Well, I guess that with this, Higurashi finally comes to an end, and I have to say that the creators couldn’t have chosen a better way to close it off than with Rei. It really made excellent use of the OVA format to surpass itself, in terms of comedy and silliness in regards to episodes 1 and 5, and in terms of solid scriptwriting for episodes 2, 3 and 4. I’m really going to miss this series.
Anyway, I’m not going to write a review for this OVA, because I know from experience that I’m terrible at those kinds of reviews, especially if I don’t marathon them. What I do want to say though, is that everyone who finished the TV-series should really also give the OVA a chance. It’s one of the very few cases in which the OVA is as good as the series it’s based on.
Anyway, this episode closes off Higurashi with another silly chapter, in which Rena swallows a “Magatama” which makes her fall in love with whoever holds an identical “Magatama” in a different colour, which shows Rena spooning up to Tomitake, Takano, Oshii and eventually Keiichi through a hilarious episode. I liked it better than the first episode of Higurashi Rei, because even though it was very silly, it also showed a new side of Rena: the side of her that wants to be close to others, and so is very easy to adapt her hobbies to others.
This also leads to an awesome Mah-Jong match, and at that point you could really see that it was a wise decision to put the director of Shion no Ou on the director’s position, rather than Chiaki Kon. The Mah-jong match in this episode which probably only took up 5 minutes was more exciting and creative than anything I’ve seen in Saki for the past half five months. It really reminded me that there can be game-based series that don’t have to rely on god-mode powers and Deus ex Machina.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class – 10
GA really is the best 4Koma adaptation I have ever seen. And sure, the competition isn’t exactly dazzling, but it’s the first 4Koma adaptation that managed to really portray the short and snappy pacing of those sort of stories. It always brings something new to the table and never fails to catch my interest.
Anyway, this episode yet again seemed focused on torturing those with a limited understanding of Japanese like myself, because there was a lot of dialogue again. It starts with a rather morbid aspect of Japanese schools that I never knew about: donating blood. Yeah… apparently sixteen year-old school students all have to donate their blood at one point. My question to the Japanese among us: is that really true? O.o
Anyway, the teachers also seem to accompany them while the students of 15 years and below are asked to come up with designs for the blood donation truck’s mascot. Nozaki is the only one of 16 years, and so the rest comes up with all sorts of designs, ranging from cute to morbid. In the end, Awara’s design wins.
I also love how this series randomly introduces characters like they’ve been part of the setting all along. It just isn’t afraid to just pull out an extra person whenever he or she is needed, in order to make the setting come alive. And somehow these types of characters all feel real in their own way, instead of cliches or plot devices.
Anyway, the four remaining members of the art design club also play a strange little word game, in which they in turn name various things that have to do with blood donations, in order to get some inspiration for their designs and torture me, trying to understand it. The suggestions were: scene of the crime, blood transfusion, rose, pictures of the scene of the crime, and a whole bunch of words I just couldn’t make sense of. *kicks Japanese*
Next up is a short joke about how Usami keeps telling everyone not to smoke or drink coffee too much, after which she’s seen taking lunch supplements and a strange appearance of a teacher called Morita, who never really does anything. We then see Noda catching Nozaki’s happiness because she’s feeling down. After that we see another collection of drama pieces in which some of the characters are acting out very dramatic death scenes.
Yamaguchi ends up burning her hand when she uses water that’s too hot. Noda then spills a box of screws, and Oomichi cleans them up by her hairpin which turns out to be magnetic. Next up is lunch with Yamaguchi who took medicine and is fine again and Noda and Tomokane acting out yet another dramatic death scene. We the learn that Yamaguchi likes to leave the egg in her udon for last because it’s her favourite part. Seriously, at this part it feels like the show keeps changing subjects every ten seconds.
Next up Oomichi scares Yamaguchi with her magnetic misunderstanding, then we switch to Noda hiding in one of the boxes that were supposed to have been cleaned up. Noda then shows off some of her pencils that she made, one for each member of the Art Design Club. Nozaki’s somehow is twice as large. They then talk about how colours in dreams. I can’t relate to that because I hardly remember my dreams, but it’s indeed interesting if some dreams are indeed in monochrome.
Next up is a class about drawing in crayons in which Yamaguchi is in her element again drawing yet another sort of cute animal. We then go back to the box which has Oomichi and Yamaguchi in it. The episode ends with a small joke about catching happiness again, after which we see a small part of the girls buying new supplies and saying goodbye to each other. Oomichi, Noda and Nozaki need to catch their bus, while Yamaguchi gets overly enthusiastic about some of the supplies, making the rest miss their bus. Oomichi then invites them in a restaurant and the end credits roll.
Seriously, I’m still amazed at how much the creators manage to stuff into one single episode. It really feels like regular comedies can’t even get the same amount of stuff in double this amount of episodes. My favourite part of this episode was where Yamaguchi suddenly found that screw inside of Oomichi’s hair. Without knowing the context, it must have looked really weird from her perspective. ^^;
And really: what ever happened to the subbers for this series? I know that they were busy a few weeks ago, but it’s been ages since the last release and the subs still are stuck at episode 2. Even Mouryou no Hako got faster subs than this one. At times I really don’t get the moe-loving crowd. With the popularity of series as Hidamari Sketch, Lucky Star, Azumanga Daioh, Saki and K-On, this should have been at least moderately popular. When comparing series of slice of life with thrillers, then okay you could argue that it’s a matter of different tastes. But what does the cast of the aforementioned series have that the cast of GA doesn’t have? Fanservice? Moe fans, enlighten me!
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Jungle Emperor Leo Review – 77,5/100
For those who were confused: the Jungle Emperor Leo remake is not a full fledged TV-series of 80 episodes. It’s a TV-special celebrating the 80th birthday of Osamu Tezuka. It’s about one hour and 45 minutes long, and directed by the director of Code Geass of all people. Still, while this show has its flaws it still serves as a very nice family movie that perfectly captures the childish side of Osamu Tezuka, and yet isn’t afraid to become dark and serious.
Jungle Emperor Leo is an environmentalist anime, and with these kinds of stories there always are plenty of obvious pitfalls. A lot of environmentalist stories lack any sort of subtlety, and often contain entire monologues on the creators’ morals. Yes, we get that the earth is in danger. We get that man is evil. Now stop shoving it down our throats!
Typical of Osamu Tezuka, the basic premise of this special is overly idealistic: humans are evil and make animals suffer. However, it brings a lot of twists to the table, and I mean a lot. This isn’t just a matter in which some character you thought to be evil turn out to be good and vice versa, but there’s a very imaginative back-story behind everything that really makes you think about where humanity is going with the pollution of the earth. It criticizes modern technology, but at the same time it also pays homage to it. The main villain, while he’s obviously got a very sick and twisted mind, isn’t pure evil either: if it wasn’t for his actions, the animals would have been even worse off, and his feelings for his son give a surprising human touch to him.
In the lead are two young children: a young lion and a young boy. These two form the back-bone of this special, and while they’re not the most interesting characters, they do their job of keeping the series going without getting boring because the creators put a lot of time in fleshing the two of them out. They’re both charming, yet flawed characters that are nice to watch if you can accept the fact that they’re a couple of little kids and that the boy can talk to animals for no apparent reason. The majority of the rest of the cast also has well backed-up reasons for their actions, which is always a nice thing.
Unfortunately though, the ending is pretty cheesy, and nullifies a lot of development that went into the setting. It’s too idealistic and solves things way too easily. Plus, it’s got this thing in which small animals are able to win fights with fully grown animals… which is pretty lame no matter how you look at it. This special really tries, but in the end it can’t fully shake its stereotypical nature.
This anime reminds me a lot of Miyori no Mori: both involve kids who somehow can talk to beings they’re not supposed to see, and protect them from evil humans. In the end, I like Miyori no Mori better because even though it too was idealistic, it feels more complete and heart-warming, plus it showed a more realistic portrayal of its lead character. Nevertheless, Jungle Emperor Leo really served its job as a homage to Osamu Tezuka, and the creators stuffed a lot of nice elements in it.
| Storytelling: | 7/10 |
| Characters: | 8/10 |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 |
| Setting: | 8/10 |
Shangri-La – 23
Haha, what an awesome episode. With such a huge series with so many different subplots and such a frantic pacing, I was really expecting some sort of trainwreck for the final episodes. And yet the opposite turns out to be true, and instead the finale developed into a thriller to stop Ryouko from trying to destroy the world.
And really: it works. Because the rest of the series fleshed Ryouko out so well compared to most villains out there, she’s far away from those stereotypical evil overlords and really stands out as a huge threat to the lead characters. Her mindset is demented, yes. But at the same time as a villain, she’s very competent: she knew exactly how to place the chess pieces right in order to get her way; so far, she only made one mistake throughout the entire series in terms of her own ideals: she didn’t know that the daggers could be removed from the altar, and she didn’t know that they could cut through any kind of steel. And I admit: you’ve got to think pretty far-fetched in order to have seen that one coming if you didn’t know anything about it.
I also love how she also averts one of the tropes that most villains of her kind strangely get away with. Suppose you were working for an evil overlord, and found out that your master was planning to destroy the world, you included. Would you still support this boss? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Ryouko did well to keep all her plans to herself, right until it wouldn’t matter anymore who would find out. I mean, her plan to hold Kunihito’s parents hostages would never have worked for long, but it did buy her the necessary time to take Mikuni away from Kuniko.
And yeah: this episode finally explains what happened to Karin’s parents: they turn out to have been dead all along. Talk about an awesome plot twist here: all the wealth she attained, everything she gained when she created Medusa: it was all just a case of denial in her case.
Okay, so one episode is left. The set-up for the final episode is fairly straightforward: Ryouko wants Mikuni to destroy the world, Kuniko is here to stop her. What I want to see from this series is an ending which is more than “Kuniko and Ryouko have a fight and Kuniko wins”. I’ve seen too many series who have fallen to this trap, but if there’s any series who is able to evade this, it’s Shangri-La. This series really has exceeded my expectations at this point. These past few episodes took it away from its image of “yet another trainwreck” when it showed that it’s very well capable of writing a solid finale. What more could you want?
And yeah. Who cares that Kuniko descended the tube with her dagger? It’s science fiction. Who knows whether that dagger has magical slowing-down powers?
Rating: *** (Awesome)]]>
Guin Saga – 23
At the end of this episode, there’s an insert song. I suspect the lyrics to be gibberish or some other obscure language, and I don’t exactly know who sung it, but whoever she was, she really has an amazing voice. Thumbs up to whoever she was.
Anyway, yet another episode of excellent buildup, and a surprising scene from Sumni who proves once and for all that she’s able to kick ass. Probably the most important part in this episode was Guin (ZOMG) leaving Remus and Linda: for one, he did it because he’s targeted and Remus nearly got killed if it wasn’t for Sumni, and this also allows him to pursue his own goals, now that Remus and Linda have found their place back where they belong. At the same time, Istvan also learns that Naris is planning to marry Linda for his own goals, and quickly ends the alliance he made with him.
Looking back, the weakest part of the Guin Saga was definitely the CG of the Mongol army in the Nosferas arc: while a nice try, the creators just weren’t able to simulate grand grand-scale battles with the limited budget they had. That does sort-of worry me for the finale for this series, as it promises to end with an all-out battle between the armies of Naris, Amnelis, Remus and Scar. Did the creators save up enough budget to make it work, or does the plot have a few more surprises to make up for the flawed battles?
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Konnichiwa Anne – 23
FFor me, this was the best episode of this series since the move to Marysville. I really expected some emo cheese-fest in this episode, with Noah randomly getting sick and all, but as it turns out the creators had very clear ideas on what this episode was going to be about.
Unlike what I thought at first, this episode really wasn’t about Noah. It’s sad and all that he got sick to the verge of death, but I really don’t care about this kid enough to really call his near-demise engaging. What instead caught my attention was how his accident completely jumbled up the Thomas Family: we suddenly got a complete different image of what everyone was like, and a couple of characters actually got some development out of it.
I mean… when Noah collapsed, it was Anne who took him out of the hands of HIS OWN MOTHER, in order to take care of him, while Johanna was instead following Anne and assisting her. You’ve got to fail pretty badly as a mother if you let a nine-year-old make decisions for you that affect the life of your children.
Horace thus far has been your typical child: always goofing off, however in this episode he slowly began to see that he was the oldest. Of course his attempts to show this failed pretty badly, but I think that he reached the point at which he’s going to start to mature, rather than goof around all of the time. Edward meanwhile kept staying with Harry: he’s starting to become a big brother to him, even though before he was just mimicking Horace. I suspect that from now on, Anne is going to have it much easier to try and take care of the house, simply because with this, the Horace/Edward combo has finally been broken.
But the biggest focus of this episode was of course on Bert. In a way, this guy is actually developed better than Anne. While on one hand that’s a bit wrong in a series called “Konnichiwa ANNE”, but on the other hand it allows a really in-depth look at a type of character who hardly ever gets this much attention in today’s anime which is all about moe and bishies. We hardly ever get to see this much attention to a character who is as flawed as Bert, and in this episode you really could see the fruits of all the mistakes he made in the past: what the doctor’s mother said may have been very blunt, but it was how just about everyone in the village saw him as: a good for nothing drunkard who never works. Because of that, he never gets the chance of another job, keeps drinking and just continues the vicious cycle.
The scenes around Noah recovering were a bit too cheesy, on the other hand. I’m surprised that even though this series really knows how little kids behave, they really only seemed to have focused on their every day behavior. Not what they’d be like during a crisis. But then again, that of course is pretty hard to study, since you can’t just sit by a sick kid and observe what his family is doing.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 22
Hmm, this episode was a bit of a step back for this series. It had a great potential, but in my opinion the creators wanted it to make an emotional impact a bit too hard and so the episode featured a bit too much overacting and clichés.
The fight between Lin and Wrath was great: it really showed yet again that this is a series in which nobody is just going to get himself killed that easily. The fight was inspired and dangerous, without overpowering the characters in your typical shounen-esque series. It really showed that Lin’s performance for the past few episodes was indeed very much an act, and is a force to be reckoned with.
But yeah: then we cut to the fight between Ed, Al and Scar. In order to buy some time for Lin to show up (of course not knowing what happened to them), Ed and Al start talking about philosophy. Ed then mentions Winry’s parents, just at the moment which Winry chose to show up in order to check up on him. So she gets emo, grabs a gun that happened to be lying around, and fails to shoot the guy who killed her parents. I’ve never really been a fan of her, and I really feel that her voice actress was really trying too hard in this episode.
It’s a shame, because Scar was really good in this episode. His background is much like in the first series, but a lot more brutal and realistic. He feels sorry for what he did for Winry, but at the same time his mindset is not idealistic enough to just drop his guard and try to make up for her loss in every way he can.
But yeah, I really do wish that the creators are going to make Winry go back to Resembool soon, because she really doesn’t belong as a main character in this series. Once in a while she does something slightly useful, but the show often gets too angsty with her around, with this episode as the epitome. If I want to see angsty teenagers, there are plenty of other shows I can go to.
Rating: (Enjoyable)]]>
Cross Game – 23
Okay, so now that this series has also delved into baseball for all-female teams, I just can’t help but hijack a part of this post for some comparisons on that other baseball show that’s airing this season: Taishou Yakyuu Musume, because this episode pretty blew all of its focus on baseball away.
In a way, Taishou Yakyuu Musume and Cross Game are quite similar: both are slice of life series at heart, with a bunch of characters who just happen to play baseball. TYM plays in the 1920s, while Cross Game takes place in what I guess are the 1980s (due to the lack of PCs anywhere…), and both are feminist in their own ways, without shoving “women rock” down the viewer’s throats.
TYM has one advantage over Cross Game: none of the characters are naturally born talents, destined to be among the nation’s best baseball players. Instead, what keeps the team together is the passion of the central characters to make the team they compiled together, and show that girls can just as easily do sports that were meant for guys.
But yeah, Cross Game pretty much owns it in every single way in terms of development. I’m still not sure how the girls of TYM became this good at baseball within only one year of training, considering how they started with absolutely nothing. Cross Game meanwhile first establishes its characters as people with extraordinary talents and then develops them utterly flawlessly.
This episode really had the best baseball match of the series for me so far: we know that Aoba is extraordinary talented, and she worked hard to hone her talents all through her childhood. And yet this episode showed that she’s not alone, and even though she’s able to bring an entire team together and significantly improve its performance, this episode really showed that there are many other different kinds of talented players out there.
I remember how Major also tried to do this, but instead of creating formidable foes, it instead came with a bunch of shounen-esque villains: a bunch of one-trick ponies who only had one thing they were good at and that’s it. And in that way, Taishou Yakyuu Musume does shine: even though it has lots of characters, it does care for its characterization and uses its limited time to move its characters away from their stereotypes, instead of the overblown melodrama that turned me off at Major, where I really didn’t like the overly cheesy drama.
Anyway, long story short: this episode rocked. TYM pales in comparison, but still is pretty nice slice of life.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
My Dilemma with Gintama
I have a question for the people who have been keeping up with the latest episodes of Gintama. As some of you may know, I’ve been keeping up with Rumbel’s subs for the series. Now that Horriblesubs have released the final missing episodes between Rumbel’s and the start of Crunchyroll’s, I decided to slowly marathon up to the latest episodes. Right now, I have just finished episode 124 and am seriously considering to drop the series altogether.
My question to you is: is Gintama really going to improve?
Because seriously, my patience at this point has entirely run out. I have heard that around episode 140, this series gets serious again with a bunch of good episodes around Kagura’s past, but is that really going to be worth it if the creators are going to delve into boring fillers again? Is it really going to be worth it, watching a dozen episodes, just to get to one good one?
Ever since the new director took over at episode 101 for me, this series has lost all of its charms, but I had faith in the series, hoping that it might pick itself back up. However, then I reached episode 120, which was the funniest episode ever since this guy took over. So what was the best joke in that episode? A rip-off of one of the best jokes of the first director. It was at this point that I realized that it was getting pointless to watch this series.
I truly rate the first 100 episodes among the top comedies I have ever seen. Sure, it also did have its share of weak episodes, but those were vastly outnumbered by the number of awesome and really well written episodes. The new director however just failed to live up to it in every single way. The penis jokes for example have become way too obvious, and that’s just the tip of the ice-berg.
Another pet peeves of the new director is that he tries to stuff in as much references to other shounen series as possible. I’m always in for a good parody, but that’s the problem: instead of parodying, the new director is simply listing a bunch of references without making fun of them. After a while this becomes really, really boring.
Then there’s also the matter of the increase of lengthy arcs. In the first 100 episodes, the only arcs that took up more than 2 episodes were the ones that mattered: the ones that developed the characters and made optimal use of their length. Right now the long arcs are just dragging on beyond belief, often wasting entire episodes with things that can be solved within only 10 minutes. The biggest example of this are episodes 121, 122 and 123: what the heck was the point in dragging this on for three episodes? The entire story would have fit into just a half of an episode, and instead it became an utterly predictable bore-fest that just would not end.
A more fundamental problem however is that the quality of the script-writing has gone down a lot. The first 100 episodes were really good at tugging at my heart-strings, not through its characters, but because of its subtle writing that knew exactly what to say. Especially the long monologues of the characters were deep, meaningful and really got the best out of the characters in the serious moments. That’s completely gone now as well. The dialogue has become uninspired, cheap, and way too much focused on over the top violence in an attempt to make up.
I’m really beginning to feel that I’m just watching the show for the heck of it, which is a shame because there are many better shows at the moment that I’d rather spend my attention at. In the end, there really seems to be a curse on shounen series that go beyond the 100 episode mark: Dragonball Z would have been fine if it just ended after 26 episodes; it would have been a nice action series that way. Naruto was pretty much a good series until the start of the final Chuunin Examinations, after which it dragged its story on and on beyond belief. Bleach was also a very entertaining shounen series for its first 30 episodes… until it descended into a bunch of boring and predictable fights around the Ichigo the Marty Stu. Gintama lasted longer than the others, but in the end, my enthusiasm for the first 100 episodes is just completely gone at this point.
So yeah, if I do end up dropping it (which is pretty likely at this point), what do you want me to do? Write a review about just the first 100 episodes, or is that review not really necessary?]]>
Pandora Hearts – 22
Well, since the manga is going on way beyond the end of this series, which is going to come in three more episodes, I’m not expecting too much from this series’ finale. Sure, the final episode may end up to become awesome, but the story isn’t going to come together like with most endings, and it’s probably going to keep me hungry for more until that second season gets announced. If it ever gets.
Nevertheless though, this show just keeps surprising me. Some of the flashback parts in this episode were utterly demented, not to mention that just about the entire episode was dedicated to Break’s past. We also learn about how Alice and the Will of the Abyss used to be twins, somehow strangely connected through each other in the Abyss. When Alice got killed, I assume that the Will of the Abyss remained in the deepest parts of the abyss, while Alice herself was just cast into the regular Abyss, where Oz ran into her.
Thinking back though, this series did miss out on being a classic. Now that this series has nearly ended, I’m beginning to understand why: compared to the other series this season, the cast of Pandora Hearts didn’t grow on me as much. This series has always excelled at two points: the complex storyline and back-story behind everything, and the demented style of storytelling that just keeps the surprises going. But it also excelled at these points incredibly well.
In the end, Oz ended up as a bit of a flawed character: he works when the focus isn’t on him, but when this show focuses on him it starts focusing a bit too much on his cheesy self-retrospection. As for the rest of the characters: the thing that made them awesome was this series’ style of storytelling: the people from Xebec did a great thing of translating the style from the manga to the anime, and give it as much impact as possible. But in the end, the cast members on their own just aren’t as interesting as the cast of Guin Saga, Phantom, Shangri-la, Full Metal Alchemist, Cross Game, the New Mazinger and some other shows.
Nevertheless, where as the spring season of 2008 brought some truly inspiring science fiction premises and the autumn of 2008 brought lots of new things to the table for the horror-series, the spring of 2009 excelled at the fantasy-premises. The new Full Metal Alchemist, Guin Saga, Pandora Hearts and Shangri-La (which walks a bit in between fantasy and science fiction) and if you include the winter-season Kemono no Souja Erin all came with great and inventive premises that really contributed to the fantasy genre.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>