Kemono no Souja Erin – 46

by psgels, posted in Kemono no Souja Erin



This is why 50-episode series rock. They can easily take an episode and solely dedicate it to really show the effects of character-development. This episode would have been impossible in a 13-episode series: it would have broken the flow completely in a series that already has so little time.

So yeah, even for a calm before the storm, this episode was quiet. It was solely dedicated to Erin and Ialu, with perhaps a minute of Damya and Kirik. You can really see that this episode was solely meant to develop Ialu. This actually reminds me of another show from the director: Sisters of Wellber. While its pacing was definitely faster, that one also had these kinds of episodes that were just totally devoted to character-development. In theory, they were very nice ideas, but in the end the scriptwriting was just too cheesy and soap-operaish.

In that view, I’m glad to see that he’s learned a lot since then. Sure, it may have been done well in the book, but correctly portraying this in an animation doesn’t happen automatically. The slow pace of this episode formed a good build-up to finally Erin’s attempts to talk Ialu out of fighting.

This is now half the job. Now use this development well!
Rating: * (Good)

Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra – 09

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



This series just continues to defy my expectations. Here I thought that for its formula would consist out of mostly four-episode arcs, and here this episode comes and instead of starting a new arc, it gives a ton of extra depth to the previous arc. Most notably, we learn a lot more about Ganbanzel. Seriously, I thought that he was going to be one of the major villains!

One thing I really love about this series is its ability to take any character, and give this character a complete, imaginative and detailed backstory and motivation. The same with Ganbanzel: this episode really showed a different side of his. He originally was a victim of one of the attacks from Hamyuts Meseta (or Hamy, as she’s aptly nicknamed in this episode) of all people.

It’s probably this what inspired him to join the church. We still don’t know why he so interested in Enlike, and even though he’s dead now his book still remains. My guess would be that this gets explained somewhere later in the series. The big mysteries right now are the bearded guy, and the half-invisible guy right now. While the Church is a bit of an obvious enemy, these two don’t seem to belong in any party and are hovering somewhere in the middle, it seems.

I also wonder. It’s now established that one regularly can’t obtain more than one power. And yet we see Hamy with at least three: her sensory threads, the stone slinging and the super-strength. She doesn’t seem to be another book eater, because she isn’t spamming random powers like Zatoh did, but there definitely seems to be more to her than meets the eye.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Darker than Black – Ryuusei no Gemini – 08

by psgels, posted in Darker than Black - Ryuusei no Gemini



Oh, the soundtrack for this series rocks. I consider it to be even better than the one from the first season. What I only noticed right now however is that Yoko Kanno didn’t write it this time. Instead, it seems to have been composed by a voice-actor, of all people. It’s the guy who voiced Hamdo in Now and Then, Here and There and Shou Taishi in Saiunkoku Monogatari, among many others. I’m really not sure where he got the idea of composing a soundtrack from, but he did a bloody brilliant job at it.

In any case, this episode yet again showed off this series’ wonderful style of storytelling, which is brutally direct, and also creative and very exciting during the action-scenes, even though the action itself is in no way over the top. In Darker than Black, fights rarely end with everyone retreating with minor wounds. In this series, battles are fought with the intent to kill. Take that, shounen-series!

But seriously though, I didn’t quite think that even Tanya was no exception to this rule. Here I thought that the creators were saving her for the big climax in which Suou manages to settle their differences, despite being contractors… and here this episode just unceremoniously kills them off. Her death wasn’t in vain, though: it was a great opportunity to show that teenaged contractors indeed have bugs inside of them. This series has mentioned it before, and it’s an interesting concept that in the world of contractors, there also still exist contractors that need to grow up. it also fits really well in the development between Hei and Suou, and you can see that the creators spend some time into this.

On top of that, the mystery has also thickened. What the heck was Shion doing there? I this some kind of double red herring? That their father needed Suou the most so he pretended that Shion was the most important one so that she wouldn’t catch suspension? Heh, some father.

Also, why does Misaki have a portrait of a black cat hanging on her wall?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Umineko no Naku Koro ni – 22

by psgels, posted in Umineko no Naku Koro ni



So now we’re back at the island again, and this episode portrayed a new character as the villain: Kinzou. Like all villains of Umineko, this guy is way over the top, but then again, that’s part of the fun. You don’t exactly watch this series for its realism. We also see a new servant introduced: Gaap (not the most fortunate name: it means “yawn” in Dutch, which makes it a bit hard to take her seriously).

What’s also interesting is that in this arc, we never get to see the corpses for the first twillight confirmed. All we see is Beatrice smirking and claiming that it’s the same as the previous first twillights, but the massacre scene was just like any other magic scene in this show so far: an illusion. Who is to say that these people really died? This is especially notable because one of the biggest suspects right now (Dr. Hanzo) could have used this to his advantage and pretend to be dead, killing everyone from the sidelines.

Still, this also supports the theory that there are multiple killers. My prime theory at the moment is that Kinzo is responsible for the first twillight (see the third arc, in which the murders had to be committed by one of the six people who died there), and after that Hanzo took over with the rest of the murders.

And boy, that scene between Maria and Rosa was intense. This also explains why the scene between the two of them in the last episode felt a bit incomplete, and now you can really see where the twisted personality from Maria came from. However, Rosa does raise a few questions: if this supposedly happened in every single arc (of which I’m not convinced of at the moment), then it doesn’t really fit with her behavior during the second and third arc. Having been killed more than a 100 times, Rosa should now be terrified of of her. I didn’t exactly get that impression from them, aside from the first arc, perhaps.

Now that the first season has nearly ended, I do have to say that so far, I do consider Higurashi to be better than Umineko. We’ve now seen 22 episodes, and while the potential for mystery on both series is just as interesting, Higurashi had far better characters at this point. And while Studio Deen’s influence really contributed to the creepiness and atmosphere of the first season, I’m not feeling the same as with Umineko.

Overall, I’ve been getting a bit disappointed by Studio Deen for the past year. They used to be one of my favourite studios, but their shows seem to have dulled, and ever since Amatsuki, their good shows have either been good shows because they had awesome source material, or because they were sequels of already good shows (Jigoku Shoujo and Higurashi Rei). I’m missing that typical Studio Deen-esque feel that can make already good premises even better.
Rating: * (Good)

Usavich Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Here’s a quickie: Usavich may be 39 episodes long, but each of these episodes is just a minute and a half long. You can breeze through this series in about one hour. But is it worth it? Yeah.

The thing with comedy anime, and especially those very short and strange looking ones is that you’ll never know whether or not they have enough inspiration for their jokes after some initial hilarity. Usavich is the story of two CG rabbits, who we can see in jail, an later on in the series they escape. The sense of humour in this series is downright absurd: there are tons of violence jokes, toilet jokes, sadism, flat-out randomness and let’s not forget the three musical episodes that are some sort of musical medley throughout various sound-effects. Just watch it, it’s very hard to explain.

The lead characters have absolutely no lines, and are pretty stereotypical, but what makes Usavich awesome is its sense of timing. The jokes are all delivered spot-on, and it retains its hilarity throughout the entire series. It loses a few points by repeating some of its jokes at times, but most of the episodes sparkle with creativity. A recommendation if you’re looking for a really quick watch. Heck, even Chi’s Sweet Home’s episodes were longer.

Storytelling: 9/10
Characters: 7/10
Production-Values: 8/10
Setting: 8/10

Matantei Loki Ragnarok Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Matantei Loki Ragnarok is the first installment of Hiroshi Watanabe’s “Mystical Detectives”-trilogy (along with Tactics and Suteki Tantei Labyrinth). Those who’ve read some of my earlier reviews about this guy’s work know what I think about him: he can be incredibly talented, but also incredibly stupid. Whenever I go into a series of his, I absolutely have no idea what to expect.

I actually watched an episode of Ragnarok before I started this blog, and I wasn’t that convinced. It seemed just like any other silly adventure series that had nothing but a group of characters, going on silly adventures. And here the danger of first impressions shows up again, because against all my expectations, this turned out to be a genuinely excellent series. It’s a bit silly at times and sometimes it leaves a few small questions unanswered, but oh boy. This series really delivers when it wants to.

Like I said, the ingredients are pretty formulaic. In fact, you can see a lot of parallels with Hiroshi Watanabe’s other shows: we have the mahou shounen, his butler. There’s the annoying female sidekick, the animal sidekick, the complete moron, the energetic guy who runs a lot of jobs. Yet, this series actually makes something out of it. The cliches are there, but really: the characterization is so damn good.

This again isn’t a show for everyone, because it’s another one of those series that has a lot of slice of life in it. You might think that this will devolve into a series where most of the time is spent on random mysteries, but those actually play a fairly small role. Much more important to this series is showing the characters interacting with each other, and just having fun on a daily basis. And it does so with creativity. Loki is actually a pretty likable male lead: he’s mature, despite his looks, and likes to tease others. The female side-kick does yell a lot, yet she’s not stereotypical enough to get annoying, and she has enough other sides to her than her constant “mystery!”-catchphrase.

Throughout the majority of its airtime this simply is an enjoyable, varied and sometimes silly slice-of-life/adventure series. There are a number of goofball characters, and therefore also a number of goofball episodes with a sense of humour that’s typical to Hiroshi Watanabe (no idea is stupid enough!). This series really sets itself apart in its final quarter, however. It’s astounding how much this series takes its time to fully develop its main characters AND villains. This series has a really heart-warming finale that made me rate this show much higher than I was originally planning to.

The animation is basic, but it’s being made up by the visuals themselves. The character-designs were done by one of the best character-designers in the business (she also did the character-designs for Ghost Hound, King of Bandits Jing and not to mention Jigoku Shoujo). The music, especially near the end, also manages to create a great atmosphere for this series.

I might be one of the very few in this, but I’ve really become a fan of Hiroshi Watanabe. It’s obviously not because he’s a consistently good director: Star Ocean Ex and Shining Tears X Wind were just terrible, and Suteki Tantei Labyrinth was a trainwreck (an incredibly fun trainwreck yes; but a trainwreck nonetheless). However, the thing with this guy is that he just keeps surprising me. No matter what kind of series he’s doing, every single one of his series have caught me off-guard and surprised me with a sense of creativity I truly did not expect. Whether it’s good or bad remains to be seen, though.

Storytelling: 9/10
Characters: 9/10
Production-Values: 8/10
Setting: 8/10

Kimi ni Todoke – 08

by psgels, posted in Kimi ni Todoke



Nice. Two good episodes in a row for this series. At this point this series is starting to look a lot more positive than what it did in the beginning. At this point, the obligatory school sports festival is about to arrive, and the creators did a pretty nice job to show the preparations for everything, including Sawako’s antics because she doesn’t exercise.

The episode also did nice in fleshing out the romance and the different characters. It was pretty enjoyable to watch, and you can really see that Sadako is gradually getting used of not being ignored anymore.

I guess that the biggest danger for this show is the love triangles. When you see love triangles in a series in which it’s pretty obvious that the creators have no intentions to break up the main couple, they’re just boring! This episode established that the blond girl is yet another one of those girls who has a crush on Kazehaya, so I really don’t hope that this is going to continue on throughout the series. It reminds me of Itazura na Kiss: the creators just kept throwing in love triangles to supposedly “test” the strength of the relationship between the lead couple. Unfortunately, all that did was make the entire series incredibly shallow.
Rating: * (Good)

Gakkou no Kaidan Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



For most of the series I review, I watch them in their original language. There are exceptions, however, and this is one of them. The original Gakkou no Kaidan is beyond mediocre. The characters are shallow, the stories are stupid and formulaic (there are twenty episodes in total, and it rips off The Ring in at least five of them), depthless, predictable, full of plotholes and every ghost is stopped right at the last possible moment. If I were to review the Japanese version, you could subtract at least 20 to 30 points from the rating.

Interestingly enough, the person in charge of the English Dub thought so too, and decided go with his own version. The result is a hilarious parody chockful of American pop culture and jokes that are so wrong that you’d normally never see in anime. Think sex, drugs and violence here. On top, the characters also love to break the fourth wall whenever something doesn’t make sense in the script. And it actually works!

The lead characters also get transformed from just another standard group of kids without much of a distinct personality, to a group with a retarded dyslexic kid, a drug addict, a closet pervert Jew and an obsessively devoted christian. The funny thing is that despite these seemingly offensive stereotypes, the characters are actually much more colourful and developed than their original versions.

I’ve heard plenty of stories about dubs who completely ruin their original series. However, with everything there are some definite exceptions: with Gakkou no Kaidan, there hardly was anything left to ruin, and the writers for the dub had a clear vision of what they were going to do. It’s an interesting experiment that really brightened up an otherwise horribly dull series, and the humour isn’t like anything you’re ever going to encounter in anime. The only thing that really stands out in the original version is some nice shading and the OP. Talk about catchy.

Storytelling: 9/10
Characters: 8/10
Production-Values: 8/10
Setting: 8/10

Tenchi Muyo! – Ryo-Ouki 2 Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Well, so here’s my review of the second OVA of the series that has the dubious honour of having been ripped off the most amount of times by lazy writers. It also includes the special Bangaihen episode that aired in between the first two OVAs for convenience’s sake. Overall, you can see that this series holds an edge over most other harem concepts. It’s still a bit of a hard to believe premise and the reasons for the different females to stay with the lead characters are… silly to say the least. But hey: at least they’ve got reasons!

I actually like the second OVA better than the first. My big problem with the first is that it lacked balance, especially the serious parts just dragged on for ages. This really was fixed in the second OVA: the action, serious parts, slice of life and comedy are all nicely balanced. At first, this show might make it seem like it starts with a random filler episode (like so many other shows have), but thanks to detailed slice of life and good characterization there’s hardly a moment in this show that’s really boring. On top of that, when it does tend to drag on, some character-back-story suddenly pops up.

The OVA does a great job to flesh out and explore a majority of the characters here, and you definitely get to know them better throughout the series. That’s definitely a plus. And even the purely slice of life special bangaihen is enjoyable to sit through thanks to the characters and the comedy. When the main storyline for this OVA pops up, it actually delivers, and it has a much more interesting villain than the rather dull one that the first OVA had to use.

There were only two major annoyances I had with this OVA. The first is Ryo-ouki. I know that she must have meant well and all, but near the end her excessive nondescript squealing becomes just too annoying. This didn’t work in Pokemon, and it also doesn’t work here. The second annoyance is the final ten minutes of the OVA: for some strange reason, they’re nothing but a slide-show with people talking in the background. Did the budget ran out at that point or something? It’s surprising, because the rest of the budget is actually really good with very smooth and detailed animation.

Tenchi Muyo isn’t really going to make it to my favourites anytime soon. It might be very good for your average harem, but there still are tons of non-harem series that are just better and have more interesting and believable stories. It’s just isn’t my kind of setting here and the seemingly endless amounts of times at which this formula has already been ripped off didn’t really help increasing my enjoyment of it. Nevertheless, this second OVA yet again stands out with some pretty nice characterization of its characters, and that has to say something.

Storytelling: 7/10
Characters: 8/10
Production-Values: 9/10
Setting: 7/10

Konnichiwa Anne – 34

by psgels, posted in Konnichiwa Anne



Okay, so this was a mixed bag. It would have been a great episode actually, but some of the faces in this episode were drawn really weird. When Anne got back to Tessa, the look on their faces was just rushed and overly cheesy. That ruined what could have been a powerful moment.

Nevertheless though, apart from that I liked this episode a lot. The fire arc was solved very neatly, and enough time was given for both Anne and Tessa to sort out their thoughts and make them willing to talk. This episode did a great job in developing the two of them. It’s especially great to see that Anne is finally recovering from the shock she received from the death of Mr. Hammond and all of its implications. Especially the part in which she ran away on her own (Tessa eventually became too scared to go along with her).

I fear however for the next episodes. There are five episodes left. My prediction is that the next episode will focus on Amy Thompson (aka the headmistress). After that we’ll probably get two episodes focused on the evil classmates, while the final two episodes will wrap up the story and send Anne off to the Cuthberts.

I have great expectations for the final two episodes, but the other three are going to be the problems: they’re exactly the type of episodes that this show just ISN’T GOOD AT. The headmistress episode reminds me of the midwife episode: she started off so promising, but when she got her own episode her development was just cheesy. The same goes for the evil classmates: I really like how thus far, the only reason why they’re bullying Anne is because it was Anne who started fighting with them. However, who knows what kind of cheese they’re going to fall into as soon as they’re going to get developed?
Rating: * (Good)