Some Quick Reviews: Bungaku Shoujo, Two Walnuts and Kowarekake no Orgol

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews

This is a bit of an experiment. All these three titles are pretty short and I don’t have much to say about them individually, but I might as well make a combined entry that talks a bit about all of them.

Bungaku Shoujo

This one’s a strange 15-minute special about a girl who loves books so much that she eats them. Seriously, she imagines the stories she reads very vividly and compares them to food, only to eat the paper the stories are written on literally. While I liked some of the food analogies, I overall fail to see the point of this release. To me it just seems like a really long commercial for the manga, light novel or whatever this story is based on. There is potential if it can get itself a proper TV-series: if they can make this into a sort-of story about stories, and put more emphasis on the latter than the former unlike what was done here, it might become interesting enough to warrant a watch. But even then it’s going to have to really put work in making its characters interesting. This OVA though… I can only imagine recommending it to someone who already is interested in the source material to have a quick look on what it is about.
Rating: 70/100

The Two Walnuts

This has to be one of the lazier premises of a World War II movie I’ve seen. Instead of just taking a person who actually lived through the hellish period, and expanding upon his or her life, the creators just had to take a kid who lives in 2007 and magically transport her back to a few days before the bombing of Tokyo. The rest of the antics are predictable: while the creators did well in showing the hardships of those times (especially the cruelty to animals is a major theme) it’s just all too easy for the lead character. At the end the creators try to create sympathy by going Tomino, but the melodramatic way in which these deaths are acted out is just a mockery of the real Tokyo Bombings. Stay away from this one, if you want WW2-movies: instead go with those from the eighties and nineties.
Rating: 65/100

Kowarekake no Orgol
Again, this is just a random commercial for whatever manga or visual novel it’s based on. The problem is that it was unbelievably boring, and what impressed me the most was how it kept dodging any sort of explanation of what’s going on. Seriously, every time that it’s about to explain something, it quickly cuts to some sort of boring slice of life scene. That doesn’t really work in a one-shot OVA. At this point we have some sort of story about a guy who finds a broken down android, who dies and wakes up again a couple of times, but how and why are never explained. And on top of that, the characters themselves are boring and cliched, especially their back-stories (or whatever this episode dared to show of them, anyways). It’s obviously a slice of life OVA, so if you like that then be my guest and ignore this mini-review, but for me I only find slice of life around characters I don’t care about boring.
Rating: 60/100

King of Bandits Jing – In Seventh Heaven OVA Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Okay, so usually I don’t write reviews for OVAs that are based on a series, because often they’re just too similar to the series they’re based on, or just random side-stories that aren’t meant to be judged as standalone products. There are exceptions of course, when an OVA goes into completely its own direction, and improves significantly on the series it’s based on, I do want to promote it a bit and say a few things about it.

And an excellent example of this is King of Bandits Jing’s OVA. The TV-series itself was all over the place; some episodes were awesome, though most of them were very simplistic and unimpressive. Now here the OVA comes, and it takes the best parts of the series, and just goes all out into an awesome mindscrew.

The visual direction really is amazing. It takes place in a semi-dreamworld, and just about every shot is creative, and beautifully drawn. There’s so much creativity put into just three episodes. If you finished the TV-series and liked its weird stuff, then you owe it to yourself to take a look at it, because it’s entertainment at its finest.

The three episodes are also completely different from each other. The first is chock-full of visual comedy and uses its creativity and unique direction to create a very entertaining adventure through a dreamlike world. The second episode is more serious, and actually tells about Jing’s past. While he doesn’t exactly gain much depth, it’s still very interesting to watch. The third episode in its turn is a character-study of the major villain, which was very interesting and well scripted.

Thanks to Jing’s tongue-in-cheek personality this OVA has a unique feel, but it’s not to the point where the style gets in the way of what’s important. The characters’ antics and the visuals are just as important and the animation is actually really good. Add to that that one of the best character-designers out there has worked on this, and you’ve got something consistently entertaining.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Tongue-in-cheek execution with tons and tons of creativity.
Characters: 8/10 – Great emphasis on character background despite the weirdness.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Absolutely stunning designs.
Setting: 8/10 – Tons of nice and neat ideas, though the concept of the series remains questionable.

Sora no Oto – 03

by psgels, posted in Sora no Oto



I finally have the name of the mysterious disease you see pop up in so many different anime: it’s malaria. THANK YOU, Sora no Oto, for finally giving it a concrete name! Seriously, I’ve been puzzled by ages at how weird the Japanese colds are: You keep seeing shows that talk about “cold” and “fever”, but it turns out that those were just too lazy to do any research. I think only Tokyo magnitude did the same. Apart from that I don’t think I can recall any other series that gave these “fevers” a descriptive name. I’ll give this show a number of inaccuracies though, like Kanata recovering very fast, and Rio seemed to think that only children could catch it, which I doubt is really true. But then again, I don’t see her for someone with lots of medical knowledge.

In any case, this was a good episode for Rio and Kanata: both of them were fleshed out pretty nicely in this episode, and we also got to know their background. Very nice to see that this series is making use of its episodes. There’s one thing I didn’t like, though: Kanata became fascinated with music when she saw a blond girl play the trumpet. It’s an event that shaped her entire life. Now coincidentally, Rio also learned to play the trumpet from a certain blond woman. I mean, coincidences are one thing, if they make the story flow better… but what’s the point of it here? There’s no reason whatsoever for Kanata and Rio’s past to be linked somehow…

What I’m asking for now is the same kind of depth for Kureha, Noel and Phylicia, and an end where all of this development comes together. Characters with depth are nice, but you also have to use them correctly.
Rating: * (Good)

Armored Trooper Votoms – The Brilliant Heretic Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



The Brilliant Heretic OVA was made in 1994. It never actually got subbed, but a raw version is available, so I decided to check out its content. It’s set about 30 years after the end of the television series and so it’s the only OVA so far to be a sequel to the series, rather than a prequel. As a series from the Votoms Franchise, it just isn’t as refined as Ryousuke Takahashi’s other works, however it’s still an interesting watch.

One thing that will be hard to swallow in this OVA is that the main focus doesn’t fall on any of the lead characters. Instead, we have Chirico doing what he does best (fighting), Vanilla providing support, Gotho has degraded in some sort of a mad old man, and Fyana really has gotten the short end of the straw because she’s nothing more than a damsel in distress throughout the entire OVA. A role that she avoided so well in the TV-series! The rest of the cast doesn’t appear at all, and instead the depth in this series comes from the setting, and in particular one new female character.

This new character is actually pretty interesting, in the way that she fits in the political system of the setting, but she’s not perfect. She’s quite a bit cliched and her *sigh* romantic feelings fail to make any impact. The relationship with her father is very interesting, though. I think my favourite part were the ones that focused on the politics: at first sight they’re simple but they’re actually quite interesting.

The animation is very inconsistent: it ranges from very stiff to really good, though most of the animation edges to the former. There are a number of scenes that have the same kind really smooth animation that Ryousuke Takahashi would later perfect in Gasaraki.

However, because of one final twist this really is a must-watch for any Votoms Fan. I’m not going to spoil exactly what’s going to happen, but while this series doesn’t live up to Ryousuke Takahashi’s usual high standard, and the new characters while they have their times of depth also have their times of shallowness, it really doesn’t deserve that it’s not gotten subbed.

Storytelling: 8/10 – A bit disjointed, but interesting politics, the same dark atmosphere as Votoms.
Characters: 7/10 – A bit of a mixed bag.
Production-Values: 7/10 – Again: mixed bag.
Setting: 9/10 – Interesting setting that tries out many new and different things.

Hanamaru Youchien – 02

by psgels, posted in Hanamaru Youchien



Oh, screw it. I know I said that I was going to blog Nodame Cantabile’s Finale, but I really fail to see why that would be interesting. I know myself by now. I’m going to spend every episode complaining at how it doesn’t live up to the spectacular first season, and continue to talk down to a series that would otherwise have been at least a bit of a decent romantic comedy. In the end, the first episode of the new season showed enough to me, in the way that it overplayed Nodame’s antics too much. To me, it feels like this season’s Noitamina is wasted.

So yeah. I can try to sugarcoat it, but why bother. At this point, I’ve covered eighteen seasons of anime at this blog, and I consider this one to be the worst out of all of them. I very often disagree with those “worst season ever”-comments, and with a good reason: usually there are all sorts of underrated gems that are being ignored. But this season… I just can’t make any cheese out of it. Not only is the season itself incredibly small, there also are so few series that carried over from previous seasons.

At this point, there are only five series that I’d consider truly excellent: Armed Librarians, Durarara, Cross Game, Full Metal Alchemist and Marie & Gali. Depending on how they turn out, I can only see Sora no Oto if its uses its characters right and Ookami Kakushi if it gets its pacing right joining this list. That’s a definitive low in all of the eighteen seasons I’ve covered so far. So yeah, with that I’m stuck with really old series (Seikai no Monshou), guilty pleasures (Cobra), shows that are never meant for greatness but have one or two nice things (Kobato and Letter Bee), shows and OVas that only air once a month (Katanagatari and there are a number of OVAs that air in a few months that I want to cover) and… this.

Again, I’m not expecting the next GA or Ooedo Rocket here. All I want from this series is entertainment until this season is over, and at that area it pretty much delivers. It’s obvious problem is that the moeblobs here don’t really feel like actual kids, especially Anzu and Hiiragi are way overdone, and that story that the headmistress told, about how all kids would magically adapt the personality of their teacher was just stupid. Though Tsuchida himself and the other teachers are pretty nice to watch, and the chemistry between the characters is also pretty nice.

What I also want from this show is creativity. At this point, I don’t really care whether or not the characters in this series are stereotypes. I’m happy enough about the lack of teenagers (just about the only thing at which this season DOESN’T disappoint: the teenagers for once aren’t dominating the different series). What I want from this show is creative situations that the characters were put in. And the ED was actually pretty much what I meant. I never saw it coming that the creators would pull a space opera parody with these kinds of characters.

I’m not sure whether I’m going to have enough to say about every single episode, but ah well. For now, who cares?
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Cross Game – 41

by psgels, posted in Cross Game



This episode was full of just about everything that makes Cross Game awesome. These few episodes right before the tournament starts are pure gold, because the creators are subtly trying to get the final few developments in before the matches start for real.

Speaking of which… how about the manga? Has it actually ended already, or does it continue? I mean, the characters are about to hit the final tournament of their high school careers. I can’t imagine this series continuing afterwards.

In any case, this episode was full of these small and subtle jokes as well: right after a point when a character is doing something seemingly cliched, there always turns out to be some ulterior motive. I found it strangely assertive of Aoba to just offer her ladder to Kou when he needed it it. And indeed it turns out that her father once borrowed it from Kou’s father and forgot to return it. Or when Azuma reacted emotionless when Kou brought up his birthday… only for it to turn out that Kou got the date wrong. Or take Aoba’s very subtle birthday present: a piece of cake, right after Kou just gobbled up a cake made by Akane.

Speaking of which, Kou’s eighteen now! He’s an actual adult right now, and so would Wakaba have been if she were alive at this point. That means like, what? Around eight years have passed since the start of the series? I personally love those kinds of series that show multiple flash-forwards, and don’t just stick with one or two versions of the same character.

In this episode I also realized that Kou and Aoba’s father can relate to each other very much: both lost the one they were in love with, and thought to spend the rest of their lives with. That became especially apparent as both of them stood near the graves of Wakaba and her mother.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 40

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



I really want to thank all of the manga readers who drop by here to leave a comment for staying away from the spoilers. Even though I don’t reply often, I do read all of the comments that get posted, and they’re often insightful, yet don’t give away what’s going to happen next. That’s something I realized especially after this episode, where we suddenly get treated to Hohenheim and Father’s backstory!

This was an awesome episode, that filled in a lot of the blanks in the back-story. As it turns out, everything started with a king, tempted with the prospects of eternal life. It all started with one successful attempt to create a homunculus, if I understood correctly. In order to create it, the blood of a slave was used, who would later become Hohenheim. The problem was that that was a really weak homunculus, who could only exist within a glass flask. That homunculus tricked the king of the country (who was really gullible, apparently), to create a huge transmutation circle, which sacrificed the entire population of the country to create two philosopher’s stones: Hohenheim and Father.

Now we also know why it was so easy for Father to take control of an entire country: everyone was killed off in the first place so he could very easily take control. Now, one thing that this episode seemed to hint at was that there are philosophers’ stones of different levels, depending on how much people are sacrificed. In fact, note that huge picture that we also saw earlier on the ruins? This episode only showed the inner points in that picture to be lit. currently, father is trying to lay out a transmutation circle that covers the outer reaches of the circle.

Also, what about the door? This episode also showed that “the truth” was already there before father arrived: it was probably this truth that showed our little homunculus how he should create such a philosopher’s stone. My guess is that for Homunculi, it somehow is very easy to get to this door. So here’s my guess as to Father’s plans: the philosopher’s stones that he’s made of is very powerful, but not exactly the “perfect” thing, the thing that will give him true freedom. My guess is that he has to make use of people who have seen “the truth”, and create an even bigger transmutation circle to achieve full immortality. This episode established him again as a patient person who’s willing to go through great lengths in order to accomplish his goals. It’s perhaps a bit cliched for a villain, but at this point I really think that he’s trying to become superior to whatever is on the opposite side of that door, “the truth” that showed him about alchemy, and who keeps taking away body parts from people who attempt human transmutation.

There are still a lot of questions lingering, though. What kind of homunculus was Father before this transmutation? Was he an early form of Pride, or were there actually more homunculi? I also now see that homunculi need a philosopher’s stone to function properly. And only one stone per homunculus seems to be the limit, otherwise he’d just keep feeding them these stones in order to make them more powerful and efficient.

Also, what has Hohenheim been doing for the past centuries, really? It took him something like five centuries to figure out something that Ed and Al figured out in a couple of years. A lot of his life is still a puzzle at this point.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Cobra The Animation – 03

by psgels, posted in Cobra The Animation



This show is really something else. It’s very much a guilty pleasure, and I’m actually enjoying it more than most other shows this season. But damn. the things it tries to pull are just completely ridiculous.

So get this: Cobra and the girl arrive at the core of the planet, and are about to shut off its propulsion system that threatens to destroy it. A gravity field then gets triggered that traps them both. Cobra then trips, falls down a trap hole, ends up in a weird city, hits his head, loses his memory and suddenly an the show suddenly turns into a mafia street-fighting story. I mean… wtf?

The worst thing is that while Cobra (erm… or Joe) is spending days in that underground city, fighting, Secret is still there in the same place, being crushed by the gravity trap. I can understand Cobra himself: after all with amnesia he wouldn’t know what was going on there. What I can’t understand is the mindset of the writers when they came up with this? I mean, amnesia already is a cheap and overused plot device (just look at Dance int he Vampire Bund), but this just takes the cake in complete over-the-top and ridiculousness.

But yeah, I guess that that’s the charm of this series: it’s completely ridiculous, but at the same time it never claims to be something deep or realistic. And unlike most other shows this season, it’s actually got quite a bit of creativity and originality, and it’s one of the few series that doesn’t follow any of the modern bandwagons, other than being another remake. And this is why I love remakes: every single one of them tries to pay homage to its original series in its own way.

This episode thankfully looked a lot nicer than the previous ones. The direction still was lazy (one shot we see Cobra carry a naked Secret… the next shot she has her clothes back on. But the CG was really well done in some of the scenes. The art looked actually pretty good, and at least I’m glad that this isn’t a series that blew all of its budget in the first episode.

But yeah, the only tension in the fight is there thanks to Yoshihiro Ike’s soundtrack. It’s really getting ridiculous how insanely powerful Cobra has become, up to the point where the enemy has to poison him in order to win. It’s so obvious that in the next episode, Cobra is going to pull yet another ridiculous stunt in order to get back at them like that.
Rating: * (Good)

Letter Bee – 15

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



Oh boy, it’s been a while since I blogged a series with this many anime original fillers. Or at least, this episode had nothing to do with the main plot, was poorly animated and was very much a standalone story. The Irony is however, that the anime fillers are actually better than the manga fillers. That is to say: the stories in the manga about characters who are only going to play a role in their respective arc and completely disappear after that were much less interesting and atmospheric than what the anime came up with. Of course I’d rather see the main storyline animated, but seriously: I’m not exactly regretting watching the past number of episodes.

This episode was of course nothing spectacular, but it could have done a lot worse with the ingredients that were given to it. Right from the start it was obvious that the woman was deceiving her boyfriend; her acting was shallow enough for that. The pacing of this episode, along with Lag’s usual meddling made it interesting to watch, though. And the ending was actually pretty nice in the way that the creators cleverly stayed away from a forced happy ending, and that the two just broke up after Lag’s powers revealed Bonnie’s lies.

These fillers aren’t perfect of course. This episode was badly animated, and the creators clearly didn’t have the budget for it. I’m also not that happy with how Lag just “happened” to run into them. Still, for a filler it was pretty good. My only hope is that the creators aren’t going to let them take over the show in order to wait for the series to progress, especially since the manga is still relatively short. In most cases I really advocate long series lengths, but thanks to Studio Pierrot this is turning into an exception: I really hope that this series closes off at 25 episodes, only for a second season to be animated in a few years time.
Rating: * (Good)

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – Simple People OVA

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood

There are no screenshots because it’s a pain to take them from a streaming site and I’m feeling lazy

Well, because you kept bugging me about it: Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood seems to have a set of OVAs episodes, of about 13 minutes in length, which deal with some background issues here and there. The second one talks about Winry’s earrings. At the latest episode I was already wondering what was up with them. I never knew that she had that many of them.

And as it turns out, they were gifts from Ed and Al in order to make up for how Ed kept breaking his metal arm. It makes sense for Ed to hold on to them, and actually have it as a meaningful symbol for the danger that she has put herself in.

During the first twenty episodes of this series, I really disliked Winry, as some of you may remember. Now I see that this wasn’t just her character there that got on my nerves, but also the way that the first Full Metal Alchemist used her series. For some characters, it actually created a very interesting story opposed to the manga, but the other characters received such pathetic roles that it completely prevented them from getting any depth, and Winry was one of those. I never really understood why she kept tagging along, and the situations and adventures that the creators put her in were uninspired and lazy.

I think that the biggest mistake that the first season made was that it tried way too hard to give every character something to do. It’s one of the strengths of the Brotherhood series, but the first series did that up to the point that these reappearances made no sense whatsoever, or like with Kimblee, Winry and that Library girl, just felt so out of place and pointless. The overall story was good, and isntead of the politics that Brotherhood has it instead was much more about morals and values.

But yeah, I like the Winry of Brotherhood much more than her first season version. She feels much less ditzy here, and especially in this episode you could see that she really cares about Ed and Al. She really ditched her old earrings, and instead kept all six of them on at all times. At least until the latest episode.
Rating: * (Good)