Sora no Oto – 02

by psgels, posted in Sora no Oto



Yeah, with this episode I’m sure: the thing that’s keeping me interested in Sora no Oto is the setting. This episode did a great job of fleshing out the abandoned school building that the lead characters live in. I’m interested in the customs that these girls have, the history behind the people who once were in the school, and the overall culture in the country of Helvetica. It’s imaginative, detailed and inspired. I love how this episode took its time to introduce the various rooms in the building. That’s why I think that this show rocks.

As for the characters… yeah. They could be better, they could be worse. Rio is about the only one with a bit of an interesting personality. The other four are just archetypes. In this episode, they behaved too one-sided and according to their role (the big boobed mother-figure, the optimistic girl, the tsundere and the sleepyhead). If someone has an optimistic character, it doesn’t mean that she’s happy 24 hours of the day!

I’ve seen much worse, though. They’ve got the potential to grow, and as long as the drama isn’t going to get either too heavy or rely too much on these stereotypes, they shouldn’t get in the way of the rest of the series, and they’re fairly enjoyable so far.

The director himself is promising, but not flawless. He’s done Elfen Lied and Denpa-Teki na Kanojo, so he’s great at building up tension, but usually doesn’t seem to care about believability, which is pretty much shown in the character stereotypes here. Still, I can see how he can make this story work. I’m not that sure about the series composition, though. Hiroyuki Yoshino doesn’t really have a good track record, having been involved in quite a few unbalanced series with an original plot. Still, A-1 has struck me as a company who doesn’t like to interfere as much with its content as Sunrise or Satelight like to do, so perhaps this will allow him to finally show what he can do without being marred by production executives.

Because yeah, the big advantage of this series is that it’s an original story for as far as I can tell. No manga, no light novels. There’s not going to be an issue of chapters that don’t translate well or manga fans that go berserk because a certain part was left out or done wrong, and the potential for this series cutting off in the middle of its story is also very low. It’s great to see that amidst the crisis, there are still anime that dare to go with original stories that haven’t been tried and tested before.
Rating: * (Good)

Maria-Sama ga Miteru – Haru Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



I now see that it’s not exactly right to call Maria-Sama ga Miteru a shoujo ai series. If you want lesbians, there’s Aoi Hana, Sasameki Koto, Blue Drop or Candy Boy. Instead, it’s more like a relation-focused drama series that just hardly has any male characters in it. The second season continues pretty much where the first one left off, but it focuses more on drama than on the slice of life.

And it’s really the same typical drama of this series, that tends to make an elephant out of a mosquito. Because of how elegant the culture inside the school and especially the “student council” that this series focuses on is, the creators can really make the simplest things seem like huge problems, without overdoing it and delving into melodrama. Though granted, the second season seemed to be edging for that line a bit more than the first season did.

However, it also continues developing its terrific set of characters, who still remain the selling point of this series. What’s special about this season is that various characters come and leave, and so the main cast at the end of the series looks quite a bit different from what it looked like in the beginning. There’s a ton of background, extra depth and character-development in this season, which makes it worth watching if you enjoyed the first season.

I still think that my favourite episodes are in the first season (the Sei episode), however on average the second season is superior: it’s more consistent and overall more interesting development, although the final arc may have taken things a bit too much overboard. The graduation arc however rocked. It was subtle yet touching, and so many characters were developed in that arc alone.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Elegant atmosphere, subtle drama.
Characters: 9/10 – Tons of extra development, background and depth for the cast of characters.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Great character-designs, gentle music.
Setting: 8/10 – An unique portrayal of a catholic school, unlike most stereotypical portrayals of the elite you see in your average anime.

Some Quick First Impressions: Hanamaru Yochien, Seikon no Qwaser and Kaito Reinya

by psgels, posted in Hanamaru Youchien, Some Quick First Impressions

Haramaru Yochien

Short Synopsis: Our lead character starts his new job at a kindergarten for moeblobs.
First, let me say this: this show rocks for having absolutely no teenagers in them! It only focuses on young adults and 4-year-old kids, while teenagers only appear in a few flashbacks. Aside from that, it was a bit of a strange series; the best way to describe it would be a cross between Potemayo and Kodomo no Jikan. It has the moeblobs from Potemayo if they were to 3 years older, and it has a similar teacher to Kodomo no Jikan, even including a similar love-interest of his. The biggest problem with this sereis is obviously that most of the characters are too one-sided or stereotypical, but it does work. This episode was enjoyable slice of life. I especially enjoyed those small scenes after school. What this series needs to do is to somehow remain as light-hearted and enjoyable as it was here, not repeat itself too much, and flesh out the cast beyond the stereotypes that we’ve seen so far. If it’s going to focus on the romance, then I hope for something similar to Yume de Aetara (the OVA, not the TV-series. By GOD, not the TV-series).
ED: This is why voice actresses that pretend to be little kids should never sing.
Potential: 50%

Seikon no Qwaser

Short Synopsis: Our lead character wants to protect her seemingly retarded sister as much as possible.
Ugh… that sister. What a horrible voice actress she received. Just about everything about her is annoying. Apart from that, this episode was decent. There’s potential for a decent action-series, although the direction was flawed at times (one moment the camera pans across a classroom, and the next shot from out of nowhere a girl with a ridiculous pink hairstyle just appears). About half the cast is interesting, while the rest of the cast are just dull stereotypes with a one-sided personality. The lead character herself is decent, but has a nasty tendency to overact. For this series to work, it’s really going to have to put in effort to correctly pace its storyline, and not waste time on pointless beach, hot spring and pool episodes.
OP:
ED: What was the mindset the creators were in when they came up with these visuals?
Potential: 30%

Kaito Reinya

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a phantom thief in the city with the most incompetent police.
There’s an art to making a good comedy: actually making it FUNNY. That’s something that Kaito Reinya completely fails at. It’s full of corny and overused jokes, the slapstick with the mouse is so bad that it becomes horrible, and the constant references to phantom thieves are uninspired at best. I guess that this series’ selling poing is that it’s fully animated in flash, but even that looks lazy: Hanoka, which was produced three years earlier, looked much better than this uninspired… thing.
OP: Obnoxious explanation of the premise of the show.
ED: Not really an ED, more like just a credit role.
Potential: 0%

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 39

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



Great to see this series back again, especially after that cliff-hanger after the previous episode. Like most people expected, it was set in stage. I really like how Ed and Al are gradually gathering more and more allies in their fight against father. With things like these, there are plenty of people who would oppose his ideals, and the challenge is to unite them without causing suspicion, and that’s what this episode did really well.

A for Kimbley, he got a much better role than in the first series. In the first, he never really served a purpose. And even though most of his actions have failed in Brotherhood, he still has this air of danger around him, rather than devolving into that deranged homicidal maniac. At this point he still has the potential to screw all of Ed’s plans up.

And also, in this episode something happens that gives a complete new twist to Al’s story: for some reason, without ever initiating it, he walks through a very cold environment and suddenly sees his real body at the end of the gate. This is about the first time that the gate appears to someone who hasn’t called it, and it was more like an illusion anyway. What was behind it?

Speaking of which… that gate may have a completely different meaning in this series. At the end of this episode, we see Father list Ed and Al among Hohenheim and probably even Izumi. Could he have some sort of plan that involves people who have seen the gates? Does this also involve his plans of blowing up the country? And more importantly: who is going to be that fifth person to see the gates? Apparently, homunculi don’t count, even those who were human once.

Also, the new OP and ED are pretty good. Probably the best of Brotherhood so far, however there are nasty spoilers in them about Pride. If someone who’s behind were to watch them, he’d be totally spoiled about their identity. My question therefore is to the people who post them on sites as YouTube, etc, to include some sort of spoiler-warning.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Cross Game – 40

by psgels, posted in Cross Game



Well, like expected in this episode we get the first hints of the upcoming baseball tournament and the quest for Koshien. My guess is that the games will take place in the final eight episodes of this series, so my predictions are that this series will remain a gem to watch at least for the rest of this month. After that though, I have no idea what’s going to happen. For one thing, I do hope that Aoba will give in, and compete with the girls’ tournament. At least that will give a bit of an extra dimension to the various matches.

This episode was mostly about Aoba, and her, trying to figure out what to give her priorities to: Akane, or her own chances to accept the coaches’ very rare invitation. On top of that, there was this weird stalker of Akane who uses a cat to draw suspicion from him, and I learned that Senda’s voice actor has experience with voicing animals, because he’s really good at it.

I also loved Azuma’s brother in this episode. He’s much more involved with the team this year, and it shows as his passion to get them to Koshien burned heavier than even the coach’s.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Cobra The Animation – 02

by psgels, posted in Cobra The Animation



Well, I guess that this series is lucky to air in such a dry season as this one. If this would have been a regular season, I wouldn’t even have thought of blogging it. But yeah, the thing with this season is that not only are there less series than usual, the series that carried over from the previous seasons are also very small in their numbers. I’ve got seven open blogging slots this season, and by the looks of it there are only eight series even remotely worth blogging (this one, Sora no Oto, Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu, Dance in the Vampire Bund, Durarara, Ookami Kakushi, Nodame Cantabile Finale and Katanagatari). Out of those eight, I’ll probably skip on Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu. As a comedy-series, it’s just overwhelmed by the other comedies this season (just about the only thing that isn’t scarce in this season: thankfully there still are tons of great comedies).

And this series can boast two great names: Yoshihiro Ike for the music and Osamu Dezaki behind the screenplay and storyboard. It’s a shame that Osamu Dezaki isn’t directing this thing, so his influences are much less noticeable. I’m therefore not expecting this series to become as interesting as Ultraviolet was, far from it. The direction here is a bit sloppy (one moment Cobra shoots his arm away, the next it’s just attached back). However the parts where we saw Cobra run away in infrared were really typical of this guy, and fun to watch. 😛

And yeah, the creators were really lucky that they got Ike Yoshihiro to compose the soundtrack. This guy is consistently awesome and because of that the soundtrack is among the best of the season, among the one from Letter Bee and Armed Librarians.

Also, with this episode I think I saw a bit of the charms of the Cobra franchise: it’s a bit like James Bond: this is really meant to be an unrealistic adventure series that’s more about entertainment and doesn’t care in the slightest in creating a realistic setting. Because of that, the creators can really include neat ideas that otherwise would have made no sense, and I have to admit: the mechanical bull with infrared vision and the giant rays with weird faces were much more creative than the random monsters that generic fantasy anime usually throw out.

This series really is going to have to make it with its characters and ideas. As long as the characters remain fun until the end, and it keeps using these neat ideas instead of cliches, then I’ll probably enjoy it until the end.

Oh, and on top of that it has something that only very few other series this season can boast: it’s actually about adults. For once we have a lead character who isn’t a teenager of some sort and fanservice of women who are actually over eighteen years old.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Letter Bee – 14

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



You know, despite the many faults and annoyances of this series… I did miss it somewhat throughout the winter break. This series is cheesy, slow, and at times boring, but at the same time it’s probably the most genuine series of everything that’s currently airing. And that for a shounen-series.

I think that the biggest difference with this series between your average shounen-series is that most of them series drag on in order to stall for time. This series drags on in order to create an atmosphere. Again, you shouldn’t expect developments in this episode. This episode had a bit of new information, but if you’re just going to wait for it you will be bored to death.

This episode was again very strange: we have this scientist who works for the Letter Bees, and he captures Steak and everyone thinks that he’s going to cut him apart for research. The usual hi-jinks ensue, though it’s kept within borders: it was nice enough to watch, but at the same time it was about the opposite of what you’d call exciting.

But in the end, I have to admit. That scene in the flashback, in which Lag cried out for Gauche was incredibly well delivered. It felt so heartfelt, and it’s scenes like this that I’m still watching this series for.

As for the side-characters… this episode really gave them some extra charms. Seeing the cat lover inside Zazie pop up was very charming, and finally we get to see Aria play the violin. That was also a nice touch.
Rating: * (Good)
OP: Terrific art. Gentle music.
ED: Who was the artistic director of this thing? The images look absolutely stunning!

Seikai no Monshou – 01

by psgels, posted in Seikai no Monshou



Well, since the poll was a failure anyway, I decided to experiment a bit. For the past five hours there was this cryptic link to a poll with four options. What I basically did was pick out four series that were recommended, which fit the criteria and seemed the most interesting, and labelled them as Contemporary Fantasy (Windy Tales), Mecha (Innocent Venus), Comedy (The Great Horror Family) and Science Fiction (this one). It was an interesting experiment, to see what people would vote for when they had no idea what they voted for. Especially how almost nobody voted for mecha or comedy.

In any case, I’ll be blogging this series for the coming season, even though it aired more than a decade ago. The rest of this season is just too dry to find 12 bloggable series, especially after blogging Kimi ni Todoke turned out to be a failure.

In any case, I’m impressed. This episode on paper would have been nothing special: there’s this big galactic empire that invades planets and Earth (or Martine in this case) happens to be one of them. Oh, and democracy seems to be abolished and the monarchy is back, so that the lead character can call himself the next in line for the throne at such a young age.

But the way that this episode described the take-over from the galactic empire was what impressed me. It offered a detailed back-story. It’s not just a simple case of “they were too strong, we couldn’t stop them!”, but the humans themselves, especially their president also screwed up big-time, and they could have actually won if it wasn’t for his actions. The betrayal of this guy will probably come as an interesting backstory, later in the series.

I really needed to see some parts of this episode twice in order to fully understand what happened. Certain characters appear before they’re introduced properly, which made following the first half of this episode quite difficult. For example, at the beginning of the episode there was this woman who was searching for Jinto, the lead character. Why was he running away?

Sunrise really was an excellent production-company around the times that this series was produced. It came with tons of creative and interesting premises, and I just can’t help but think that they dulled in for the past five years, perhaps with the exception of Gintama and Bakumatsu

Rating: ** (Excellent)

Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra – 15

by psgels, posted in Armed Librarians - The Book of Bantorra



Awesome to see this series back again after its recap last week. I mean, at this point I 97% confident that this is going to turn into my favourite series of the season. Nothing that appeared in the winter-season, even the best stuff, has come close to this series so far. Most of these series are going to need weeks to get fully going, while this show has already a season’s worth of build-up inside of it.

And seriously, it surpassed itself yet again with this episode. The arcs right now are shorter than they were at the beginning of the series, but damn: this episode was good on so many levels. It successfully developed not just Mirepoc, but also the red-haired woman, it added depth for Cigal, but what surprised me even more was Lascal Othello’s son, and DEATH. So much for a major villain. And seriously, that son was a very nice touch. He only appeared… what? One minute? And yet he gave so much extra depth to this Lascal Othello guy: it shows that he’s not just another bad guy who needs to be defeated, no. He’s just a normal person who assumed the role of a legend, and therefore abandoned his family even though he once lived a normal life (including marriage).

And remember the book of Hiza that Winkeny took in the Mokkania arc? The reason why Hamy wasn’t that faced with it was because it really didn’t have anything to do with the main storyline. Instead, this was the red-haired girl’s plan, in an attempt to get more information on the actress, who had a lot of links with Lascal Othello, and Hiza was the one who investigated her case. Talk about tying everything together!

But that wasn’t even the best part of this episode. That honour goes to the plot twists related to the main plot. I mean, it was hinted before, but now we actually see this in much more detail: the church is collecting books of both Armed Librarians, and also its own members. They’re looking for the perfect book, or at least the books of talented and people who have a passion for what they do. Now, might this actually have something to do with Hamy? What if she possesses this “perfect” book that the church has been looking for? That they don’t really see her as a threat, but rather because they want to have her book?

But seriously, wtf?! The church and the Armed Librarians are working together in order to kill the people who seek Lascal Othello? How the hell does that work? What would be the point of that? That was one heck of a creative plot twist, and I have no idea how the creators are planning to write themselves out of that one. Armed Librarians is really a series in which everyone has something to hide, but damn, I didn’t expect Barori to hide a secret that big.

Also, someone refresh my memory. Yor… wasn’t that that thingie that Volken ran off with?
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Some Quick First Impressions: Ookami Kakushi, Dance in the Vampire Bund and Omamori Himari

by psgels, posted in Ookami Kakushi, Some Quick First Impressions

Ookami Kakushi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character moves into a new town and immediately gets himself a new girlfriend.
Yeah, the thing with this season is that just about every show has some sort of overused anime cliche, even the good ones. In any case, the best way to describe this episode was: intriguing. It was basically mostly introductory with a lot of slice of life and a few hints here and there that the town that the main character moved into is screwed up. It’s very promising, the characters are very moeified, but it’s not like they’re stereotypes and they’ve got potential to grow and develop. It also has the best soundtrack I’ve heard so far this season. Now, the question is mostly going to be: is it the creators’ intention to fully animate this story, or are they just going to stop in the middle?
OP: Yuki Kajiura delivers one of the best OPs of the new season.
ED: Pretty decent ballad.
Potential: 70%%

Dance in the Vampire Bund

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the leader of the Vampires. And a little girl.
The biggest problem with this series is of course going to be Shinbo: is he going to be able to adapt this story properly, or is he just going to repeat himself and focus on the complete wrong parts of the story? I remember the last time he tried to do a series with a little girl who was a vampire (Tsukuyomi Moonphase), which turned out to be a pain to sit through. Though granted, this episode gave a much better first impression. There’s no way to measure it up to the rest of the series, because it was clearly an introductory episode, but let me say the following: if the rest of the episodes are going to be as interesting as this episode, then we’ve got ourselves a success. The TV-program about the existence of vampires was a nice touch, but none of the main characters really got a lot of screentime.
ED: Boring J-rock.
Potential: 50%

Omamori Himari

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to be protected by a hot chick.
Now this is really is one of those shows that I’d label as terrible. A few cliches here and there doesn’t usually hurt, but when a series packs a ton of cliches EVERY… SINGLE… MINUTE… then it becomes a huge problem. This series rips off just about everything in this episode from other harem shows. The cat allergy? Hello, Nyan Koi. The hot chick with mysterious powers that suddenly protects the lead characters? How often haven’t we seen that one before? The childhood friend who is in love with the lead character and wakes him up in the morning? Come on, please. Probably the most blatant part is the set of character-designs that it shamelessly ripped off 11Eyes: did it seriously think to get away with the lead character, who looks like a more energetic Yuka with only a different hair and eye colour? And how about that teacher, who also looks EXACTLY the same aside from her hair and eye colours? For the most part of this season, I’m being more lenient than usual because how week it’d otherwise become, but this is just nothing. It’s nothing that we haven’t seen before taken to the extreme, the build-up is abysmal. Only go for this one if you’re a hardcore romantic comedy fan or just like to see boobs or panty-shots.
ED: Obnoxious J-pop. Blegh.
Potential: 0%%