Katanagatari – 07

by psgels, posted in Katanagatari



Well, the graphics really were all over the place in this episode. It’s a shame to see that the budget for this series is starting to run out, because this episode was full off models, the characters were suddenly drawn with incredibly thick lines, and a lot of the fights boiled down to people moving so conveniently fast that all the animators had to do was to draw a bunch of curved lines.

It’s a shame, for a series with so many still frames, you’d expect the art at least to be crisp. I think the worst part of the graphics in this episode was how ridiculously small Nanami’s feet were drawn. Normally I like it when artists take an interesting graphical approach to an episode… but this was just the sign of either a very low budget… or a really bad outsourcing decision.

It’s a shame, because this episode was was all about Nanami again. I still find the concept of her powers a bit hard to grasp. Unable to die? Well, why don’t you commit suicide then? Still, the relationship between these two siblings, the extra info about their parents. It was well worth it. The graphics may have cut corners, but the series still is as good as it has ever been with its dialogue and build-up.

In any case, this also destroys the theories of “Nanami as the end boss”. With this episode, this series seemingly closed off Nanami’s story here, but I wonder whether we get to know more about their parents. Either way, the time has really come for this series to actually start some kind of finale now. We’ve gotten a few hints as to what it might be about, but something tells me that the creators still have a number of tricks on their sleeve. The cutting of hair always seems to be a solid symbol of change, after all.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Armored Trooper Votoms – Phantom Arc – 02

by psgels, posted in Armored Trooper Votoms - Phantom Arc



All in all, this turned into quite a unique series. With the second episode, we’re given a new hint to the point of why this series was made, as we continue to revisit some of the locations of the television series. This time: Kummen, the jungle kingdom that was the stage of the second quarter of the series.

Alongside the nostalgia and the decade-spanning developments, this series also puts a lot of focus on the mystery around Chirico: what exactly is he? What has he been doing after the end of the Brilliant Heretic, where that massive spoiler happened? As it turns out, there are more people trying to find him, and the mysterious mecha of the previous episode may also just have been someone who wanted to lure out Chirico (who probably wasn’t even there at the time).

Either way, it’s great to see these kinds of drak and gritty mecha series again, compared to the over the top and colourful ones that we’ve been getting lately. Cocona and Vanilla may be light hearted, but they actually form quite a nice contrast between the otherwise dark fight scenes here that don’t try to be epic with their direction. The politics also were a nice addiction, and it’s quite ironic that with thirty years, nothing much has changed in Kummen, which just devolved into yet another civil war. We can now see that the plan of the prince, who was portrayed as a brilliant stategist at the time, failed to create a new and stable country because people were too quick to grab their firearms at their disagreements.

In any case, I really wonder what’s up for the next episode, because a lot of that arc was spent on a space ship that already crashed by now. For me, it was that arc that really sold me to this series. The loneliness of just being all alone, along with Fyana being really able to show that she’s more than just a damsel in distress. There are quite a bit of open questions left from there, so I’m really looking forward to it.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Kuroshitsuji II – 02

by psgels, posted in Kuroshitsuji II



Okay, so in this season my method of choosing the series to blog is going to differ a bit from the previous season. In the past spring season, I was pretty much juggling with the series that I wasn’t too sure about, until I was happy with the series that I ended up with. This season I’m still going to cover twelve anime, meaning that I’ll pick up the seven most interesting new series. However, whenever they end up disappointing or too much of a chore to write about I just drop them so that I can get some extra time, watching some of the older series that I’ve been meaning to check out.

Because honestly, this episode was pretty terrible. The two new characters really were fantastic: Claude and Alois were incredibly fun to watch, and I really want to know more about them. That’s the reason I’m blogging this series. And this is also why I’m willing to try out this series as an experiment, without having watched season 1.

Because after this season, I really don’t want to watch more of Ciel and Sebastien than necessary. Together, they’re decent, but bland. The biggest problem however, is that their friends are all annoying stereotypes and especially Ciel’s fiance is just a complete moron without any personality. This episode also just made no sense, and lacked the attention to detail that made that first episode so good. A flood appears from nowhere. Instead of running away, the characters just stand there like it’s nothing. The fiance somehow finds it a good idea to climb on a boat. There is a dam to which water flows from both sides (how the hell does that work?) and after the flood is over, it really completely disappears. It leaves no marks, or scars to the landscape, conveniently for the plot of the episode like nothing even happened.

The first episode worked because it was so incredibly camp, yet well executed, creative and shocking. The servants were all well characterized and stuff. I’m glad to see that in this link, it becomes clear that Alois and Claude will form a big part of the second season, but it also seems a post that’s mostly focused on calming down the fans of Sebastian and Ciel, portraying them as the good guys.

This really has me worried, because good guys generally tend to get more airtime than bad guys. On top of that, I also really don’t hope that the OP is spoiling the entire plot of this series. Also, didn’t Ciel supposedly die at the end of the first season? Good luck in trying to write that into the series correctly…

Oh, and for those who were wondering: there was no iota of Claude and Alois in this episode.
Rating: — (Lacking)

Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu – 02

by psgels, posted in Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu



As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Ookami has some nice ideas. Just too bad that it doesn’t know how to use them, is pretty bad at building up and has a terrible narrator.
– Amagami may have a pretty good staff, but even they couldn’t do something about the utterly dull scenario and lead character.

As for Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu… yeah. It’s definitely a wild-card for my blogging schedule this season, and if it would have aired in any other season, I would never have considered to cover it. This summer season however… I wouldn’t call it dry, like with the previous Winter Season. There are quite a few excellent titles with Shiki, Nurarihyon no Mago, High School of the Dead and Occult Gakuin, along with promising sequels as Kuroshitsuji II and Sengoku Basara II. Apart from that though… there really isn’t anything else. The rest, while having charms here and there, is just doomed for mediocrity.

Out of that ‘rest’, the one that stands out the most is Denyuuden. As much as I fear the staff (it has the director of the first season of Sengoku Basara, Regios, Rental Magica, Mamoru-ku n ni Megami ni Shukufuku wo, Yume da Maya Kidan and the Chrono Trigger OVA, while the series composition guy only worked on Chocolate Underground, Dogs, Bullets and Carnage, Final Fantasy Unlimited and Kurogane no Linebarrels… what kind of a resume is that?!), I’m willing to offer them a chance to impress me.

Denyuuden (as I’ll call this thing for now) stands out with its tongue-in-cheek lead characters, and this episode showed that it’s also interested in building towards a serious story. I’m interested in how the two are going to mesh. This show sucks for having such a focus on teenagers in such a fantasy setting (with the strongest magician like what? sixteen years old?), but this episode spent a lot of time on what it should have been doing: building up, introducing the setting, showing a bit of back-story, things like that. The characters are quite likable due to this tongue-in-cheek execution, and they’ve got enough chemistry. That should be alright for now, though do note that I WILL DROP THIS SERIES as soon as it starts dragging or falling apart.

The worst part of this episode was that it tended to try a little too hard with the dramatic scenes. The part in which that girl whose name I can’t remember cry up to Raina could have been done more subtle, while the bullies in that flashback scene… were just too much.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Some Quick First Impression: Shiki, Strike Witches 2 and Stitch! Zutto Saikou no Tomodachi

by psgels, posted in Shiki, Some Quick First Impressions

Shiki

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a typical teen-aged girl who doesn’t like the place she’s grow up in.
Well.. so this series really has an issue with its character-designs. The unimportant characters are fine, and the females range from decent-looking teenagers to actually great looking parents. But the males, dear god, the poor males. Some of these guys look absolutely atrocious. What were the creators thinking here? Either way though: putting that aside, then this was a really excellent first episode. The direction was snappy and creative, and it proved to give a great cliff-hanger to its first episode. The horror was subtle yet at the same time in your face when it mattered. This is another one of those series that play in an isolated Japanese village, and the creators did a really good job in portraying the silent and remote nature of this village, full of older people and farmers about to hit retirement. The art direction was really good, and really made this episode interesting to look at whenever the males weren’t in the picture. This episode already showed that it’s great at building up an atmosphere and fleshing out a single character over a single episode. Noitamina looks like it’s going to be awesome this season as well!
OP: Best OP of the season.
ED: Hmm, badly sung.
Potential: 90%

Strike Witches 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character originally thought that she wouldn’t be fighting anymore, but returns to the battlefield anyway.
Strike Witches… makes no sense. Seriously, any attempts to give any logical criticism to it are the equivalent of gathering a small army to kick in an open door, so therefore I won’t. Instead, it’s a series that’s all about its characters, and weird ideas for its setting and scenarios. Since the first season was obviously produced without this second season in mind, this episode merely serves to put things back into status quo by pulling the lead character out of retirement and having the enemies that were previously thought to be destroyed return. Right now, the second season will probably have more time to explore the different characters, plus it looks like we’ll also get more dime to delve into the cause of all of the evil monsters, which never really was explained in that first season. Either way, this episode pretty much showed that this really is going to be much of the same: if you liked it, then you’ll probably like this series as well as it wasn’t an entirely shallow series, and if you hated it you’re going to hate it even more because nothing much has improved. Personally, it wasn’t that much of a chore to watch the first season, but did it deserve the incredible amount of DVD sales? Of course not. This series is fluff. Charming fluff, but fluff nonetheless.
OP: Pretty much a carbon copy of your standard OP
ED: Pretty much a carbon copy of your standard ED
Potential: 35%

Stitch! Zutto Saikou no Tomodachi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character moves to a new high school with her troublesome alien friend.
I watched the first episode of this one back in 2008, so I figured that I might as well check out what happened to it. But seriously, it has really derailed in the process! The show devolved into some really weird combination between japanese and american kids’ shows. The villains are terribly incompetent morons like you always see in those uninspired american kids’ shows, while this episode showed the lead character as she moved to a new school, gets the attention of the hottest classmate and makes enemies with a spoiled rich girl, in typical Japanese fashion. I mean, East meeting West is nice and all, but that still is no excuse for a kids’ show to treat its audience like idiots. I mean, there are times at which this series tries to educate its audience when Stitch causes trouble (seriously, this thing is like a trouble magnet. For him, entering a door becomes an entire adventure of hopping across the room while breaking as much in the process as possible), but right at the start we see him steal a bunch of donuts and nobody even squeaks at it. Be consistent, dammit!
OP: I really believe that the creators should have put more than 2 minutes into composing this thing.
Potential: 0%

Maison Ikkoku Review – 92,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



96 episodes. I know that it’s a huge task to watch this series, especially when it’s filled with slice of life. But heck, who cares? This series deserves every inch of its status as a classic. Heck, it’s by far the best romance I’ve ever seen.

I mean, the big danger with these incredibly long series is that they spend too much time dragging on, or repeating themselves. That’s not the point of Maison Ikkoku, though. It’s here to really deliver the every day lives of its lead characters, and we follow them through EIGHT YEARS of their lives. We start at the point at which the lead character (Godai) tries to get into college, and we get to see the progression of him and the ones around him through his college years, up to the point of him, trying to find employment. There is a HUGE amount of character-development in this series, and you know what? It’s handled even better than Touch.

Along with the every day lives, this is a series that continues to tug against the characters and their relationships with real and identifiable problems. At times it may go a bit overboard with the misunderstandings, but it always finds very down to earth methods to solve them. This series also masterfully uses the cultural norms and standards of Japan in the 1980s in its drama, like the desire for women to be ‘pure’, the focus on marriage, or the tight job market. There’s always something going on in this series and when it drags out, it really drags out to get the best out of the characters, rather than stalling for time.

Some of the characters of this series are hard to get into: they’re the types of unlikable bastards who leech off others and enjoy the misery of the easy victims. Flawed as they are though, these people also have the charms that grow with you as the series continues. They’re all portrayed real people, rather than the usual stereotypes who only can live off their gimmick. Throughout the entire series, they’re annoying, but for once they’re annoying in a lovable way.

But what really blew my mind about this series was how well it was technically executed. I mean, this series has the best animation of any Studio Deen series I’ve seen so far, and that for a series with nearly a hundred episodes! Animation is smooth and detailed, characters move as life-like as possible and there are less still frames than in most 24 episoded series nowadays. The way that the series portray all of the different feelings and emotions, from anger to love to hangover, is done very realistically. And it keeps this standard up throughout its entire run, with only a few noticeable hiccups.

Rumiko Takahashi… yeah. She really is a genius when she wants to. This series even blows series from Mitsuru Adachi out of the water with its depth and execution. I wouldn’t call it perfect, though. There are times when it uses coincidences too much in order to get two characters at the right place at the right time, and its characters can be quite dense at times. But even there: it’s a pretty realistic portrayal of denseness. It’s not like we have characters like Hanamaru Youchien here: characters here have trouble getting romantic hints, but they’re in no way stupid enough not to notice the obvious signs thrown in front of them. In fact, everyone in the series has his or her moments of stupidity and intelligence. Either way though, if you want the best romance anime out there, then I really believe that this is the series you should check out.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Makes excellent use of its 96 episodes, it’s really good at building up, really succeeded in bringing the source material to life. Sometimes it uses too many coincidences, though.
Characters: 10/10 – Absolutely fantastic. Wonderfully portrayed, fleshed out and developed.
Production-Values: 9/10 – For its time and length… very impressive. Detailed in its movements, and surprisingly few corners are cut.
Setting: 9/10 – This series has ton of slice of life, but exactly because of that it’s able to offer a very detailed portrayal of what people in their twenties, more than twenty years ago must have gone through.

Suggestions:
– Touch
– Saiunkoku Monogatari
– Victorian Romance Emma

The Seamifinals of the Aniblog Tourney

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

Silly puns aside, we’ve reached the semi-finals. Yay!

Today’s opponent is without a doubt the strongest I’ve had to face so far. Heck, they already existed before I even knew what an anime blog was. As usual, you can find the link to the tourney here:

http://aniblogtourney.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/semi-finals/

And also, don’t forget to check out Sea Slugs Anime Blog, if you haven’t already done so. 😉

Rainbow – 14

by psgels, posted in Rainbow



Hell yeah, the creators really did it:they closed off the two major antagonists. We’ve actually reached a point at which the biggest conflicts are gone, and yet there are still 12 episodes left. That’s something you hardly ever see in anime.

This episode was both about revenge being sweet, yet not sweet enough to allow you just to kills someone and get it over with. The doctor got what he deserved, and our lead characters also got their chance to dance on his premature grave in order to really let his deeds sink into him. Ishihara meanwhile was a bit more ambiguous, as we don’t know exactly what happened to him, but Mario gave him a nice closure.

Now, those final twelve episodes. They’re all going to be about our characters growing, and exploiting their own futures. It’s this part that I’ve really been looking forward to, and how this series, with all its over the top acting, is going to end up handling this. This episode also stressed that they’ve all grown up, they’re adults now, and they can now move on with their lives.

There’s one thing that I especially want to know: whatever happened to Joe’s sister? Did they get together? The past two episodes have really not told much about these lives, in order to really focus on wrapping the past storyline up.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Digimon Xross Wars, Tono to Issho and Nurarihyon no Mago

by psgels, posted in Nurarihyon no Mago, Some Quick First Impressions

Digimon Xros Wars

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the legendary hero who can save the world from an invasion of Digimon.
Well, so this was going to be the biggest question-mark of the season. It’s digimon… but focused on an even younger audience. Would that really be able to work? Well… after watching this episode… it seems that the creators intend this to be one of those cheesy mecha series from the seventies and eighties, and I don’t mean that in a good way! Battles descend in flashy transformations in which the good guys are able to wipe out hordes of evil digimon at once, everything is unnecessarily spunky. The direction unfortunately also sucks. Things just… happen. There is no build up, no attempts to create suspension of disbelief, it’s just an adventure of a bunch of kids who happen to have superpowers. I will say this though: it is better than most other kiddie shows. There’s a hint of drama, and one or two scenes actually didn’t have cheese. But yeah, let’s face it: this one’s never going to be as good as Digimon’s first season. I know it’s a kids’ series and all, but that’s no excuse to look down on them and treat them like idiots.
OP: Decent enough.
Potential: 10%

Tono to Issho

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a famous person in the Sengoku era.
So… if you were wondering whether the tv-series improved on the OVA… don’t bother. IT’S EXACTLY THE BLOODY SAME! Seriously, as it turns out, the tv-series is just going to consist out of the OVA, chopped up into episodes of ninety seconds. I mean… eh?
ED: The only thing new, but still crappy.
Potential: -70%

Nuyarihyon no Mago

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the grandson of some lead of some large youkai family.
Some shows go all out with their first episode. This one didn’t, but there still is enough to like left. This episode was wonderfully subtle for a shounen series. There’s no overacting, there is no fanservice, the lead character isn’t some cocky idiot who charges into fights, and yet the drama that’s there is handled really well. The characters get to say what they want to say without going over the top, and this episode already established the lead character beyond a mere caricature by showing how he chose to grow up as a normal human, despite the house full of youkai he’s raised in. I especially want to praise that soundtrack, which turned out to be really atmospheric and added an extra layer of emotional depth to the dramatic scenes. The series still is a bit childish, as we see a lot of scenes of middle schoolers, hanging out with each other, but there was nothing bad about them. There were no obvious stereotypes or characters who abuse their own gimmicks, it pulled no cheap tricks, nor were the characters acting way too stupid for their own good. The youkai designs range from cute to simple to actually quite beautiful and well drawn. Overall, a solid start to a series that surely is still holding back a lot of its cards.
OP: Decent at first sight, but it has this innocent charm to it.
ED: Um… yeah. Why does this work so well?
Potential: 85%

Some Quick First Impressions: Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin, High School of the Dead and Seitokai Yakuindomo

by psgels, posted in High School of the Dead, Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin, Some Quick First Impressions

Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the daughter of the head of some supernatural high school.
How awesome. This was everything a first episode should be! Funny, entertaining, tense, mysterious, intriguing, engaging, this episode was all of it. I was really afraid of the way that the promo material portrayed the lead characters, but there turned out to be no need to worry. The female lead at least is a very colourful character, and most importantly: this episode really wasted no time to delve into her background. It just went “screw carefully introducing characters and waiting with their background until the last minute. We’ve got only thirteen episodes here, you know!” This episode was full of weird and entertaining plot twists that had a ton of charms. The jokes were quite creative, and most importantly: while it definitely made its characters out to be a bunch of oddballs, it never turned them into idiots. Especially the part in which that ghost pretended to be the lead character’s dead father, she really saw through such a shallow trap immediately, instead of getting all sentimental about it. However, I do have one thing to say about this episode, and this is a pretty big issue: this clearly was a “let’s go all out with our first episode”-first episode. That is NO EXCUSE for the show to dull in after this. This has the potential to become a classic if all the episodes are of this caliber. However, will the creators really have enough material to make every single episode entertaining, or will they just descend into random fluff after this?
OP: Very neat art there.
ED: A decent ballad
Potential: 95%

High School of the Dead

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is in a school full of ZOMBIES
Yeah, it’s pretty much like expected. The story itself has the depth of a paper bucket, we have a school zombie invasion and your average teen-aged lead happens to be one of the few who manages to escape, along with his love interest. There’s a ton of fanservice as well. Does that matter, though? Of course not! This is just one of those shows that knows exactly what it is: adrenaline. This episode was a great taste in what is about to come, with a tight and over the top atmosphere, with a lot of passion and overacting. Right from the start, this would be a series that’s going to sell itself with its action, and well, in this episode it accomplished its mission! On the cliche side of things, though: while there are definitely cliches here and there (the childhood promise being the worst of them), the lead characters for once aren’t actually useless or weak. the lead female practices martial arts, while the lead male has also showed that he can kick zombie ass.
OP: Decent J-rock, though nothing special.
ED: Again, decent j-rock.
Potential: 75%

Seitokai Yakuindomo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to be in the student council in a school with 90% females…. they’re not even trying anymore, are they?
Oh boy, oh boy! I hope that you’re a big fan of short-jokes, because this series surely has enough of them in its endless attempts to remind us that one of the characters is short. Seriously, the people from GoHands are terrific animators. So why the heck do they keep spending their time with these incredibly stupid premises? While not as bad as Princess Lover, Seitokai Yakuindomo is yet another one of those series in which we get to see cute girls with the depth of a paper bag parade around the screen, all around one male character who gets his usual harem. The jokes here… were terrible. They’re not funny, and some of them get repeated endlessly. I doubt that many people who visit this blog were planning to check this one out, but still: there are so many better shows of this kind. I don’t see anything that sets this series apart from its ilk.
OP: Glad to see that the jokes that the series plans to drag out in the rest of the series are even more terrible than what they showed in this episode.
ED: Obnoxious.
Potential: 0%