OVA Impressions: Black Rock Shooter

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions




So, Black Rock Shooter has finally aired. It was a bit underwhelming, but still a pretty decent slice of life OVA about a middle schooler and a friend she makes at her first day of school. Not a lot of stuff happens throughout these fifty minutes, but it was pretty good at fleshing out its main character, and showing the progression of their relationship over a bit more than a year’s time. In the end, the drama gets a bit cheesy, but it works. It’s a pretty decent way to spend 50 minutes.

Oh yeah, and it has random girls who fight each other.

Now that’s the part I’m a bit iffy about, because it was supposed to be the selling point of this OVA. Instead, you get to watch some pretty neat animation, but the story itself just feels tacked on at best. Its purpose only gets revealed at the end of the OVA, and even then I feel like the creators should have put more effort into either combining these two, or just splitting them apart entirely. As you can see from the screenshots: it really looks awesome. It deserves much better than being some flimsy background for a story that doesn’t even need it and would actually be better off without it.

I guess that the creators originally intended the slice of life parts as a sort-of background support story for those “black rock shooter”-scenes and all, but they ended up spending so much time and effort on the high school part that it completely dwarfs out these action scenes. What I rather would have seen was just fifty minutes of those girls who fight each other, and see what they’re doing when they’re not fighting, where they came from, and what is up with the interesting locations in which they fight; that kind of stuff. They don’t need a bunch of middle school girls for that.

Pros: Neat fight scenes, good soundtrack. Pretty good slice of life.
Cons: High school part completely dwarfs the action part. Action part doesn’t really fit in.
OVA Episode Rating: 7,5/10
(Yes, I’m still experimenting with what kind of format works best when reviewing OVAs)

Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu – 04

by psgels, posted in Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu



Okay, so it was indeed impossible for this series to live up to the previous episode, and this episode indeed wasn’t as good as the previous one. Still, it completed the introduction of this series, sending Raina on the quest that we saw him at in the first episode, filling in some of the main gaps and questions we had (as in Shion becoming king).

But seriously, this show really likes its mood swings. The banter between Raina and Ferris is just silly. They make use of every moment to snare at each other. The contrast with the otherwise serious story has some interesting effects though. The way in which Lucile is basically using Shion from the shadows is definitely no laughing matter. On one hand, this Lucile guy is being set up as the villain, and yet Ferris still is loyal to him after the decapitation of the previous episode.

I was also surprised at how well the creators handled Raina’s time in jail. The conversations he had with his guard were quite interesting to watch. The way that the two became friends was quite charming, and they actually gave a character to this guard. Two entire years passed throughout this episode and you could see that the two of them got along with each other.

Kiefer Knolles (seriously, these people have weird names; just look at MAL: Ferris Eris, Iris Eris, Klom Claugh), I also really like how she just didn’t sit on a rock for two years, waiting for Raina to get released. And instead, she found her own way of dealing with having all her classmates massacred.
Rating: * (Good)

Shiki – 03

by psgels, posted in Shiki




A lot of building up was done in this episode, but it still had an excellent atmosphere. And I must say, for a studio like Daume, the art has really turned out to be quite beautiful here. The shots that use CG or strange filters are really well composed here. Character-designs like these are definitely a risk that was taken here, but it works out quite well.

The drama in this episode was a bit less due to the inclusion of some random emo teenager (or at least, that’s what he looked like). At this point, this guy is still a bit too extreme to be taken seriously, but I wonder what his purpose will be for the rest of the series. In any case this episode did a pretty good job of showing a bit of the every day lives of these people, and how they met each other, and I can very much see an extreme character like him pay off in the end. I can see that the creators were going for a bratty teenager here, so I’ll wait to see them show different sides of this kid.

Especially Natsuno showed a bit of a different side of him here. He was indifferent here, but now that he wasn’t bothered by some teen-aged girl here, he didn’t have this air of annoyance around him. His new friend also helped here, I guess.

This episode also was very much hinting at which characters we should watch out for. We finally get a good look at the owners of the castle, along what is possibly their daughter. The latter is so obviously featured in the OP and ED that she has to play a huge role here, and this episode pretty much set her up as a future antagonist. Also, the cat dude also seems to hold some secrets.

In any case, I love how the creators have been trying to include as many inhabitants of the village as possible, while giving EVERYONE distinct character-designs. Even all of the minor characters look unique, and are portrayed as people, rather than cardboard cut-outs (aside from a few old people in those rumour-scenes, I guess).
Rating: * (Good)

Kuroshitsuji II – 04

by psgels, posted in Kuroshitsuji II



To answer the most burning question of this episode: yes, Claude was in it. No, he didn’t do anything. He only had two lines and most of this was another Ciel and Sebastian episode, though the next episode shows promise.

In any case, this episode was clearly inspired by Baccano. It really was a step into the right direction here, and I like the concept behind it, creating chaos inside a train full of interesting characters that has a hostage on it. I just don’t agree with the execution.

I think the biggest problem with this episode was that it was a Kuroshitsuji episode. This episode went through a lot of trouble to throw in as many characters as possible into this episode, but in the end they hardly amounted to anything here. There was a point at which everyone was getting pumped up on working together to free the hostage, but then Sebastian came and just god-moded everything back to normal. In fact, this is a problem that I’ve had with with every episode that has Sebastian in it: in theory it would kick ass to have an uber butler at your disposal (and Alois really showed this in episode 1), but if you’re going to use him in this way, a character like him just kills all of the build-up.

To me, this episode felt like it just introduced a lot of stuff for the heck of it. It was a fun episode because of this chaos, but the episode just felt too forced. At times, the direction also seemed to skip entire scenes without any proper transition. Train episodes like this can be done to great effects, though. Wild Arms for example had a particularly awesome one. This one however… it was too unbalanced.

Now, as for the main storyline, with Claude’s appearance (without Alois, interestingly enough), we got a few new hints as to what is going on. We really seem to be back in the past here, or either at the end of episode one we travelled into some kind of other dimension. My guess would be the latter, since I can assume that Ciel in the first season never really talked about this mysterious “spider”. At this point, the question most on my mind is how Claude knew that Ciel was looking for revenge.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

OVA Impressions: Hen Zemi

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions



I’ve been thinking lately about how to cover OVAs lately, especially after Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu, Tono to Issho, Kaichu and Darker than Black’s OVA. None of my review systems really seem fit for it, because especially with one-shot OVAs (that in a lot of cases don’t turn out to be one-shot at all), I’m basically just reviewing episodes. In a lot of cases I’m not sure whether to put them under “reviews”, “quick first impressions”, or to just write an episode post about the episode in question.

That’s why I decided to add them into a new feature: OVA impressions. Under this category I’ll cover all of the OVA episodes that come out throughout the year (and it also seems like a good place to put reviews of movies like Halo Legends and Genius Party). When enough entries have been written I’ll create some sort of index that lists all of the episodes I reviewed with their rating, and in the meantime I’ll think of something on how to include some of my older OVA posts.

Now that that’s out of the way: Hen Zeni. Oh boy. In this year, after Chuu Bra, Ladies Versus Butler, Seikon no Qwaser, KissXSis and Mitsudomoe, I didn’t possibly expect a series that would push the boundaries of taste any more further. I was wrong; the depths that this series reaches into are unbelievable. This series chronicles the lives of a bunch of university students… and it’s just wrong on so many levels. The length at which some of these characters go with their fanservice jokes is just unbelievable. One guy in particular… do yourself a favour and don’t watch this OVA right before eating. Seriously, you will lose your appetite.

Xebec… these guys baffle me. They’ve showed by now that they can deliver their share of excellent series, and yet they continue to dabble in these tasteless fanservice shows lately. The thing is however that this episode was quite well directed. The way in which the creators play with emotions (no matter how disturbing) throughout this was actually quite well done. The animation was quite excellent in certain scenes. The creators really managed to keep your interest here.

Anyway, as for the rating, I’m experimenting a bit with how to correctly rate these OVAs, since my regular rating system for series doesn’t really work with most of them (especially rating a one-shot OVA for its setting is just pointless). Here is how I’d rate this episode:

Storytelling: ** (Excellent)
Production-Values: * (Good)
Creativity: * (Good)

Combined Rating: ****
(Yeah, I’m really using the ratings I use on regular episodes on purpose, right now I’m really trying to figure out what kind of rating system would work best on OVAs). The combined rating is nothing more than the rating of these three categories added on top of each other. In the next weeks I’ll try to think of a better system here…)

Perrine Monogatari Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Perrine was created in 1978. And really, it’s amazing to think that already at that time, when anime was just in its adolescence and only fifteen years old, it already had its share of masterpieces produced. When thinking of the early WMT-series, usually you think of Isao Takahata‘s Anne of Green Gables and 30000 Leagues in Search of Mother, but Perrine also really belongs amongst them.

Perrine Monogatari has a great story, but I do want to say that I probably have never seen another series that spends so much effort into building up for it. To put things into perspective: the original novel by Hector Malot only starts around episode 20. Before that, it’s all original material, portraying the lead character Perrine and her mother as they journey from Bosnia to Paris. and even when the story starts for real, it still takes its time in order to really make Perrine’s journey as realistic and believable as possible.

And it works, because this series is meticulously detailed. All of the events of the series, bot the uplifting and tragedic ones, really come across as realistic, both in the dialogue, the scenario and the way in which the characters are animated (which really is impressive for a 53-episoded TV-series of its time; there really are very few still frames here), even simple things as buying bread are given plenty of time to signify their importance.

Needless to say, the character-development here is amazing. Perrine slowly grows into an amazing character, but also the side-characters are all very realistic, with both their charms and flaws, and even the characters who only appear for one or two episodes are portrayed as actual people, rather than a bunch of stereotypes. There are no villains here whatsoever, and instead the drama around the series is all created around the flaws of each character, while it explores themes as hard work and honesty.

Now, there are times at which this series plays around with fate a little too much, and the language barrier also gets ignored throughout the first half of the series, but the only reason why this will catch your attention is because the rest of the series is just so incredibly realistic. This obviously is not a series for those looking for action, but for the people who are interested in slice of life and travelling series, it’s an excellent recommendation. It never tries to force any artificial drama when this isn’t necessary and it always remains wonderfully down to earth. It’s the series like this that showed that anime can be refined and mature, and not just silly entertainment for kids, opening up the door to more and more anime aimed at older audiences.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Very realistic, very detailed, a ton of build-up, but note that it’s very, very slow.
Characters: 10/10 – Wonderful development, charming and realistic side-characters.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Quite good for its time, though a bit messy for today’s standards. Especially the sound quality will be hard to get used to.
Setting: 9/10 – A very detailed portrayal of the places that Perrine visits, from Yugoslavia to France.

Suggestions:
– Porfy no Nagai Tabi
– Anne of Green Gables
– Touch

Darker than Black – Kuro no Keiyakusha Gaiden – 04

by psgels, posted in Darker than Black - Ryuusei no Gemini



What an awesome conclusion to the Gaiden-arc. The direction here was just perfect in hitting the right emotional notes. I love how well it made use of the build-up in tension of the previous episodes, and at the same time it also stood apart as a unique episode to Darker than Black.

So, we now know how Yin ended up with the ministry of community and affairs: they stood back from a distance, watching Hei struggle to get Yin back, and when everyone aside from Hei and Yin died, they grabbed their chances and took her while Hei was still… out cold, I guess. But that was nowhere near the main focus of this episode. The episode started getting awesome as soon as the illusionist started playing mind games on not just Hei, but everyone around him. It was interesting to see that he didn’t seem to care about money or power, despite having such a convenient ability. When Hei shocked Yin, I think that that was the point at which she really awakened, or at least lost the control of her real body, explaining why she was had to be kept in such a container in Ryuusei no Gemini.

Still, to think that it was Yin who caused the massacre of the previous episode. The way she so easily killed all of Amber’s former allies, in the same way she again released the souls of everyone here.

This episode also fills in the blanks of Hei’s development. Another big focus here was that we finally get to see Hei, showing himself emotionally vulnerable. As soon as he loses Yin (he thinks she died), he starts turning into the drunk that appeared at the first episode of Ryuusei no Gemini. I love how the creators animated his eye when the woman from the CIA contacts him. It’s there where he closes off his exposed self, and becomes stoic again.

The music really was brilliant here. Ishii Yasushi… his works are quite limited but I believe that his works really equal Yoko Kanno’s soundtrack of the first season. Again, it’s very different, but just as powerful.

As for a review about this OVA, I don’t think that I can say more about it than what I’ve done in these entries (I’m not really good at writing these reviews of OVAs that air only once every few months), unless a lot of people request me to. Now, for a sequel there are three possibilities:
– The creators are now secretly working on the third season, and will announce it in a few years. God, if this is true then I really wonder what that one will look like.
– We’ll get to see a few more OVAs in the future that will close off the entire series.
– There just aren’t any sponsors left interested in the series so it’ll die a silent death.
Obviously I’m rooting for the first, but I’m not going to get my hopes up until it actually gets confirmed. In the meantime, I’ll just eagerly anticipate Bones’ next major series. No offence to Heroman, but compared to the usual standard of Bones series, it just doesn’t live up.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Rainbow – 16

by psgels, posted in Rainbow



This episode was all about crowning moments of awesome. Heitai and Baremoto… their actions really made this episode. Not only did the creators find a plausible reason to get Mario out of jail, they also used this occasion to refer back to Mario’s past.

This arc at its core, I think, really was meant as this social criticism, a tad different from the first arc. The first arc was all about underlining the horrible circumstances that some inmates are put through. This arc uses this, but looks at a broader perspective, and also includes the views of the hard-working war veterans who look down on the street-punks. Baremoto’s speech was all about addressing this hypocritical view, and how the lives of their generation was ruined because of the war these adults went into. I do believe that they could have portrayed these adults with a bit more depth, but taking the length of the series into account, and how a lot probably needed to be cut here, it was handled quite well.

Now that we got Mario’s back-story wrapped up, I’m really curious what the creators plan to do with that of the others. At this point I’m not sure whether their background was cut in order to focus on the more important parts of the story, but the OP is definitely hinting at something more.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



One shot OVAs of large mangas are often not really noteworthy. They’re usually just commecials for their mangas, but don’t stand on themselves as individual pieces of work. Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu is an exception, so I decided to just write a review about it in an attempt to explain why.

I’m not really happy with the shoujo romance genre of the past five years. You know, those series about a girl and her romantic adventures, usually in high school. I used to be a big fan of the genre, but now it has rather come at a standstill, with only a few series as Skip Beat and Perfect Girl Evolution delivering something new and interesting while we in the meantime are stuck with stuff like Kaichou wa Maid Sama, SA and Kimi ni Todoke that just have the same shallow romances over and over.

Because of that, it’s really a shame that Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu has only one episode, because this episode was definitely the best shoujo episode since Skip Beat. I’m not sure what this would have looked like in the form of an actual series, but this is exactly what shoujo should be, rather than the dragged on and inconsequential other shows of the genre.

This one is directed by the director of Casshern Sins, and you really can see his influence here. Considering the circumstances, he really made optimal use of only twenty minutes. It’s got the same pacing that made Casshern Sins so addictive, in which characters sometimes take a small pause before they talk. There are a ton of close-ups, skillfully combined with other shots that actually give quite a bit of life to the characters despite the limited budget. Along with the surprisingly good soundtrack, this got quite an emotional reaction out of me.

While I haven’t read the manga, my guess is that the creators took some key scenes of the first few volumes, and compiled those together in twenty minutes. The downside of this is that we’re lost on a lot of background information that just couldn’t fit into this episode. Especially that cutting scene piqued my interest, because we’re not shown the context in which it happened, in favour of the more important scenes that did need to get enough time to really work. The result is definitely tightly packed, but in return, the creators gave meaning to every single line here: not one word is wasted here as the characters develop each other through their dialogues.

The only downside was that the creators didn’t really get a good voice actor for the lead male. His voice lacks subtlety here, and is too monotomous. But really, I can see a tv-series based on this thing being successful. There’s not much comedy, but a shoujo romance… I really see a lot of potential in that if the creators treat it the same as they did here.

Storytelling: 9/10 – I’m very impressed here with what the creators did in just 20 minutes here. Great pacing, excellent dialogue, really well cut and pasted from the manga.
Characters: 8/10 – Lack of key events or background, but surprisingly deep for only 20 minutes.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Low budget, but the visual direction is pretty good here. Excellent soundtrack.
Setting: 7/10 – Don’t expect any background to be explained here.

Suggestions:
– Voices of a Distant Star
– Maria-Sama ga Miteru
– Baby Blue

Nurarihyon no Mago – 03

by psgels, posted in Nurarihyon no Mago



This episode really was surprisingly good for something that just started out as a mere build-up episode. I mean, first of all this episode introduces itself as another one of those episodes like the first, in which Nura again has to keep youkai out of the sight of his friends. It’s not the most exciting at all, but necessary for the future of the series and to get to know these characters.

But as it wen ton, it made the whole premise of this series a lot more interesting, now that an onmyouji joined his class. If used WELL (and not as some sort of gimmick, that’s important here), this new girl could make this series a lot more dynamic now. My first impressions about her so far are positive: she’s someone who knows what she wants, and she didn’t waste any time to search for any places with youkai in it. Now that she actually knows that there are youkai inside Nura’s house, she’s bound to visit there more often. I also doubt that she really didn’t find Nura’s grandfather suspicious.

I think the weakest link in this series are Nura’s best friends, but really: I’ve seen much worse. They actually serve a purpose other than being annoying, they give Nura a reason for wanting to be a human, and as long as they’re well fleshed out, I don’t think I’ll mind them too much. I think my big problem with them is that they’re morons. Unlike the new girl, they didn’t seem to pick up any of the hints, despite being fans of the occult. I know they’re kids and all, but being kids doesn’t make them total morons.
Rating: * (Good)