Heart Catch Precure
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the umpth incarnation of the legendary mahou shoujo.
Holy crap! Pretty Cure has always been a franchise of cheap mahou shoujo series; that’s why I initially dismissed this series. But oh my god. This episode was just awesome: it was everything a mahou shoujo should be! Just one look at that opening scene should tell enough: the utterly gorgeous character-designs, the animation, the music and the tension. Everything was just wonderfully done in this episode. The humour was really funny and adorable. But the best part were the facial expressions: just look at how many different and expressive emotions they managed to convey in just one episode! Seriously, this episode took me by an utter surprise. The question now is: does it also have a good plan for the next 49 episodes. Precure has been… notorious for its repetition, however if it’s really the intention of the creators to finally come up with a good series, then I’m in!
OP: Fun and catchy.
ED: The ugliest part of this show.
Potential: 80%
Seikai no Monshou – 05
One feature of anime that I’m glad has mostly disappeared over the past ten years is the obligatory summary of the previous episode. This episode was one of those examples in which this got taken too far as it spent its first five minutes recapping what happened in the previous episode.
The rest of the episode however more than made up for it. In this episode we get our first taste of the space battles in this series, and the creators have really shown that they know how to write one. It takes the approach of the unidentified enemy: we know that there are a bunch of enemies out there, we just have no idea who they are. If you can make these enemies still behave like real people, even though you never show them, you can get some amazing effects. Later, series as Starship Operators and Bokura no would improve even more on this formula. And in a way, I feel that the former took its inspiration from this series: taking the very technical style of space-battles, and making them even more realistic and believable, rather than just have a bunch of spaceships fire at each other.
The destruction of the Gosroth also is extra bad for Lafiel, since her mother just died. It turns out that one of the reason why the captain was so harsh on Lafiel was because she was partially trying to raise the girl she “provided her genes for”. She tells Jinto this in their escape. Even though they’re travelling together again, just like a few episodes ago, the mood between the two is completely different and gloomy, and yet you can see that they’ve gotten already more used to each other.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Hanamaru Youchien – 05
A Neon Genesis Evangelion reference. I see what you did there, Gainax.
Seriously though, I’m a big fan of parodies, but only a specific kind of them. I love the kind of parodies that deconstruct a genre or stereotype, making them look completely ridiculous with their own logic. Random reference dropping however… meh. That really gets old after a while. Hanamaru Youchien was hopping back and forth between these types in this episode.
The role play in this episode is great and wonderfully subtle. However that full metal alchemist reference just dropped all of the subtlety. Although, I do have to admit: with Evangelion 15 years old at this point, Tsuchida could easily have been amongst the kids who grew up with this revolutionary new anime. You can see that he’s not watching anime anymore and is more of a gamer, but the point at which he got nostalgic at Evangelion was a nice touch for his character.
Overall, Seiji Mizushima isn’t the best director, but he does have his good points in terms of characterization. Hanamaru Youchien in no way matches up to what I consider to be his best work: Ooedo Rocket, but it’s still turned out surprisingly charming and Tsuchida and the various adults turned out to be surprisingly good straight men and women so that the kids could go wild with their imaginations. Compare that to Bottle Fairy, which had a similar premise, and it does turn out differently because the adults are more than just walking dictionaries, and have their own lives and identities here.
Also, if you’re wondering why I’m not saying much about the actual content of this series: I can’t. I mean, they’re mostly just random adventures that just need to be watched. I’d much rather talk about the bigger picture in this series’ case. Because seriously: I have no idea what to comment on Koume’s romantic adventure for example.
Rating: * (Good)
Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 43
The previous episode showed the Drachma army, guided by Kimblee, about to attack Briggs. Here I thought that it would be a huge battle… only for them to get slaughtered in seconds. Seriously, these guys don’t even survived past the opening credits. The big question is of course: why? Why did Kimblee go through the trouble of taking off for ten days, where he was supposed to be chasing after something much more important and dangerous. Perhaps it was part of creating that big tragedy for Briggs: instead of simply destroying the structure, one could of course kill off a bunch of people near the site. Perhaps that would work too.
In any case, this episode… talk about juicy plot twists! The guts and unpredictability of this series is only surpassed by the Armed Librarians. While it of course also would have been interesting if that chimera really was a traitor, it didn’t really make sense of his character: never once was it hinted that he was inclined to do this. As a method of luring in Envy however, it worked out much better than expected. That fight scene against him was nothing short of awesome.
And noooo! May Chang was put on a bus! What a shame that she had so leave, though I can understand why. Also, Hohenheim’s visit to Lior in the previous episode was more important than I imagined. To think that the creators were actually planning to meet him up with Al and Winry at that point; that promises all sorts of potential for the next episode.
‘
There have been a few characters who have been surprisingly absent during the past months. I mean, what happened to Greed, aka Ling? Also, I’m waiting for Roy to go back in the spotlight again. I know that it’s pretty hard for him to move around with Bradley and all, but still. I really expected him to be one of the main characters of this series. I also find it interesting: Ed has been completely gone for like two episodes now. That’s a first!
Also… the end of the episode. That put a whole new dimension to the core concepts of this show: Father had created an entire army of transmuted humans. This really begs the question: why did Ed manage to see “the truth”? Why did their research fail? And if seeing the truth is common with human transmutation, then why are Ed, Al and Izumi so special? Was it because their attempts failed or something? But then their reason for being necessary for Father’s plans would have to be really far-fetched…
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Cross Game – 44
Yeah, this is what I meant. Last week when the creators suddenly decided to focus on the second years; they just needed more attention. The idea of this episode was nice, but at this point I just don’t care about these second years. The four of them are exact copies of each other: there’s nothing that sets them apart. And in the end, at which it turned out that they saved the match it just became a bit too obvious that the creators were trying to build up to it.
For the rest of this episode, I have no complaints, however. One thing I loved was how this episode never tried to prove something using the match against Miki. What we saw here was just a bunch of old friends who played against each other after having been apart for a few years. The part with the second years was forced, but apart from that it was just so wonderfully natural and charming. Friendly matches like this one are very rare in sports series and even when two friends are against each other, they tend to overact and make it way too dramatic than needed. Miki and Azuma were wonderful in this episode, simply because they stayed so down to earth.
Another big theme of this episode was Aoba, and the fact that she’s not using her talents. Next to Kou, it’s indeed very easy to forget that she also is an excellent pitcher, and she was pretty much the one who taught Kou everything he needed to know about being successful. As a teacher, especially so young, she should feel proud of what her student turned into. ^^;
Rating: * (Good)
Cobra The Animation – 06
Yeah, I think that this is my favourite episode of the new Cobra so far. While its premise is… unrealistic to say the least, it lacks the stupidity that plagued the previous number of episodes, and instead aims to deliver a cast of interesting characters. All with their own backgrounds and motives. At this point there still are a few redundant characters (that con man for example didn’t seem to have done anything), but overall it was a pretty enjoyable episode, and for once with this show it’s not for the wrong reasons.
But this episode did not lose the main focus of this series: space adventures. In fact, I would have preferred a bit of less time on the adventures, and more to the background of these characters. Although I do admit that that bodyguard also was very interesting, even though he was just random cannon fodder. The fact that he could not see the mountain, which only appears for those who believe in him says a lot about him, though.
While I like adventure series done right, in the end Cobra isn’t one of them. It suffers in its characterization: aside from Cobra none of the characters are really that interesting. However, the next episode actually might break that trend. Still, I’m somehow enjoying it so far into the series. Plus, shows in which you can punch an angry shark and knock it out and where con men walk around with Mickey Mouse-haircuts deserve points for creativity.
Rating: * (Good)
Letter Bee – 18
What kind of an episode was this? Seriously, this was by far the WORST installment of this series so far. It was ridiculously stupid, poorly produced, incredibly rushed and generally an entire waste of time. It makes no sense. It was horrible to watch. Who were the idiots responsible for this mess?
So get this: in this episode we meet a bunch of people who don’t agree with the policy of the Letter Bees, and are of the opinion that their fees are way too high for the poor people who’d like to send mail to their loved ones as well. Fair enough, competition is always good. So what do they do? THEY CHALLENGE A BUNCH OF KIDS TO A RACE. On a horsed cart. To test who is the best at delivering letters. It only gets worse from there on.
Connor for example halts his cart in front of a few roadblocks. We never actually see anything going on at that road. They could have just passed it, there was no reason to block it whatsoever. Connor stands still because he believes it to be the shortest road and his gut feeling (read: stomach) says that it’ll be removed in no time.
Along the way the bad guys decide to cheat for no possible reason whatsoever, since later in the episode it’s more than clear that they’re good guys. They end up crashing because a wheel on their cart was loose. What the heck? Later, as the finish is near they run into a bunch of Gaichuu (since this was a race to a nearly abandoned town and back, why they didn’t run into these Gaichu on the way to this town is beyond me), and the cart of the “Letter Pidgeons” is destroyed. When the Gaichu are taken care of by the Letter Bees, Lag abandons his cart in turn and just starts running as well. The entire cart just disappears during the entire rest of the episode, even though it would have been way faster.
The endless stupidity in this episode was just unbelievable, but the Letter Pidgeons themselves are just plain badly characterized. They’re just a bunch of paper bags and the dude who could only utter 3-word sentences was especially bad. The animation was cheap and the characters looked even worse and more like cardboard cut-outs with just one emotion.
But what pisses me off the most about this episode was how it completely ignored and side-stepped important themes for the setting, and at some point even contradicted the SERIES ITSELF. It’s like the writers of this episode knew absolutely nothing about the story, and just looked at the first OP for inspiration. Connor just continuously whined about food, even though it had already been established that while he likes to eat, he isn’t completely obsessed over it. Zazie is an experienced Letter Bee. While he can be cold, it’s nothing like him to just curse in front of small children (seriously; wtf!?) and yell at them to hand over the letters they want to deliver.
Also, it completely ignores one very important issue, and that’s what upset me the most about this episode. Lag is someone who we already know is obsessed over justice. This episode addressed how Letter Bees basically discriminate and don’t give poor people a chance. And Lag doesn’t even give this a second chance. He does lecture the Letter Pidgeons on how it’s important for a Letter Bee to deliver the heart of their clients. However, it makes no sense in the context: none of the mistakes that the Letter Pidgeons made would amount to such a lecture: these people simply did not know about how dangerous Gaichuu can be. Lag then completely avoids answering why he’s basically ignoring poor people. This would have been a great chance for the creators to clear up this little plothole of how the Bees make money, but the creators just continuously avoid it in order to go for cheap adventures.
I know I sound angry and I’m very much ranting here, but I really hate to see this show’s potential wasted like this. It really was going into the right direction before this thing came.
Rating: —- (Abysmal)
Night on the Galactic Railroad – Fantasy Railroad in the Stars Review – 85/100
Remember Night on the Galactic Railroad? It was probably one of the quietest movies you can get. In any case, it was based on a story from Kenji Miyazawa, and back in 2007, it was animated for a second time by a digital artist named Kagaya. I was expecting something with cat people again (something that returns in nearly all of Kenji Miyazawa’s adaptations), but instead I got something much more unique than I thought.
If you looked at the screenshots you might wonder why there aren’t any people on it. That wasn’t because I was in some strange mood when I took them. There really are NO PEOPLE, or any other sort of characters in this OVA. We just have a narrator who reads the story of Kenji Miyazawa, combined with visuals and music. She also does the voices of the lead characters, but they never appear on the screen. All this show is is one huge chunk of atmosphere as we travel through all sorts of locations and constellations.
Don’t worry though. This is really an excellent recommendation if you like visual poetry. What this movie does excellently is combining the narrative, dialogue, visuals and music into one. It’s the perfect movie for if you want to relax for about an hour and dream away, and because of the limited storytelling and how we never get to see the characters, the narrative speaks to your imagination to fill in the omitted parts. It’s such a relaxing, yet thought provoking and imaginative OVA.
Which is really helped by an absolutely beautiful soundtrack. Every second of that soundtrack fits perfectly with the rest of the story and visuals, and it’s been very skillfully composed. The visuals themselves are also utterly gorgeous. Nearly everything is in 3D, and not everything is perfectly and realistically rendered, but nevertheless it’s full of eye candy. This is what I meant with the art of cutting corners in 3D animation, back in my Urban Legend Hikiko Review. Everything that matters is rendered beautifully, and the rest, like realistic water or textures. Ah well, who cares. They don’t prevent the visuals in this movie from being awesome.
Fantasy Railroad of the Star really is an engaging adventure and a beautifully imaginative journey across the Galactic Railroad. It’s obviously not for everyone, and you have to be into this kind of stuff otherwise you’re going to be bored out of your skull, but it’s OVAs like this that start off with a great experimental idea, and actually make it work. It’s a shame that it’s taken three whole years for this thing to get released in the west.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 – A wonderful combination of dreamy narrative, visuals and audio. |
| Characters: | 8/10 – Um, yeah. We never get to see them, but even though words they were a wonderful lead cast. |
| Production-Values: | 9/10 – Beautiful soundtrack, very imaginative rendered visuals. |
| Setting: | 8/10 – You can see that the creators had an extensive amount of astronomical knowledge. |
Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra – 19
Holy crap, you people weren’t kidding about this episode! This series just continues to get better and better. What an incredibly creative script, this series really takes no conventions for granted.
Oh, remmember the first few episodes of this series, in which Volken was nothing but an average lead character with a strong sense of justice. Seriously, I never expected that someone as Olivia Litlet would get more screen-time than he did. The way that this series plays around with our expectations and turns them into something unpredictable is just unbelievable.
So yeah: Volken died. The creators actually had the GUTS to kill him off. And yet Olivia still lives at the end of this episode. This episode did such a great job of developing the two of them. Volken on one hand seeing his beliefs destroyed when he found out that his mentor was not the upholder of justice he believed him to be, while Olivia as a strong woman searched for the passion that she once lost. It’s that passion and perseverance of her that really allowed her to live as a meat. Colio had already shown that it was possible, and she just took it a small step further. The whole ritual? She was trying the entire time to get her memories of Vend Ruga back. As someone who took care of her when she was a child and before the church got her.
Also, we’ve been expecting this for quite a while now, but Hamyuts finally confirmed it: the Church and the Armed Librarians aren’t at war at all. They just pretend to be. Heck, the Church was even created by the Armed Librarians. My guess is that they were intended to take care of all of the dirty work, probably for that damn tree or something. My guess is that it feeds on exciting books. That would be quite the irony: that the Armed Librarians and the Church just exist in order to provide nice books.
It’s also interesting: all this time it turned out that Hamyuts Meseta followed after a red herring, and basically sank a ship for nothing, just because Olivia wanted to scrabble her feelings on the wall. However, for her to go through such lengths. I really believe that we’ve found our major villain of this series. Or rather: the major good guy, since we’ve now pretty much confirmed that the Armed Librarians are the bad guys.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Durarara – 05
This show has just gotten even better than it already had. Just when you think that nearly all of the important characters were introduced, this episode comes and throws in a heap more of them. The way in which this episode weaved so many different story-lines into one was just done masterfully. Masaomi got a lot of extra depth in this episode as well, and Anri too became a lot more colourful.
One thing that this series likes to do a lot is flash-forwards, without giving any indication what they’re about. This episode had those two as well: we first see two seemingly random scenes, in which Celty gets attacked by some other ghost or spirit, and Mikado and Masaomi run into some random direction. Only at the end of the episode were these two scenes explained. Things like these can really spice up an episode.
Also, Masaomi. While at first sight he was just another one of those “best friends”. You know, those paper bags you see in harem anime who play the local pervert and whose only purpose is to make the lead character look ‘good’. Well, that image got completely shattered with this episode, as it might even be that he only acts like that in front of his friends. This episode hinted at some event that happened in his past that caused an old friend of him and Izaya to end up in the hospital. I’m not exactly sure about the details, but for some reason he doesn’t visit her as often any more, so it might have been caused by something he did himself. Either that, or Izaya was just so damn scary, although that girl doesn’t seem to mind Izaya.
Then, Anri and Yagiri. In this episode it’s revealed that Anri didn’t talk so desperately in front of Yagiri because she herself was attracted to him, but rather because one of her friend, Harima, who apparently stalked him, and now mysteriously disappeared. And for some reason she looks surprisingly much like that girl that might carry Celty’s head. Coincidence? I actually doubt that.
Also, what was up with that new character who talked with random punks and has some sort of hikkikomori daughter? It was a nice way to add a bit of characterization for these people, by the way. May they rest in peace. Or at least that’s very much hinted at at the end of this episode…
Rating: ** (Excellent)