Heartcatch Precure – 30

by psgels, posted in Heartcatch Precure



This episode reminded me of a mistake a lot of the bad mahou shoujo have made: the mascots. A lot of creators seem to believe that as long as you have them act brightly enough all the time, they’ll end up enjoyable. Instead of portraying them as cheerful characters, they take this way over the top by making this cheerfulness their only character trait. When the series also starts putting these mascots into central roles, you’ve got your recipe for disaster. I think the best example of this is Lilpri, which started airing during the past spring season: what could have been a fun and over the top idol series got completely out of hand when the creators suddenly found it a good idea to make these really badly characterized mascots the lead characters.

Chypre and Coffret know exactly what they are: support characters. They never get into the spotlights, they do their jobs by alerting Tsubomi and Erika as fast as possible about any desatorians, and while both are cheerful, they also know how to… you know, act normally. Then Potpourri came, and seemed to be doing the complete opposite, and she actually got a few episode parts in which she was the central character. Granted, because she was only born recently it makes sense to portray her as a little kid compared to the more “professional” Chypre and Coffret, but something in me didn’t really get used to her. So when this episode again promised to be another arc about her, I had a bit of doubts.

But god dammit, what a sweet episode it turned out to be. I knew from the moment that Potpourri and the little girl stopped playing that my fears were wrong, but even then I was surprised at how GOOD and sincere this episode was. Cure Moonlight’s return alone was already awesome enough, but I love how well Potpourri and that little girl she met acted and made up.

I mean, this show is actually setting out to be even better with its second half than its first half here. There was a far bigger contrast between the light and dark parts, but I like how at the same time the creators aren’t forgetting to keep this a bright and fun series. The creators had a lot of fun with the facial expressions in the bright parts here, not to mention how well the fight was animated (seriously, show: screw the magical beams and instead keep with the martial arts: those really show off how good the animation here is). On top of that, the creators also made excellent uses of Cure Moonlight here, by having her remind her how close Itsuki would have been to losing Potpourri.

I also wonder when we’re going to see the mysterious grandfather again. He hasn’t appeared in ages, but that just shows that he hasn’t been needed, and how the cast has grown.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Some Quick First Impressions: Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a real samurai and fights a bunch of cute girls who are also samurai.
Oh… the pain. Granted: this show looks cool. It’s got this neat filter and background art style that give it a bit of a unique retro feel. The opening of this episode in which those airplanes were sliced down for no possible reason had a great atmosphere. So, what did the creators chose as the first scene to introduce the lead characters with? By having the male lead walking into the female leads as they are changing their clothes. I mean, come on. It’s 2010. Are we ever going to abandon that horrible cliche? Apart from that, there are a number of other things about this series that I just hate. There’s first of all the present: after Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Arms has moved on from that now and chosen Japanese history to randomly rip off without giving its teenaged characters any link or similarity to their respective counterpart, making it rip off one of the parts I hated from Ikkitousen and Koihime Musou. The delivery also leaves a lot to be desired here: when this show focuses on action, and nothing but action, it’s actually pretty good. Anything that involves actual acting though… not so much. The voice acting and the facial animation of the characters are just terrible, especially when this show tries to be funny. I mean, you actually have to try to make jokes that bad.
OP: Aside from the fanservice, I have nothing against this OP. A solid introduction compared to how badly acted this show turned out.
ED: The ED in contrast is pointless fanservice and annoying J-pop
Potential: 5%

Kuroshitsuji II – 10

by psgels, posted in Kuroshitsuji II




It’s great to see that even now the creators are still developing the entire story and coming with new twists. Last week I mentioned like this series felt like it was one of those stories in which the creators make up the events as they go along. This episode surprisingly proved that statement wrong, suggesting more like the entire series had been planned carefully beforehand.

Seriously, the twist in which it was Alois’ little brother who made a pact with Claude in order to get rid of all of the villagers was a very nice one: so Claude simply created a random reason to form a pact with Alois, blaming Sebastian who had absolutely nothing to do with it. These demons have the weirdest habits in their attempts to make their souls as tasty as possible. I also loved the reason the creators found for keeping one of the villagers alive in order to explain what happened. Also, what the heck was Ciel’s eye doing inside that maid’s throat? o.O

But seriously, though: after the initial episodes, the plot for this series turned out to be surprisingly non-linear. I mean, the plot is chock-full of fanservice, but it has been surprisingly well plotted and planned out, in order to make the story as interesting as possible. It really makes me think about whether they also have a cool ending in mind, or are just working to a scenario in which Ciel and Sebastian can live happily together.

Either way, this episode again showed how much fun the creators themselves seem to be having with this series. This episode was chock-full of those tiny details like interesting camera angles, nice ideas and all kinds of strange antics from the butlers, from yelling out loud how tasty Ciel’s soul is to pulling a bunch of film out of Claude’s servants’ eyes. Oh, and Alois returned as well… somewhat.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu – 10

by psgels, posted in Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu




Last episode was a bit disappointing considering its material, but this episode made up for it. Now that those two goons are gone, Ferris’ attempts to get Ryner out of his Alpha-Stigma mode were the best part of this series since episode three. It was very artistic, intense and furthered the relationship between the two of them.

I think my problem with this series is that I’m currently watching it, just for Ryner, Ferris and Shion. At this point, I can’t really find myself to care about the rest of the cast. It’s up to the rest of the series to make these guys interesting, because the series moves away from Ryner and Ferris too often for them to be able to save the series. Right now this show is really busy fleshing out its setting with all of the political intrigue, but at this point there are too many shallow characters.

I blame not the lack of development or background, but the lack of fleshing these guys out. Ferris and Ryner are great to watch because we see so many different sides of them in different situations. Most of the people on Shion’s court get too little airtime to show their characters off. Everything is always serious business, and this episode was probably the first that attempted to show a different side of Claugh now that he’s in love with that Blue haired girl. Having this cast come to live is going to be this series’ biggest challenge for me.
Rating: * (Good)

Shiki – 09

by psgels, posted in Shiki




I’m beginning to understand why people were saying that Shiki took a while to get going. This episode showed the series surpassing itself yet again, it was completely gorgeous, well built up, full of tension and atmospheric as hell. If this trend will continue for the second half, then we’re in for an awesome horror series here.

There was something very interesting going on with the graphics in this episode: they were very inconsistent, but I mean this in a really good way. There were a number of off models in this episode, or some hastily animated frames. But dear God, the good shots looked better than ever here. There really were quite a few shots and drawings in this episode that looked utterly gorgeous.

This episode was all about the counterattack of the vampires, but we do have to wait a while before we learn what happened to Natsuno and instead we see them pull a mass attack on doctor Toshio. It’s interesting that he’s one of the few characters that the vampires aren’t going to kill. I suspect that they see him as the one who keeps their attacks within the village: if he dies, there won’t be a doctor to treat the patients, and they’ll be moved to a larger hospital, which probably means trouble as soon as people there start to notice what’s going on.

I think that the fact that this is all happening in a remote town is a key here: that the vampires are relying on the secluded nature of the village and its residents, who tend to try and keep all of their business inside the villagers, and aren’t open to outsiders, even when possibly questioned by the police. And this episode showed that that’s indeed the case: Toshio hasn’t called the police yet: he wants to be the one to save his village. I think that that’s going to be one of the main problems of this series, though: stubborn is one thing, but there has to be a time in which Toshio needs to swallow his pride and involve the police, especially when so many lives are involved. Yet, since we have yet to see any kind of police in this series, I doubt that they’re going to play a role in this story, otherwise we would have seen some foreshadowing by now.

But yeah, when at this point I’m about to call something like that the major flaw of this series, it obviously means that I’m enjoying the rest of the series a lot. It’s been ages since the last good horror show ended, so I’m really glad to see how well this series is doing with its atmosphere. I especially liked how this episode built up its expectations of having a single vampire try to get into the hospital, only to show a whole army of those buggers at the end of the episode.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Rainbow – 22

by psgels, posted in Rainbow



With the arcs around Mario, Joe and Cabbage, their story was all about trying to make their dream come true, or finding their place in adult society: they all had their goals and worked towards making them come true. The big difference with Baremoto’s arc s that his goal was impossible to begin with. His personal growth was all based on a big mistake, rather than a struggle to get rid of his own past.

Baremoto probably is the character who developed the most throughout the series, having the most amounts of flaws of the entire cast that he had to deal with. And this episode really was a great conclusion for him, in which his thoughts of being able to buy women with money is completely trashed. This episode again was very dramatic, like with Joe and Mario’s arc, but this time all of the drama was centred around Baremoto, realizing what an idiot he had been, and coming to the decisions to make up for the things he did wrong. I liked that a lot.

Also, the next episode will be the Suppon-arc, excellent to hear that. With four episodes left, the arc after that will probably the conclusion and I’m really curious to how the creators are planning to end it. Really, could we get a small arc for Heitai to close off this series? That really would make the entire series complete.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

August Summary

by psgels, posted in Monthly Summaries

To be honest, I’m about to consider 2010 as the worst anime year since I started blogging. The summer season overall was held back by its quantity problem, which results in only a few series that I really consider memorable. Does that mean that I consider that anime is dying, though? Absolutely not. I’m very curious to see how it’s going to evolve in the future and in the upcoming years.

In this month, the surprises mostly came from the series that have been carried over from previous season, with a few notable exceptions. Overall it’s a better month than the previous one, and even the series that aren’t going to turn into anything memorable have their share of very enjoyable episodes.

#19 (20) – Amagami SS – (6,25/10) – I’m still watching this show, but it’s still just plain boring. The second arc was simply decent, it at least had some dynamic characters, but apart from that nothing stood out, and the conclusion yet again was too fast and rushed. The third arc however… by god. The portrayal of that shy girl was just abysmal.
#18 (19) – Asobi ni Iku Yo – (7,5/10) – Out of the huge onslaught of moe shows by AIC this season, this one turned out to be the best one. It’s self-conscious and knows that it’s just harmless fun, and the gunfights are enjoyable enough. The characters themselves are really cliched, but they could have been much more annoying. There’s good chemistry between them, which sortof makes up for the huge amount of flaws that this show has in its premise.
#17 (16) – Sekirei – (7,75/10) – The weak point of this series remains the scenes without drama: the voice actors just try too hard to sound cute, and those scenes are just annoying to watch. Still, the main story has been getting better now that the creators revealed the major background behind everything. The characters are definitely coming together now, despite the silly and fanservicey premise
#16 (18) – Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakama-tachi – (7,75/10) – This one has gotten better. The animation still is consistently good, and it really has been thinking about arcs that give the main characters some depth, rather than the more silly adventures of the first few episodes. My problem with it still is the huge amount of references to otaku pop culture and overused anime cliches that just don’t interest me. Especially the boob jokes have to stop because this show has been overusing those beyond belief.
#15 (6) – Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu – (7,75/10) – This month for me wasn’t as good as the previous one, but that mostly had to do with expectations. It’s mostly been a building-up moth for Denyuuden, and nothing really special happened here.
#14 (10) – High School of the Dead – (7,75/10) – What sets High School of the Dead apart from all other fanservice shows this season is its atmosphere, which is really genuinely good. The action itself is also very entertaining. Beyond that it’s just gore an fanservice, but I’m enjoying it so far.
#13 (12) – Katanagatari – (8/10) – This is a bit of a strange series, but even though its episodes are twice as long as usual, I just don’t have a lot to say about it. Nothing really stands out, good or bad. I hope that the final episodes indeed are going to get more interesting so that I’ll at least have something to say about it.
#12 (15) – Heroman – (8/10) – This show is weird. I thought it was predictable, but in this month it made a bunch of really strange choices. That island arc was a completely pointless filler. I have no idea what it did in this series, it had no relation to the plot whatsoever, and overall was boring to get through. On top of that, ONLY now, after more than twenty episodes, did it suddenly decide to reveal the most crucial background information. I mean, especially the explanation of Psy’s leg should have been given right at the beginning. But yeah: the upside of this is that the past few episodes have been really character-centric, and actually did a lot of good stuff with them.
#11 (14) – Mitsudomoe – (8/10) – You know? Of all the moe shows this season, I’m enjoying this one the most. Sure, it has its mind in way, way deep into the gutter, and most of the series consists just out of utterly wrong toilet jokes, but the delivery is top-notch and actually gets better as the series goes on. I don’t want to laugh, yet I can’t help it here.
#10 (11) – Anymaru Tantei Kiruminzoo – (8/10)

Now that the climax has started this show has definitely been delivering, and everything seems to be coming together now. I still believe that this could just as easily have been a 39 episoded series, but it’s been an entertaining month for Anymal Tantei Kiruminzoo.

#9 (7) – Nurarihyon no Mago – (8/10)

Gyuki’s arc was quite good, even though it spent most of its time just building up for the rest of the series. Now that we finally got the introduction arcs done though, we should get to the interesting parts of the story, to which I’m looking forward to a lot. It’s perhaps not the most exciting series, but still a very solid one.

#8 (17) – Kuroshitsuji – (8,25/10)

Now that Alois is in the picture again this show has become a whole lot more interesting. His insanity is just so interesting to watch, and I love all of the interesting plot twists the creators try to put into this. However, it would suck if the sole purpose of this series was just going to be a plot device to get Ciel and Sebastian to happily coexist together.

#7 (8) – Sengoku Basara – (8,25/10)

Building up, building up, building up. Really, this month has been either building up to the finale (which had better be damn awesome with all this hyping) and one particularly crazy action episode that blew all my expectations. I expected this to be just one string of action-scenes, but instead this series went for just a couple of them, while trying to make THOSE as epic as possible. Well, I must say that so far they’re doing a good job because episode 18 (or 6) had without a doubt the best action I have seen this month, but this is all going to depend on these final episodes.

#6 (4) – Rainbow – (8,5/10)

This month we got various mini-arcs that were meant to develop and explore the characters as they move on with their lives, and I’m really liking this show more and more. Some characters can be a bi stereotypical at times(specially the thugs), but it’s still both fun and exciting.

#5 (2) – Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin – (8,5/10)

Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin took on a completely different direction from expected this month, by taking on a much quieter and controlled pacing. I still consider it to be the series with the most solid execution of the Summer Season, though. The episodes ranged from really well executed (episode 06) to a bit disappointing (episode 08), but overall they were all focused on developing the lead character Maya. Whether it’s going to work depends on the final third of this series.

#4 (5) – Shiki – (8,75/10)

An excellent atmosphere that just continues to get better. This show is very good at building up, and that really starts to show at this point, not to mention that the soundtrack also just gets better with every episode.

#3 (9) – Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru – (8,75/10)

I’m not sure what happened, but somewhere the creators suddenly decided to flick the awesome-switch here. This series improved beyond belief during the past month, with a number of awesome episodes in which all of the build-up of earlier on in the series is coming together. The music especially has exceeded all my expectations here.

#2 (2) – Heartcatch Precure – (8,75/10)

You can really see the show evolving now that Cure Sunshine has appeared, and it has possibly made this show even better. Some of the fights have become a bit beam-spamming, but the individual stories for each episode have been incredibly charming.

#1 (1) – Giant Killing – (9/10)

I love this show! Especially now near the end now that everything is coming together, the entire cast is just one chunk of personality. The opposing team is just awesome, not to mention the huge amounts of Dutch that the creators managed to insert. Every single character still stands apart as individual despite the huge cast, and not to mention how great the creators are with the build-up of the past arc.

Nurarihyon no Mago – 09

by psgels, posted in Nurarihyon no Mago



Well, it was a bit of a wait, but this episode definitely delivered. Gyuki’s climax definitely was worth the wait, and this episode really changed the course of this series now that Rikuo stopped running away from his demon side, while at the same time not abandoning his human side as Gyuki suggested. It’s great to already see character-development at this stage in the series.

I also see why the previous episode was so necessary, as it really explained the loyalty behind Gyuki’s actions, added to Gyuki’s pride as a youkai. In either case, it’s great to see that the people in this series are willing to grab their own responsibilities instead of running away. I guess that that was the entire point of these introduction arcs.

I do hope that either Rikuo’s classmates will develop like this, or that the story is indeed going to move away from them, as the youkai part of this series is looking to be a lot more interesting than the human part. I understand why they were necessary, though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin – 09

by psgels, posted in Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin




It’s episode nine. We’re about to hit the climax with five episodes left. And so this episode comes with a seemingly unrelated arc that ends with a cliff-hanger that will continue into the next episode. I’m really interested in the creators’ intentions here.

Don’t get me wrong here, this episode was excellent as usual. I still consider this to be the best executed series of the season. But I’m fearing that this series will go down the road of Sora no Oto and wait too long with its ending, resulting in a bit of a cop-out. If this episode wasn’t what it looked like and actually was already slightly hinting at that climax then it’s fine, but I don’t want the same thing that happened with Sora no Oto’s ending to happen here.

Anyway, about the episode, when you ignore the time-limit of this show, it was a very good one in its build up. The creators are continuing to develop Maya, using her relationship with her father, and the next episode especially seems designed to push her character in a new direction. Meanwhile this episode was excellent with its facial expressions, especially Maya’s, but JK also shined here.

It’s interesting how the case was seemingly solved before the end of the episode: the spirit’s father accidentally killed her due to neglect, now all that’s seemingly left is to bring this ghost to that father, have a bit of dialogue and things should get finished. That shouldn’t be enough to fill an entire episode. Still, with all that build-up it had better be building up to something awesome. It’s quite like Sengoku Basara Two this season: they’re both spending quite a bit of build up hyping up their own climax, so at this point I still can’t say anything about how good they are going to end up becoming in terms of the big picture, unlike, say, High School of the Dead where you know exactly what to expect.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Symphony in August Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




I was really starting to fear that Symphony in August would meet the same fate as Furusato, Japan (as in, arriving to the west three years late and flying completely by people’s attention even though it’s really good), but thank god this didn’t turn out to be true. I really urge someone who likes the realistic kind of movie to somehow sub this thing, because it really doesn’t deserve to fade into obscurity.

Symphony in August turned out to be an incredibly uplifting movie, but the interesting thing is that it’s completely non-fiction: it’s based on the autobiography of the singer and songwriter Ai Kawashima, and takes place seven and eight years ago as she tried to find the recognition for her singing skills. She she even voiced the songs throughout the movie.

After watching,I can really understand why people wanted to make a movie about her life, since it is a very inspiring and slightly unusual road through which Ai worked herself up, and eventually ended up singing the theme song of the Place Promised in Our Early Days (that part isn’t shown in this movie though, it’s solely about her rise to fame), starting out as a street performer. The creators did a wonderful job of portraying her as a character. She grows like a real character, acts very genuinely on the hardest moments of her life, and the people around her who support her are also portrayed as wonderfully restrained.

The director, Akio Nishizawa really has a knack for these kinds of movies: realistic, down to earth and honouring the Japanese cultural heritage of music. In this movie though, I did notice one of the very few points at which he missed the mark: the ending. For who knows what kind of reason, the producers just couldn’t get the right funding to fully animate it, so parts are shown in CG. To make matters worse, at this point the movie abuses its sentimentalism a bit too much and shows a few too many people with tears in their eyes, and this goes on for too long. Apart from that I consider Symphony in August to be just as good as Furusato Japan, but the ending is where the latter is just much better.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Realistic, down to earth and well paced. Only the ending could have used more subtlety.
Characters: 9/10 – Non-fiction, and it shows. A very realistic portrayal of the characters, and they’re charming as hell.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Detailed and well drawn movements, with some unfortunate CG abuse at the end.
Setting: 8/10 – Good portrayal of the modern singing business.

Suggestions:
– Furusato, Japan
– Fancy Lala
– Piano no Mori