Star Driver – 11

by psgels, posted in Star Driver



And finally, we’ve gotten to the second part of the Kanako arc, this time focusing on her female servant, Simone. And it’s this point at which you can really see that this series is getting better now that we’re moving into the interesting back-stories. This episode really did some justice Simone, and turned her into quite an interesting character, not to mention also giving Kanako some extra depth here.

The interesting thing with Star Driver is that at the beginning, I thought that all of the character arcs would have the same format as Kanako’s. Instead, everyone is different. Kanako’s arc is probably the most Utena-esque: developing her both through stories of her and the people close to her. Midori and Benio meanwhile are running are both running after guys, but the latter does so to control everyone while the former is interested in them for a whole different reason. Keito meanwhile only acts behind the scenes and doesn’t seem to have anyone close to her and the biggest mysteries are Head and his replacement, You.

All of them don’t just have completely different characters, they also have completely different roles in this series, are explored in completely different ways and influence the plot in completely different ways. Utena had the advantage that it had 39 episodes to really go in-depth with its cast. This was vital because this way, it could give all of the major supporting characters three big arcs. Since Star Driver doesn’t have that luxury, I like the solution it found for that. Whether it’s actually going to work though, we’ll have to wait for that until the second half. This episode in any case was a neat pointer to the right direction.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Letter Bee – 36

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



I’ve sat here for more than ten minutes now, thinking of something sensible to say about this episode. It was completely amazing, and yet in completely different ways that I expected. And it’s one thing for the twists to be stunning here, but this episode really ended up shining because of the results of these twists. Talk about atmosphere here!

Of course it’s a bit strange that Hazel and Garrard sent this young girl to poison Connor because it wouldn’t cause suspicion, only to blow up the entire abbey, but apart from that I really loved this episode. Tings really started with that new piece of soundtrack with just a piano playing, and I’m still amazed at how well the creators did justice to the story of that cookie baking girl. The main event of this episode, the Gaichuu eating the hearts of all of the nuns, went off really well because of that.

And then Gauche suddenly popped up! And he actually got shot by Lag. I really hate the creators for pulling the cliff-hanger card in order to make us wait on what it exactly did to him for next week. In fact, this episode pulled a lot of cliff-hanger cards here: what will remain of the giant Gaichuu? When will Nichi come back? What will become of the nuns who lost their heart?
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Bakuman – 11

by psgels, posted in Bakuman



It’s interesting: there are a lot of those series where fans of the original complain about stuff that was cut out. This season has a lot of series in which the opposite is going on: creators trying to stuff everything in, to the point of a really slow pacing. This is fine and dandy of course, if it wasn’t for one major flaw: the uncertainty of that second season. That just shows how difficult it is to balance the story of a manga correctly into anime format and creating a good balance between pacing and cutting.

Bakuman again: this episode was pretty good in the way that it was very slowly progressing the story, devoting an entire episode to just the wait of the announcement that they made it into the Next magazine. If Bakuman were 50 episodes I wouldn’t have much of a problem with this episode, but at this point I’m getting a bit impatient: will this series be able to make enough points with 25 episodes of length or will it be another one of those series that spends too much time on building up?

Apart from that though, there really wasn’t much to say about this episode: everything is pretty much moving along as it has been. This show is far from static, but at the same time there’s not much acceleration either, to move into physics terms for a bit.
Rating: * (Good)

Katanagatari Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Katanagatari




Clocking in at 12 episodes of 50 minutes each, Katanagatari was definitely an interesting experiment of a series. At first sight it seems like a bit of a boring concept to base a series around a quest to gather a different superpowered sword every episode, in the middle of lots and lots of talking, but it’s got enough charms here.

I personally disliked Bakemonogatari, but Katanagatari finds a good balance between its dialogues. They’re interesting, varried and after a few episodes they become pretty able to carry the whole series. The dialogue does a good job at fleshing out the characters, and discussing what’s going on at the plot. The storyi itself is simple at first sight, but gets pretty detailed as it goes on, with quite a bit of historical significance, meshing in excellently with said dialogue.

Another thing that this series is really good at is its martial arts. The fights in this series are often short and to the point, but they’re often interesting looks at the applications of different fighting and weapon styles that together paint quite a complex exploration of martial arts.

There are some downsides to this, most of them having to do with the fact that this series can become a bit too shounen-ish for its own good. Fights are interesting to watch, but they’re also too unrealistic and too much based on logic and too little on physical flaws. It’s a good thing that this series doesn’t force its characters to play tic tac toe, because that would have kept them busy for an eternity.

That’s just a detail that is of course easy to ignore. What’s a bit less easy to ignore is that while most of the battles are down to earth and thought-provoking, there are these few battles that try to be epic and as a result go way too much in the Dragonball Z direction. Perhaps these battles aren’t incredibly long, but they do become rather uninspired with characters moving conveniently too fast for the naked eye to follow, eliminating any kind of strategy just for the sake of over the top fighting that’s done better in a ton of other series. Especially Emonzaemon is guilty of this, and he’s by far the least interesting characters of the series as well, and a very one-sided villain. That’s a big problem in the second half of the series because he features a lot there.

Togame and Shichika form a great led couple, though and the people they run into in every episode are varied and have great back-stories. When you want to watch this series, you really should take into account that relatively little happens in each episode, it’s a very slow paced series and the dialogues take up a HUGE focus of each episode. If you have the patience to appreciate this, then you’ll be rewarded with quite an enjoyable series.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Great use of dialogue to flesh out the story and characters. Great portrayal of martial arts.
Characters: 8/10 – The main villains could have been better, but the rest of the characters are well fleshed out, with the main characters well developed.
Production-Values: 8/10 – The animation is never spectacular, but does what it needs to do to make this series very stylish.
Setting: 8/10 – 5Interesting back-story in Japan’s history. Martial arts are interesting but unrealistic.

Suggestions:
– Amatsuki
– Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi
– Blade of the Immortal

Katanagatari – 12

by psgels, posted in Katanagatari



Well, so it turned out to be a pretty good end here. It had some things I didn’t like, but overall there were enough things that surprised me and went against my fears. It’s an action-packed ending that at the same time still spends enough time on the dialogue and the conversations between people.

Togame’s death had an interesting effect on this episode, and I definitely liked it when she revealed that she was also planning to just get rid of Shichika after her mission ended; definitely gives a twist to the two of them being lead characters. I also liked how this episode also showed battles that showed exactly how not to use the first eleven defiant blades. That was definitely an interesting way to get rid of them, even though it may not make the most sense in the story.

I also liked the iron of the whole ending. We pretty much have Shichika trying the same thing as his sister, and failing. I really expected the princess to be this boring final villain, and yet instead she gave a nice little twist at the end. I liked that a lot.

Now, for the stuff I didn’t like, the battle between Emonzaemon and Shichika was as dull as I expected. Here, it was no longer a matter of martial arts but instead it was this over the top Dragonball Z esque fight in which people supposedly moved too fast for the naked eye to follow. That’s not epic, that’s just lazy, it’s a sign of the creators that they don’t know how to create an interesting final fight. On top of that, Shichika ended up with a dozen gunwounds, all of which just perfectly heal afterwards… that was just too shounen.

Overall, this wasn’t always the most interesting series to blog due to so little happening in each episode, but overall I liked this show. It’s definitely kept my attention, and in any case we need more series like this that go beyond the standard formats of broadcasting.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Haiyoru: Nyaruani

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Haiyoru! Nyaruani

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a lovecraftian alien. Or at least that’s what she supposed to be.
This was just terrible, in every single way. This episode was pretty much three minutes of random talking with the characters trying to make jokes, with a huge emphasis on “trying”. The jokes were lame as hell, and to make matters worse the voice cast was completely hamming it up, making the jokes even worse. The animation is terrible. What happened to the times in which flash anime like Hanoka had some actual ambitions. Just skip this. What kind of TV station is crazy enough to air this kind of crap anyway? Even though this is the first new series of the Winter Season, I have no doubt that this will be the worst out of all of them.
ED: Why is this so long? Why the heck does this have conventional animation? It’s still crap, though.
Potential: -50%

Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt – 11

by psgels, posted in Autumn 2010 Kaleidoscope



Of course it’s great to see Garterbelt’s past here, but what really made this episode for me was its brilliant second half. It pretty much was about nothing: Panty and Stocking sitting in front of the television being really bored. But the entire half was shot on the same camera on the same position. It only panned twice, it only cut three times. Apart from that, it was all about Panty and Stocking randomly talking, along with Chuck, Brief and Garterbelt who appeared along the way. I love these kinds of episodes that really take this unconventional way of storytelling.

And still there were plenty of things going on with that half being everything but boring. Panty and Stocking being bored was surprisingly interesting, especially when you learn about the bizarre context at the end of the episode: Garterbelt spending ten hours inside the kitchen in order to cook a lunch party to celebrate that his afro was announced as the best afro in the world. The voice acting was especially fun and excellent here, and I like how the animation brought the characters here to life without a camera that usually keeps changing positions. I also really liked the final punchline. That was some great comedic timing there.

A lot of the anime today are just too safe and hardly ever bother with episodes like this and that’s quite a shame, really. There’s a ton of potential here if you’d just wish to abandon conventions and that’s what I really appreciate this series for doing.

Oh, and it’s not like Garterbelt’s backstory was uninteresting either. I mean, with the entire history tour that this guy made, parodying everything from Adam and Eve to the vikings.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu – 23

by psgels, posted in Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu



What the hell was that?!

I mean, words can’t describe this episode. Just… watch it. These past twenty minutes were at the same time brilliant and stupid. We’ve only got one episode left, and here this show comes and decides to completely ignore any kind of plot and focus most of its time on silly character antics. No really, 90% of this episode is just random banter between the different lead characters. No Tiaa, no Gastark, no Ryner’s father. We were in the middle of such a dramatic arc: that atmosphere is completely gone for 90% of this episode.

Yet, I have to admit the guts of the creators to go with such an episode. It’s brilliant to come with such a change of mood when just about every normal urge of common sense would say otherwise. I’ve seen a ton of series by now that had to deal with ending way before their source material does that would leave a ton of unresolved plotholes behind. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a ballsy way to do it: this episode completely ignored the politics that it knew had no way of wrapping up and instead focused on the characters.

A lot of the dialogue of this episode was just plain silly, yet make no mistake: this episode was really trying to develop its characters. I think that the revelation at the end of this episode was actually quite powerful: this entire episode was simply meant as a farewell party for either Ryner or Shion. Shion made his decision in the previous episodes: he’d kill Ryner. This entire episode was simply trying to give the both of them the time to relax and just be themselves. Oh, and I also loved that scene in which Ferris revealed that she wanted to start a dango shop.

But yeah: the plot. there is no way in which the final episode is going to be able to close off this show properly. Still, this episode showed that the creators are going to try something here. And I admit: if I had to chose between a simple adaptation of the next bunch of chapters, or coming with a twist like this, I’d prefer the latter. Let’s see whether the creators can actually make something out of this.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

OVA Impressions: Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu – 02

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions



So, apparently the Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu manga is crap. I would seriously not have guessed that. I mean, I do not see any way in which the anime version is inferior to the anime adaptations of Kimi ni Todoke, SA, Kaichou wa Maid Sama, Vampire Knight, Itazura na Kiss or Shugo Chara aside from its production values.

I mean:
– It’s short and to the point.
– It doesn’t drag on endlessly.
– It’s not another one of those “will they won’t they” stories: the lead characters are an actual couple.
– Instead of not knowing whether they want to make their lead female strong or weak (leading to bizarrely unbalanced characters), the creators made the lead female just average, having both her strong and weak points without trying to make her seem anyone she isn’t.

It’s definitely refreshing in the shoujo romance genre, not to mention that the acting also was pretty good; I especially liked the lead female in it. The lead male too: at first sight he seems like another one of those cold assholes, but the rest of this episode then proves that he can do other things than be always cold to the lead character.

Of course, this episode was a tad cheesy at times, but I liked how it was pretty much a down to earth romance here. It’s just their time together at christmas and them getting to know each other better. The budget was obviously low here, but I still really like what the animators did with the visuals, giving the lead couple some interesting character designs. The main issue with the animation here is that the lip-synching is totally off.
OVA Episode Rating: 7,75/10

Shiki – 19

by psgels, posted in Shiki



Just… wow. The counterattack really was the final part that was missing from this series. After the huge amount of build-up, we finally see it used and this show is actually well on its way to surpass itself. Just about everything in this episode was just amazing. The past episodes entirely turned everything around for this series: everything changed. This is exactly what I’m hoping for when a series spends a huge amount of its time on building up.

The hunters have now immediately become the hunted. The interesting thing is that the regular Shiki don’t seem to have superpowers. The only reason why they were so successful during the majority of this series was because of that excellent stealth game that they played. The only ones who seem like they can make the difference are the werewolves, along with Seishirou and Seishin. Especially the latter intrigued me like no other in this episode: what kind of difference here can he make with Sunako next to him?

Three episodes also feels perfect for closing off this series and I really ope that the creators take this chance to give this series the closure it deserves. The DVD sales have unfortunately been pretty bad (the first volume only sold at 606 copies, putting it only slightly below the Armed Librarians and Senkou no Night Raid), so there is no way that this can get a second season, so it really needs to end well within these three final episodes.

It’s interesting how we finally see that red haired woman again that was in the first episode. I’ve been wondering for a while what happened to her, and I thought that Tatsumi got her, though instead the Shiki got her mother. Interesting twist. Meanwhile this episode built up for both Kaori and Ritsuko are building up to something really interesting as well, I’m really looking forward to this finale.
Rating: *** (Awesome)