Mobile Suit Gundam – The 08th MS Team Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Those who know this blog probably know that I’m not the biggest fan of Gundam, neither UC or the New Generation. However, there are exceptions. This one included.

It’s far from perfect, but the solid execution, characters and avoidance of a number of annoying Gundam tropes made me enjoy this series a lot more than most of the other ones of this franchise. The 08th MS Team tells about a small squadron of five people, stationed somewhere in a jungle, near the frontlines. It shines in how it portrays these characters, and the tension that erupts from having to work so closely together so often. I personally really enjoyed the chemistry between these five, and it also helps that the lead character himself belongs in my top three of Gundam Leads: while bratty at first sight, this guy is mature, intelligent and has a sense of leadership that’s very rare amongst main characters of his kind. Sure, he does have some of the flaws that’s become a bit too typical of Gundam (ignoring orders, anyone?), but he had this refreshing sense of charisma that felt like a breath of fresh air amonst all teenaged mecha pilots.

More Gundam Tropes were avoided this way. I was pleasantly surprised at how the creators didn’t go through ridiculous lengths to give the lead character the strongest mecha possible: the lead character trashes quite a few of his mechas along the way, and as a consequence he ends up piloting less impressive-looking ones. Battles are also much more a matter of tactics, rather than random shouting and endless battles in which everyone ends up retreating. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this series, especially the middle part.

There also was a lot for me to dislike, though. Most notably, the bad guy. This guy was pretty pathethic throughout the series as he tried to carry out his plans, and the creators tried to explain some utterly non-sensical things just on his insanity like it was some sort of magic plot device. I guess that the intention of the creators was to show some sort of moral, in the way of “even though no side wishes for war, it’s always ruined by some moron who doesn’t think straight”, but for that to work I would have really liked some more depth on these morons.

Speaking of ‘war is bad’, it’s prevalent in this series too, but I feel like these themes are a bit too underdeveloped as well. It doesn’t really mesh well with this series’s other themes, resulting in how battle-hardened soldiers suddenly start rambling on cheesy ideals that feel more like the writers’ opinions than that of the characters themselves. I’m overall a bit iffy on the character-development: it’s very prevalent, but in a few cases (for me the most notable were the main villain, Eledore and Michel) it felt like the characters just changed character, rather than evolved.

It’s also got a really weird final episode, especially for its time. You can pretty much see it as the prelude to those exclusive DVD-only episodes, that tackle a topic that hardly has anything to do with the main storyline. Overall, the idea was very nice, and was definitely an interesting way to close off such a series, hampered only by one particular very obnoxious and stupid character.
Yes Michel, that means you.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Great atmosphere and the look at war through the eyes of a common soldier. Only becomes too epic for its own good in its final quarter, rather than its final half.
Characters: 8/10 – Excellent chemistry, character-development all over the place. Emo villain.
Production-Values: 8/10 – For Gundam’s standards not the best, but well detailed animation and decent enough music.
Setting: 8/10 – Showed a different side to the UC universe than most other Gundams.

Kobato – 22

by psgels, posted in Kobato



It’s beautiful episodes like this one that totally restore my faith in anime. What a wonderful example of how to write a touching story without the biggest budget, epic backstory or over the top plot twists. The character-development in this episode was all worth the wait and the first half, and a heart-warming prelude to that finale. I laugh at articles like this one (well, the ‘anime sucks’-section anyway), which paint a completely biased and one-sided picture of the current state of anime.

I love it when a series changes my perception of things, and for me, Kobato restored my faith in these simple series that might not amount to much at first. Despite its mediocre start, I’m emotionally connecting to this series, more than just about every other series this season. This is really what a drama should be.

I also think that this is one of the few good uses of the “crash before the ending”-trope. Just like with White Album’s second season, Fujimoto’s crash was nothing serious, and instead more meant as a wake-up call, rather than creating some cheap drama by placing someone in the hospital. On top of that, it was also well built up: in his state of mind, it’s not surprising that Fujimoto wouldn’t pay attention to the road.

To be honest, out of all the series that are about to end in the upcoming weeks, Kobato’s is the one that I’m looking forward to the most. It’s really been building up to that final episode through its entire airtime, and out of all the endings, it’s this one that I feel has the most chance of actually turning out great. It’s the kind of ending where the creators have to really screw up big time to ruin it. Especially considering how the creators wrecked the kindergarten in this episode, it shows that they’re not going to force down a happy ending if it doesn’t make sense within the story.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Sora no Oto – 11

by psgels, posted in Sora no Oto



Yes! Yes! Yes! It’s going as I hoped: this episode started the finale, which is both at the same time hard-hitting, yet stays true to the main cast. The drama in this episode was powerful, and instead of moving the main cast to the conflict, it moved the conflict to the main cast (makes sense, trying to hit an outpost rather than a well defended city). The war is about to begin, and yet this series did not forget that it’s also a slice of life series, and saved a good number of minutes, just for that purpose.

The only thing about this episode that was questionable… was Noel. I mean, it’s a bit late to suddenly reveal that she used to be a genius young scientist; my suspense of disbelief was about to break when that revelation suddenly came from out of nowhere. I mean, a princess is one thing, but a genius young girl who saves the war with her own inventions is on a whole new level.

Thankfully the rest of this episode was awesome enough to make this insignificant. There was plenty of character-development now that Rio is gone, the animation was as imaginative as always, and I loved how this episode showed that both Helvetians and Romans can be quite nice people when they’re not trying to kill each other.

And the creators actually thought of language boundaries. The Roman people actually spoke German. And it’s not like we heard one word or something, no. This woman uttered entire monologues in German; the creators cut no corners in making her ramblings believable. And I must say, Japanized German sounds surprisingly good. The European languages all sound very different when the Japanese try to speak them. Their Dutch is fairly good, mainly because a lot of our vowels sound similar (for an example of that I direct you to a certain episode of Samurai Champloo). German also survives fairly well, as this episode showed. English is a bit different, as it often gets raped by voice actors who have no idea about their pronunciation. By far the worst I’ve heard, however, is French. Seriously, whenever the Japanese try to say it, it’s not French anymore. Its just become gibberish.

In any case: that finale. Right now it’s very tempting for the creators to Deus ex Machina that enemy army away with that priestess legend from the first episode. With all of the build-up of this series, a lot depends on that final episode: bring those themes together! Get the best conclusion out of those characters! Do something unexpected that lifts this series to a higher level, yet doesn’t derail it!
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Victorian Romance Emma – The Second Act Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



My one big fear for the second season of Emma is that it would be too ambitious. You know, when a formula works in one series, the creators try to do the same, only bigger in the sequel, ruining the subtlety that made the original so wonderful. And indeed: Victorian Romance Emma’s second season is a lot more emotional than the first. But it still works wonderfully. What a great romance series!

And granted, while this season isn’t as subtle as the first, it packs a punch with powerful character-development. It’s all about making difficult and life-changing decision that all have their consequences, inside the uptight English noble culture of a few centuries ago. Emma herself still is a wonderful character, with an excellent combination of strengths and weaknesses. William, the male lead also grows tremendously throughout this season.

The animation quality is also surprisingly good for a slice of life series. The poses are creative and consistently detailed with a great sense of aesthetics. The soundtrack is also even better than the first, with a lot of simple but powerful piano tunes, and other kinds of classical instruments.

In order to tell its story however, this series does pull a few coincidences that might not fall well. The way that the story is continued is a bit questionable, and the climax as well, while closing off the characters wonderfully, does include a few strange accidents, that curiously all happen at the same time.

Nevertheless if you ignore that, then this is a series that’s very well built up. Like the first season, it’s a series in which not a lot happens, but that allows the creators to really explore whatever does happen in great depths. I’ve never really understood the appeal of the maid fetish, or why so many series need to have one for God’s sake, but this is a worthy exception: mature, engaging and heart-warming. A recommendation for everyone who likes history and romance.

Storytelling: 9/10 – A few coincidences don’t stop it from being very well built up and giving everything ample time to develop.
Characters: 9/10 – Wonderful characters with great development.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Very solid.
Setting: 9/10 – Excellent depiction of Victorian England’s upper classes.

Heartcatch Precure – 06

by psgels, posted in Heartcatch Precure



Again we focus on a random kid, and again it’s not a total waste of time at all. Note how this episode revisited some of the previous victims, showing that they’re still alive. That’s rare, even among the good episodic mahou shoujo. This episode also showed a bit more about that mysterious guy, who against my expectations might not be the student council president. This episode also made sure that the battles aren’t going to end up incredibly repetitive by revealing the powers of these mysterious heart seed as sources of random powers. With a bit of creativity this can lead to pretty nice action scenes.

We’ve often seen school photographers in anime. Her story wasn’t as good as last week’s, but it still was well thought out: it’s not exactly like she was feeling down because she was terrible at making photos: she had the right intentions, however by capturing people’s accidents she just carried out her hobby in a bit of a wrong way.

This episode again was great on the visual expressions of the characters. Also, take a look at the student council president’s aikido: that’s not just good animation, but you can actually see that the animators spend time at studying how to perform these techniques. They’re all just hints at how much effort they’re putting into the production of this series. I’m also not sure for how long this is going to continue, but this episode introduced yet another transformation scene. Weren’t these scenes originally intended as a means of laziness? 😛
Rating: * (Good)

Hanamaru Youchien – 10

by psgels, posted in Hanamaru Youchien



I keep advocating series, even slice of life series, to focus on adults. This episode showed one of the reasons why: alcohol. The drinking party has got to be my favourite arc of of Hanamaru Youchien yet. It’s episodes like these that aren’t just hilarious. They also show interesting new stuff about the characters.

Overall, this is something that I never expected at this series’ halfway point: ever since then, this series has just been getting better and better. Especially the past two episodes made up for the lackluster middle part. The great part is that Tsuchida is evolving. This guy really is your average loser done right, and it’s amazing to see what a little characterization can do. Despite the predictability of everything, I’m noticing that I’m actually feeling sorry for this guy, and like his colleagues would support these two getting together. That’s something I never really expected after finding out how incredibly dense Yamamoto was.

As for the brother: my first reaction when I saw him was: “god, not another one…”. And yet even the first half of this episode was great to watch. It’s a very interesting idea: a homage of such an overused thing as a school festival. That little part of drama was also surprisingly good: it’s just like a real kid for her to break down with so much pressure on her. That story ended up being a very nice story about family.

And then the ED, which also was among the best that this series has shown so far. I loved how the visuals and the music had completely different themes. I know that I often criticized this series when blogging it, but at this point, I’m glad that I picked it up. It’s nice and refreshing to blog something like this. It’s a great example of a series that actually redeems itself after a number of weak episodes.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 48

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



With this episode you can really see that the pacing has slowed down: an entire episode was dedicated to just one fight, save from two or three scenes about Mustang. It makes you wonder: did the creators at the start of this series know how many series they were going to have to work with? Or did they intentionally rush the first half of this series, in order to give the finale ample time to play out? It’s refreshing to see though: most endings of long series are rushed, but by the looks of it this series is going to get all of the time it needs.

In any case, for the supposedly “strongest homunculus”, Pride looked pretty pathetic in this episode at first, when he couldn’t even beat Ed. Wouldn’t it just be easy to surround Ed with his powers and strike him from multiple sides? It looks to me that while Pride may have the most convenient ability, he’s also quite uninventive, and instead had to actually eat Gluttony in order to gain the upper hand. It’s probably because he’s not used to these “cleanup” duties, which seem to have been part of Lust and Envy’s role, when they were still alive/free.

I thought that Wrath would be back for revenge quite quickly, but surprisingly he’s hiding somewhere. This series has been quite skillful in having characters carry out their own agenda when they’re not on the screen, so who knows what he’s been up to.
Rating: * (Good)

Cross Game – 48

by psgels, posted in Cross Game



Well, so this is the episode I’ve been fearing for twenty episodes now: the match against Ryuoh. And unfortunately, while the previous matches were surprisingly good, this one… wasn’t. During the previous matches, you could really see that Adachi did a ton of stuff to spice them up. This one however, was different.

It’s very straightforward: Kou keeps hitting everyone out, apart from that cleanup hitter. The enemy pitcher meanwhile also hits everyone out. And then, when a person has made it onto a base, the team slips up and lets a point go. Nearly every baseball series has them: the match against the supposed best of the best, in which the stakes are highest. This is where Touch did a far better job.

As for the good stuff: Akaishi. I mean, the entire series has been building up to the fact that he would redeem himself in this episode (in the same way that Kou is bound to hit 160km/h in the next one…), but nevertheless it did allow him to develop. Even though he hit a home-run before, in this episode he really was able to let his worries go when he celebrated the point. Asami back home also was great to watch.

In any case, I really hope that the next episode will close off the game quickly, so that there’s as much time as possible for the series to go back to the slice of life, and conclude itself.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Cobra The Animation – 11

by psgels, posted in Cobra The Animation



This episode was pretty much everything that is Cobra in a nutshell: evil organizations, fighting bad guys, stealth, jails, exotic locations, gunfights, treasure hunts, bloodsport, hot chicks (FOR ONCE not teenagers), charismatic crooks. And of course the psychogun. The infiltration of the base of the slave market just screamed Cobra, and it’s interesting that this episode was so enjoyable, while completely staying true to itself.

A neat idea in this episode was that machine that would display the aura of the people fighting in the arena. It’s a nice subversion to the Dragonball Z-esque spontaneous auras that you often see in a lot of fantasy shows. Having it actually explained a bit makes it look actually cool.

Shiva’s castle also brings back a theme that has been used in many stories throughout the entire Cobra 2010 series: greed. Here we again have an array of side-characters, lusting for a supposedly awesome treasure. Now, the question is Cobra’s role in all of this. Why is he doing it? What event in his past has to do with all of this?
Rating: * (Good)

Letter Bee – 23

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



This episode was surprisingly darker than what we’ve seen of this series so far. It’s still a typical Letter Bee episode, with Lag crying, misguided villains and Gaichuu fighting, but some parts were surprisingly heavy.

The thing is, that most of the time in series about kids, bad guys tend to underestimate those kids, and go easy on them, allowing the kids to easily overpower the adults with whatever God-mode beam they have.
Letter Bee too has its share of God-mode Beams: the shindan. However, the adults around them have no pity for them whatsoever. As an anti-government
town, they hate everything that has to do with it, and even tried to feed a bunch of kids to a huge monster. It’s happened more often that kids are put into such ridiculous situations, but thanks to the build-up of the rest of this series, this was actually one of those cases in which I bought it.

As for the “one unable to become a spirit”, we’re still not exactly sure what those are, but Nichi seems to be one, strangely enough. At first I thought that they simply meant that they’re unable to become ghosts, but a “seirei” doesn’t seem to be often associated with humans. In any case, they seem to be so wanted that people are trying to create fake ones by performing surgery on them. Now where do they get those arms from in the first place, and what would be the point in creating them?

The episode closed off with a bit of a deus ex machina, though. What was Zazie doing there, appearing just at the right moment?
Rating: ** (Excellent)