Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 62

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



So this is it: the big battle against the final villain. The key is of course to get the plot to come together at the same time, rather than just showing a bunch of yelling and flashy beams for episodes after each other. This episode passed with flying colours. It yet again had my attention from beginning to end.

Interestingly enough, this has a ton of parallels to the ending of the first Full Metal Alchemist. I’m going to discuss those now, so those who have yet to see it: SPOILER ALERT.

In the first season, Al TOO sacrificed himself for Ed, also with a bit of help from a small plot-hole. In this episode: how did Al know exactly how to go to the gate all of a sudden? In the first season meanwhile, the concepts of the Philosopher’s stone was a lot more vague than in brotherhood. It was much more mythical and mysterious, rather than the strictly defined powers it gives you in the Brotherhood series. As a result, the circumstances here are much more detailed than the ending of the first season, in which Ed dies then Al offers his life to save Ed who then offers his life again for Al. Here, Al acts out of desperation, as a way to prevent Ed from getting killed by offering him his arm back now that Ed no longer has a reason to not have his arm (I guess that that means that it immediately returns the arm to the original owner).

You can also see this contrast between the two series in the portrayal of “God”: in the first series it was all powerful, it was always there to punish those who messed around with human transmutation but nobody actually knew who he was or where he came from. In Brotherhood however, he’s a gigantic eyeball in an eclipse who designed a totally logical world in which people get to travel to a gate dimension when they attempt to transmute humans. Ed’s arm is more like a sacrifice to get to somewhere (the truth), rather than just a punishment.

Aside from that, a lot of this episode was just about everyone, who could fight from long range, whether main characters, side characters or even nameless soldiers, hacking away at Father to try and break that guy’s barrier. I loved how this episode gradually played out and broke this barrier of his to the point where he eventually snapped.

I think that the one character with the surprising amount of airtime that I totally did not expect was Mai Chang. I mean, she has been a vital side-character for the past episode ever since they started fighting Father, even more important than Roy Mustang. I think that part of the reason why the creators made her decide to go back with Envy was a way to develop her for later, on top of getting her involved back with the plot and story. You can certainly see that she’s very alert right now, much more than she was at the beginning of the series. Still, I would have liked to see at least a bit more of her backstory in the earlier episodes.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Heartcatch Precure – 19

by psgels, posted in Heartcatch Precure



To all of the fathers who happen to be readingh this blog: Happy Father’s day!

While this episode didn’t outright state this, it was without a doubt a father-themed episode. Erika’s father played a big role here (and we even got to see the point at which he met Erika’s mother! Yay for character development!), while the story of this episode was very much about a father-daughter relationship.

It was about the point at which kids are grown up, and ready to leave the house, combined with the sentiments that are involved. The father here was a typical farmer, who probably will be all alone as soon as his daughter, who found a nice boyfriend she wants to marry with, leaves the house. This episode consciously chose not to show anything about her fiancee, because that was not what this episode wanted to focus about. This wasn’t about a choice between love and family, but rather a story of growing up and realizing your own happiness.

The first half of this episode was seemingly pointless fluff, but the incredible amount of energy made it just as good to watch as the serious parts. Plus, we also got to know a lot more about Erika’s family as well, for example in the way that Erika taught her sister how to effectively cut up vegetables, or how Erika was somehow afraid of tomatoes.

It was also an excellent episode for Tsubomi to show her passion. This episode showed that she’s really interested in nature and flowers, but she also has this habit of completely getting engrossed into new hobbies that she never tried before. This episode turned her into a temporarily photographer as she was having fun with Erika’s father’s camera. It’s all done very naturally, I remember how as kid I also used to get really excited with the random hobbies, only to completely forget about most of them.

And on a side-note: I noticed that the creators were really playing around with Erika’s hairstyle in this episode. It’s great to see series that noticeably put effort into even the small details like that one.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Armored Trooper Votoms – Phantom Arc – 01

by psgels, posted in Armored Trooper Votoms - Phantom Arc



Well… that turned out to be different than I expected.

In any case, I’m very glad to see another series of Ryousuke Takahashi, but this episode was far more light-hearted than I ever expected. I can fully see the idea behind it, though, and this is a great one. The Phantom Arc is all about nostalgia. It plays twenty five years after the original series played, at a time in which it has been twenty-seven years after the original series ended. This episode was all about the side-characters who have all built up their own lives after Chirico left them, and this series shows them as they decide to go back to some of the locations of the TV-series out of nostalgia.

Like the Pailsen Files, these are very interesting and creative ideas as continuations that were produced decades after their original series. It’s a great way to add to your franchise. The disadvantage of course is that there is no way you can watch this OVA without having watched the TV-series. This one is entirely meant for the fans.

As for the actual content, this episode did well in mimicking the light moments of the TV-series, so there’s not much to say about the serious parts. All we saw of Chirico was a bunch of shady silhouettes, and he ended up stealing a mobile armour in order to fight Shaka in a battle to the death. No reasons were given of why he was there, what he was doing there, and why he picked that day of all possible days to do this, that’s left to the rest of the episodes.

I also wonder how everything is supposed to fall into canon, especially with the Brilliant Heretic. This could become a bit strange for the people who haven’t seen that one, as there is a crucial plot twist at the end of Brilliant Heretic that will cause you to really wonder what’s going on in the next number of episodes as soon as Chirico really shows himself.

On the production side of things, I was a bit surprised: this really goes back to the original series. Most of Ryousuke Takahashi’s series are animated with a great attention to detail, but this brings us back to the inconsistency of the 1980s.

Also, the character-development. I really like how down to earth the creators have portrayed them. Through the past twenty five years, the characters have changed subtly. You can really see that Vanilla and Cocona are a married couple now. In the TV series they insulted each other, but to balance that out they were also nice to each other. Here the insults feel harder, and instead of balancing these out with nice comments, they instead just are themselves without any pretension. I wish I could have seen a bit more about their six children, but on the other hand they were just made to show how the two of them spent their past twenty-five years.

At first I thought that this was a bit cheap compared to Ryousuke Takahashi’s other series, but a surprising amount of attention has gotten into these characters right now.

And really, the entire cast of this series is now in their forties or above. When was the last time we got an anime like that?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei – 09

by psgels, posted in Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei



This was just awesome, the way in which everything came together in this episode, and there still are two episodes left for Yojou-han’s conclusion. This episode took events from all of the previous episodes and wove them masterfully into one.

Very different from usual, Watashi ended up being a bad guy here, rather than joining a regular club. It was some sort of evil society that was responsible for the rounding up of bikes in episode three. I think that this was the first time he really made Akashi angry here. In fact, we get confirmation that she’s still a member of the same clubs as she’s ever been in, and we get more and more a confirmation that every episode is the same, aside from which club Watashi decides to enter. The previous three episodes were special in the way that he wasn’t too involved in these clubs (an English club and reading club… yeah), which allowed him to explore love a bit more, instead of getting all caught up with these clubs here.

In all of these episodes, he met Akashi in different ways, because they pretty much were in the same campus, and she happened to live next to Ozu. Ozu on the meantime… I really begin to suspect that he was involved in everything here, from the tennis club to being Higuchi’s disciple to being the captain of the lucky cat Chinese restaurant. The reason he was involved in the cult in episode five was because his girlfriend was that raven-haired maiden that Watashi was chasing after back then; that’s why he crashed that airship. This episode finally revealed all of his motivations.

There was one big difference here though, that doesn’t really fit into the canon of the other episodes: Watashi did NOT find Akashi’s Mochiguman, but instead Ozu went after it. Could this be a hint that Watashi is getting further and further away from her, and that he’s just failing to notice what’s right in front of him? This episode does show that now that he finally found wealth and power he still feels like he’s missing something, which was pretty much the first time he acknowledged this.

Also, this episode did NOT feature a rewind. Instead we just have Watashi sulking in his room. I think that out of all the conclusions this season, Yojou-han is the one I’m looking forward to the most. There are just so many ways in which it can go, and I really feel like the creators have been carefully building up towards that ending.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Angel Beats – 12

by psgels, posted in Angel Beats




This episode, to me, felt like it was desperately trying to catch a train. Sure, it got there in the end and it’s a damn cool train, but at the same time it rushed through everything and forgot to buy a ticket, and now just keeps hoping that a member of the train crew won’t drop by to find out about this. This episode came with a ton of interesting plot twists, but at the same time it just didn’t care about logical narrative. Things just… happened, while most of the necessary transition scenes were lost on the cutting room floor or something.

But you know what: who cares? This series has already been chaos, and in that sense this episode was everything this has been focusing on. The thing I liked best that yet again, whenever we feel that finally the setting itself is taking action, it yet again turns out to have been just another regular character who took his own ideas. This has been the same for Kanade as she played the evil part to get everyone to pass on, the new student council president with his God complex, the Tachibana clones who went out of control: all of them are just people who took advantage of the setting, and the setting remained very much like an axe or a saw: sure, you can kill people with them, but they’re usually pretty useful in getting somewhere.

And hey, how many other series can boast that they actually found a believable way to include the power of love as a plot twist? It’s actually quite an interesting idea, in a world in which spirits who find themselves at peace will disappear. If you were to fall in love there, and the other person disappeared, that would make it damn hard to disappear as well out of love sickness. The guy in question happened to know how the computer programs worked here, and I guess that he installed some kind of system to prevent the same thing from happening again. His methods were just too extreme, though. If you can’t make them disappear, then just turn everyone into NPCs. That’s cruel! I’m also very curious here which NPC this guy turned into…

In any case, the end of this episode dropped a ton of hints that Yurippe has disappeared. In terms of Key, it did not turn out to be as emotional as their other works. The thing is that Air and Clannad reserved a lot more time to get the best out of their emotional climaxes, while that clearly wasn’t the focus of Angel Beats. I do think that I like Angel beats more than Kanon, so at least that’s something.

To be honest, I’d rather see a rushed episode with a ton of interesting ideas like this one, compared to a series with no ideas that, while solid, is too focused on playing it safe. Especially when it doesn’t have much else to offer. That’s why I rather liked this episode, despite the obvious criticisms you can have against it.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Durarara – 23

by psgels, posted in Durarara



Ah, so the creators are going into an anime original ending. My opinion of those kinds of endings is simple: as long as it works, I don’t mind. Although of course in the past creators have shown that adapting a story and writing an original can be completely different (I think Claymore is the most notable example of this). But, here this series has the odds in favour of it: Takahiro Omori‘s endings have got an excellent track record. Baccano ended wonderfully, even though the source material continued on, Jigoku Shoujo always had excellent endings in which everything came together, and Fancy Lala had the single best ending of any mahou shoujo ever.

But Durarra… its ending is a bit more nuanced. You can see that a lot of thoughts went into it, but it lacks refinement. Here’s what I mean:
– I really liked how in this episode Mikado explained why he decided to shut down the Dollars. A surprisingly solid reason and gamble of him. The fighting didn’t stop immediately, but I doubt that he was just thinking in the short term. Unfortunately, he did not explain why he refused to answer Kida’s calls.
– I liked how the adults here set the children in their place, the chemistry between Celty, Anri, Shinra and Shizuo was well done, it was subtle, developed the story and was very interesting to watch. The conversation between Simon and Kida however… that was just too one-sided.
– The twist that the Blue Squares were the ones who took over the yellow scarves was actually quite interesting. It gives a reason to those random attacks they’ve been making beyond “ZOMG dollars sucks”. On the other hand… what were the creators thinking with that fight? Why can Kida easily kick away guys twice his size, and only after ten or so guys does he give up? I know that such an iron bar can hit hard and all, but it’s thugs he’s dealing with. These guys should know how to fight. I also did not like how they stood there like sheep while Kida was having a nice talk. And even during the fight, most of them just did nothing. Yeah, that’s a good idea, attack just one at a time.

Nevertheless, those are just details. What about the bigger picture? There, I can see where the creators are going here. They’re continuing the path of the flawed characters. They made Mikado more naive (seriously, I’ve seen quite a few webmasters pulling some weird drama that makes shutting down the Dollars just seem like nothing special) to let everything spiral out of control like what was originally hinted at. It decided to focus on the fact that the characters are teenagers, in the way that they have good ideas, but at the same time can’t quite see all of the consequences of their actions and don’t always take the smartest way out.

I suspected this way earlier, and with series that focus on flawed characters, it’s really hard to make your audience care about them compared to the flawless and charismatic ones. For me, it was especially Kida who got in the way and made me lose interest. This episode actually used Celty as a catalyst very effectively to develop Mikado a bit, in the same way that she took care of Anri.

The final episode is going to be very important for this series. I really want to see a good conclusion here, when the creators went out of their way to create a new one, eliminating any chance for a possible sequel. Kida is about to develop out of his angsty self. If the creators can get his character-development in the final episode right (and I really mean make something memorable out of it), then I feel like I’ll be able to forgive a bit of the disappointment of the second half of this series.
Rating: * (Good)

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Artland is… weird. Let’s define it as that. They’ve got this talent to make all of their shows look as cheaply as possible, and yet they actually deliver some pretty good series. Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou looked like an incredibly cheap harem series when it first was announced. The character-designs for the females were incredibly stereotypical, the trailer was full of fanservice, it had the director of Shakugan no Shana. It was a recipe for failure.

Again, another proof of why you shouldn’t judge books by their cover (a saying that I really hope applies to the upcoming Summer Season!), because Daimaou turned out to be along with B Gata H Kei the series to breathe some much needed new life into the moe fanservice genre. Beyond all of the stupidity, beyond all of the pointless fanservice, this series has a lot to like. It’s not exactly deep or anything, but as entertainment it is very solid.

Finally, we have a moe show that understands the concept of creativity. This show turns out to be a subversion of the good versus evil genre, where the most good-natured guy out there gets labelled as an evil demon lord. Instead of whining and crying like a little girl, he’s assertive and tries whatever he can to escape his fate, ‘helped’ by to be honest quite a dynamic cast of side-characters. Every character here stands as unique and contributes something to the series, though my personal favourite was the green-haired girl. I loved her wise-cracking jokes with her deadpan delivery.

What makes the plot of this series interesting is that unlike most fantasy series, it just doesn’t care about credibility: it’s just there to have fun, and while the subplots are all solid enough to give the characters their background and make them to be more than just paper bags, it often just gives up and chooses entertainment above just making sense. The series is at its best when it manages to balance these two out the best, in which serious scenes move to nonsensical ones in rapid succession. The show is at its worst when it rather forgets this, and dabbles too long in either its fanservice, or its serious stories.

While the character-designs of this series may be terrible, the animation, especially in the money shots, is actually very good. There is a surprising amount of fluidity, and a few episodes are just downright fun because of how much the animators were playing around and trying out various ideas.

I think the weakest part of the series are the serious parts of Hattori in the beginning, and the serious parts of Keena in the end. With Keena, the creators were trying to go for some dramatic climax that just ends up as an anti-climax, while with Hattori has some annoying tsundere moments. For a harem though, it’s pretty damn good and has quite a few nice ideas on good and evil.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Too much pointless fanservice, but nevertheless solid entertainment.
Characters: 8/10 – Charming, stupid, harem, hilarious, tsunderes, background, cliches, but all have their own purpose in the story.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Unimpressive character-designs, but actually pretty good animation. Artland knows a number of very good in-betweeners.
Setting: 8/10 – Ton of nice ideas, though limits itself with its cliches a few times here and there.

Suggestions:
– Touka Gettan
– Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou
– Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito

Sarai-ya Goyou – 10

by psgels, posted in Sarai-ya Goyou



Ah, like expected: the series is going to close off with Yagi’s arc. This episode was meant to set everything up, while the final two episodes can really explore this guy.

We also now know why Yagi was so important to this story, as he turns out to have known Yaichi as a child (yeah, the child in the flashback really was him). It all points towards a trauma: the guy witnessed the death of the only adult he looked up to, which is probably what made him turn to become a member of a gang. The beauty is that he already developed a lot in the meantime. Yagi has some weird ideas, and he keeps sticking to his criminal roots with the use of Goyou, but he’s also bright and witty.

It’s interesting how there have been no kidnappings for the past few episodes. It’s probably because of Yagi that he’s not trying to do anything funny; he must have recognized him back there, though it was probably a bit harder for Yagi to lay the link because of how Yaichi grew up and completely changed his appearance. The white hair also could be some sort of hint here: why did he suddenly lose all of the pigmentation there?

In any case, with two episodes left I’m very curious to see whether they can surpass the middle episodes. I think my highlight of this series lies at episode six and seven. The final two episodes have already received a ton of build-up at this point, now it’s up to this series to make optimal use of this.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

B Gata H Kei Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Of course, the past Spring Season had plenty of gems with a ton of depth, but what made it really stand apart from all other seasons is that I now have two new favourite moe fanservice series. It’s a genre I usually hate, but this season came and showed that you can actually do this genre right with enough imagination and characterization.

With B Gata H Kei, your mileage may still vary, of course. It features a loser with a hot girlfriend, oblivious to a childhood friend who is in love with him, a ton of boob jokes and a lead female who is an incredible tsundere. It’s a recipe for disaster, one that so many other series screwed up at, but this is the only one that I’ve seen that manages to come with more than just that.

The characterization managed to keep me more than interested despite these cliches. Yamada is a wonderful lead character in the way that this series explores her attempts to have sex. She’s a unique character in the sense that she has the most weird ideas and the most shameless actions. This series really likes to toy around with the embarrasment about its subject matter, in a way that I consider to be the best out of any fanservice show that I managed to sit through. Every major character in this series has his oer her own things to be embarrassed about, which results in a number of priceless situations.

In the middle of this series it may look like the series gets lost a bit into its own cliches, and these episodes by far the least interesting of the series. The creators did plan a number of great and incredibly dynamic final episodes for the series to close off. Of course, leaving aside the fact that it doesn’t actually end, and that the final episode is ONE BIG TEASE.

If you’re interested in this series, you can simply give it a one-episode taste test, it’s pretty much what you can expect of the rest of the series, so if you don’t like it, it’s not going to get better, while if you do, it’ll keep you entertained. Teenaged romances in anime are usually terrible, especially the ones that focus too much on moe, but this is actually quite a charming series about teenagers exploring their feelings about sex. There’s a ton of fanservice, but it’s not just fanservice for the sake of fanservice: it’s all there with a purpose, it’s a means to get the characters to show their best side, rather than just pointlessly showing some boobs to get viewer ratings up.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Well paced, doesn’t drag on its jokes, and knows how to deliver them well. There are too many cockblocks for a series like this, though.
Characters: 9/10 – Wonderful characterization, excellent voice acting. We get really into the minds of the lead characters, and especially the lead characters are very dynamic and pretty well developed for just 12 episodes.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Consistent, well balanced and nowhere annoying.
Setting: 8/10 – A TON of cliches are present, but the series knows this and tries to make them ridiculous as much as the story allows.

Suggestions:
– Kenko Zenrakei Suieibu Umisho
– Yoiko
– Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou

Ookiku Furikabutte – 38

by psgels, posted in Ookiku Furikabutte



I think that if I did not know about the series’ plans to suddenly cut off the series at episode thirteen episodes, I would have absolutely loved this past arc. Still, even though knowing that this arc could have been God knows how much better, I still loved the way that the past match evolved. It really showed how much more interesting your plot can become with a lot of added realism.

In baseball, losing matches are two of a kind: the margin of loss is so small that it depends on just one pitch whether the team would have lost or won, or they’re matches that the main team would never be able to win off, making them lose by a huge margin. This episode however, falls in none of those categories. six versus eleven is a huge difference, and yet until the final pitch I kept thinking that there might be some way for them to get back, or at least close most of that distance. The final pitch here was nothing glorious: it wasn’t your hot blooded pitcher battle between the two most important characters of the game. Instead, it was against a guy who was so scared with the weight put on his shoulders that he only could have hit that ball by sheer luck.

In any case, I’m glad that, knowing the episode count, the creators reserved at least one episode for the aftermath. This episode definitely made a huge impact on the characters, and this doesn’t just mean Mihashi and Abe. The guy who was up at the final pitch also must be thinking very hard about the way he completely blocked back there.

I wish I could say that a potential third season could really make a lot of use of this development, but let’s not kid ourselves: there’s no way that there’s going to be a continuation for this series. I doubt that even the creators knew that this series would only get thirteen episodes, judging by the pacing, or otherwise they would have cut back on the slice of life episodes, or that first match. This series was incredibly lucky already to get a sequel and license. Heck, A-1 only made one other sequel before: Birdy the Mighty Decode, and that was because it clearly planned beforehand. Even their most popular series, Kannagi, hasn’t gotten a sequel, despite being nowhere near complete.
Rating: *** (Awesome)