Shiki – 15

by psgels, posted in Shiki



So, we’ve waited a number of episodes, so finally it’s time: the entire episode was pretty much building up for it to happen at the end: Natsuno’s return, and probably the start of a serious counterattack to the vampires.

It’s not outright stated, but my guess is that Natsuno’s father somehow managed to hide his body out of the reach of the vampires, telling everyone that he was going to be cremated outside of the town. This episode also showed me that Natsuno is the real main character of this series. Of course, Toshio did something amazing in the last episode, and that guy can indeed do some outrageous things, but it took fourteen episodes for him to get there. This episode too just shows Toshio wandering around randomly, looking for allies, whereas Natsuno would have immediately started doing something concrete. The only thing that really stopped him during the series was the fact that he couldn’t move due to his blood loss.

Speaking of which, Seishin suffers from this even more: he was introduced as one of the main characters of this series, and yet he didn’t really do anything: he’s capable, but again he really needs Natsuno to push him forward, and unfortunately the two haven’t even met yet.

Most of this episode was building up, though there was a lot of interesting stuff that happens: we’re shown a bit of the prejudice of Toshio’s mother, along with Isaki (one of the nurses) finally quitting, along with a bit of a strange turn of events with a really flamboyant undertaker who… does just about everything you shouldn’t do in order to remain unsuspicious. It’s a… strange twist, especially for this series.
Rating: * (Good)

Kuragehime – 04

by psgels, posted in Kuragehime



It’s a bit of a shame that this series does use a number of cliches, like nosebleeds, dead mothers and shallow jealousy. Still, its high energy makes up for it, though that only appeared at the end of this episode. It made for a great episode ending, though most of the other airtime this week was put into building up.

There are basically two main plot-lines in this series: Tsukimi’s relationship with Kuranosuke and the adventures of the sisterhood. The former deals with Tsukimi coming out of her shell, exploring love and getting over her trauma about her dead mother. The latter will most likely end up with the sisterhood being forced to face reality when the apartment gets torn down. That all needs build up, and that’s what this episode was for.

The big danger right now for this series is that it’s going to devote too many episodes to building up: there are only eleven episodes; we’ve pretty much established right now that there is a love triangle between the Koibuchi siblings and Tsukimi (though granted, Kuranosuke seemed more jealous of the innocence between two virgins rather than that he actually feels romantically interested in Tsukimi) and that the sisterhood will probably refuse to accept the fact that the apartment will be torn down until the last possible minute. I WANT the next episode to really push this forward. Noitamina is too short to goof off.
Rating: * (Good)

Kimagure Orange Road – I Want To Return To That Day Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




It’s strange: you can pretty much predict what’s going to happen in this movie if you watched the TV-series and the OVAs. They just kept building up and up to this bubble, which finally bursts in “I want to return to that day”. But heck, this is one of the closest things you’ll see to a perfect movie: anything more or less and it would only have made the movie less memorable. Kimagure Orange Road already set a number of standards in the romance genre that have not been matched ever since, but this movie really is brilliant: it’s one of the best, if not THE best romance movies I’ve seen.

The TV-series were incredibly annoying: the movie is anything but. Gone are the silly hijinks and the annoying teenaged antics. Instead, this movie fleshes out its cast with some really realistic dialogue. I’m really amazed: I already thought that the TV-series was down to earth when it wasn’t annoying, but the movie just adds in a whole new layer of realism, which really allows the characters to shine.

Most romances tend to get a little cheesy because they want to try to be too dramatic and do too much in too little time, but this movie is completely different from that. The characters act subtly and don’t try to create more drama than what’s necessary. Because of that it has a full hour to develop the relatively simple premise of his movie, and it really results into a wonderful conclusion to the Kimagure Orange Road franchise. It should be noted though that you really need to have watched the TV-series if you want to touch this thing: otherwise you’ll just be left in the dark.

This movie can be compared to Tenchi Muyo In Love 2, but even with that kind of a movie, expect even more realism and less forced drama here. The pacing of this movie is slow, but if you managed to sit through the TV-series, then patience shouldn’t be an issue here. It’s really been a while since I watched a teenaged romance that was this grounded in realism.

Storytelling: 10/10 – Grounded in realism, both the quiet and the dramatic parts. Simple, yet extremely effective, with a wonderful ending.
Characters: 9/10 – Uses the main characters from the tv-series brilliantly, and gives them a very satisfying conclusion that many, many modern romances can learn a lot from.
Production-Values: 8/10 – The best animation from Kimagure Orange Road so far.
Setting: 8/10 – Do note: the telekinesis from the TV-series is completely gone. But then again, it has no point in this movie anyway and would only have ended up as an annoying cock-block.

Suggestions:
– Umi ga Kikoeru
– Anne no Nikki – The Diary of Anne Frank
– Bokura ga Ita

Honey and Clover II Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




It’s interesting how I decided to watch this right after Aria The Origination: in essence they are very similar series in the way that they both are meant to wrap up and conclude their respective prequels. The big difference is that while Origination had a positive outlook, Honey and Clover II is bleak. Where the first season’s main focus was slice of life and describing its characters, the second season is all about its drama.

And what a great drama it is! It retains the excellent dialogue that flowed through Honey and Clover’s first season and uses that to conclude all of the major plotlines that the first season left hanging. There isn’t really a main character in this season: there are about ten characters who get equal screentime to close off their characters. It’s a bit more rigid than the dynamic first season, but it leaves hardly a moment wasted and even though it only has half of the airtime as its prequel, it still closes off each character satisfyingly.

A lot of people predicted that I’d rate the second season even higher than the first, but in my opinion, I consider the first series to be better. The second season had a lot more drama which really made for strings of powerful episodes (especially the ending), but the first season was also wonderful in how easy it was to relate to it as a slice of life series, along with the way it described its characters.

In the second season, the characters do lose a tad of those charms, mostly because it spends so much time on developing them, rather than fleshing them out. On top of that, I also feel like the second season could have been a bit more dynamic: to me it felt like the creators were running down a bit of a checklist, especially with the big “Hagu twist”. They’re minor details, I know; but for me the way in which the first season both developed and fleshed out its cast at the same time is something for which I just can’t give its sequel the same rating. It remains a brilliant character-study, though.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Trades in the dynamics of the first season to a focused character-study that leaves hardly any scene wasted.
Characters: 9/10 – All of the characters develop here wonderfully, even though they lack a tad of their charms from the first season.
Production-Values: 8/10 – A bit less impressive than the first season, but it still is pretty sweet to look at.
Setting: 9/10 – Still thanks to the first season incredibly solid portrayal of the final years of college.

Suggestions:
– Aria The Origination (after watching the first two seasons of course)
– Asatte no Koukou
– Aoi Hana

Aria the Origination Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




The first half of Aria the Origination is pretty much the same as Aria the Natural, perhaps with a bit more focus on the characters and a little less on the setting. It was pretty much as good as it always was, but I still was left wondering why this series was held with such a high regard. Then the second half came, and I understood. Talk about saving the best for last.

The main purpose of Aria the Origination is to take all of the build-up that the previous Aria seasons put into the characters, and make everything come together. It’s here where the character-development really starts to become apparent, and it couldn’t have closed off this franchise in a better way. It’s only thirteen episodes long, and yet it contains some of the best Aria Episodes you’re going to run into.

Oh, and the graphics also got a bit of an upgrade: the animation is quite a bit more detailed and fluid throughout the series and you can easily see that the creators got themselves a bigger budget for this one, although it has to be said that the animators do try a tad too hard during the dramatic scenes. That’s about the only real complaint I have about Aria’s Origination.

Looking back, as a franchise Aria is neither the best slice of life or Sato Junichi series I’ve seen: I still think that I liked Windy Tales (which pretty much did everything Aria did in one fourth of the same time), Kaleido Star and Strange Dawn (both emotional roller-coasters) better. But still it stands out as a really good and charming series with excellent characterization that just gets better as it goes on. Aria the Origination remains a wonderful conclusion that deserves to be watched.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Brings a ton of build-up together wonderfully with morals that tie in really well with the characters.
Characters: 9/10 – Origination is all about the characters, and they give the series a wonderful conclusion.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Even better, though the animators try a tad to hard during a few dramatic scenes.
Setting: 8/10 – Much less of a focus compared to Natural, but still it’s a solid backdrop for the characters.

Suggestions:
– Windy Tales
– Honey and Clover
– Beck – Mongolian Chop Squad

Nurarihyon no Mago – 19

by psgels, posted in Nurarihyon no Mago



You can fault this episode because that wolf demon took too long in attacking Rikuo’s classmates: if he wanted to, he could have killed them off in a surprise attack easily, like what he did to that fish a few episodes back. On the other hand though, the way in which he played with them like a cat does with a mouse created one heck of an atmosphere.

I really wonder what this episode looked like in the manga, as Rikuo’s classmates really played a key part in it: they were both the main focus of the episode, and they also served to anger that wolf youkai who loathed humans and had huge pride as a youkai. This episode worked well because the previous episodes did such a great job at fleshing out Rikuo’s classmates, but if they would have been just as annoying as in the first ten episodes, then this episode probably would not have worked.

Also, what was up with that scene of Yura, looking at a bunch of ants? It’s a neat detail, but I wonder why the creators decided to include it. I liked it for some strange reason, though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Shinryaku! Ika-Musume – 06

by psgels, posted in Shinryaku! Ika Musume



A consistently funny episode, though unlike the previous episode there wasn’t really one thing that stood out. This episode wasn’t really anything special for this series’ standards, but it still packed some great jokes. The biggest problem with this episode was that half of its jokes weren’t fresh.

What I mean by that mostly lies in the first and third segment: the first segment featured super sentai parodies: that has been done plenty of times before. The third meanwhile came with no new material and instead was more of a set-up, developing a bizarre love polygon that is probably going to be used by future episodes. It has the potential to spiral out of control to be hilarious, but at the moment it still revolved around the scared girl being scared of Squid Girl, which was already featured in this series.

Nevertheless though, all of the segments had something fun. In the first segment, I love how down to earth the people organizing the sentai show were: they were perfect straight men for the antics of Squid Girl and the way in which she took over their performance. The second segment rocked because of how we suddenly discovered that Squid Girl was really good at math. It was obviously meant as something silly at which Squid Girl would completely outclass Eiko at, but to think that the creators went with math of all things.

As for the third segment, I can see what the creators did there. At first I was fearing another forced love triangle or something, but the twist here that everything exists in Eiko’s head definitely made for a bunch of laughs here. At the same time I’m quite surprised at how the creators have restrained themselves from devoting a segment on Goro’s crush on Chizuru: especially this early in the series it probably would have come off horribly forced with predictable romantic jokes you see everywhere. When it surfaces here and there though, it has its charms.
Rating: * (Good)

OVA Impressions: Tamayura – 03

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions



The reason I was so negative about Tamayura’s first episode was because I thought that it would only have two episodes: when you have half of your airtime spent on dull introductions there’s little time to actually use it. With four episodes however, it makes much more sense to spend that first one on setting everything up.

Tamayura 3 was also quite charming. It wasn’t as deep as episode 2, but it worked as a simple adventure and it really felt like we got to know the cast better. Now, there still are a few quirks that are overused, though: the twin-tailed girl is way too obsessive: whenever she has the chance she fangirls about Kou. The whistling girl was a cute idea for five minutes, but it doesn’t work when it becomes her main method of communication. Also, was that hot spring sequence really necessary?

As Iyashi-kei, it works, though. Four episodes is just long enough for the characters to show themselves off, and short enough for this to become sort of a quick watch, making it very different from Aria and its 52 episodes, which are much more of a commitment to sit through.
OVA Episode Rating: 7,75/10

Shinrei Tantei Yakumo – 06

by psgels, posted in Shinrei Tantei Yakumo



Quite an unusual episode for Yakumo: in most of its episodes it tries to stuff in as much as possible. The story in this episode however was really small. It was so simple that it probably would have fit into half an episode. So instead the creators stuff in a lot of scenes to flesh out the different characters. It works well.

And seriously, the drama in this episode was simple, yet very effective. The ghost in this episode was not angry because of some romance, but instead this episode featured a shy and secluded girl who once made a picture of herself wearing a pretty dress. It’s a simple yet very effective twist here.

Karuka, she has her issues, but in the end I do consider her to be a good female sidekick. She’s got plenty of weaknesses, but she also is pretty useful in getting Yakumo to crawl out of his shell. She’s certainly no moron and is really trying to understand him and the various ghosts she runs into, without becoming overly pushy or obnoxious. I like that. Speaking of morons… To think that “the klutz” in this series would be played by a guy. This guy… has no backbone. And yet I like his purpose in the series, having to work together with that woman that he’d once seen possessed.

This episode featured quite a few of those small scenes of characters who had nothing to do with the plot of this episode, but I like those kinds of scenes for some reasons. Heh, and yet this was the first episode in which we didn’t get to see Yakumo’s father. This really was meant to be some sort of quiet before the storm.
Rating: * (Good)

Star Driver – 06

by psgels, posted in Star Driver



Whoa!? This early?

Like expected, this show only got better as soon as it started focusing on one of the major characters. This episode, it was Sugata’s turn. His Cybuddy… has the power to make the user sleep eternally. It’s apparently the king of all Cybuddies (so much for Takuto getting himself a special Cybuddy), and based on the tale that the blue-haired girl was telling, it’s based on a king who got bored of his immortality and wanted to be put to sleep on purpose.

After that kind of exposition, I really did not expect the creators to use that card so early: I thought that only later in the plot, he’d be forced to use it. My guess is that he really is going to remain asleep for quite a number of episodes and that we’re really not going to be able to see him for a while. The creators really don’t seem like the type of people who would just chicken out after so much build-up.

Also, the birthday thing was something they probably got from Clamp: two characters with the same birthday, with a lot of irony put into them. It works in this context as well, though. It’s of course one thing for Sugata to hate his own birthday because of his father finding that day out of all possible dates the right date to tell him about his destiny, but Takuto having the same birthday is also interesting. We really don’t know much about him, but the creators do keep hinting that there’s something about him: that watch for example: we know that it’s important to Takuto, having it with him on his birthday and all, but apart from that we don’t know anything about it.

On a side-note: I love the use of insert songs in thsi series. It’s great for the atmosphere.
Rating: ** (Excellent)