Cross Game – 28

by psgels, posted in Cross Game



Yeah, this was by far the best baseball match of Cross Game, in which Kou and Azuma finally get a real threat posed to them. The matches still are nowhere as intense and exciting as in Touch, but it’s getting there. If the second half of the series can further develop the fact that Kou and Azuma aren’t perfect then we’re in for a great series.

For once, Kou didn’t give away a point because he was playing around, lazy or otherwise intentionally not focusing. The way that Keitaro just whacked a home-run out of Kou’s pitch caught him completely off-guard and Azuma too for once just hit a regular pitch, instead of a home-run. I also like that Senda, despite his portrayal as a seemingly useless character actually gets to bases at times. That’s more to say from Akaishi: there’s this theme with him, never being able to score any sort of solid hit: he either hits very hard, only for the ball to get caught, or he just completely fails to hit the ball in the first place.

Aoba again acted completely different from how she usually does, and turned into a bit of a fangirl for Kou, which of course clashed a bit with her tsundere-side. Yeah, at this point the arrival of Wakaba-lookalike seems about right to develop their relationship a bit more.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Letter Bee – 02

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



Okay, this episode convinced me to start blogging this series. It had a bit of an uneventful first episode, but you can see that it was holding back. This episode showed a bit more of this series’ potential, and showed that it can very well write a nice dramatic scene. Lag is a bit too much of a crybaby in this episode, but thankfully: he grows up. Nevertheless, it still remains a question whether or not the creators are going to be able to pace the story properly, get the best out of the setting… and somehow solve the problem that they’re dealing with a still on-going manga…

The director is a new guy, as in he’s never directed an entire series before. This really can go anywhere, and at this point he seems decent enough. You can see that he’s not trying out or adding a lot of extra things, but the adaptation so far seems faithful from the perspective of someone who hasn’t read the manga like myself. He however was the technical director of Kaze no Youjinbo, which does show a lot of promise. Especially since Kaze no Youjinbo started off really slow and uneventful as well, and only became memorable as it went on. Perhaps this is the guy who can bring Studio Pierrot back to their standards before the Naruto and Bleach-era.

In any case, while a bit cheesy, that scene where Lag carried Gauche on his own was quite endearing. I like how the creators chose to start this series off with a young version of the protagonist: this way we can really get to know him. I just hope that he became less of a crybaby, but five years can change a lot of things. And apart from the crying, I liked how this episode really took its time to show the conversation between Lag and Gauche.

Apparently, there are going to be 7 DVDs. Since the first is going to contain the first two episodes, my guess is that the final six will each contain three, making for a total of 20 episodes for this series. Seems enough to get a nice story out of it.
Rating: * (Good)

White Album – 15

by psgels, posted in White Album



As for the shows I’m not going to blog:
– Out of the onslaught of moe comedies this season, Seitokai no Ichizon definitely stands out as the best and funniest. Nevertheless, I see no potential in blogging it weekly.
– Kuroko’s lesbian siscon fantasies in Railgun were just painful to watch. Even Index was better than this!
– For a while I thought that it would be fun to blog Blacksmith, with Manglobe behind the animation and an excellent soundtrack and all. But in the end, it’s just too much generic fantasy in which a band of teenagers has to go face an evil army of demons and evil adults. I want series that take risks instead of playing it as safe as possible.

Which brings us to White Album: love it or hate it, but you can’t deny that it was one of the most unique romance and eroge adaptations of the past years. While it has moe, it never tries to present the characters as such. Instead, it wants the viewer to hate its characters. Not through crappy scriptwriting as in School Days, but instead because of the characters’ actions, while still keeping a very solid script.

I mean, when you ignore the melodrama, the writing and direction is incredibly solid. The dialogue is meaningful and deep, the drama is often incredibly subtle and the creators really have an eye for detail. Just take a look at how Touya played with the condensation on the windows, or how incredibly well animated Mana was when she met Haruka on her bike. Choosing a generic fantasy like Blacksmith, in which the characters all act like caricatures and wounds magically disappear, over this one would just not sit right.

I really expect that this is going to be my hate/love series of this season, but I’d much rather have this series to rage over, rather than some badly written and lazy show that just feels stereotypical. I think the biggest problem with the first season was that it left an incredibly bad taste: it solved absolutely nothing, even for a show that’s supposed to be continued. Is it bad? No. Did it cause me to hate this series for six months? Yes.

As I watched this episode though, I was reminded more and more of why I started blogging this series in the first place. FINALLY Touya and Yuki get the chance to talk to each other for a good while, and it’s completely the opposite of the stereotypical way that I expected. They just hang out, albeit a bit uncomfortably with Yayoi being near, and then they say goodbye again.

2009 has been an excellent year for romance, so I might as well see and check out how this unique series is going to play out.
Rating: * (Good)

Some Quick First Impressions: Cheburashka Arere, Darker than Black: Ryuusei no Gemini and Sasameki Koto

by psgels, posted in Darker than Black - Ryuusei no Gemini, Some Quick First Impressions

Cheburashka Arere

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a monkey that starts living with a crocodile.
Hmm, the kiddie-shows this season are surprisingly good. I wouldn’t exactly recommend Chebrashka to any adult, but for once we have a series that tries to be different from all the other kiddie shows out there. It’s actually a bit nostalgic, as it seems similar to the kiddie shows that I watched when I was only five years old (most notably, Barbapapa). One thing that especially strikes me is how good the animation is. The character-designs are simple, but they move really fluidly with hardly any corners cut. Interesting.
OP: Just a title screen, but original music.
ED: Very obnixious to anyone older than five.
Potential: 20%

Darker than Black: Ryuusei no Gemini

Short Synopsis: Our lead character stopped getting haircuts.
It was quite a surprise to see that this first episode focused on mostly completely new characters, but yeah: this was the best first episode of the new season. It’s got the intriguing setting of the Book of Bantorra with a solid and intelligent execution that can’t be matched by any other series this season. The characters are well written, the attention to detail to the origami was a very nice touch, and the battles still rely much more on wits and intelligence than raw power. This episode really showed that Bones didn’t make a sequel just to milk out this franchise, but they’re really intending to give it some more depth. It’s a shame that there are only going to be 12 episode, but on the other hand that’s going to make this series short and sweet. 2009 really looks like it’s going to be Bones’ best year ever.
ED: Solid albeit uninteresting ballad with a slide-show of random landscapes.
Potential: 90%

Sasameki Koto

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a lesbian.
Sasameki Koto: a tad shallow, but definitely charming. This episode was one of the most emotional first episodes of the new season for me, because it was the best at combining subtlety and straight to-the-point drama. The soundtrack fits this romance series very well, and the atmosphere was pretty nice for this story. But yeah, that shallowness is going to become a problem for this series in the future. The dialogue felt not really very inspired, and the characters were a little too quick to cry. Nevertheless, after Aoi Hana with its mountains of subtlety, it might be worth watching a more direct lesbian series.
OP: A nice and calm song, although definitely not the best of its kind.
ED: A bit too annoying and poppy song.
Potential: 50%

Omoshi Magical Theatre: Risky Safety Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



When I posted my first impressions on Kobato, I noted how incredibly cute its lead character Kobato was. I then started watching Risky Safety, and suddenly Kobato looked more like Hamako from Gintama in comparison. Omishi Magical Theater: Risky Safety has got to be one of, if not THE cutest anime I have ever seen.

And it’s not like most series that attempt to go for cuteness, in which they try to make everything as brightly coloured and fluffy as possible with a lot of energetic overacting. The titular characters, an apprentice Shinigami and Angel named Risky and Safety respectively, have such a natural charm that’s near impossible to plan out. Nearly all of their quirks are just too cute to watch when combined with the incredibly talented voice actres of these two (why yes, they’re voiced by the same voice actress, who does a fantastic job portraying both of them). They’re the type of characters who make all of the scenes they’re in a joy to watch.

The ten-minute episodes basically consist out of the two titular characters helping out a kid with worries, but the storytelling is genuine enough to make something interesting out of such a simple premise. The stories are well built up, and are about serious themes as undecisiveness, love, good and evil that aim to teach simple moral stories. You can also see that the creators like to try out new ideas: sometimes they like to show a bit of what happens in the setting around the characters, like showing a random conversation between a few passers-by that has nothing to do with the story, or showing some sort of reference to an earlier story. It’s interesting how in this story, whenever something gets destroyed or changed, it remains changed. For example, the stuff that Risky breaks in one room still remain broken 24 episodes later.

Overall, this series shows that anime can also be simple, yet effective. It’s an excellent recommendation for those who are looking for a quick watch. It’s such a charming series from beginning to end, and surprisingly solidly produced as well with detailed animation that hardly cuts any corners. With an excellent dreamy soundtrack excellent voice acting and incredibly cute antics, I really enjoyed this little series. It’s a shame that we never hear anything from its production-company anymore, APPP. Around ten years ago they used to do a number of series with very neat ideas, but right now they only seem to concentrate on in-between animation jobs (but doing a great job at them nonetheless).

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

Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra – 02

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



As for the series I’m not blogging:
– Kämpfer is just yet another stereotypical fighting show with no depth whatsoever.
– Nyan Koi had a really disappointing and shallow second episode. Plus, it’s obvious that the creators have never owned cats.

As for the Book of Bantorra, I think it was pretty obvious that I was going to blog this. Barring the sequels, it featured for me the best first episode of the new season so far and it looks to be another hit for newcomer David Production. This time, they might not have such a powerhouse behind the direction, but the premise has quite a few nice ideas thrown into it, there are lots of characters, all with different morals and values, and this episode showed yet again that it can deliver very nice action-scenes, even with its clearly limited budget. All in all, a very intriguing series.

The director didn’t handle any series I know, but this guy seems very experienced, with a lot of different series under his belt. I’m also very happy with the one who’s behind the series composition: Mari Okada. She wrote the script for a lot of the episodes of Simoun, and did the series composition for a lot of different series, including True Tears, Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, Canaan and Vampire Knight (which may have sucked, but I heard that it was the best possible adaptation that the really mediocre manga could have gotten). That’s definitely a plus when animating a series of light novels with such a big setting.

The art director is also an interesting one, because Shigemi Ikeda is an artist with a huge amount of experience: the list of series he did the art direction for just goes on and on, and the result show in this episode in the architecture. You really need a lot of creativity to come up with these complex structures. A job well done, if I say so. The soundtrack also is done by the Death Note soundtrack guy, who also composed the scores for Himitsu and Real Drive, which means an excellent soundtrack as well.

But yeah, the weakest point in this series really is the direction, in the way that the quality control tends to be a bit off at times. This episode most notably showed that in the sudden increase of the already huge cleavage of the director, or how the widow of the guy who was killed by Coolio’s friend suddenly chose Colio of all people to talk to was also a bit too coincidental. Nevertheless, when compared to Shangri-la last season there are far less assaults to my suspense of disbelief, so there shouldn’t be any major problems there as long as the creators continue to keep the rest of this series interesting.

Volken also seems like an interesting male lead: he’s an adult for one, and he’s an interesting combination of an capable commander with strong morals, and a naive subordinate with a lot of potential for growth inside of him. He’s able to stand out as the lead character, and yet he doesn’t hog all the screen-time for himself (in fact, that meat guy has gotten more screen-time than he did in this episode). Hamyuts also has the potential to become a very interesting villain, the way she has been portrayed in the past two episodes: as long as she isn’t going to end up as a static character, the creators can do a lot of great things with her. I especially like how she likes to do things herself, instead of sitting in her chair, looking evil.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Umineko no Naku Koro ni – 15

by psgels, posted in Umineko no Naku Koro ni



Holy crap! How many extra dimensions can a story get within just one arc? Turn the chessboard upside-down? How about reaching into a completely different dimension to find an extra side of that chessboard hidden!

With this episode I’m really starting to see Ryukishi07’s brilliance as a writer, and it was by far the best episode of this series yet. Where to start?Eva finds the gold, but instead of stopping the murder her second personality takes up a life of her own, goes after the gold and becomes the next Beatrice, the mysterious girl that we’ve been seeing in the OP? What the hell?

Screw trying to prove that the murders didn’t happen with magic. My theory still stands that the real murderer is probably some sort of illusionist and Beatrice and the other witches are pulling all sorts of illusions to confuse Battler. However, what does this mean for the entire nature of the games that Beatrice and Battler have been playing? Beatrice actually did not know that this was going to happen. Does that mean that for every arc, she just puts the initial pieces into place (as in, the magical servants and gives them the right instruction), and then watches everything play out like she wanted to? And what exactly does it mean of being in that “shadow realm” of theirs. It’s one thing that psycho Eva took over the title of Beatrice in this arc, but why did Beatrice also give up her name in that shadow realm? It destroys so many theories.

First of all, if she just did that to fool Battler, this would simply come to light at the end of this arc when everything gets reset again. Also, it also doesn’t mean that Beatrice simply wants power, because she just gave that up like it was nothing and didn’t even seem to be upset about it. Also, the way Beatrice and Ronove spoke about psycho Eva, in that “I’m not going to tell you because you’re not going to understand it anyway”-way was surprisingly genuine. There’s no reason for them to have said that if that were just part of the play, so more and more signs are pointing towards a whole dimension of magic not only in the “shadow realm” (by lack of a better name), but also within the island itself.

And then comes the final quarter of this episode in which Beatrice (or Beato, I guess) shows a completely different side of her. She really is an innocent child at heart, that laughing of her was just a way of her playing around, albeit in a bit of an extreme way. I’m not sure what exactly went on in her twisted mind, but she seems to have a complete lack of morals. This is just a guess from me, but even though Bernkastel and ΛΔ have formidable powers, they never actually went against Beatrice and Battler pretty much was the first one who slapped her in the face among her charade of various servants and furniture. And on top of that, the Beato on the island has also completely swapped personalities and is the complete opposite: mature, aware of her loss and while she still has pride, she says goodbye to her servants with her head held high.

Right now, my guess at who’s the murderer is also completely different. Eva is of course a huge red herring, as are Rosa and Beato. If we are to take from Higurashi, the killer is someone who has stayed in the background who seems innocent at first sight. That leaves the biggest suspects at this point Battler’s parents and Eva’s husband. These are the ones who have had the least amount of attention so far, and they do have their own sets of motives, to try and get rid of Krauss and become the inheritor/inheritor’s husband/wife.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
And remember: please refrain from mentioning anything that happens in the visual novel after this point…

Brigadoon Marin to Melan Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



I’m getting more and more impressed at Sunrise’s lesser-known mecha series. Sure, they have made plenty of series that just consist out of a string of random action-scenes without much substance, but on the other hand there also are series as Overman King Gainer, Zone of the Enders, Zegapain and Votoms, which all sparkle with creativity. Brigadoon is yet another one of those.

Brigadoon is one of those series with a cute and brightly-coloured outside, but a dark and lethal inside. It starts off pretty innocently, in which a 13-year-old girl suddenly gets hunted down by evil aliens and needs to be protected by some sort of combat android. The series is at these points fun to watch, and a very energetic action-series, but as the series goes on, the dark side of the series shows up more and more, and isn’t afraid to put the lead characters through hell and beyond in order to get its points across. The formulaic setting of the series is also completely abandoned in the second half, for a far more interesting plot with a lot of twists and turns along the way.

This series is especially good with its characters. Not just the main characters, but also most of the side-characters get their own share of depth that makes them engaging to watch. Especially Marin strikes as an excellent lead character for this series: she has plenty of flaws as a character, and yet her energy carries the series and prevents it from dragging.

This series also has a unique visual style. The animation during the light parts is very quirky, and during the dark parts it’s detailed and intricately shaded to get the best out of the seemingly childish graphics. The soundtrack is also unique, and has a number of very noteworthy tracks.

Granted though, this series does have its share of flaws. One of the most notable is the regeneration powers that the androids (called Monomakia here) in this series seem to have. I’m really not much of a fan of those sorts of powers; after all, why care about a character getting injured if he can easily be zapped back to good health. And yeah, because of this the characters get injured to near-death a few too many times. Not only that, but sometimes the regeneration rules also go inconsistent with their own inner logic.

This becomes mostly apparent in the ending, which really wants to bring everything to a happy end a little too badly. Revelations are pulled out of thin air, deus ex machina make sure that everyone gets to have the easy end, and all in all it’s just one huge rush-job that the creators didn’t put much thought into. Nevertheless, this remains a pretty good action-series. There are some really neat ideas stuffed into it. Sure, there is a bit of fanservice here and there, but it never gets in the way of what’s really important.

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

Some Quick First Impressions: Kimi ni Todoke, 11Eyes and Kobato

by psgels, posted in Kimi ni Todoke, Kobato, Some Quick First Impressions

Kimi ni Todoke

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is that scary girl from Hyakko. No seriously, the two are introduced with exactly the same examples!
Ah, finally we have a series that goes with its own art style, instead of one that has been copied from a thousand other series already. That’s definitely a plus. Kimi ni Todoke is a shoujo-series, which you forced me to blog back here. Overall, compared to the first episodes of other shoujo-series, it doesn’t really stand out: the humour hardly got any chuckles out of me and the set-up is pretty basic. However in this season it really has been the best teenaged romance so far. with those standards it’s of course not that hard to achieve this, but the female lead is nice to watch, and doesn’t feel like a stereotype at all. There’s a nice bit of drama that doesn’t try too hard and has a sense of subtlety, and overall it was pretty nice. Although the creators really need to work on making that male love interest less perfect, because right now it’s nothing more than your average shy girl’s fantasies of dating the hottest and most popular guy in school.
OP: Nice art, but the song is standard J-pop that doesn’t interest me.
ED: Nice albeit a bit dull, ballad.
Potential: 50%

11Eyes

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets woken up every morning by his childhood friend.
I swear, I’m getting dejá vus from all of these moe shows this season. This feels like the umpth time I’ve seen fanservice, childhood friends becoming lovers, obnoxious classmates and generic moe character-designs. Nevertheless, for these first impressions I mostly look at the execution, and for this series it actually rocked. The slice of life scenes were still pretty dull and cliché, but whenever this series gets serious it gets dark and brutal, and the creators are immediately able to switch from a light and boring atmosphere to a very tense and dangerous atmosphere with a small touch of horror and mystery, and I really have to praise this series for that. Now all that remains is to wonder whether the creators can keep this up, and whether this show has a premise that can really get the best out of this direction. Agh, I have no bloody clue!
OP: Actually one of the best OPs this seasons. Energetic, varied and fast-paced, fitting the dark mood of this series.
ED: Again, a very nice track that nicely ties in with the cliff-hanger.
Potential: 50%

Kobato

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has to help other people.
After watching X, this was about the last thing I expected from the next Madhouse Clamp series: a cute shoujo series. And granted, the lead character Kobato is sickeningly cute. There’s a nice dynamic between her and her stuffed animal side-kick what made this episode worth watching. However, the side-characters felt rather flat and one-dimensional. Seeing as this is going to be a series that’s going to focus on Kobato helping out other persons, it’s going to be a bit pointless if the creators can’t create engaging characters for Kobato to help. In this aspect, Miracle Train did it much better. Kobato also was portrayed a bit too angelic during this episode: she can somehow take the worst ingredients and make a delicious dish out of it, she can sing perfectly, etc. Nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable episode and knowing Clamp, at least you can be sure that the characters are going to be developed as the story goes on but based on first impressions both Clamp and Madhouse have done better in terms of cuteness.
OP: Standard J-pop song that didn’t catch my interest.
ED: Quiet song that again didn’t catch my interest.
Potential: 50%

Some Quick First Impressions: Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu 2 – Purezza, Anymal Tantei Kiruminzoo and Shin Koihime Musou

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu 2 – Purezza

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to date the most popular, perfect and rich girl in school.
And yere we have yet another moe show: Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu’s continuation. I’m not really interested in all of the otaku-ish hobbies, but I figured that I might as well give this show a second chance to get me interested, but ultimately it didn’t. By far my biggest problem with this episode was that the many attempts at comedy were shallow, not funny and often downright atrocious, a problem I have with a lot of the moe shows this season. As for the romance, I admit that that part was pretty cute. The love triangle is just a copy of any other love triangle out there, but the romance between the lead character and Nogizaka Haruka, despite cliché, was pretty cute. Though I don´t really think it was cute enough for me to keep watching this…
Also on a side-note: is Japan really such a xenophobic place in which you get immediately labelled as loser in middle school when they find out that you like watching cartoons? Strange country.
OP: A bit of a mock opening of Haruka’s favourite show, but did the creators really have to go with something so cheesy?
OP2: I remember how the OP of the first season was abysmal, so this is a very good improvement. Catchy J-Rock and an inspired visual style.
ED: Way too cheesy and badly sung J-Pop.
Potential: 10%

Anymal Tantei Kiruminzoo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character can transform into cute and fluffy animals.
So yeah, this is a series aimed at kids. Just about everything in this show is designed to be as cute as possible, and it revolves around the premise of a bunch of kids searching around in their parents’ attic and finding a bunch of magical thingies that transform them into mahou shoujo. But really, for a kid’s show it’s actually not that bad at all. For once we have kid’s show that actually not as cheaply written as possible. The two characters are likable, and the episodes played out quite natural. What especially struck me is the surprisingly good soundtrack. This is probably a good series for the Shugo Chara-fans who have been turned off by how it jumped the shark with Party! As for the rest of this series, it could be a fun, relaxing series. If we are to believe the title, the girls are going to use their powers as detective. I guess that has promise as a light watch.
OP: It will never leave! It will never leave!
ED: Korean vocals, of all things, and again just too catchy.
Potential: 30%

Shin Koihime Musou

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a “honorable warrior” in ancient China.
It’s series like Koihime Musou that ruined any chance of me, being able to take the Romance of the Three Kingdoms-saga seriously. One of the classic Chinese novels? It’s probably going to remain in my mind as a series of very stupid and girly stories you can only laugh at. This sequel of Koihime Musou seems to do exactly the same as its predecessor: it’s here to deliver cute girls, more cute girls, and in between even more cute girls. I doubt that I’m going to continue watch this one since it’s really not my type of genre, but if you like moe and boobs doing nothing you’ll probably enjoy the slice of life in this series. It’s just too stupid for me with little else that caught my attention, and in that it didn’t really seem to have changed from the first season.
OP: Spunky OP. Not exactly something I want to listen to again, but definitely not among the worst this season.
ED: Too much sugar and squeaky voices.
Potential: 20%