Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru – 08

by psgels, posted in Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru



Yeah… tons of fanservice in this episode. It’s annoying when moe shows do this, but with the bishies it’s just as bad. Especially during that bathing scene I’m surprised that sparkles didn’t start flying off the characters. You could also really see that Yuki used to be a girl when he started making necklaces for everyone.

So yeah, this was another laid back episode meant to flesh out the characters. It did its job well, we got to know a bit more about zess (he finally doesn’t feel like a one-dimensional paper bag anymore, though he still looked like an idiot when he brought Yuki to school). It’s nice and all, but this episode did remain boring. It’s not a chore sitting through it, but that also pretty much everything positive you can say about it.

The first and foremost priority of the creators is avoiding to pull another 07-Ghost here. These past two episodes are one thing, but the show shouldn’t stick too much inside its own fillers. Whether these came from the manga or not shouldn’t matter. The manga should also have tried to make these chapters more interesting.

Having said that though, the background art in this episode was quite good.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

The Secret of Kells Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



I know that this is an anime blog, however that doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to talk about anything else. Japan certainly isn’t the only country that can produce great works of animation. I’ve reviewed Korean and Chinese movies, so why not? This Oscar nominated co-production between Ireland, France and Belgium is certainly worth a look, and I also believe that modern anime can learn a lot from it.

The graphics of this movie are very impressive. At first the character-designs may seem simple, especially the lead character Brendon. However, the animation itself totally makes up for it, as it is incredibly smooth. What steals the show is the artistic direction, though. Gorgeous, imaginative and varied, this is a feast for the senses. The soundtrack is also excellent; it’s a great composition that combines traditional instruments with a modern soundtrack feeling.

The story looks a lot like a family movie, but make no mistake that this is based on Irish folklore. On one hand you have some often used tropes of a boy who wanders into a forest and meets a cute mysterious girl spirit. On the other hand, this movie is also about the Viking invasion of Ireland. It’s got a surprisingly elaborate story to go through in just seventy minutes, on top of building up its characters. There’s also plenty of character-development, the characters are all likable, and the most important ones are well fleshed out.

The creators may have been a bit too ambitious with this, though. Trying to stuff as much as they did in this movie lead to a number of strange leaps in logic, or plot twists that lack poor build-up. The ending for example is based on a bunch of great ideas, but the creators reserved too little time to make it flow naturally, reducing impact from what it could have been.

Storytelling: 8/10 – A bit rushed, but well told, nice humour, excellent scenario.
Characters: 9/10 – Engaging characters in Irish folklore.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Excellent artistic direction. Very fluid animation.
Setting: 8/10 – Great portrayal of the old Ireland, though the Vikings and other monsters don’t get a lot of depth.

Suggestions:
– Comedy
– Arete Hime
– Night on the Galactic Railroad

Tales of Vesperia Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



The Tales of-franchise stands out because every game gets to be adapted by a different production company and a total different staff. This leads to a wide variety of different adaptations with all their own focuses, interpretations and things at which they stand out. With Tales of Vesperia, it’s Production IG’s turn, and they went with the movie format. And holy crap, is it good. This is everything an RPG adaptation should be.

At first it might seem like your average fantasy story: alas, the protagonists are young. One of them appears to have a princess as girlfriend, there are more cute girls, meant to act as the voice of reason when the lead males go out of control again, blah blah blah. But make no mistake: for every cliche that this show uses, it subverts two of them. While this is a fantasy movie, it for once does not require the leads to travel across the world and have all kinds of adventures. No, these guys are part of a town guard: they simply belong to a unit, responsible for protecting a bunch of people. There’s nothing like saving the world in here. Aside from the initial cliches, there’s no attempt made to make these characters seem any bigger than they are: they merely follow the orders of their captain when they fight a battle.

Also, this is animated by Production IG, and it really does live up to their name. The battles here are incredibly well animated: in duels, there are no still frames or convenient cuts; a lot of focus has been put on the sword skills, team work (and not just a team of four warriors or something, they often fight battles with a small squadron in which everyone knows his place). Fights aren’t a matter of whacking a sword long enough until the other party goes down, instead they’re calculated, realistic and believable. Because of this, the magic system can also be fleshed out a lot more: the spells here are a lot more interesting, logical and believable than you usually see in fantasy series.

There is a lot of drama in this movie, most of it centred around the coming of age of the two lead characters. The two of them are flawed, and a lot of the focus of this movie is about fleshing these two out, and developing them. Especially in the first half of the movie these two like to cause trouble, which can be annoying to watch at times, but it’s all with a purpose: to get the best out of their development. They really both develop into great characters in the end. What also helps throughout the first movie is a great sense of humour: it’s got a very good comedic timing.

The fact that the characters for once are simple town guards also has another advantage: you really can get a good feel of the people who live in this town, and this movie takes optimal advantage of that: it chooses a few random townspeople and gives them a convincible personality and character, which all do a great job of bringing the town to life.

I do have a few question marks about the ending credits, though. I’m not sure whether it’s meant to be an advertisement about the games, or a sequel, but it showed many of the cliches that this movie avoided so well. In any case though, this movie is yet another excellent example of how good RPG adaptations can be when some actual effort is put into them. Despite some initial cliches, it’s got excellent characters, a believable scenario, excellent animation really manages to bring its setting to life.

Storytelling: 9/10 – It’s got a ton of fantasy and action, but brings this realistic and believable. Well paces, nice ideas and good attention to detail.
Characters: 9/10 – There are cliches, but makes up for this with excellent character-development and great chemistry between the characters.
Production-Values: 9/10 – What you’d expect of a movie: no cut corners, well portrayed battles that find a very nice balance between believability and action.
Setting: 8/10 – Inspired and lively, though loses points because of how young some of the characters are.

Suggestions:
– Tales of the Abyss, Eternia, Symphonia, Phantasia.
– Strange Dawn
– Popolocrois.

Heartcatch Precure – 17

by psgels, posted in Heartcatch Precure



Yay, more Cure Moonlight. This really was a build-up episode, meant to develop the relationship between her, Tsubomi and Erika. From now on we should probably see her more often.

The Desatorian of this episode was a bit less compared to the other episodes, though. He lacked the time due to this focus also on Cure Moonlight, and the conclusion was overly simplistic. This series is set up in such a way that being turned into a desatorian shouldn’t make you see the light, however the way in which the guy in this episode immediately realized what he had done wrong felt forced.

But ah well, there’s always next time. The parts that focused on Cure Moonlight rocked as ever, and even though the drawings of the baking family lacked a bit of inspiration, just about everything else in this episode looked again beautiful.
Rating: * (Good)

Giant Killing – 09

by psgels, posted in Giant Killing



So we’ve already had English, Dutch and French, and now this episode also throws in a bunch of Brazilians. Awesome. Their portrayal is a tad stereotypical, but they did well in contrasting with the rather uptight Japanese players. And who knows, something’s telling me that the next episode will add a lot more colour to them. One of the reasons this show is so awesome is because of its huge and incredibly diverse cast, and with this episode it became even more diverse.

This episode had no soccer matches, but for a series like this that’s no problem at all: it again showed that this isn’t just a series about football, it’s a show about everything that involves football, from the players to the fast to the press and the coaches and all of the other staff members behind a team who all have their own functions. With so many details, I can more than forgive the few unrealistic parts about the soccer.

The cast really is huge, probably the largest of the entire season, but nearly all of the characters here stand as individuals. Take the supporters for example: you have the loyal fans, then there are the fans with the most status who rally everyone on to cheer as hard as possible, and then there also are the older fans who long for the nostalgia of the old Tatsumi.

I also loved Tatsumi in this episode, you can really see that he knows that he’s not going to win easily, and even he has to motivate himself a bit after such a losing streak of five matches. I think that for a lot of people, they’re into a test of endurance: how long can they keep up with the team’s abysmal performance? How long will it be before Tatsumi will live up to his name and brings a victory to the team? Seriously, out of all of the sports series I have seen so far, this one feels by far the most unique.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 59

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



We’re really nearing the climax for this series now, you can really see that the focus is getting more and more back to the lead characters and especially the lead villains. The next episode should be all about Father, trying to do whatever he needs to do in order to execute that plan of his. After that there are going to be three more episodes to wrap everything up. Should be enough.

Thumbs up for especially Al in this episode: he actually refused to go back to his body, because he knew that it would be impossible to be useful with that kind of a posture. That was actually very well built up: ever since he got stuffed in that box and Pride got hold of him, he’s had a lot of trouble being useful, having to play the part of damsel in distress a few times, along with just being too far away to help out in the early battles of Central City.

This episode made a ton of promises for interesting fights: it’s not just the question of “Will Al be able to redeem himself?”, but also, “how will Roy kick ass now that his eyes are gone?”, and “what will Mai Chang’s role be if the creators went through the trouble of putting her amongst the most central characters of the story at the most crucial time?”, to a fight between Scar and Mustang that will continue into the next episode. And then there’s Ed: as the lead character but nowhere near the best fighter, what is his role going to be?

The animation was quite inconsistent in this episode: some parts were animated quite smoothly, and you can really see that the animators really like animating the fights that involve Bradley with great detail, but there also were a few speedlines, unrefined faces and still frames. The big question for that is obviously going to be whether or not the creators saved enough budget for those final episodes, especially since they’ve been teasing us over and over with that ED.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




I did not like the first Rebuild of Evangelion because, well… it was a recap. I’ve got a big problem with movies that do nothing other than follow the exact same scenario as their predecessor, it should be a format for trying out new things, experimenting and just going all out with wild ideas.

Anyway, the second movie however follows its own scenario, which makes it a lot more enjoyable to watch. It combines the build-up of the first movie, a few things here from the TV-series and a bunch of other things that are completely new. A lot of the “monster of the week” angels of the TV-series were dropped, and instead the action focuses much more on the three lead characters. At the same time, we get an array of new characters, and the new twists that this movie pulls are definitely interesting. The final two movies do have a bit of work to do to cover up for the seeming techno- and myth-babble of this episode, but at this point there is no reason why they shouldn’t be able to do that.

The thing I liked most about this movie was the artistic direction during the action-scenes, which was with no doubt fantastic. The action, the use of colours, the soundtrack. Everything was a feast for the senses. This is just one of those movies with unique and awesome graphics. I also liked how the creators discovered that you can get pretty neat effects when you play a piece of soundtrack for a scene that at first sight doesn’t fit it at all. At the same time though, surprisingly little has been done to blend in the CG with the traditional animation outside of the action-scenes.

My biggest issue with this movie was the characterization, though. It’s just unrefined and rushed. Asuka’s development is just way too quick and sudden, and the quiet moments in the movies, which should be used to build characters, make use of too many shallow cliches. You know, the cliches that you see in dozens of high school shows already. The focus on cooking has been done to death by now, Shinji’s friends have degenerated into these typical high school “best friends”. Characters also really like to describe themselves with cliched one-liners, and these small things just keep piling up.

So yeah, this is pretty much a movie that kicks ass during the climaxes but is a bit tedious to watch during the quiet parts. This is one part of balance and characterization that the next two movies really have to get better if they really want the Rebuild of Evangelion to be remembered ten years from now.

Storytelling: 8/10 – A bit of myth-babble does not take away imaginative twists on the original Evangelion with clear attempts to make the story even more interesting in the next couple of movies.
Characters: 7/10 – Nice ideas, but the characterization is too shallow and there are too many cliches.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Magnificent during the action scenes. I would have given 10/10 here if it wasn’t for the obtrusive CG at times.
Setting: 8/10 – Nice potential, interesting ideas.

Suggestions:
– Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence
– Bonen no Xamdou
– Princess Mononoke

Tales of Symphonia – 06

by psgels, posted in Tales of Symphonia



Awesome. Nearly an entire episode dedicated to Regal and Presea, my two favourite characters of the game. It was a bit cheesy, sure, but I don’t care! This is the episode I’ve been anticipating ever since the Tales of Symphonia anime got announced. After more than four years of waiting this episode was SO worth it.

It’s awesome to see that in an adaptation of a game that shined because of its side characters, the creators indeed intend to give all of them ample time to show themselves, especially considering the limited time that this OVA has to deal with. The characters didn’t end up travelling to Ozette or Regal’s company, and the point about the rotting corpse of Presea’s father was also omitted, but instead Regal immediately recognized Presea, and didn’t keep his past secret, wanting to settle it immediately. That works too.

A bit surprise was also that Presea’s character is completely different from the game. In the game, when she recovered, she still remained quiet: she only said something when necessary, and she remained introvert. Here however, she’s much more outspoken. Her voice actress also gives a very different dimension to her character compared to her English voice actress from the game. I actually liked this difference quite a bit, to see such a different interpretation of her character like this.

Adapting a game is probably the most difficult kinds of adaptations that you can get. With mangas and light novels, you can pretty much copy and paste the scenario from start to finish. With games however, you can’t just do that: there are so many things that just can’t be translated to the animated medium: random battles, quick-saves, the battle system, having to slowly travel around the world and talk to random people. You really have to think outside the box to make these work. And again, I’ve got to applaud Ufo Table for actually pulling off a pretty good attempt here.

This episode did have its nitpicks again, though. The biggest wut of this episode came at the beginning, when Yggdrasil showed off a skill that not only he never had, but also introduces quite a bit of plotholes. When he has the ability to stop time, then how the heck can it be expected to beat him? In all the battles he can just stop time and kill everyone before they can do anything. In the games, he was just ridiculously strong and used that to beat everyone. He could have easily used that here too.

Also, the flashbacks. In the games, we never saw an actual flashback of the moment at which Lloyd’s father killed his mother, people only talked about it. It’s quite reasonable, since Lloyd shouldn’t remember anything about it. It was pretty much a big question mark at this point. In the anime however… yeah. Is there anyone who hasn’t played the games and does still now know what’s up with Lloyd’s father? Great subtlety, guys.

Overall, Lloyd and Collette were the least interesting characters of the games, and that again pretty much shows here. It’s very refreshing to see an entire episode without Collette, while Lloyd felt like he had a bad case of constipation in this episode. The rest of the cast was wonderful, though. Zelos’ jokes were a lot funnier than in the games, and the chemistry between him and Genius worked surprisingly well.

I expect the next episode to again kick a lot of ass. The final episode… well… in the games it was a standard climax. It definitely wasn’t among the best parts.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Angel Beats – 09

by psgels, posted in Angel Beats



I’ve had my criticisms about this series so far, but really: this was the best Angel Beats episode so far. A great sign at this point.

I’m very pleasantly surprised: there is no villain anymore. At first you’d indeed think that there would be something darker behind everything, like some sort of evil overlord who enjoys toying with lost souls. Instead, the souls created all of the conflict themselves. The final episodes won’t be about beating some sort of end boss. It’ll be about getting these characters to accept their grudges. Most notably, Yurippe. It’s typical Key, but I mean that in a good way. June overall is going to be an awesome month: there are so many awesome series that are going to climax there, I really can’t wait to what they have in store here.

The trainwreck scene was probably the most focused part of this series yet, and it also was without a doubt the best background scene we’ve seen in this series so far. I think that the thing with the early flashbacks of this series was that they were just too short: we got to know why these people held a grudge, but we never got to know who they were. Young Yurippe for example: her character is sad, but also got the depth of a paper bag. It’s now up to the final few episodes to link the two of them together, because one of the things that made this episode so good is how it showed the growth of Otonashi as a character. If all we’ve seen of Yurippe is a little girl who gets scared when her siblings are about to die, you can hardly play with the character-development at that point.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Ookiku Furikabutte – 35

by psgels, posted in Ookiku Furikabutte



Surprising amount of comedy in this episode. It ranged from the tickling to the interplay between Mihashi and Abe to angry coaches. Especially the tickling seems to be something that’s going to return more often in this series. Regarding this I do hope that the creators will prevent it from turning into a weird gimmick.

In any case, I’m intrigued about the length of this match. According to what people say, its length is even longer than the match of the first season, and yet in two episodes we’ve already gone through four innings. I’m guessing that the pacing will tone down in the next number of episodes, and these past two episodes indeed looked like they were setting the stage for the rest of the match. The point that was scored against them in this episode was really there to make clear that a lot has to happen here for them to win.

So yeah, that’s pretty much it. My entries on this series have been a bit short, but commenting on the episodes has been fairly straightforward: it’s consistently excellent in its portrayal of these matches and the animation still is consistently detailed.
Rating: ** (Excellent)