The past two episodes of this series made me think a lot about the nature of criticism. Especially after the previous episode, which I slammed down for having Yuki supposedly collapse for cheap drama, even though it’s not that weird for people to get sick in these situations. I also remember people who weren’t happy with that episode because it included robots. But yeah, then you have things as this: is it still unrealistic and unbelievable when it’s being used in real life?
I think that a lot of people (including myself; I’ve caught myself doing this plenty of times), whenever they are turned off they start looking for reasons why. These seeming logic flaws are then very easy targets for these criticisms. Ignoring the obvious cases in which a plot twist becomes so stupid or unbelievable that it destroys the entire suspension of disbelief, these things often aren’t the real reasons for these declines in quality, and in the case of very realistic shows as Tokyo Magnitude, you can see people who start blaming things that turn out to be perfectly normal.
In the end, the only thing that I can really criticize this series for is that I don’t like the OP. I’m one of those people who is too lazy to skip through OPs (aside from perhaps marathons), but at the same time I’ve never been a big fan of neither j-pop or j-rock, and Abington Boy’s School is no exception to this rule, and the song they used for this series’ OP is getting more and more on my nerves.
I think the thing with this series is that episodes 2-5 were utterly amazing, and the past episodes, instead of building up to a great climax at the end, instead went to go for a much quieter aftermath. It’s not exactly the same as Eden of the East, where it became clear along the way that the creators just took too much on their plate and badly paced the series after its initial episodes. With Tokyo Magnitude, I think it’s obvious that the past few episodes lacked the same emotional impact of the first five episodes. The question however is: does it need to be?
I’m getting more and more convinced that this show indeed doesn’t really need to be. I’ve become so used to anime, which nearly all have the general pattern of a build-up that gets increasingly full of tension, but here we have an entire subversion of this trope. During an earthquake, the biggest emotional shock comes right after it happens, and after that the tension, while it’s still there, fades as more and more people regain their sensibilities. The more I think about it, the more realistic it becomes.
Anyway, about this episode, aside from the total chaos in the hospital it was a very quiet one. Yuki turns out to be fine for now, while Mirai has visibly grown up while Mari becomes more and more worried as to what happened to her children. It’s a role reversal here: the reason Mirai managed to grow wasn’t just because she had to look after Yuki, but also because Mari, who started out as a mother figure, started to show more and more of her weaknesses. And that was the strength of episode six: its purpose wasn’t to insert some random illness, but instead show that Mari instead was just a human being, and at that point Mirai realized that her whining wasn’t going to help at all to solve the situation, especially since you can really see that she wants Mari to be reunited with her daughter.
As for the reason why Mari refused to take the scooter in episode: she might actually be running away. Take a look at this episode: instead of walking fast, like what I would do when I was worried about someone, she often walks way behind Mirai and Yuki. It’s as if she’s scared to find out that her daughter died.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Edit: I rewatched this episode, based on your comments, and you’re right: they’ve given this episode a completely different meaning, and what I believed was a rather quiet episode has now become incredibly sad instead. I really have to give thumbs up for the creators for having the guts to go this far.
Rating: *** (Awesome)]]>
Basquash! – 21
Okay, that’s it. This series has completely given up any form of logic at this stage. I mean, seriously. It surpasses itself in terms of stupidity in this episode. There were plenty of moments in this episode that just made me ask… “why?!”.
A list of bullet-points of all the wtf-moments of this episode:
– Satelight: what the heck are you doing making Flora fall IN LOVE with Dan. There are five episodes left, for God’s sake. What the hell are you doing slapping on a harem at the last possible minute?!
– In this episode, Dan and Flora end up abandoning everything else in order to be able to reach Rouge’s last concert on time. In order to get through some sort of customs that are in the way, they dress up as women. Never mind the question where they got these clothes from, DAN STILL DOESN’T REALIZE THAT FLORA IS A GIRL.
– To make things worse, even though he thought of the clever plan of dressing up, he ends up blowing his cover, simply by getting into another fight with Spanky.
– There are lots of guards at the customs, with advanced weaponry, mechas and professional equipment. Dan blows his cover right in the middle of them, surrounded by about two dozen of these guys. And yet they let them go. They don’t arrest a criminal who is wanted for committing multiple crimes and who even is notorious enough to have entire billboards full of wanted posters. Yes.
– Also, check this picture of Rouge as she’s lying under some medical thingy. What the hell is up with that waste? I mean, anorexia is one thing, but this is just ridiculous.
– Later in the episode, Dan and Flora get themselves surrounded yet again. All these soldiers are armed with guns. Dan fights them off… with a basketball. A freaking basketball. Versus dozens of guards. And he actually wins.
– To make matters even more ridiculous, Flora finds this a good moment to show her real identity. She pulls off her clothes, under which her full princess outfit was hidden.
– The only thing that all of the guards are able to do is kneel and make weird puking noises. No seriously, what was up with those yelps of pain as they kneeled before the princess?
– Flora uses her authority to stop Dan’s arrest. Yes, being a princess is fun!
But yeah, on the other hand: who cares? I think that we all should have seen this point coming, right when it became clear that the director of Kiss Dum was going to take over this series. In the end, all I’m asking from this series is an entertaining finale. I remember that last year at this point, Macross Frontier did the complete opposite and delivered an incredibly generic and boring finale for me, so my big hope here is that Satelight is able to avoid this and end the series on a high note, rather than with a disappointment. You can see that this series is still building up at this point, so it really can go anywhere at this point.
And for all the stupidity, I also have to admit that this episode was fun to watch. Sure, it didn’t make any sense, but setting aside the newly developed romance it was fun to see Dan and Flora together, and especially Dan’s dress rocked. The new soundtrack of this series is also really good. And finally we have a Kawamori-series with a soundtrack that isn’t based around j-pop.
Rating: (Enjoyable)]]>
Umineko no Naku Koro ni – 09
Okay, so this series isn’t exactly the best of the season at the moment, but then again that’s only logical since it’s clearly only building up, and yet I’m already enjoying it a lot. when this series started, I admit that I was really doubtful whether or not Chiaki Kon would be able to pull off this series, considering the other shows she has worked on after Higurashi, but this again shows that even directors with flawed records can be able to produce good series if the source material and guidance is good enough.
Anywaay, while the first arc focused on the younger generation, this arc puts the focus at the servants, as they’re labelled as the prime suspects. This episode shows that someone killed Kanon and Jessica, dragged Kanon out of the room and locked the room afterwards. There are only six keys in existence that are able to open the lock, since Beatrice ruled out window-climbing and lock-picking with the red texts. There were two keys inside the room as it was locked: Jessica’s and Kanon’s. That means that there are four keys left, and all of them are in the possession of the four servants left alive.
In this way, the most suspicious one is Gouda. He could have faked his own death in the first arc and he had no alibi for the death of Jessica and Kanon. Furthermore, Battler’s argument of how such a guy with a nice face couldn’t possibly be the murderer is weak. Try saying that to Higurashi.
However, that doesn’t really mean that one of the servants is the culprit. Have we actually seen it confirmed that all four keys are present at their owner? I think that we’ve established by now that the killer is a good pick-pocket. He could have just taken one of the servants’ keys to make it seem like they did it, which also would make more sense because it would be stupid of a servant to put the blame on himself like this. In this way, Rosa fits as the main suspect: she too could have faked her own death in the first arc, and taking charge of the situation as a leader figure does kind-of take suspicions away.
That just leaves the question as to who committed the murders here. The illusions in this series become weirder and weirder, and harder to logically explain. Previously, you could just assume that the murders on Kanon were flashy set-ups by Beatrice, but Gouda actually felt the zombie-Kanon as some sort of solid matter. Do you suppose that the killer actually used some sort of magic mushrooms in order to accomplish that?
One thing that rather annoys me about this series is how they keep censoring the gory parts. I mean, come on. Take a look at Himitsu ~The Revelation~ for example: in that series the corpses were even more disturbing, and not even an iota was censored, which really contributed to its dark and creepy mood. This show airs like, how late? 2:00 in the morning? What kid is going to be awake at that hour?
And as usual: when discussing this episode, please refrain from mentioning events that happen after this point in the visual novel.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Aoi Hana – 09
A peculiar episode for this series, especially with only two episodes left after this. You’d think that this close to the end, the creators would pump up the drama, but instead we get what is likely the quietest episode of this series yet. There was a lot of simple slice of life.
So in this episode, Kyouko basically takes Akira, Fumi and some of her classmates to a holiday house owned by her fiance. A lot of the episode was just focused to the bunch of them having fun. There was a bit of drama, but this was much lighter than previous in this series. Basically, Kyouko’s fiance turns out to really like Kyouko, even when he knows that she has a crush on a girl. Yet again a subversion of the “childhood friends becoming lovers”-trope. This also is an important episode for Akira at the end, where she finally seems to realize that she’s the only one of her friends who still hasn’t fallen in love.
With two episodes left, I’m very curious to see how the creators are planning to end this series. Of course, I’d be happy with a second season, but there are other shows that are currently airing that deserve a sequel much more than this series. With the Noise time-slot apparently having bombed, I don’t think that the producers are very keen on keeping this series going, and I’m really not bothered if that turns out to be the case: we’ve got ourselves a nice, short and consistently excellent romance here that was really good while it lasted.
I personally hope that the creators are going for a Hitohira end here: don’t try to save the biggest climax for last, and instead try to wrap up the plot nicely, and let life just go on afterwards. That’s going to be perfect for this series, instead of inserting some shallow conclusion in which Akira suddenly comes to realize that she’s in love with Fumi. That’s going to be rather lame.
Rating: * (Good)]]>
Chocchan's Story Review – 85/100
Okay, time for me to review another really obscure movie that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago. Chocchan’s story is an adaptation of an autobiographical story of a mother during the second World War. Unfortunately, the only version that I could find was a Finnish sub, of all things, so unless you happen to know Finnish or Japanese, don’t bother to ask where to get it. If however, you do get the chance to watch this movie and don’t mind a quiet and slow-paced story, then I really recommend it.
The thing with this movie is that it’s wonderfully down to earth. Even though it plays during the very dark World War II, it never forgets its main focus: the characters. A lot of horrible and depressing things happen throughout the movie, but it never attempts to do things over-theatrical. This is a movie full of subtle details in the characters’ developments.
It’s also one of the few movies I’ve seen to pull off some actual credible and believable character-development. It shows the life of the main characters, starting right from the moment she gets engaged until more than ten years later, when she bore her fourth child. there are numerous time-skips throughout the movie that also allow her children to be developed this way. Seriously, in anime it’s very rare to see a mother or parent with this much depth; let alone in a movie.
The downside to this movie is its music. Whereas the storytelling is full of subtlety, the music isn’t. The story is supposed to be subtle, but a lot of the most dramatic moments lose their touch when an incredibly loud set of violins thunder through the speakers, overpowering just about everything else. A soundtrack often does wonders in enriching a story, but this is one of those few anime that would have been better without any music at all.
Nevertheless, this series really succeeds in creating a cast of “real” and likable characters and does a really good job at showing the struggles of a mother during the second World War, not knowing whatever happened to her husband who was recruited by the army. It deals with heavy themes and struggles, and yet it’s well acted without crossing the borders into melodrama. Especially if you’re a fan of the World Masterpiece Theatre, you’re bound to like this little movie.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 |
| Characters: | 9/10 |
| Production-Values: | 7/10 |
| Setting: | 8/10 |
GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class – 08
I already suspected this for a while, but now I’m sure: Yamaguchi is awesome. She’s such an adorable character in her innocence and love for art, and that dream sequence at the end of this episode was all kinds of awesome compiled together. I’m really getting more and more warmed up to the characters for this series.
The episode starts with a strange sketch in which Noda theorizes what kind of colours and items would match the different members of the cast. This becomes sort-of a running theme throughout this episode. It seems that it’s an idea she has for a manga, though I suspect that she never really started on it. When she asks what kind of item would match Yamaguchi, it seems that everyone quickly thinks of a pair of glasses.
Next up is another quick sketch in which the cast members start to imitate their classmates, of which Noda’s impression of Nozaki made Nozaki rather angry… The sketch after that is a strange one, which I guess imitates one of those nature wildlife programs and talks about students in their natural environment…
They then turn back to color associations, and how you look at the warmer colours like red and orange, and the colder ones like blue and purple. Noda figures that Tomokane and Yamaguchi both belong to the warmer colours (due to Tomokane’s energetic personality, and Yamaguchi’s warm nature), while Nozaki and Oomichi are the colder ones (Nozaki due to her calm and down to earth personality and Oomichi… yeah). As for the question who Noda is, Nozaki figures that yellow fits best.
Next up Nozaki, who comes up with a magazine that has one of those tests that analyzes people based on their favourite colour. Oomichi, with her favourite colour being black, obviously gets some rather negative results.
Next up is a short sketch about Origami, especially Yamaguchi and Oomichi are good at it (with Oomichi only folding pure black stuff). Yamaguchi is out of a certain colour, and so she goes to buy some new stuff, while Nozaki keeps reminding her not to talk to strangers, et cetera.
Next up is a long series of short sketches about the use of colours and materials, in which the series tries to explain certain terms in art in a playful way. They are:
– Vivid Tone, or lots of bright colours. This has Noda dressed up as a witch who turns Tomokane’s hair dark green and Nozaki’s tea bright green. Certainly vivid. Interestingly enough, when she drinks milk her colours become so diluted with white so that she nearly fades away.
– Pale Tone. Witch Noda is back, this time with pale colours.
– Dull Tone. We somehow turn to the other Art Club for this one as Awara tries to get Homura to draw an oil painting, who obviously has no idea how that works. Awara doesn’t seem to have a clue either. Don’t ask me what this has to do with a dull tone… perhaps it’s referring to the dull tone in which oil paintings were usually painted?
– Dark Tone. We see a very dark picture of Oomichi in a very dark background, and they use the interesting example of how a room with a dark ceiling seems to look much more ominous than if it had a dark floor instead (hmm, never noticed that one).
– Grayish Tone brings us to a setting in slightly grayer colours. Another nice example is having a birthday party in which everyone is in gray. It just doesn’t fit.
– Strong Tone, at the Art Club again. They talk a bit about pencils versus brushes, and how you never seem to need white pencils (so true ^^;).
– Mono Tone. Somehow this involves moldy bread. I’m still not exactly sure why…
The next half of the episode ranks among my favourite parts of this series so far. We see Yamaguchi in a very sleepy mood as she walks to her next classes, and she can hardly stay awake as they try to attend a class about surrealism. I’m not going to bother to try and understand what the teacher says about this, because half of the time people talk right through her.
Anyway, Yamaguchi eventually falls asleep, and even when it’s her turn to read parts from the book there’s no way to wake her up, so Tomokane and Noda try to do some ventriloquism act with her. In the end, Yamaguchi can’t even remember that that happened to her. It seems that she always gets very sleepy after breakfast or exercising. Noda suggests to go to her locker and gets something against sleep.
What follows is a crazy sequence of dream scenes inside Yamaguchi’s head that I can only describe as brilliant. No seriously, the enormous amount of creativity that runs around in her mind is just awesome, ranging from mermaid Nodas to flying staircases. It also builds further upon the Trompe l’Oeil of the previous episode, without even making it seem like the creators were simply reusing the same stuff.
We even get to see an image of a young Yamaguchi drawing. After that there is a bit of an aftermath and after that the episode ends.
Anyway, I may be a bit late in saying this, but this is a very good adaptation, isn’t it? I mean, I haven’t read the original 4koma manga, but I doubt that it was literally the same as what we see here right now. You can see the which sketches were directly taken from the manga, but there also is lots of stuff that really amazes me if it started out in a simple 4koma format. The director really did a great job of adding the energy to this adaptation and adding a few nice things here and there to keep this consistently entertaining.
But what amazes me the most is the following: out of all of the eight episodes so far, every single one of them has been different and unique from the other. They were all dedicated to a different topic, style or mood, and even when they revisit old material, they build further upon it, rather than simply milking out the same jokes like what too many comedies do nowadays. I remember how a previous work of Hiroaki Sakurai (the director) did have this problem: Cromartie High School was hilarious, but it really tended to repeat itself. I’m really glad to see that he realized this and made every single episode new and fresh. This really is everything a good comedy should be.
Also, this is one of the first school series I have seen in a long, long while that actually teaches me something. Am I the only one who sees the irony in this?
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Shoutbox Topics: Realism in Nana
“Mhmm yea, I’d have to say NANA is the most realistic/engaging shoujo I’ve ever watched. I’ve watched the season like 3 times and following the manga currently. I just really felt the realtionships were so realistic and the way the characters acted were amazin” On the contrary, Theowne wasn’t impressed: “Didn’t get too far with NANA, just seemed like superficial characters having superficial relationships. I’ll pass.” “Meh, it’s a matter of your attitude or personality. Me, I just didn’t care about any of the NANA characters. Complete opposite of Honey and Clover.” Sappire adds: “One of the Nanas is indeed superficial, but so are many people in real life. I think NANA does a realistic portrait of people’s feelings and fears, it’s definitely worth a watch.” senerikfred also liked the realism in Nana: “I’m with Opio-NNANA’s characters are engagingly realistic. Hachi ended up as one of my favorite characters all-time. She’s shallow for sure, but not an idiot or malicious.” “Gack. I don’t usually watch stuff as predictable as NANA, but what I like about it is that there aren’t dramatic twists left and right, and it’s so meticuous in fleshing out the characters that more often than not, you know exactly what’s going to happen. It’s made clear exactly what everyone’s reasons are. And damn, DERP isn’t everything there is to like.” But Theowne notes: “I’m sure its realistic.=) It’s similar to why I don’t read “realistic” celebrity gossip. I just don’t care about these superficial soap-operas of such characters, and so it felt emotionally hollow. And remember, this is all just my own honest reaction, different people will interpret it their own way. I’m not saying I’m right and you’re wrong. =)” I know I missed a number of posts, but this seems to be the gist of it. Now, go ahead with your discussion without those nasty limitations of that shoutbox. ;)]]>
Shangri-La – 21
Three episodes left, and we finally move to something that resembles a climax. This episode was much like episode five, in which a lot of focus was spent on trying to hack Medusa out of trying to destroy the world, especially focusing on Karin vs Kuniko. In this episode, Karin finally has to learn to grow up a bit, and the highlight of this episode was Kuniko, trying to talk some sense into her.
In the next episode, we should finally get some light of what the hell Ryouko has been up to throughout the series, as she finally seems to be ready to execute whatever plan she was scheming. Finally we see her taking one of the digmas (Mikuni) back to her. It could be that she was simply waiting for one Digma to collect all of the daggers, and figured that it might have gone faster if she’d just Karin collect the daggers, rather than send her own men to do the job. Probably she also did this in order to avoid suspicions on her part. That still leaves the question why she’s willing to let Atlas succumb to earthquakes, though.
I’m surprised that this episode was relatively quiet, especially since this series still has a lot of work to do in its final hour to wrap everything up. I suspect that this was really the last calm before the storm and I really wonder what the creators are planning to end this series with. Endings are always really tricky to really pull of well. This series does have the ingredients to make it work, but I’ve seen many awesome series with unimpressive endings, so I’m just going to keep my expectations low for this one.
Rating: * (Good)]]>
Guin Saga – 21
Haha! This series is getting closer and closer to the big climax. Or at least… the big climax that’s going to close off the first of hopefully many Guin Saga seasons. To be honest, out of all the shows I’m watching right now that are about to end, this is the series that I’m rooting for a sequel the most. With a show focused so heavily on politics, you really NEED lots and lots of episodes to get the best out of it. The same goes with Tytania. Looking back, it just isn’t worth watching if the producers had no intentions to animate the second half of the story.
In any case, this is one of those typical episodes in which the plot thickens, mostly around the Parro revolution. It becomes clear that a lot of the former citizens of Parro have grown rather tired by the Mongol occupation, and while on their own they don’t stand much of a chance (their strategy of rolling inside barrels may have worked for a few soldiers, but they were quickly outdone by the Mongol soldiers), however Naris managed to get them under his control in time, and so they’ll prove to be of a much better use rather than simply Mongol Target Practice.
Speaking of which… I’m surprised that Naris so easily gave up the cover that he was dead. I’m still not exactly sure why he bothered to try and marry Amnelis, though it might have been a move to confuse the enemy and humiliate them. In any case, it’s going to be interesting to see how Amnelis is going to react when she learns of this.
Cuthron (or however you spell that in English), unfortunately ended up dying in this episode, because he was being out-witted by the very same Mongol officer that he was trying to kill. It turns out that he was a traitor in the Mongol army; my memory isn’t exactly clear on this matter, but if I recall correctly he was converted by Rikia when she was taking care of Naris’ fake assassination.
Speaking of which, only when I went to the official site to look up Cuthron’s name I realized the incredible size of the cast of this series. Seriously, it’s a enormous washing-list that just keeps on and on. It’s amazing that so many characters have already passed the screen. Especially considering how we’re only at what? Novel fifteen out of 130? At this rate this show has a good chance of surpassing even Baccano and Saiunkoku Monogatari in terms of its amount of characters… Especially Mister Question Mark intrigues me. Why did the creators bother to put him (or her) up when there’s absolutely nothing known about him (or her).
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Konnichiwa Anne – 21
When I read some of windy’s comments, it amuses me that we both ended up liking and disliking the complete opposites in this series. It just shows that there are many ways to look at this series, even though it’s not among the better World Masterpiece Theatres.
I can somewhat understand how the Marysville arc was supposed to be what this series should be about: Anne and her every day life. However, I think that the biggest problem I had with the Marysville arc is that it was a complete rip-off of Emily of the New Moon. Its adaptation, Kaze no Shoujo Emily, was one of my favourite series of 2007, and I really hated seeing it butchered like this, with a lot copied over and just about every good part removed, with the most notable one being Henderson as Anne’s teacher. At least the Thomas arc had its own identity, of a poor family that was on the verge of being broken up due to a drunk husband. It’s a very down-to-earth problem, and I liked that part a lot.
But yeah, I do agree that these parts did take the focus away from what’s really important in this series: Anne. In exchange we got a very nicely developed Thomas family, but as a prequel of Anne of Green Gables, this series fails. I think that I stopped looking at this series as a prequel a long time ago. This simply is a show that just happens to have a lead character with the same name and looks as in Anne of Green Gables. Nothing more, nothing less.
In any case, I thought that this really was a great episode for Anne. I thought that they would again focus on Bert, but instead he simply gets fired and throws his family in disarray. The focus became much more on Anne, who now had to work extra hard because Johanna would end up working continuously in order to be able to support her family. We also see her get mad at her brothers for the first time, which definitely was the most memorable scene in this episode.
For a minute, I was worried that she was indeed going to join Henderson and Eggman as they moved away from town, but thankfully she eventually chooses not to. A very nice build-up to the point at which she in the end is really going to have to leave them. Especially imagining that the second house she eventually ends up in was much worse than the opportunities she has got to live happily as a family.
But yeah, there were parts at which this show was a bit too cheesy again, mostly again around Henderson. I just couldn’t buy that the entire class was crying because Henderson had to leave. I mean, come on. She wasn’t that good of a teacher and she wasn’t at her post for that long either.
Anyway though, I’m very glad that she’s gone now. The good thing about this show is that it seems to be divided into four arcs that are probably going to be entirely different from each other, so if you don’t like one arc you can just wait until the next one and just consider the dull arc as build-up for the good parts. I’m interested where this series is going to go after this, now that it stopped being an Emily of the New Moon rip-off and can start focusing on its own direction again.
Rating: * (Good)]]>