Level E – 02

by psgels, posted in Level E



As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Beelzebub is just crap. Why does this director keep getting work?
– Zombie is being overshadowed by the other comedies this season. It’s funny, but not the funniest of the season.
– I’m probably going to pick up Dragon Crisis after Showa Monogatari’s four preview episodes end. It’s enjoyable, but I don’t have any room for it right now.

Meanwhile, Level E is just unbelievable: this second episode was even better than the first. This show is absolutely amazing, and just about every scene in this episode was just awesome. It’s been a while since I’ve seen such a good comedy as this one, and this is coming after the Autumn Season of 2010, which had more excellent comedies than you could shake a stick at. The comedic timing, the build-up and voice acting in this show are all just perfect.

I also loved how this show subverted various alien cliches. Usually when aliens come to earth, they try to blend in by putting on some kind of people suit, right? This episode premiered some new aliens as just human-like, but they travel around in these bizarre cheesy alien costumes. Or take those scenes in which the aliens are surprised by some of humanity’s inventions, which this episode parodied by having that blond-haired alien enjoy the heck out of the snow on a broken television set.

I also love the main characters. Yukitaka and Miho in particular, as they turned out to be nothing like the first episode made them out to be. Yukitaka already had an interesting background with his history as a bench-warmer at Japan’s top baseball school. This episode also revealed that he was a former punk (and used that extremely well, by the way). Miho meanwhile threw all stereotypes away in this episode with her own unique backstory, being raised in an extremely paranoid way. I especially like how sharp she is: she immediately notices everything around her, including Yukitaka’s backstory. Seriously, a lot more female leads should follow her example.

In fact, there are a ton of characters who are completely different from what they appear: it was for a long while a mystery what these men in suit were, and the cat turned out to be… a walking alien camera. This is just full of these awesome details and nice ideas.

Oh and on a side-note: don’t try to look up the long-haired alien’s name on sites as Myanimelist and AniDB. I did, and unfortunately just spoiled myself to an awesome joke that the creators have in store for us for the next number of episodes and that only amazed me even more of how extremely well this show is planned out.
Rating: **** (Fantastic)

Heartcatch Precure – 47

by psgels, posted in Heartcatch Precure



Okay. That was awesome.

I mean, Cure moonlight once again proves here that she’s my favourite character of this series. An entire episode devoted to her fight with Sabaaku and Dark Precure, only being helped by Cure Blossom. In just about any other mahou shoujo, characters like her often take up the role of a supporter in the background: creators would have put priority on the real main character, in this case Cure Blossom. Here instead we get an epic fight between her and Dark Precure, worthy of the climax of this series.

On top of that: Professor Sabaaku. Dear lord, he’s Yuri’s father. I always wondered what happened to Yuri’s father, but somehow it only occurred to me that he might be also part of Sabaku when his mask fell down. That really was an awesome plot twist, to think that he created Dark Precure, entirely because he wanted to beat his own daughter. That Dune is one bastard here. If he somehow found out what Cure Moonlight would become later (presumably because he got some sort of similar radar like the one that the mascots have), he really could have pulled it off by brainwashing her father.

And the best part is that things aren’t even over yet. This episode ended at the exact point where Cure Moonlight beat Dark Precure. Like, immediately after that. No aftermath. Heck, not even a “curing scene”. This really convinced me that the creators are trying to save the most heartwarming moments for last, which is also why we haven’t gotten to see Kumojacky and Cobraja’s real forms yet. I mean, pretty much the only bad guy left at this point is Dune. With two episodes left, the creators can really pull off an amazing finale at this point.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Star Driver – 15

by psgels, posted in Star Driver



The first episode in which no cybody appears whatsoever. And at the same time it’s also one of the best episodes so far. I mean, how many plot twists did this episode feature on one single character anyway?

This entire episode was dedicated to Mizuno, and only at the end do we get to see the part that the previous episode was building up to: the Crux Brigade making their move. The rest of this episode was all about character development when Mizuno finally realizes that Takuto is into someone else and also where her mother returns home, after abandoning her children years ago. By far the best part of this episode was when she tried to leave the island though: that’s where her character really came together.

And those weren’t even the only plot twists in this episode. First of all it’s finally revealed that Head is indeed the painter R. I mean, there was no way for him NOT to be, but after finally having this confirmed it does have some interesting implications: this episode again hinted at how this guy is supposed to have this huge history. On top of that, he’s actively trying to recruit Sugata again, but this time without using mind control. Sugata meanwhile finally decided to break off his engagement to Wako (if Takuto wins a duel from him, at least). This episode was really hinting at how something is going to happen to both him and Takuto. But yeah, this is Star Driver: whenever it’s trying to hint at something, it’s actually hinting at something completely different.

Oh. And who the hell were those sudden new members of Vanishing Age?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ookiku Furikabutte – 38,5

by psgels, posted in Ookiku Furikabutte



Apologies, I seem to have missed Ookiku Furikabutte’s DVD only episode. It’s a bit of a second epilogue and it’s very much like the DVD only episode of the first season: focused on the aftermath, both for the lead team and the ones from the opposing team. It’s been a while since the series finished, so I had a bit of trouble refreshing my memories and remembering who was who again, but overall I liked this episode.

This episode pretty much did everything it needed to do to wrap up this season, while at the same time leaving with a huge “we’re not done yet so read the manga”-end in which the different team members show their ambitions for the team (they did this once before, right?). We see some interviews, Abe’s visit to the doctor and also the opposing team as they mentally prepare for their next match, along with the anxieties of their captain.

I really wonder whether or not a third season will arrive. Overall the DVD and BD-sales have not been bad at all, averaging at around eight thousand copies per volume. This is however considerably less than how much the first season sold, not to mention the terrible reception of this series in the western world. Ah well, it’s a matter of time before we know for sure. There was a gap of three years between the first and second season after all.
Rating: * (Good)

Mitsudomoe Zouryouchuu! – 02

by psgels, posted in Mitsudomoe



As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Let me get back to Gosick when either Heartcatch Precure ends or Showa Monogatari’s first four preview episodes are over. By that time the characters will hopefully be less annoying.
– I remember noting how Cardfight Vanguard at least didn’t contradict its own rules in its first episode. It did in its second, though. Not to mention the huge amounts of cheese.
– Freezing’s second episode was even worse than the first. Plus, it has one of the worst male leads of the season, only eclipsed by the one from Cardfight Vanguard and Oniichan.
– Oniichan no Koto Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne… just… no.

Meanwhile, there are two reasons why I decided to blog Mitsudomoe:
1. Convenience.
2. It’s rare for a comedy sequel to actually be better than the original.

In regards to the first reason: Mitsudomoe 2 will only have 8 episodes. That will be very handy considering this. In case you haven’t looked at its official website, let me elaborate: the official site lists the following release dates for its DVDs:

Blu-ray＆DVD 『SUPEARNATURAL THE ANIMATION』
ファースト・シーズン/全22話
◆2月23日⇒Vol.1-3（第1-6 話） レンタル開始／Vol.1（第1-2 話）発売
◆3月9日⇒Vol.4-6（第7-12 話） レンタル開始／BOX1（第3-12 話）発売
◆3月23日⇒Vol.7-9（第13-18 話） レンタル開始
◆4月6日⇒Vol.10-11（第19-22 話） レンタル開始／BOX2（第13-22 話）発売

Basically, episodes 1-6 will be available from February 23rd, episodes 7-12 from March 9th, episodes 13 to 18 on March 23rd and the final four episodes on April 6th. That is a whopping twenty-two episodes of Supernatural in only a month and a half. If Mitsudomoe ends a month earlier, then at least I’ll have a bit more space in the hopes of being able to properly cover it….

As for the the second reason: this sequel is just unbelievable. The first season had its problems: about 50% of the jokes were hilarious, the other 50% just fell horribly flat. In the second season, this ratio shifted to 80% of hilarity with 20% of jokes that just aren’t as good. These past two episodes have been absolutely hilarious, and to my surprise this second episode was even better than the first.

In this episode, this show finally shows that it knows the difference between repeating a joke ad nauseam and running jokes. This episode took the material of the first season, and really started toying with it. The start of the episode was the perfect example, in which that creepy occult girl suddenly appeared. Right from the start, you could sense the tension and the huge probability of things going wrong.

It also helps that these episodes were much more varied than the first season. Even the previous episode which was just focused on one big story never felt like it dragged on. This episode was the complete opposite in that it had many different scenes that prevented these jokes from dragging or milking themselves. The entire second half for example was about Christmas, and yet we saw the preparations to the Christmas party, the Christmas party itself, the hopeless way in which the teacher spends it, the part where santa clause arrives, and its aftermath. The story here flows much more naturally than the first season, which just was a bunch of random scenes pasted together.

Now, this show still has its mind in the gutter, but it’s much less deep than the first season: it only makes a tasteless joke when it’s got a really good one (like Hitoha’s hairy leg) and even the resident pervert didn’t keep on rambling about panties like he did in the first season. On top of that, this show can also boast Mitsuba: the first female lead character who actually doesn’t look like a supermodel in a long while (Kuragehime only counts half, because the only thing that prevented Tsukimi from the same thing is that she didn’t bother to spend time on her looks).

Now, there were some bad jokes in this episode. The female teacher… even this sequel didn’t really manage to make anything out of her. She’s such a hopeless character that I don’t think that anything can make her funny. The mother joke also felt a bit flat. Still, this episode had me in stitches during the largest part. This is really one of the series this season that majorly exceeded my expectations.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Letter Bee – 40

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



This episode was evil. The more I think about it, the more I want to curse the creators. To end with such a cliff-hanger, how are we supposed to wait another week for that?!

Seriously, the majority of this episode was so incredibly sweet. It was very sappy, but with this series it only makes sense for Lag to be overjoyed that he can finally spend time with Gauche, and actually carry out a number of deliveries with him. It’s finally time for Gauche to pick his life back up where he left of and the reunion to Aria and Sylvette was really sweet and emotional.

And then Thunderland came with the announcement that he just realized that Gauche might have been putting up an entire act. It was built up really well and worked as an excellent plot twist. What exactly went on in his mind though is a complete mystery. We know that he regained his memories of both his time as Gauche and as Noir: if he still was the old Noir he wouldn’t have gotten along with Lag this much; he could easily have smacked him in the head and ran off. At the same time though, the bugger found his duties as Noir more important than his family. I’m really dying to see his thought-process there.

On a completely unrelated side-note: it seems that Bleach is actually going to end (there is no way that that band would screw something like that up if it wasn’t true). Great news, because that means that Studio Pierrot finally have more resources available to make interesting stuff again. Having them adapt both Naruto and Bleach at the same time really hurt their output of interesting series. Perhaps Level E is the first sign of this. Or perhaps Beelzebub is going to take its place. To be honest, I hope that that last thing isn’t going to be true.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Bakuman – 15

by psgels, posted in Bakuman



After the eventful previous episode, we’re back to a leisurely pace this week, centred mostly on its aftermath, building up and one new major development: Mio’s debut as a voice actress. The romance itself didn’t really change during the past few episodes due to that strange promise of not wanting to meet each other until they’ve both made their dreams come true, but thankfully that’s about the only thing about this show that’s currently not moving (albeit really slowly). That’s pretty much this show’s biggest strength at this point.

This episode did give Moritaka some extra motivation though, now that he knows about it. Mio also showed some new sides of her: the conflict between her modesty and her dreams of becoming a voice actress. She did get herself quite a rare chance here (I can only imagine how different the voice acting business works from the manga writing business) and it took a while for her to really accept that she just made a major step toward becoming a full fledged voice actress.

The start of this episode meanwhile (the recap at the start was one minute and ten seconds long, by the way; I think I’m going to keep track of those times from now on…) showed also a bit more about the difference between Nizuma Eiji and our two lead characters. Because he’s on his own, he has this talent of making things up as he goes along, and somehow making it interesting (I’d like to see how that guy handles continuity, by the way), but with two people this suddenly becomes a lot more difficult as you have to make sure that you’re both on the same line of thought. At the same time though, Moritaka and Akito also don’t strike me as the pure version of the “calculating type”, in the way that Nizuma Eiji is the pure form of the “genius type”.
Rating: * (Good)

Wolverine – 02

by psgels, posted in Wolverine



As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Infinite Stratos has a male lead who despite only piloting a mecha once, has 1337 piloting skillz. Yeah right, been there, done that. Moving on,

Anyway, now that the entire season aired, I can really say that it has one HUGE advantage, and one huge disadvantage:
– The great thing about this season is that just about every series has an awesome soundtrack. There really is a TON of ear candy here.
– The bad thing about this season: teenagers. Whether it is the series that continued on from previous seasons or the ones that debuted during the past two weeks: nearly every freaking show revolves around kids and teenagers.

The only exception is this one: Wolverine. So of course I couldn’t pass this up, especially how much better than Iron Man it has turned into. Wolverine pretty much had the worst possible publicity with the disaster that was Iron Man: poor in just about every way. Let me reassure you though: Wolverine was made by an entirely different production team. One of the few similarities is that they had their soundtracks composed by the same guy, and even there Wolverine is better.

Now, I am not really a fan of Wolverine, so I don’t really care whether or not he’s different from his American version. Still, I’m not going to complain that this series is going to adapt a number of the comic books that are integral to his backstory, especially after how Iron Man screwed up with its original story. Wolverine’s action also was much better than the incredibly dull fight scenes of Iron Man. It’s well directed and makes great use of its soundtrack in order to build up and create its atmosphere. The fights themselves aren’t particularly well animated, especially after watching Madoka Magica and Yumekui Merry, but they still work thanks to a good sense of timing and atmosphere.

The acting is very stiff, this episode showed that again, especially during the quiet parts. Still, the characterization is good enough to make up for it. The female character who was introduced in this episode actually kicks ass, compared to Iron Man’s love interests whose roles were completely shallow and corny. Yukio’s backstory meanwhile is simple, yet effective. It fits the whole superhero series much better.

Ironically, two and a half years ago Madhouse and Osamu Dezaki pretty much created the perfect example of how an anime superhero crossover should be done with Ultraviolet: it had interesting plot and characters and a unique style and creative vision. Wolverine ultimately is too simple to be as good, but this simplicity is more than enough to keep my attention here because beyond the stiff acting there’s nothing really wrong with this one. Still, this remains a great sign: all of the marvel anime are going to be completely different from each other, instead of the same. Who knows, perhaps X-Men and Blade are going to be even better?
Rating: * (Good)

Yumekui Merry – 02

by psgels, posted in Yumekui Merry




In a way, Yumekui Merry is quite similar to Madoka Magica: they both deal with magical girls, and both have gorgeous action scenes in a strange kind of dream world. After two episodes, I’m definitely liking Yumekui Merry more. It’s got some of the best direction of the entire season, plus it already packs some good drama and characters after only two episodes, beyond simple introductions.

This episode introduced a bunch of different new characters, including a childhood friend and her awesome father, along with a bunch of other classmates and a girl who wants to be a nurse. I especially like the latter, as they show how many different dream creatures there can be: beyond just existing, they also can inspire people, creating “dreams” in the sense of long-term goals. Especially that scene in which her dream demon got eaten away was just beautiful to look at. This show has some of the best background art and character designs of the entire season.

It’s a shame that this show also couldn’t escape the “walking into the shower naked” cliche, but at least the creators had this “ah, it’s in the manga so let’s just get this over with and focus on what’s more important”-air about them, compared to stalling such a scene for a ridiculously long time and getting the lead character to make a fool out of himself. That male lead meanwhile… this season definitely has a ton of characters like him. He isn’t the best, because we haven’t really learned much about him beyond the fact that he has weird dreams involving talking cats, but he’s also certainly not the worst, thanks to his acting. He’s neither overly whiny or hormonic and so far is doing pretty well to carry this series.

Now, I doubt that this series will be as good as Casshern Sins, but you can really see that the two series have the same director. The camera work especially shows this, with a ton of close ups and shots that focus purposefully on the tiny details on the background, like a bunch of leaves, a can or some chalk.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 02

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica




As for the shows I’m not going to blog:
– Rio Rainbow Gate is one of those rare shows that are so bad that they’re good. But it’s still way too stupid for it to be interesting enough to blog.
– Kimi ni Todoke just was too annoying, despite how the graphics have gotten even better in the process.
Note: this season I’m going to have a bit of a strange blogging schedule, due to Heartcatch Precure and Showa Monogatari, so in about half a month I’ll have room to pick up two more shows (yes, I am going to end up blogging 50% of this winter season!). Even with that taken in consideration though, I don’t think that Kimi ni Todoke will be one of those two, due to the large amount of other interesting shows this season.
Note2: I’m going to be blogging four shows on Thursday. So yeah, some of them will be delayed. Especially because I’m not often in the mood for these low quality versions that often pop up first.

In any case: yeah, I’m blogging a Shaft series again. Soredemo Machi last season did a great job of taking away a part of my bias for them, and this show holds some nice potential. It obviously takes a lot after Nanoha, but brings enough of its own for now. I’ve seen Shaft do much worse in this area before, in any case.

This episode wasn’t as good as the first, but I still liked it quite a bit. This show is especially good at its action scenes, which are really artistic and well directed and do a great job getting me to care about the characters. This entire episode built up pretty decently to that scene at the end, though I would have liked to have seen more details into the witch, and less general explanations.

Now, this episode did show that we shouldn’t expect much from the humour in this show. There was this one bit in which that classmate of the lead characters started making lesbian jokes… and they didn’t work at all. It just shows how dry Shaft’s humour has become, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Thankfully it was just limited to one scene and this show takes itself seriously during the other parts of this episode.
Rating: * (Good)