Cross Game – 35

by psgels, posted in Cross Game



Ah, the valentine episode. Thankfully, the creators use it well with a pretty romantic episode with quite a few new developments. It’s episodes like this that really show the chemistry of the entire cast of characters of this series, and not just the main ones.

This episode shed quite a bit of light of how Kou and Aoba genuinely feel about each other. Aoba is clearly into Kou, but lacks confidence because of the arrival of Akane. Kou on the other hand is just clueless. Unfortunately, he falls into a staple that many other anime leads fall into, but his relationship with Akane makes up for it. You can see that she finally makes him think about his own love-life.

But yeah, the great thing about Akane isn’t just that she sparks up tensions between Kou and Aoba, but because everyone in the series aside from Azuma knew Wakaba well, she also has this effect on just about everyone in the series, and even Azuma is indirectly influenced by her. Speaking of which, he was surprisingly direct when he claimed that that the only girl he’d want to date is Aoba. For a usually subtle series, this really came out of nowhere, but I think that the reason he was able to say it was because he believes that he doesn’t stand a chance against Kou. Give this a few episodes, and let’s see how this affects Aoba.

Also, Aoba finally tried out for the girls’ team. Again, this brings us back to the baseball. I really wonder what the final quarter of this series is going to be like (assuming that there are going to be 52 episodes). The baseball is obviously going to return there, but I really hope that the creators will put away enough time for the slice of life.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

White Album – 22

by psgels, posted in White Album



Aah, I’ve seen too many shallow anime. I really thought that Mana would break down in this episode, while in reality what got into her was just a short emotional outburst. This doesn’t turn out to be the case in which a bit of talking simply solves everything and magically develops characters in the right direction. Ah, I should have known!

But yeah, this was likely the best episode of White Album so far. Instead of a major climax for Mana, we get to see a major episode for Haruka, which really surprised me: paste that scene of her in any other series, and it would have ended up incredibly cheesy. Suddenly coming out of the shower naked in a desperate attempt… that’s so hard to prevent from turning into soap opera material, it needs lots and lots of build-up. But I think that White Album actually pulled it off. I feared for a moment, because Haruka’s earlier emotion breakdown made no sense whatsoever.

This episode really shed light into her character. Her scene was daring, but still subtle and nowhere over the top, and again it was more like an emotional outburst: after that she behaved completely normal again, rather than some angsty teen that refuses to listen to anybody. Then there’s also the matter of Touya, of course, who really doesn’t seem to know when to quit.

Also, what on earth could Menou be up to? How did she find out about Misaki, and why does she intend to make her seem like a slut? I know she’s rebellious and all, but to do that just to protect Touya seems a bit unnecessary.

With only four episodes left now, we’re about to get to the point where everything goes to hell. I really wonder how the creators are planning to end this. I mean, at this point they can indeed show what they’ve been promising us ever since Touya started screwing Yayoi, or they could play the gigantic troll that laughs over us by having a very mundane ending…
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Letter Bee – 09

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



Well, Lag is a bee now.With a bit of luck, the introduction should now be over and the real story should start. It was a bit embarrassing to hear him claim to want to become the best Bee ever. While I guess that he has been majorly influenced by Gauche and all, but all I could think of when I heard that was Naruto and Ash Ketchum. And that’s a direction I definitely don’t want him to go into. O.o

A majority of ths episode was spent on a really long flashback, that didn’t really tell us anything we didn’t know already. At least, nothing major. It did raise a few subtle questions: why did Gauche change guns? Why did he want Lag to have his old gun? Where did he get such an expensive and unique gun? And why was all important information that would explain all of these questions conveniently left out of the flashback, even though those fragments are meant to be from his soul? Oh, and there seems to be some sort of organization that plans to overthrow the goverment, but yeah: every show has those.

Also, more crying! Sylvette reveals why Gauche became friendly with Lag: Lag reminded him of Sylvette. These two should enter crying competitions, seriously. I also feel that this series is using its soundtrack a bit too much. What I mean by this is the following: in this episode, it yet again wastes a bunch of beautiful tracks during relatively unimportant scenes. If the soundtrack for this series is big, then there’s no problem, however I fear that those tracks are going to lose their impact when they’re played too often.

I may be overly negative right now, but this wasn’t that disappointing of an episode. Uneventful is a better word. Unlike many other series, I really feel that Letter Bee has potential, but there’s no way for me to know for sure whether it’ll be able to deliver in the end.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

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)