Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka Review – 70/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka?




That’s it. With this I’m done giving these generic looking moe shows a benefit of doubt. Kore wa Zombie Desu ka is not as bad as Dragon Crisis. In fact, it has a few parts that are actually good, especially in its first half. It lead me to believe that, in fact, we might get a very enjoyable fanservice show here. Unfortunately though, this show then proceeded to run all of my hopes into the ground.

Let me start with the good stuff: this show is quite creative when it wants to be. When it wants to, it can use its cliched ingredients, insert some good chemistry between the characters, throw in some crazy plot twists and create an excellent tension. There really are a few excellent episodes in this series, especially the first and the one about the slasher. It’s just that there’s just so much crap in the rest of this show.

Zombie is at its best when the chemistry around its characters is dynamic. It’s got well written banter that works well with its nonchalant zombie main character. It’s quite enjoyable when it doesn’t take its own cliches seriously and instead tries to put them into a creative scenario. Most of the time though, it just forgets this and devolves into dull moe hi-jinks. Eventually, it just gives up trying to be interesting and just opts for lazy slice of life that’s just there to fill up time. The characters in this show are nowhere near well written enough to remain enjoyable when they’re not funny.

The big nail in this one’s coffin though is that it has no bloody clue how to tell a good story. The drama in the first half can actually get quite good when the show still is a collection of random episodes about the important characters, but it completely falls apart when it tries to build up for some overall storyline. The drama gets incredibly cheesy, and the worst part is that the creators don’t even realize this, so they just keep stretching the cheese ad nauseum.

The entire second half of this series is based around complete stupidity from one character that ends with one heck of a Deus ex Machina (several of them, actually). And then, when the climax is over and you thought that things couldn’t get any worse… episode 12 will destroy any good memories that were still left with one giant middle finger to both its audience and cast of characters.

Studio Deen. Please put some people who can actually tell a story on your next series. I mean, you’ve showed in the past that you can make genuinely good moe shows with Touka Gettan and YamiBoushi. Why so much laziness?

Storytelling: 7/10 – When it wants to, it can be very enjoyable and dynamic, but this doesn’t happen often enough and gets ruined by some terrible episodes and drama.
Characters: 6/10 – Try to be serious, but fail. Try to be enjoyable, but fail as well. Only when they try to be themselves they work well.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Pretty decent animation. Certainly not the worst.
Setting: 7/10 – Has nice ideas, but doesn’t use them often enough.

Suggestions:
– Touka Gettan
– Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
– Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito

Level E – 12

by psgels, posted in Level E



Awesome to see the entire main cast together again for the finale of this series. I mean, these are the kinds of characters who are awesome to watch, no matter what they do. Having an entire arc focus on them was exactly what this show needed to close off well.

Also, I finally spotted an overused cliche in this series: the seemingly helpless girl who manages to hit a home-run against all expectations. But then again, as an alien it makes perfect sense, and this episode even poked fun at the “walking into the shower”-scene that baffles me of why it was the first one to do that.

Overall, it’s true that the first arc of Level E was without a doubt its best: it had the element of surprise and used it utterly brilliantly. What happened after that is very interesting, though. Instead of joining the bandwagon of trying to make more episodes in the same vein, the rest of the episodes continued to experiment with all kinds of different stories and characters surrounding aliens on earth. Standalone it’s indeed easy to just compare the to the first three episodes and label this as a show that goes downhill, but nevertheless I find the way in which this series paints together a complete picture, making use of its momentum and constantly changing its focus and characters, to be quite brilliant and the single most enjoyable show of this season.

The thing is that I rarely give very high ratings to comedies, even though it’s a huge genre in anime. Level E has opened my eyes on how good the genre can be when it has some actually interesting stories to tell. This way, it can also be good whenever it’s not funny. Call it the X-Factor of comedies. With most comedies I’m just disappointed when they’re not funny, because besides being funny they fall apart without their humour. For Level E though, I think that it also would have worked as a series if it didn’t have its humour. It’d obviously be less awesome, but I can imagine that it would still keep my attention.

What’s more: a lot of comedies seem to be trying to solve this by going all serious in the final two episodes. I’ve only seen very few of them that actually pulled off such a good climax, though (Hyakko being one of those rare examples). This series however showed that you can just as easily tell serious stories that fit in 1 to 3 episodes that can work just as well as long arcs if they all succeed in coming together and form a whole and creating its own universe.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

OVA Impressions: Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn – 03

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, OVA Impressions



The adults in Gundam Unicorn… are actually portrayed really well. Their maturity works quite well. And like I said before: the execution here is incredibly solid and if this wasn’t bound by Gundam cliches, I definitely would have liked it even more than I am now. There are plenty of characters here who take themselves seriously, are intelligent and make for a great war drama.

What annoys me about Gundam Unicorn is something that annoys me about a lot of other Gundams as well. They’re certain ideas and tropes that just continue to run throughout all kinds of Gundam Series that I just can’t get behind, and seeing those repeated over and over… I have to admit that those are killing my enjoyment of this series a bit.

To take this episode:
– The main character is the vehicle for a lot of “war is bad” drama.He inherently believes that killing is evil… and yet he flies around in a giant killing machine.
– There also is that mentality of “oh, us adults are old and fail. Let us sacrifice ourselves so that the youth can shine” that I just can’t get behind, even though the adults are portrayed as far more useful and reliable.
– Then it also suddenly brought up the skilled minor bad guy who does nothing but frantic yelling. Especially Gundam 00 abused this one heavily.
– Oh, and let’s not forget the lead character unlocking his hidden powers once he sees one of his friends killed. Realistic warfare? Hah.

Nevertheless, this all could have been much, much worse. You can see that Char actually is aware of all these tropes around the lead characters, and has constructed a pretty solid plan around them with much more details than you usually see. Meanwhile, while the main character isn’t the best advertisement for “war is bad”, his romantic interest is actually trying to resolve conflicts using diplomacy as the “Relena” of this series. That’s one cliche that I don’t have any qualms about: it’s good to have a voice of reason in Gundam series: someone who doesn’t constantly think about fighting.

Also, I have yet to see my to biggest annoyances of the Gundam franchise: the endless yelling and angsting, and the long strings of monotone battles that they tend to devolve in. If Gundam Unicorn can actually avoid these in its second half, then it can really get quite good. However, this episode already contained a hint to the former (that guy who just kept yelling). As for the second annoyance, though: those usually are the result of this series remaining too long in space, where there really isn’t much to do apparently. The end of this episode showed the characters descending to earth.

A descending scene that was really good, by the way. The song behind it was ridiculously cheesy, but somehow the direction made it all work all the characters finally taking a break between all the fighting in order to actually get through the atmosphere safely. That’s good build-up here, to end the episode with a completely different mood.
OVA Episode Rating: 8/10

Dragon Crisis Review – 55/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Dragon Crisis




The past Winter Season was a dark season… for Studio Deen in any case. They came out with more series than any other series, and all of them were disappointing even despite my low expectations. I mean, I am a fan of them and all, but the reason for that is most definitely not their consistency!

I originally wanted to be a bit more generous with my rating for this series, but the more I thought about this show, the more I realized that it just doesn’t have anything redeemable. There’s no reason to watch this thing; everything it does has been done better a thousand times already. Dragon Crisis at heart is a boring cliche-fest that lacks any sort of ambition.

The structure of this series consists out of six two-episode arcs. This show somehow manages to do the impossible and become progressively worse with every successive arc. Seriously, just when you think that this show couldn’t get any worse, it manages to finds some way to prove you wrong until at the end, the creators just outright give up. Every arc is pretty much focused on adding someone to the lead guy’s harem. Yeah, that loses its charm really quickly.

Beyond that the writing is just outright stupid. This is the kind of show that was written by people who think that teenagers (its target audience) have the mental capacities of a lobotomized squirrel. Characters act solely on what’s convenient to the plot and make the most bizarre leaps in logic at times. Any attempts of this show to become genuine is overshadowed by their complete stupidity. Add that to a plot that is just chockful of plot evices, deus ex machinas and inconsequential techno-babble that too make no sense whatsoever. All of that really is not helped by a really annoying cast of cliches and stereotypes that are supposed to be characters in which hardly anyonee stands out.

One of the big eslling points of Dragon Crisis looked to be its animation, with Masashi Ishihama (the guy behind the gorgeously animated Read or Die and Welcome to the Space Show) as its animation director. But even factoring in the lower budget that this series received, the animation is surprisingly bland: it’s not used well, the characters are all carbon copies of each other with just different hairstyles and despite a relatively high framerate for Studio Deen’s standards, none of the visuals stand out as particularly impressive.

The reason why I still consider a series like Fractale to be good, despite the way in which it too has a lot of flaws, is because it still is a very enjoyable adventure. There is absolutely nothing enjoyable about Dragon Crisis. None of the drama works, its stories are completely void of any creativity, its characters are just there to get in the lead guy’s pants and it just had no intention of trying to do anything even remotely interesting.

Thats the big problem with Studio Deen: they’ve been losing their talent left and right and just aren’t trying hard enough most of the time. They need some incentive: something to really get them to produce the really good stuff again, because this… this just is a complete waste.

Storytelling: 4/10 – Completely unambitious, doesn’t know what it wants to do and therefore is full of deus ex machina and plot induced stupidity.
Characters: 5/10 – None stands out. It’s just one big harem with all the cliches in place.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Not as good as you’d expect, but doesn’t cause this show to get any worse than what it already is.
Setting: 5/10 – This show looks like it adctually has a complex background with its dragons and rare artifacts, but in the end it’s nothing but mere cliches and techno-babble.

Suggestions:
– Dragonaut The Resonance (Yes, I’m actually recommending Dragonaut over this one. At least that one had some ambition!)
– Fractale
– Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou

Supernatural The Animation – 12

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



Now this is more like it! Episode 12 was definitely the best episode of the second batch of Supernatural episodes. It not only showed a completely different perspective from usual, it also gave a lot of new depth to the overall story and on top of that, it was a terrific standalone story as well.

It really was a great idea to have an entire episode focused around Sam and Dean’s father: this episode was entirely devoid of those two, safe for one photograph. Their father (John) also makes for an excellent central character: he knows when to remain in the shadows and when to be useful and do something. This allowed the story of this episode to really shine.

I really liked the story of Grey and Lilly Baker. It’s also what really established the demons as a real threat here. They’ve got a tragic father-daughter relationship, but this episode was really genuine. For once the acting did not get in the way, and was amongst the best this series has shown so far.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Supernatural The Animation – 11

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



Another Sam episode, but thankfully this one made up for the previous episode. It’s a much better premise that actually knows that it should take Sam’s character somewhere. This episode developed his part in the storyline along with his memories of his mother and girlfriend, instead of just repeating things we already knew, like in the previous episode.

The case in this episode was a bit extreme, but still a pretty good story about domestic abuse. The victim in this case was given telekinetic powers for some reason and things completely escalate from that point. Unlike the other episodes though, the ending of the episode didn’t provide any extra twist that made that kid’s story deeper than imagined. The suicide did not make the story of this episode better than it already was. Instead though, we got Sam and Dean in priest outfits and this strange blond woman who at the end turned out to be that strange eyed demon.

I do have to say though that this second batch of Supernatural episodes has been weaker than the first six episodes. Obviously the previous episode had a lot to do with that and all, but even then I have yet to see an episode here that comes close to the best episodes (02 and 06) of the first batch. There have been plenty of series that also had this syndrome, though. We’ve reached the halfway point right now and let’s see whether or not the creators can use the first half in order to make the second half into something amazing.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Supernatural The Animation – 10

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



Dean has always been the best character of this series. It’s probably because this episode was entirely focused on Sam who got a crush on a woman he only barely met that this really caught my attention and all… but what the heck is up with the moon in this series?

It’s not even the “Nya-nya-nya”-song that got to me the most here. This is just one of those stories that… just doesn’t make any sense. First of all there’s that thing of a full moon multiple days in a row. I first thought that the creators were sneakily skipping around months at a time without telling us, until that last part of the episode. I mean, how else could that wound that Dean inflicted on her arm have healed so quickly?

A few of these things that don’t make any sense are of course fine, but in this episode they just kept piling up. This also was full of those strange coincidences: when you look outside the window you suddenly see her stalker. When you knock on her door you’re just in time to prevent her from killing herself.

Furthermore, a werewolf is a vicious creature. How did it manage to sneak past Sam in the first place? I mean, I know that Sam is troubled by his hormones and all, but he should have noticed a werewolf sneaking past him, going back to bed and changing back like nothing’s happened. Do werewolves usually do that? Bending around the rules of folklore is of course okay, but this shouldn’t be done with the purpose to fill up plotholes.

I also have no idea what Dean meant when he was trying to explain why the girl didn’t change into a werewolf when they were keeping an eye on her. His first explanation makes sense: block the moon from her and she’s not going to do anything (leaving aside that most people close their curtains when they go to sleep), but why did he suddenly bring up that puddle of water? What did that have to do with anything?

On a final note, Sam took his obsession over Jessica a tad too far in this episode. I know he’s sad and all, but it’s a good thing that this episode portrayed a crazy stalker, because otherwise I would have definitely made him out for one. He was just creepy here in his devotion.
Rating: – (Disappointing)

Star Driver – 24

by psgels, posted in Star Driver



An d so the creators used even less time for the climax than I imagined. Seriously, it only started at the end of this episode. It was really well done, don’t get me wrong here: the build-up was terrific. It’s just that I have no idea how the creators are planning to make everything come together in that final episode.

This episode was really quiet, but that was exactly what allowed it to push a lot of characters forward. A lot of the drama here was genuine, and even though none of the major questions were answered, it did add a lot of details to the cast and especially Wako and Keito got a lot out of this episode.

Star Driver has three main arcs, all corresponding to a Shrine Maiden. That just begs the question of why Wako wasn’t given an arc like that. I mean, this episode felt more like the climax of Keito’s arc than the climax of the entire series.

I smell a movie. Just think about the other series that premiered in the Sunday Afternoon timeslot: Gundam 00? Movie. Full Metal Alchemist? Movie. Sengoku Basara? Movie. Only Code Geass didn’t get a movie, but that has Bokuko no Akito. A movie would be the perfect explanation of what the heck is going on here.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Wolverine Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Wolverine




Let me start this review with a message to everyone who didn’t give Wolverine a chance because of Iron Man: it’s really not bad!

Wolverine and Iron Man are completely different series. They were written by different people, directed with different people and have completely different purposes. Iron Man was just crap in nearly every single way. Wolverine however was a simple but very effective action series that knew exactly what it was and what it wanted to be.

It’s a series that doesn’t have the biggest budget, but still manages to create consistently good action throughout its airtime. Nearly every episode delivers plenty of action to keep you busy, while avoiding the Dragonball Z syndrome of dragging out by changing set-ups and locations often enough to keep things dynamic. This certainly is no show that shows people just standing at the same place and talking to each other. Wolverine is a very simple character: don’t think; just do. This allows the series to be constantly moving, preventing it from getting stale.

In comparison to Iron Man, Wolverine actually has a continuous story instead of an incoherent mess that will turn off just about everyone. It’s a simple one: it basically revolves around saving a damsel in distress and all, but the creators throw in just enough extra spices to make it interesting and keep the action going. Some of the characters have a bigger story than others, but together they actually make a pretty enjoyable cast that is hot blooded, but perfect for a simple action series.

That simplicity is obviously also the biggest flaw of this series, because you really don’t want to watch this series for its depth. Wolverine is action and more action, and it only has its story and characters in order to support this action, and not the other way around. And don’t worry, it’s not like it has a cast of idiots like with Iron Man, but everyone remains pretty simple and doesn’t break many barriers. The characters in Wolverine are likable because they’re cool and charismatic, not because they’re particularly easy to identify with or anything. Like I said, the main plot of the show revolves around a damsel in distress.

Madhouse has a unique visual style, but lately I’ve noticed that they have trouble with making their characters act. The acting in Wolverine is quite stiff at times, which has a lot to do with the animators being unable to create dynamic facial expressions for the characters. The screenplay is excellent, though: it does exactly what a simple action series needs to do.

There is only one point where Wolverine was really better than any other series this season: its soundtrack and the use of it. Bold, versatile and excellent at making the action even better.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Lots of action, and does this well, knowing how to balance it out with its plot.
Characters: 8/10 – Simple, but effective and likable.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Awesome soundtrack. Animation has a lot of weaknesses, but still remains pretty solid for an action series.
Setting: 8/10 – The backstory actually does what it needs to do to make this series interesting for a full 12 episodes.

Suggestions:
– Ultraviolet: Code 044
– Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto
– High School of the Dead

Wolverine – 12

by psgels, posted in Wolverine



The only bad part of this episode was the point where Hideki set off the self destruct mechanism of the building he was in. I mean, hello? You’ll be the one to inherit that thing; why the heck are you destroying it? And heck: if you’re going to destroy a building, do it properly and burn it to the ground. You hardly accomplished anything here.

Apart from that though, in terms of screenplay this was an excellent example of how you should close off a simple action series. The deaths of both Shingen and Hideki were excellent. Especially Shingen’s fight did justice to his character, and the way in which Wolverine beat him was exceptionally well done: he really was caught by surprise here.

I also like how the creators knew very well who in this series had super hearling powers, and who didn’t: Yukio died after a fatal stab-wound, Mariko also got shot in her heart after doing something heroic but very reckless. The death of them really feel like part of the larger picture instead of the way in which Iron Man just killed off its characters for the heck of it.

Madhouse, you redeemed yourself here. This ending gave a great closure. Wolverine was nothing deep, but what it did it did well. As for the acting, it actually managed to make something out of the characters because it knew that the acting was stiff, and instead just tried to make this superhero worthy. Well, mission accomplished.

the X-men will be airing next week (in fact, it’ll be the first series to premiere of the Spring Season). Wolverine really showed that they’re all intending this to be different series that stand apart from each other. With the director of Afro Samurai, it can really go anywhere. The question is of course whether they can do justice to the X-Men themselves. Unlike Wolverine, they had a deep story about prejudice and discrimination.Let’s see whether or not that can return there.
Rating: ** (Excellent)