OVA Impressions: Mirai Nikki

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions



So… the Mirai Nikki OVA is only 8 minutes long. Yup, it’s definitely a pilot. Rather than a standalone story, I feel more like I watched a long introduction trailer here: it lightly touches upon the main premise, the important characters and the male lead, along with building the intrigue. A lot of the reasons why everything is happening are glossed over, though.

I like the looks of this, apart from the CG abuse perhaps. My guess is that all of these kids have this power to foresee the future, but I’m not yet sure how exact this is. I mean that in the way that if the reads that he’s going to die in 27 days, it’s really unavoidable for him to do so, or whether this knowledge allows him to avoid it. It’ll be interesting to see this series’ interpretation of foresight.

The lead character is decent: at first glance he’s not this generic lead, but at the same time there’s not anything special about him. His romantic interest being the school idol is ridiculously predictable, though. Can’t these people just be… normal students or something? In any case, this episode kept my attention, but it’s just an appetizer: it will leave you hungry if the main course isn’t served.

My guess is that the creators are really trying to use this pilot in order to gather sponsors. It’s much like the first Strike Witches OVA (in which characters actually wore pants and skirts when they weren’t flying), so the style of this OVA may not be its definitive style, depending on the wishes of these sponsors and/or the eventual staff that will be handling, if it gets made at all. In my opinion though, this is a pretty neat advertisement. It’s got some decent chances to actually make it as a series.
OVA Episode Rating: 7,75/10

Kuragehime – 08

by psgels, posted in Kuragehime



Awesome: this episode again keeps the balls in the air instead of waiting and dragging out for too long. The developments were fairly simple at first sight, but it’s here where the characters get themselves a bit of depth.

First and foremost, Tsukimi and Kuranosuke. At first I thought that these two were completely different in every single way, but they do have something that ties them together: they both have mother complexes. Tsukimi was wonderful in this episode, amidst the chaos that was Kuranosuke trying to get the Sisterhood to cooperate, when she lost herself in her memories of her mother with the Jellyfish dolls. It’s also interesting how Kuranosuke is always dressing up Tsukimi, only to fall for her afterwards. It’s his love for fancy dresses here that probably plays a huge part in this, along with Tsukimi’s charms that are completely different from all of the girls that he had known so far.

Yet: why are people so dense in anime? All members of the sisterhood saw Kuranosuke’s boob pads, and yet they turned it into a silly misunderstanding. Density is a way too overused plot device in anime, and unfortunately even this series didn’t escape it.

Shuu meanwhile was mostly hilarious with that private investigator that was sent after him. Especially the scene in which that driver accidentally called Shuu about the matter was hilarious.

The final three episodes can still end this show wonderfully if they want to. It’s now up to the creators to have the guts to actually do this, instead of just continuing the manga blindly until it runs out of episodes. Especially for Noitamina series a good ending is very important, since they’re so short.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

OVA Impressions: Tamayura – 04

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions



And this brings us to the end of Tamayura, and the creators chose a fitting end. It contains pretty much as much slice of life as the other episodes, but at the same time it does provide a nice conclusion to Potte’s character. Divided in two halves, the first is about her picture taking hobby, showing off all of the different pictures she made during the previous episode and getting her to meet her idol again.

The second half had a nice conclusion of her memories of her dead father when she realizes the story behind one of the pictures that her brother drew after being with him. I never really was a fan of the way in which the creators killed off Potte’s father (this is a slice of life series, twists like that don’t really belong here), but it’s used well here.

In any case, this episode was nice and relaxing, exactly what the iyashi-kei genre is supposed to be. The big pitfall for slice of life series is that they just show a bunch of boring and random scenes between the characters without any connection or creativity. That is one pitfall that Tamayura avoided. It’s not the best; I mean, most of the side-characters are pretty forgettable, but it is a pretty charming and yet short OVA.
OVA Episode Rating: 8/10

OVA Impressions: Kurenai – 02

by psgels, posted in Currently Watching:



Why was this made? I mean, apart from completely raping the Kurenai TV-Series, perhaps? If I were someone who reads manga, this would totally take away any motivation I would have had to buy and check out the manga. Please, someone. Tell me that the manga is more than just this endless string of silly and pointless side-stories!

The past two episodes have just been strings of random stories, without everything tying them together aside from a bunch of badly written characters. In the first segment there is this violent blond girl who is really depressed and somehow ends up making friends with Murasaki and hugs Shinkuro out of nowhere. The second segment sees all of the main females discovering a porn stash of the tenant that lived in Shinkuro’s apartment before he started living there, and the third was just a bunch of girls randomly talking about Shinkuro.

The worst thing about these OVAs is the terrible acting, though. What once was a mature series has now been reduced to a silly harem with stock characters who can only think about silly romantic misunderstandings. Murasaki ends up climbing a tree in order to search for Shinkurou at school, everyone obsesses endlessly over that porn stash of Shinkurou; it’s all just pointless.

And the weird thing is that Kou Matsuou is still responsible for this OVA. Why didn’t he give it the same treatment as he gave the Kurenai TV-series? He could have could have made some great filler like with the musical episode. Heck, he could even have created the start of an interesting story, that doesn’t fit into two episodes. EVERYTHING but this.
OVA Episode Rating: 5/10

Irresponsible Captain Tylor Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




As a reviewer, I often try to create parts of my reviews for anime in my head as I’m watching them. After 20 episodes of Irresponsible Captain Tylor, I had a fairly good idea of what I was going to say about it: it’s a pretty decent parody of the space genre, poking fun at the incredible luck that protagonists are blessed with, taking that to the absurd while still retaining a serious science fiction story, though it dragged too much at certain parts, had too many generic episodes and cliched characters.

Then I watched the final four episodes, and pretty much had to throw all of my impressions and assumptions overboard and start from scratch.

And I mean, it’s not like Irresponsible Captain Tylor doesn’t have its boring moments. It’s a parody, but sometimes fails in that, for example when it tries to parody the harem genre by having every single female fall in love with Tylor despite an overabundance of other hot guys. That’s not witty; everybody does that. Some of the premises for some of the episodes are also a bit uninspired, where the cliches overshadow the wit of the scenario, not to mention that Tylor himself is annoying beyond belief. And then this show comes and delivers an absolutely fantastic finale that is nothing like the rest of the series, yet ties everything together perfectly, delivers an epic climax and is completely unpredictable in every way.

I mean, it’s Koichi Mashimo here. Especially at the beginning and end of this show, he really shows that before starting Bee-Train, he already was an amazing director. The characters of this series have plenty of annoyances and flaws, and yet they’re far from one dimensional, and grow on you as the series progresses. The best scenes of this series are also amazingly well directed and this show contains some of the best animation I’ve seen from him. To make matters even more interesting, Kenji Kawai did the soundtrack for this one, and yet the music in this series is unlike anything from either him or anything else I’ve heard from Bee-Train. It’s very low-budget and especially excels in how well it’s used with the storytelling.

Whether or not I recommend it to you depends on your patience. I mean, Tylor is specifically designed to annoy both you and the other characters of this series. The middle part is also riddled with cliches that really could have used the parody nature of this series better, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to be annoyed and bored at some part of the series. I too had these points where I just wanted to get over with this series, and yet: most of these flaws are just annoying.

I could hardly spot any bad acting, directing or melodrama in this series and even the generic parts had one or two details that made them fresh and new. The finale of this series however made up for a whole lot for me, leaving behind an excellent aftertaste, compared to all of those series that keep building and building up, without actually knowing what they’re building up for. I would have rated this show much, much lower if it wasn’t for its guts that I wish a lot more of the mainstream series today had. And this isn’t entirely because I’m just a Bee-Train fanboy. I was fully aware that Koichi Mashimo made a really uninspired Sorceror Hunters two years after finishing this series.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Doesn’t aim to be consistently entertaining, is very annoying and cliched at times, yet comes together wonderfully in the end.
Characters: 8/10 – They can and will annoy you. Yet, they’re flawed, dynamic and lovable.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Some of the best episodes have truly excellent animation. The middle episodes are a lot more static, but also stilllook very good for its time.
Setting: 8/10 – 60% of the time it doesn’t make use of its parody status, resulting in a bunch of cliches lumped together. When it does though, it’s awesome.

Suggestions:
– Mobile Police Patlabor
– Kemonozume
– Argento Soma

Nurarihyon no Mago – 23

by psgels, posted in Nurarihyon no Mago



This episode suffered from a classic shounen syndrome: “I’m about to kill you! But first, let me play with my food in order to give you a chance to regroup and kill me.” The youkai with blindness powers was an interesting idea, but his powers were just too overwhelming so that the creators had to resort to dumbing down the main villain in order to prevent him from winning. That’s not good story-writing!

As for the rest of the episode… it was decent, I guess. It was a nice start to a climactic fight, but at the same time it also had nothing that really wowed or impressed me. It’s just… there. A decent episode, but not exactly the most wanted at this stage in the series. Much like the problem with Durarara’s final episodes: if this episode wasn’t the third before last I probably would not have minded it at all. Now however, I’m getting impatient.

The thing I liked best of this episode was that finally the grown up Rikuo isn’t all powerful: finally his combat shows any signs of flaws when he got blinded and I liked the interplay between him and Yuki-Onna after that. It’s not like this show is bad or anything, but I really do fear that it’s going to leave a bad aftertaste at this rate, especially when a second season isn’t going to be announced.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Shinryaku! Ika-Musume – 10

by psgels, posted in Shinryaku! Ika Musume



The first segment of this episode probably was the funniest segment of Squid Girl so far. It’s just brilliant!

At first it seemed pretty boring, as everyone was inside due to heavy rain and they started to make Teruterubouzus (those things that Japanese people hang up next to their windows to try and make it stop raining), but then Squid Girl suddenly revealed her amazing drawing skills, and then proceeded to draw everyone in the way that they appeared to her. Some of these drawings were utterly priceless, like the one of herself, the one of Takeru and the one of Shizuru. It was a bizarre glimpse in what goes on in the mind of Squid Girl.

And there’s much more in this episode than just that, since it also spent quite a bit of time on Takeru making a Teruterubouzu, which eventually led to some of Squid Girl’s interpretations of it, including dressing herself up as one (very cute, by the way), a giant one, and some rejected ones with the most hilarious faces. I also loved that scene in which Squid Girl threw her Teruterubouzu dress on top of Eiko: we only saw the aftermath of it and she didn’t say anything, but her reaction was just awesome.

The second and third segment in comparison were rather mellow, although I do have to give the second credit for its creepiness factor. It’s a bit lame that it ended with a reset ending, though: Sanae is again exactly the same at the end, which is a bit of a pity. The third segment though… was just too predictable. Squid Girl enters a baseball match and blows everyone away, it wasn’t that special except for the end in which the opponent team suddenly begged Squid Girl to join them.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

2010 Summary Part 1: My Top 20 OPs and EDs

by psgels, posted in Top 10 Anime, Yearly Summaries

For my 2010 Summary, I’ve been planning four posts: three small ones and one big one. Here’s the fist small one, the rest will come at the end of this month.

2010 saw an intereting trend for OPs and EDs: there were a lot of well produced ones with very detailed animation and that went beyond simply showing a bunch of characters in cheesy poses. For me, a good OP is original, has a great song, and has something with which it captures my attention. Likewise, I consider an ED a great one when it can retain my attention even when the episode it closes off is already finished.

Continue reading “2010 Summary Part 1: My Top 20 OPs and EDs” →

Star Driver – 10

by psgels, posted in Star Driver



At first this looked out to be a rather boring episode with the baseball and all, especially considering how Utena’s light hearted episodes were completely brilliant. Still, as the episode went on it became apparent how much characterization the creators ended up putting in this episode.

The interesting thing is that this show is no longer as flamboyant as it used to be and it’s gotten a lot more subtle now. Of course, Takuto still is the light-hearted and energetic character he always was and this episode was of course also chockful of screaming fangirls, but around him, all sorts of interesting things are starting to happen.

A lot of the flamboyance in this show is like a red herring: loud and obnoxious, but for once it has a lot to make up for it with its characterization. The “faceplant in boobs”-scene was definitely annoying, but unlike for example that 08th episode of Index, there was so much going on with so many different characters that I quickly forgot it.

Also, what’s the meaning of the songs of the priestesses? In this episode we get a new one (I still prefer the fish girl song, but that one too was quite good), but there have been enough battles that occurred without the presence of one such song. Do their songs strengthen something, or do they just do it for the heck of it?

Overall, this was the first episode in a long while that didn’t bring some sort of major twist. Instead, it convinced me that this series can manage its huge cast. A huge potential pitfall with series with a huge cast is that they try to give equal attention to all of them without making any of them stand out,but in star Driver there are a lot of them that stand out, each episode grabs all of the chances it can get in order to add some character to them, even when the episode in question doesn’t focus on them at all, and the ones on which the episodes in question do focus on still get the proper attention they deserve. Each episode grabs a different array of characters, and that’s probably the thing that makes this series so varied.

Also, a huge theme of this series turned out to be leaving the island: this show just keeps introducing stories about characters who can’t leave it, characters who leave it, and Takuto being the only one known so far who actually did the opposite and came to the island. The creators are going somewhere with that, and I’m interested to find out where that is.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Shinrei Tantei Yakumo – 10

by psgels, posted in Shinrei Tantei Yakumo



A lot of series will be ending at the end of december. The ending I’m looking forward to the most however is Shinrei Tantei Yakumo, closely followed by Shiki. The current (and probably final) arc has only just started and already it has delivered some amazing twists. Just think of how everything is going to come together in the end. I’m also the least worried of a rushed and incomplete ending, exactly because how the past episodes made it clear that they rushed the first half, exactly in order to avoid this problem.

The previous arc really cemented Miyuki Nanase as a bad-ass, and yet here this episode comes and also labels her as flawed when she completely unexpectedly gets caught. Not through some overblown car chase by one of the lead characters, but instead she gets cornered by regular patrol cars. Finally another series comes along that completely busts the “police are useless”-trope. To make things even more interesting, it’s heavily implied here that the main villain… is already dead. Again: why does this guy have such a grudge that even in the grave, his soul still continues to haunt Yakumo. On top of that, this makes Miyuki Nanase even more awesome, considering how just about everything in the previous arc was her work.

meanwhile, it’s good to see that finally there is another man who is about to die from a terminal illness, breaking the “women get sick really easy”-trope, and yet this isn’t a simple reversal in the way that the creators introduced that little girl whose future is also looking pretty bleak, balancing things out. In any case, the creators gave Yakumo’s uncle a very good portrayal. He was bleak, yet things didn’t get too sappy. Same with Yakumo’s baby pictures (nice touch to his character, by the way) that finally showed Yakumo some of the good sides of his mother again.
Rating: ** (Excellent)