Read or Die OVA Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




The great thing about Read or Die (one of the great things at least) is that you can pretty much watch the OVA and TV-series in any order you’d like. They have one similar character and take place in the same universe, but they’re completely different stories about completely different characters with completely different styles of storytelling.

The TV-series was mostly slow-paced. The OVA’s pacing is fast. It doesn’t care about being solid, and instead its biggest goal is entertainment. It does this with a tight and fast-paced plot and gorgeously animated action scenes. It’s really meant to be an adventure OVA, and does a lot of things right, considering that it’s only an hour and a half long. It’s got a great cast of characters, and especially Yomiko Readman is adorable to watch even if you haven’t watched the Read or Die TV-series.

Like the TV-series though, this is stuffed with neat ideas. The concept of people using paper to fight evil is of course very creative, but again this is just the tip of the iceberg. The different powers and plots of the bad guys in particular are just a delight to watch because of how creative they can get to accomplish their not-so-creative goals (granted, they are bad guys who are evil for the sake of being evil; it’s the ways that they use to destroy the world that are the really interesting part). The plot itself is simple, but effective, neither being too big nor too small for an hour and a half of airtime.

Now, the fast pacing does have the disadvantage is that the only positive thing that I can say about a lot of the side-characters is that they look cool, because we hardly get to know anything about them, the bad guys in particular being a problem with this. Still, for an OVA of this size it definitely could have been done better, and the characters that it does focus on are well explored.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Excellent fast-paced entertainment, though does make a few sacrifices to keep the pace going.
Characters: 8/10 – One-sided bad guys, but the main characters are very enjoyable.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Amazing action scenes.
Setting: 8/10 – Full of neat idea.

Suggestions:
– Read or Die TV
– Yozakura Quartet OVA
– Hyper Future Vision: Gunnm

Heartcatch Precure Movie – Hana no Miyako de Fashion Show… desu ka? Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Heartcatch Precure




After the Precure Allstars Movie and Suite Precure, I was a bit wary of the Heartcatch Precure Movie, especially how it was made by different people than the TV-series. The way in which Toei just keeps coming with these cash-in movies definitely had me worried. That’s why I’m so glad that this movie did manage to capture the charms of the TV-series!

The first thing you have to know for this movie is that it has a bit of a misleading title. Yes, the cast travels to Paris in order to participate in a fashion show, but they end up doing something completely different. The real plot of this movie is very much like the TV-series: it follows your standard movie plotline, conforming to a lot of cliches, but it does this so well that it doesn’t really matter, subverting quite a few other cliches in the process.

You can see that the creators of this movie carefully discussed with the creators of the TV-series what this movie should be, unlike what was the case with the Precure Allstars movie. Imagine the TV-series animation, with a movie budget. The fight scenes here are animated even better with the same addictive combination of close-combat martial arts and long-range beams, rather than just trying to zap everything.

Now, this movie could be seen as a glorified episode, but it’s a bit more than just that. The story in this movie would have never worked as an episode because it really makes use of its allocated time of 70 minutes. It’s a whimsical adventure in a wonderfully portrayed Paris, but at the same time it paints a great picture of the two new characters that are introduced in this movie. Yeah, they both start out as stereotypical, but the movie really spends its time to make their characters more than just cliches. The villain in this movie rocks because of his dynamic personality and he’s got quite an adequate backstory, making him actually more than just someone who is evil for the sake of being evil. That’s not something I expect from a main bad guy in a Precure series.

And to top things off, the movie also contains just the right amount of slice of life, in which the creators get the chance to show off both the excellent cast of characters and the tourist areas of Paris. It’s the kind that isn’t just random fluff to sit through just to get to the good parts, and instead they’re all really enjoyable to watch, wisely making use of the TV-series that already did a ton of build-up on their characters.

It’s not like this movie came with some brilliant idea like with the first and third movie of Digimon; this movie isn’t going to break any bounds, but on the other hand, it just did everything it was supposed to. It’s a must-watch for fans of Heartcatch Precure. For people who have never seen it I wouldn’t recommend it, though. The best place to start this show is really the first episode.

The reason why I’m rating this lower than what I did for the TV-series simply has to do with its length. Heartcatch Precure was a consistently entertaining ride for fifty episodes that just kept amazing me and completely redefined what it meant to be a good Mahou Shoujo. This movie lacks that value and instead just does everything it does right. Blame me watching the Third Digimon movie for that.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Whimsical, exciting, charming and adorable. Conforms to cliches but does them really well.
Characters: 9/10 – Both the recurring and the new characters are wonderful to watch.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Perhaps not the best animation for movie standards, but compared to the TV-series the extra inbetween animation really had an excellent effect.
Setting: 8/10 – Actually expands on the Sabaaku history a bit, plus an excellent portrayal of Paris without being either Xenophobic or overly obsessive. Just don’t expect much from the fashion show…

Suggestions:
– Digimon Movie 3 – The Golden Digimentals
– Arete Hime
– Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea

OVA Impressions: .Hack//Quantum – 02

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions



Ah, so this episode revealed the genre of .Hack.//Quantum to be a thriller. A thriller with as major villain the cat who in the real world is just a young boy. In true .Hack fashion, a lot of things are different from what they seem. People are really able to create a second identity this way.

It’s a shame that this one is just three episodes long, but I like how the creators found a way to turn this into a dynamic story by revealing that the entire Goal of the Cat was basically for naught. By timing this right, the creators allowed this OVA to evolve in a short time: this episode felt completely unlike the first episode. It’s good for an OVA to be varied.

One thing that I do wonder about was the reason why the creators decided to just reveal all of the major questions in this episode. I mean, this episode left hardly any questions or mystery left unanswered, aside from the Cat’s backstory. Again this hints at a completely different third episode, but that one will be hard to pull off without the mystery.

Also, on a side-note: very short Tsukasa cameo hell yeah!
OVA Episode Rating: 8.25/10

Wolverine – 10

by psgels, posted in Wolverine



This episode kicked ass! It was just simple action, but that’s exactly what this show is best at. Wolverine isn’t anything deep, but the things that it’s supposed to do, it does really well here. Ten episodes in, and it’s still consistently entertaining action that has shown very few, if any, unexpected weak moments. It pretty much delivered exactly what it promised. Nothing more, but certainly nothing less.

Also, in these types of action and adventure series, how often do we really see the creators killing off the cute moe character? Unless we’re talking about a mostly female cast, it’s always the older ones, or some of the guys that die in the middle of a battle. here in Wolverine though, the creators just killed off just about the only moe character of the entire series. The only teenager actually DIES here, due to her inexperience and naivety. That’s rare!

The strange thing about this episode is that it also flew by: I really got the feeling that it was less than 20 minutes of total airtime, that’s how it caught me up in its pacing. It’s again something that we’ve come to expect from this series: the battles are long, but not too long, and most importantly: they’re not drawn out but actually play out without characters just standing there and looking at each other for what feels like ages. Wolverine’s motto is “don’t talk, just act” and the anime so far has made great use of that.

Oh, and Yukio: she’s a great co-lead. For once she actually isn’t the romantic love interest for the main guy, but the way in which this episode had her both busy fighting the bad guys and fighting alongside her grandfather that she had many problems with, seeing the girl who replaced her die… that definitely was a nice touch for her character.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Junkers Come Here Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




There have been many slice of life movies about a young boy or girl growing up and the problems they face. Junkers Come Here is Sato Junichi’s attempt at this genre, created ten years before he would come with Aria. And really: it is among the best ones of the genre.

The thing with Junkers Come Here is that even compared to the other slice of life movies, it’s realistic (if you ignore the fact that it has a talking dog and all, but you know what I mean). This comes courtesy of an excellent characterization and a consistently detailed animation that causes the characters to nearly just walk off the screen. Hiromi (The lead girl) here just feels like a real teenaged girl and her problems are wonderfully down to earth.

On top of that, it’s also much more tightly paced compared to most slice of life series. Most of them follow the formula of first half random slice of life, second half serious story. With Junkers Come Here it’s only the first half hour that will be a bit uneventful. The movie has found a perfect balance between slice of life and character building: the events of Hiromi’s childhood that it focuses on all have a major impact on her and create a wonderful picture of her, coming together in an absolutely amazing climax.

It’s a movie with many truly heartfelt moments, even though at first sight it may be nothing more than a story about a girl and her talking dog. Everything here is very calculated, though, and it’s not just wasting time for the sake of wasting time. That’s the kind of slice of life that I personally really like.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Wonderfully paced. It’s really slow, but makes excellent use of its time.
Characters: 9/10 – even for a slice of life movie, the characters are believable with real problems. The characterization is just wonderful throughout the entire movie.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Very smooth animation that brings the cast to life.
Setting: 8/10 – Solid.

Suggestions:
– Anne no Nikki – The Diary of Anne Frank
– Aria the Animation
– Kiki’s Delivery Service

Some Really Quick OVA Impressions: Gunpla Builders, Ciel in Wonderland and Fortune Arterial OVA

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions

I originally planned to use the shoutbox for this, but unfortunately it’s down right now. Basically I just tried to watch a bunch of OVAs and failed to get through all of them. This isn’t really meant to be a full review in any way, but more a list of short explanations of why I couldn’t bother to finish any of these three.

Gunpla Builders

I already was not very motivated to check the Gunpla Builders OVA out. I lasted only two minutes with this thing. The reason for that was that in only the first two minutes alone, the characters managed to mention the word “Gundam” a whopping twelve times already. I know I’m biased, and the animation was very good here, but I really don’t want to watch this kind of propaganda!

Kuroshitsuji II: Ciel in Wonderland

This is an OVA that consists out of two episodes, putting Ciel in the Alice in Wonderland story (the Disney version). Here, I lasted until ten minutes into the second OVA. In the end, it’s just fanservice: Ciel gets put in a dress and all of the side-characters make an appearance and act weird. It’s full of the kind of humour that’s just random for the sake of being random. That doesn’t remain fun for a full hour.

Fortune Arterial OVA

This one was just terrible. The TV-series was pretty good, but the OVA is just a random side-story in which nothing happens with a climax at an obligatory scene of the lead guy walking into all of the females bathing. YET AGAIN. Stay far away from this one.

Fractale – 08

by psgels, posted in Fractale




The animators are really saving this series here. Seriously, that’s something I don’t get to see often with a TV-series, but I have to applaud A-1 with probably the best animation of the entire season. Eight episodes in and it’s still consistently fluid. Now that we’re into the action-packed episodes again, they especially deliver here. This episode didn’t look as good as the previous one, but even though I couldn’t care less about the story nor the characters at this point, they did put a lot of soul into the drawings and animation here.

When this show actually tries to deliver, it really succeeds. This episode was dark and disturbing and that worked out wonderfully well. It’s just such a shame that it sucks at building up. It’s dull and generic and completely ignores the interesting parts of the story in favour of the ever-boring Clain.

Here is something that dawned to me while watching the opening of this episode: this series is called Fractale, but if you removed the Fractale system and just replace it with your average fantasy science fiction setting, you don’t really need to change much, do you? The Fractale system was a nice idea, but it’s like the creators ignored it completely for a generic adventure story. Also, the creators really let a chance slip by by not trying to find some sort of link between the Fractale system and the fractals that it was named after. I mean, that’s what the OP has been hinting after again and again, and yet there’s nothing regarding this.
Rating: * (Good)

Yumekui Merry – 10

by psgels, posted in Yumekui Merry



This episode only affirmed the strengths and weaknesses of this series. It was a build-up for the finale (this series will have 13 episodes, by the way. It’s officially announced now), but it still showcased its rock-solid characters, excellent acting, and unfortunately not very ambitious backstory.

This episode revealed the backstory of some of the side-characters and while it definitely was interesting, it also felt like they were having a contest of who could have the saddest past. one girl’s parents died in an accident, another guy grew up with his younger sister in the hospital. Twists like these are powerful, but they shouldn’t be used gratuitous.

In the end, by far the biggest mistake that this series made however, was not making John Doe the villain. He’s a much more interesting antagonist than Elcres or Mistletain, who currently are trying a bit too hard to be mysterious and therefore not giving any of us the chance to connect with them. John Doe and his army of talking cats: you could have built an excellent story around that, while still using the unique setting of this series.

I’m a bit harsh on this series compared to others, but I am comparing it to much higher standards than usual. After all, Yumekui Merry is good, but still nowhere as good as Casshern Sins. It also doesn’t help that it airs right after Madoka Magica, which has some similar elements here. I’ve said before that series with a simple plot can be just as awesome when executed well, but here we have a series whose plot just has too little interesting twists and turns that really prevent it from being a masterpiece. Sana about to be kidnapped… I’m sorry, but I’ve just seen that a few too many times by now and this episode just spent too much time on trying to build this up, and it still hasn’t happened yet!

Anyway, enough with the negatives. I mean, Chizuru did get some much needed backgrounds, and she is really promising to be a key part in making plot of the finale less dull, standing somewhere in the middle of Yumeji and Merry and Mistletain and Elcres. And I also remain convinced that Yumeji is a great main character for a guy his age. Instead of doing nothing but angst, whine or look helplessly, he looked for ways to save Sana, and yet this episode also showed him preparing for the worst-case scenario of Merry having to send her dream demon back. Seriously, dream demons holding the dreams of their vessels hostage is something that this series overall used really well.
Rating: * (Good)

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 10

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica



Holy crap, what an episode. We’ve finally gotten to Homura’s past and BY GOD is is awesome.

This may be because I really like the kinds of series that deal with alternative dimensions, but the reason I love the stories like this is because they really allow creators to show different ways for characters to develop when done right (do note that it can be done poorly just as easily, though. Yes, I’m looking at you Yosuga no Amagami). The creators really put a ton of meaning in this episode

With this, I also understand why the creators said, prior to this series, that it would be the type of show that you need to watch two times in order to fully get it. I remember that first episode and how at first it seemed very much like Nanoha. The biggest reason for that was that scene in which Madoka saves Kyuubei from being attacked. Yeah, that suddenly gets put into a completely different perspective, doesn’t it?

One thing that was amusing during the past few weeks was seeing all of the crazy theories from everyone, ranging from speculating that Homura was Madoka to Homura being Madoka’s cat. In the end though, she just turned out to be a normal girl who just matured much more mentally due to the way that she always kept travelling back in time. Plot twists like “character x is secretly related to character Y in some bizarre way” are good, but they shouldn’t be used for the sake of just using them, otherwise they’ll just become forced.

This episode only left one major question: why wasn’t Madoka this awesome mahou shoujo when Homura first met her? This episode strongly hinted at Madoka getting more talent as Homura kept travelling back in time.

Oh, and the release dates for the final episodes are finally out: Madoka will only have 12 episodes. We’re actually ending this thing in two weeks!
Rating: *** (Awesome)

EDIT: holy crap, I knew by now that I needed to avoid that shoutbox before watching this week’s episode, but this is getting a bit out of hand here. Unfortunately due to my schedule I’m unfortunately not able to watch this series as fast as usual (combined with the fact that four of the shows I’m blogging air on thursday evening).

Next week, I’ll create a topic for discussions before the episode airs.

Hourou Musuko – 08

by psgels, posted in Hourou Musuko



This is something that has been baffling me for years now: why are romance shows so scared to show people in an actual relationship? I mean, the climax of 60% of all romance series is the confession, and 30% just refuse to end without anything happening between the lead couple, having them remain forever in this “yes we’re in love but not actually dating so that we can have harems and love triangles forever”-type ending. That, while you can definitely get some good drama out of a relationship, which is what this show is currently doing brilliantly.

Nitori vs. Anna made this into a really excellent episode. There is some uncomfortable tension between them, but it’s the healthy kind of tension that still leaves plenty of room for them to grow either closer or further away from each other. It’s not cheesy in the slightest, and it’s definitely been one of the most down to earth portrayals of romance in quite a while, even though we’re talking about middle schoolers here.

That little shot of Chiba, Takatsuki and Nitori together when they were younger was a great little addition, by the way. This really was an episode of nostalgia as well, with both Nitori and Takatsuki trying to move on in their own ways. Nitori by exploring other sides of romance, Takatsuki by growing her hair a bit and trying to make up with Chiba again. If I have to critique the creators for one thing, it’s that they show a tad to little of Chiba when she’s not near Nitori. In this episode for example Takatsuki told Nitori that chiba was behaving normally again, but we unfortunately didn’t get to see those scenes.

Instead, we got this former bully. Now, with the way in which bullies are usually portrayed in anime, this guy is a HUGE improvement. He’s bratty, but in a subtle way and he’s definitely having an impact on Nitori. Whether it’s wise to introduce a new character three episodes before the ending is a different story, though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)