Letter Bee – 45

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



This could be me, but I have a strong feeling that this was one of the chapters of the manga again. And I can understand why the creators just had to include it, despite how they’re trying to wrap up the series while the manga is still on-going (that’s the only reason I can think of for why the previous episodes went into anime original territory anyway. It really is a shame that Pierrot couldn’t get a third season for this show in time). This chapter is fairly standalone, simple and away from the main plot, but it contained a ton of heart.

Connor obviously had been missing from the past episodes, and this episode explains what he had been doing. It turned out to be a wonderful piece of character development. This really was an excellent aftermath that made Connor into a much better character than he already was. It was overall a very quiet episode, even for Letter Bee standards, but that really gave Connor the time to show how Connor and Sunny changed.

the big question at this point is of course going to be: will the final episodes be able to do the story of this series justice? I’m hoping for a few more episodes like this, plus a very solid finale that tries to do more than just answering the major questions and wrap up the story.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Gankutsuou Review – 95/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews





So, I watch a lot of anime. With this, I’m only two reviews away from my 700th review on this site, and I really try to watch as much anime as possible. So with that in mind, I do not make the following statement lightly: Gankutsuou is my favourite series of all of the anime I’ve watched during the past year and a half, and perhaps even longer. It’s often referred to as one of Gonzo’s masterpieces, and I wholeheartedly agree. This is everything that I look for in an anime, and then some.

Good Gonzo has always stood out with how damn innovating they kept trying to be. Gankutsuou is a fantastic example of this, but that’s far from everything about this series. Aside from being consistently experimental, it’s also extremely well executed.

I have not read the story of the original Count of Monte Cristo, but regardless, the creators did a fantastic job of converting it into a story that fits perfectly into 24 episodes. They took the entire setting and turned it into a futuristic setting that at the same time retained the atmosphere of France of more than two hundred years and the aristocratic culture of the days before the french revolution. It’s completely fiction and even through the weird graphics style, it feels strangely authentic. The setting here is really solid, and yet it’s the part of this show that impressed me the least.

Instead, we have some fantastic acting from the cast of characters that really brings them to life. There is a ton of character development in this series, and the creators even managed to make an often whining teenaged lead into a compelling character (though granted, before his development he does not stand out as the strongest member of this cast). The characters in this series all have a ton of flaws, and this series uses those brilliantly. The entire plot weaves together all of the different characters and their backstories, and just about everyone gets his or her moment to really show off his or her character.

And the way in which this is done was a really emotionally resonating one. This series knows exactly when to be subtle, and when to release all brakes and go over the top. The delivery in this is just perfect, with creative poses and animation in which a lot his happening at the same time, yet the story remains focused on what it wants to show. It’s really well shown with a lot of detail in how the characters are reacting to each other.

And as for the graphics… they’re some of the best you can get if you don’t mind the intrusive CG. This series is full of excellent visual ideas. I mean, just about every shot is absolutely gorgeous and it’s ridiculous how creative the visuals can get. The creators really tried to stuff a ton of ideas into the visuals here, as long as they all fitted into the story. The result is a show that looks absolutely unlike anything else. The animation itself isn’t the most consistent, but when it delivers, it really delivers some amazing and hard hitting inbetween animation that combines perfectly with the storytelling. Gankutusou really was a show in which Gonzo could show off what it was able to do with its CG, and while this show is obviously heavy on the CG, it doesn’t feel out of place. Instead, the graphics create this gorgeous whole.

Overall, I found this series one heck of a ride, and Gankutsuou is very likely going to end up in my top 20 favourite anime, somewhere between #15 and #20. I absolutely adore these kinds of series that can get a huge emotional response out of me. It’s obviously not a show for everyone (and I did hear that this anime changed a ton of stuff from the original novel), but to me, Gankutusou took a while to build up, but as soon as it hit its stride just about everything fitted together perfectly.

Storytelling: 10/10 – Wonderfully paced and balanced, just about every episode significantly advances the plot and comes with new developments that are delivered strongly, knowing exactly when to be subtle and when to be over the top, all culimnating into an amazing ending.
Characters: 9/10 – Excellent dialogue and acting with really dynamic characters. There are a few stereotypes like the angsty male lead, but even he is portrayed and developed wonderfully.
Production-Values: 10/10 – Unique. Stuffed with tons of visual ideas, both in terms of art and animation.
Setting: 9/10 – Takes France of centuries ago, and successfully transforms it into something futuristic and unique while still remaining authentic.

Suggestions:
– Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette
– Mahou Shoujotai
– Casshern Sins

Wolverine – 07

by psgels, posted in Wolverine



The background episode for the side characters. And it’s as I hoped: it again is so much better than Iron Man’s. Iron Man had a former ally who suddenly turned into a villain, and used the corniest background story just so that it would be able to explain that ludicrous plot twist. There was nothing interesting behind it. Wolverine meanwhile uses this episode to tie some of the backgrounds of the side characters together, and it does so quite effectively.

It’s a shame that Yukio turned into a damsel in distress, but then again Logan had this coming to him, in the way in which he just kept leaving her in the most impossible situations that even he would not have gotten out of if it weren’t for his healing powers. Ah well, Yukio still deserves points for trying to drown that giant monster in some conveniently nearby concrete. That “convenient” isn’t meant as a criticism here, by the way. This series consistently makes use of its environment in its action scenes in a way that I’d wish more anime would do, and so this concrete thing is a nice touch here. Oh, and that teenaged girl nicely averted the “useless teenaged sidekick”-trope when she actually proved to be quite useful. I really thought that she would only get in Wolverine’s way, but she even injured herself in order to get rid of that giant monster.

On a completely different note: the X-Men promo aired. Like expected, it will be done by a complete different team, because even the character designs for Logan and Cyclops are different. I do have to say though that it has the best looking designs of the Marvel anime so far. For once, the characters actually looked cool. As for the acting though, they unfortunately didn’t show anything about that, but it does seem that the same voice actors of Logan and Cyclops of Wolverine will return. I really hope that their dialogue will be more than their exchange of one liners in the previous episode, though. It was passable for one episode, but not an entire series!
Rating: * (Good)

Gosick – 07

by psgels, posted in Gosick



This is why this series originally caught my attention: its creativity. This episode was full of it. It successfully created an entire small culture, with its own rituals, traits and habits. It created a wide variety of characters and a very imaginative back-story that for once actually kept me guessing, instead of just waiting for Victorique to grab the script again. Finally there’s some actual build-up in the way she comes to the answer!

It’s a shame that this series leaves so much to be desired in the character department. If it had compelling and deep characters it really would have been an interesting series here. Instead, the only interesting character in this series at this point is Victorique: the past two episodes gave a lot of depth to her with her background and her antics are also starting to get quite colorful. The rest of the cast though… they’re not portrayed well.

Most of the characters here suffered from bad acting and strange behaviors. Especially those three male guests suffered from this: they were stereotypical assholes. I know that this series is deliberately withholding their backgrounds, but in doing so it also forgets to flesh them out and give them decent personalities. We never even get to know who they are. The maid in this episode as well: I’m sure that she’s a nice girl and all, but this episode portrayed her as totally deranged. Oh, and we also have Kujou. I still can’t get over the fact that the lead character of a detective series has such a poor sense of observation. First there is a box with a piece of paper in it, and he says that nothing is in it. Then he promises to protect Victorique, only for her to run off while he’s dozing off. Or take the scene in which we get a surprisingly cheerful Victorique singing from out of nowhere… and he just remarks that she’s back to her usual self. When did we ever hear her sing so cheerfully like that!? (No offence to Victorique about that, by the way. It’s really good to see more sides of her).

And don’t get me wrong, though: this episode was wonderfully told. The atmosphere it built up was excellent and the dialogue blended in really well with the music. It was well paced and packed a number of great and hard hitting plot twists. It’s because of that that it’s such a shame that this show is a waste of this potential due to the really poor attention to detail. I’ve said this before: this show is great in the big picture, but not so great in the small picture.
Rating: * (Good)

Yumekui Merry – 07

by psgels, posted in Yumekui Merry



Aaaand we’ve got ourselves a beach episode here. I guess it was inevitable, with how the OP kept hinting at it, but it’s a good thing that this show is well written, otherwise it would have been a complete disaster, plus gg’s insert jokes are also getting on my nerves now (we know these fanservice moments are bad. You don’t need to make them worse!). This was very much a buildup episode, but at the very least the creators made sure that the random antics and the fanservice didn’t get in the way of the good parts of the episode: Merry and her sense of justice.

Merry and Yumeji… they’re a great lead couple. This episode again showed that even within an episode with such a badly overused premise of going to the beach with half the cast, the chemistry between them remains rock-solid. The past seven episodes have done wonders developing the trust between them, and seeing them play off of it really saved this episode for me. For a beach episode, it could have been much worse, and the creators also took their time to slightly develop the relationship between two of the side characters.

Plus, the characters kept talking about justice, so I was really expecting Merry to gather her composure just in time in order to save that young boy whose dream demon was about to be killed. And yet, Merry didn’t even notice it, and the boy just got his dreams destroyed. It’s definitely an interesting entrance for the new villain, but she really needs to get less stereotypically evil after this point. That will be fine if this episode was indeed hinting at what I think it was hinting.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 07

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica



Ah, the wonderful character development! This episode added a ton of new things to the characters, especially Sayaka and Kyouko. This is really what these short 13 episoded series need to do: instead of wasting time like what Fractale is currently doing, they constantly need to focus and build up their characters and if character development fits in the story, then all the better.

Kyouko revealed her past and became a completely different character from who she was at her introduction. She’s still the experienced Mahou Shoujo, but the way she became a mahou shoujo is a really tragic one (which looked awesome, by the way). Sayaka meanwhile takes an entire episode to let the revelation of the previous episode sink in, to the point where she believes that she can’t even have a proper romance anymore. I wonder why, because even though she’s a bit of a zombie, she still can feel emotions like any other. Her fears here are entirely irrational, but this episode really hinted at her getting screwed over by those feelings at the end.

Overall, Shaft. I have to congratulate you. This has by far been my favourite Shaft series in years. For once, they did everything right again, and their decision to bring in Urobuchi Gen was an excellent one.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Fractale – 05

by psgels, posted in Fractale



I expected more of this episode. I mean, it was one of those episodes that make me wonder why they were included in such a short series: the incredibly risky build-up episodes. They’re understandable for character and world building in the long running series, but we’re talking about eleven episodes here!

So, basically everything that happens here is that Clain does a number of chores and Nessa takes over the flying ship of the rebels and makes everything hot. The only really new thing that we learn is Phryne’s reasons for taking away Nessa, which could have easily been done in one fourth of that time. the major problem is that I don’t know whether the characters in this series are solid enough to actually make use of the time this episode spent on fleshing them out. Especially when this was supposed to be an interesting adventure series, and this episode entirely broke that flow and didn’t really contribute anything to this.

The way in which this episode was brought also was a bit lazy. There was a lot of expendable dialogue and characters trying to be funny while they weren’t. Oh, and unfunny underwear jokes. One examples of these kinds of scenes done partly right is with the currently airing Star Driver, which blends in random antics that are genuinely fun to watch, because they’re well delivered, are mixed in with interesting and well explored characters and despite the lack of balance it is consistently fun to watch. I’m really missing that with Fractale. We’re five episodes in already and it really doesn’t have time anymore to goof off.

This episode indeed showed some of the daily lives of the rebels; it did that right, but the way in which it showed this could have been done much better, especially when it gets in the way of a lot of other things in this series. Priorities, people!
Rating: – (Disappointing)

Hourou Musuko – 05

by psgels, posted in Hourou Musuko



I do think that this series is overestimating the acting capabilities of children. I remember when we at elementary school (elementary school in the Netherlands usually lasts from the age of five till the age of eleven or twelve) got to participate in the school plays, we didn’t really know anything about proper acting and understanding your character. We mostly practiced saying all of the lines correctly and the choreography (a lot of the plays we did back then were musicals), while practicing this over and over again. Seeing people completely caught up in their role with even the right theatrical gestures, intonations and movement is perhaps a bit beyond random kids.

The creators nailed the drama, though. The scene in which that guy randomly blurted out Nitori’s secret was really well done and involved a lot of different characters who were at the scene. It also really shedded some more insight about how Nitori feels about his identity, and how Takatsuki helped him in the chapters that the series skipped over.

Saori meanwhile got the bitchy character right. Throughout the entire series she’s being strange and trying to stand out, but she does it in this subtle way that doesn’t make her annoying, yet uses the drama that she created well. And at the same time, her character is far from one-dimensional so she doesn’t end up as your typical stereotype weirdo.

As for the Romeo and Juliet play.. yeah, it had it coming that some lead characters would end up playing Romeo and Juliet. Seeing two random classmates play those roles would perhaps have been interesting in a longer series, but with eleven episodes this series really needs to take every chance it has to build further upon the main characters. At the very least we didn’t get the corny solution of Nitori and Takatsuki playing the lead roles, and the current state of events did lead to some interesting drama that again brought some more life to the characters.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Tailenders Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




Anime Innovations Tokyo is an initiative to fund innovative and new projects. Tailenders is its second major production, after Cencoroll two years ago. Both resulted in a half-hour movie, but apart from that they’re completely different. By far the most apparent difference is that while in Cencoroll it was the animation that stood out, Tailenders has awesome artwork. Just about every shot in this show looks great and very stylish, with the only downside being some CG that doesn’t blend in well.

Furthermore, where Cencoroll really put in effort in putting forth solid and believable characters, Tailenders doesn’t care about that in the slightest. Here, the characters are simple, hot blooded and trying to look cool. They’re nice to watch, but completely one-dimensional with one-sided voice acting. Instead, the innovation here comes from all of the bizarre and original ideas that it put in its back-story. Seriously, this may be a racing show, but the how and why of just about everything is completely unconventional.

Unlike Cencoroll, which was down to earth in its action, Tailenders lacks any subtlety, and is pretty shallow in its execution and dialogue. Because of that, it just isn’t as good, but it’s still worth the watch for the effort that went into the good parts. And despite the shallow build-up, the ridiculously high-speed did manage to create quite a bit of adrenaline.

Storytelling: 7/10 – Dialogue and delivery need more work, but the high speed racing sequences are worth the watch.
Characters: 6/10 – Cool looking, but one dimensional with one-sided acting.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Gorgeous artwork with a unique style. Animation is a bit stiff at times, though.
Setting: 8/10 – Many neat and original ideas. The delivery could be better, but the concept of this movie is really imaginative.

Suggestions:
– Cencoroll
– Manie Manie: Meikyuu Monogatari
– Wonderful Days

Senkou no Night Raid – 14

by psgels, posted in Senkou no Night Raid



Most DVD episodes are random side-stories that if they’re lucky, have something to do with the main story. This one is different though: it shows a vital conclusion to this series. The story is over now, but it tells what happened to the characters after the events of the TV-series: what happened to them, and how they changed.

It was mostly centred around Kazura, as this episode hints that he died in a rebellion, started by his former classmates. Before that happens he’s able to meet Aoi (who recovered and is now travelling with Shizune) and Yukina, who has been handling Natsume’s death. Again, they really did justice to the setting: they didn’t choose a cheap way out. Even Aoi helping Kazura from out of nowhere didn’t really have an effect, and he made the conscious decision to help his former classmates.

It was also wonderfully told. This had none of the acting problems of the TV-series, and the actors probably put out some of the most believable performances of the entire series. Obviously the story being less epic really helped there, but even compared to the other DVD special, the pacing and atmosphere felt very natural here. I also really like how the creators used that story of the escaped panther to subtly spice up this episode. If you liked the TV-series, then this episode is a must watch.
Rating: ** (Excellent)