This episode was a bit hard for me to understand, simply because so many things happened in it and a lot of characters I hardly even knew played a big role in it. It’s a build-up episode in which a lot of different stuff happens. While Remus prepares to take Parro back from the Mongols, a lot of other players are also putting their pieces in the right positions.
I suspect that a lot will become more clear in the next few episodes, but things are definitely looking exciting with that many players around. Istvan happens to intercept a secret message from the Mongols which makes him regret deceiving and killing the general, back in Nosferas, since his family is now looking for the one who did it.
With six episodes left after this, I wonder how the creators are planning to end this series. Are they going to rush through the current arc in order to get to the point of some big climax at episode 26, or are they simply going to keep up the same pace and just stop adapting once episode 26 has passed. If there is going to be a sequel, I’d obviously prefer the latter, but if the creators aren’t going to make a sequel then I’d at least see some sort of satisfying conclusion that at least wraps up the biggest plot threads.
Rating: * (Good)]]>
Konnichiwa Anne – 20
Ah, thank goodness. I was fearing that Henderson would end up ruining the entire series, but thankfully I was wrong. This episode returned back to the darker roots of this series, and was absolutely nothing like the past Marysville arc, and it’s a great thing to see that this series is attempting to go back to the quality of the first ten episodes.
In this episode, we return back to Bert, who is being approached by one of his colleagues, who’s planning to rob the place he works at. He only finds out at the last possible moment, but at that point he’s already broken into the office and stolen the key to the valuable goods of the train station, with nothing there really is to do about it. The episode ends as he is suspected to be the one to have robbed it and gets taken away. This episode really showed that Bert is very easily influenced by the sight of money, and that even though he sobered up, he still hates his current life and wants to be able to spend money on something nice. His biggest sin however was trying to involve Anne with it. She probably is the member of his family that he feels the most comfortable with, but in this episode he really overdid it.
As for Henderson… okay, I’m not going to lie. As much as I hate that woman, she really had her best episode here in which she proposed to Eggman (who looks really different with his beard and hair shaved off!). I’d love to see her move away to a different town, but it’s good enough to see that she’s going to stop teaching and instead leave things to the new teacher.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Zone of the Enders – Dolores Review – 87,5/100
Sunrise and mechas go together like cheesecake and… well, cheese. They’ve been producing their mecha-epics for decades now, ranging from the immensely popular Gundam and Code Geass to the lesser known Overman King Gainer and Zegapain. Still; call me crazy, but out of all their mecha-epics I’ve seen so far (barring Escaflowne, if that one also falls under the genre), my favourite is this rather obscure game adaptation of the Zone of the Enders.
I’m surprised as well to see how well this series turned out. It’s in no way the most sophisticated series out there, but it really does a lot of things right where a lot of the other Sunrise shows have fallen horribly. It’s some good old-fashioned entertainment that hardly ever has a weak or dull moment, never drags and provides plenty of interesting situations, action and characters.
What stands out the most is the cast of characters. Anyone who has been bothered by the immense amount of shows that star whiny teenagers will rejoice: FOR ONCE we have a series in which the lead characters isn’t in his teens, twenties or even thirties! James Links is 49 years old, and even his kids are fully grown adults with their own careers now. I believe that the amount of series that can boast the same can be counted on one hand.
The creators really make use of this opportunity to develop the lead cast into a varied and lovable cast of characters. The story here is about a bunch of characters who are involved into the main plot because they were dragged into it, but because they all had different jobs at the start of the series, they all stand out in their unique talents and the series really makes use of every characters’ specializations and experiences. The lead cast, because they’re all adults, also have rich and inspired backgrounds and this makes it very easy to relate to them in the decisions they make throughout the series.
This series also has a lot to offer in terms of science fiction. This show takes place in a setting in which Mars has been colonized, and the creators don’t forget to spend enough time to flesh this setting out a bit, like explaining how the politics work between the Earth and Mars, how people grow food, what’s up with the atmosphere, the smaller gravity and how people travel between the two worlds. It’s not ridiculously complex, but it is believable and really gives this series a great backdrop to work with. And really, this was the first series I’ve seen that took care to address the matter of deceleration when it comes to high-speed outer-space travel. That definitely was a nice touch.
And the soundtrack! While the OP is a bit… weird (DANGAAAA! Give me more DANGAAAAAA!), the rest of the soundtrack is truly excellent. It was composed by Hikaru Nanase, who most people will probably recognize as the woman who made the soundtracks behind Noein and Requiem of the Phantom, and she again works her magic in this series, with especially one of the best EDs I’ve listened to in a long while. The animation is nothing special, but it does enough to bring the characters alive and not get in the way of anything.
There are a few small flaws here and there, but nothing that really should get annoying. The creators did a wonderful job of keeping the cheese under control, but there are a number of minor scenes in which the cheese becomes a bit too aggravating. A few of the characters are a bit too stereotypical and lack depth, but these cases are mostly about minor characters and scenes. The main storyline is a strong and entertaining one, and even the final battle is a very engaging one, rather than your typical dull Sunrise ending. Zone of the Enders is yet another example of why game adaptations don’t suck.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 |
| Characters: | 9/10 |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 |
| Setting: | 9/10 |
Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 20
Well, that fatherly reunion surely turned out different from the first season. The Hohenheim there was like a burnt out businessman in need of retirement (but then again, who can blame him with the things he went through), but this visit was much shorter and businesslike. He just came to warn Piyoko to leave the country, and Ed happened to be there at the same time. You can see here that he regrets seeing what his son turned into, but at the same time you can see that he’s too busy with a lot of different things to be able to properly take care of his son.
And I think that that’s the biggest difference between the two Full Metal Alchemists: the first series was much more focused on the past, and how past events have influenced people, and how they’re still obsessed over them. It returned in just about every major character. The major villain there was just clinging too much to the past, rather than striving for world conquest. I guess that that’s why all of the characters were toned down in terms of strength: they weren’t of the type of a cast that simply goes forward and forward.
Brotherhood however is of this type, though. Even though the characters sometimes take detours, you can see that everyone is trying to move forward. Whether it is for Ed to find Al’s body back, the Humonculi to carry out whatever evil plan they are carrying out, Roy Mustang’s quest to catch the Humonculi. It’s much more straightforward.
Anyway, this episode was one for the character-development, with the biggest shock being that the “creature” that Ed and Al transformed back then wasn’t actually their own mother. It was just the body of a random guy. Who knows if the guy was actually alive at one point and the two brothers took his body from somewhere. Judging on how Al’s body was taken away, I’d say that it was, and there’s some sort of grown up Al walking around somewhere in the world. If that’s true, then what about Ed’s limbs? And Izumi’s baby? (that probably was the most emotional scene this episode: when she found out that she didn’t actually kill her own child).
Now, we all know why Hohenheim was involved with human transmutation in the first season, but Brotherhood still has a lot of questions lying around, the biggest being why the leader of the Humonculi looks like him. Is Hohenheim some sort of clone of this guy perhaps?
Anyway, when commenting, please refrain from mentioning events that happen after this point in the manga, because the spoilers have gotten a bit out of control recently and I’ve received a couple of complaints about them. It’s fine if one person gives off a subtle hint of what’s going to happen next. It becomes annoying when the twenty people next to this person get the same idea.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Cross Game – 20
This series just gets better and better doesn’t it? This episode probably featured some new record in terms of amount of subtle jokes and references for this series. There were about fifty hints throughout the episode about Kou’s feelings to Aoba’s childhood friend. On top of that, there were fifty more subtle plot points that ever so slightly developed Kou’s and Aoba’s relationship forward. Did all of that really just fit into 20 minutes?
Among the best parts between them in this episode was the way Aoba greeted her new “sempai” as she formally entered the baseball club, the point where the entire school found out that Kou and Aoba weren’t dating, and where the two of them used Akaishi to get each other to the infirmary when both of them sustained a small injury. What struck me the most was the surprisingly innocent way in which Aoba looked at childhood friend (yeah, forgot his name). Is he really going to be just a minor character? We’ve never even her even remotely similar up till now.
But yeah, this is really slice of life as it should be. Even without the subtle romance, those small scenes in which Kou and Azuma lived and trained together and the chemistry they have between themselves was really enjoyable to watch. The way they get on each other’s nerves when one of them slacks off is hilarious to see, not to mention how Kou succumbed to food poisoning in a certain part of this episode.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 – 06
Well, this episode unfortunately wasn’t as impressive as the previous ones. It still was amazing for any regular series, but this is Tokyo Magnitude we’re talking about, which had been consistently awesome up to this point and it’s a shame that this episode broke its flow a bit. This episode was a bit too… “anime”, for a lack of a better description. It was the only episodic episode of this show so far, but especially the animation budget was considerably lower.
The creators thankfully kept trying to animate all of the on-lookers around, characters still are very much animated, but the faces in this episode were sometimes too distorted to take seriously. It works in some series that go with this all the way, like Birdy the Mighty, but here it doesn’t really work, unfortunately.
In this episode, Mari also catches a cold from sleeping without a blanket. She collapses a bunch of hours later, sleeps for some more hours, takes a few pills and after that is completely fine again.
That is not how colds work.
This really was my major beef with this episode. I’m not sure about others, but when I catch a cold I don’t immediately notice this. Of course it’s annoying and I feel terrible while having the cold, but is it really enough for people to pass out on? Where does the heavy breathing come from, and why do they disappear that often? I’ve seen this often in anime: people catch colds and nearly always pass out afterwards for dramatic effects. Or do the Japanese have different colds than the Western world or something? Especially in a show as realistic as this one, it stands out.
But apart from that, there was a lot to like in this episode and it really allowed us to show a different side of Mari. The aftershocks made as much of an impact as ever, especially when Mari, Mirai and Yuki, especially since they were inside a building (the building where Mari works, actually). We learn that a bunch of accidents have taken place at the place where Mari lives, and she suddenly becomes a completely different person as she tries to find out more about what happened back there. All we know from this episode is that there’s some sort of fire going on, but nothing on her daughter yet. We do get to see another bunch of pictures of her daughter and her husband though, along with a small flashback of how she and her husband fell for each other.
So a major part of this episode was spent on Mari, trying to decide whether or not to abandon Mirai and Yuki in order to check up on her daughter. Mirai and Yuki even go as far as borrowing a scooter from a person who managed to survive the earthquake without any major casualties (I loved that scene in which they tried to steer that scooter. So realistic). In the end, she just decides to take her time and go along with the two children.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Pandora Hearts – 20
Okay.
That was awesome!
Whoever said that fillers are bad? Most of this episode was just random banter, but that’s exactly what made it so hilarious at this stage. Especially when Oscar brought out the liquor in the second half of the episode, the hilarity really started. And okay, I know I said filler, but it’s not like this episode was completely useless either. It did a great job of fleshing out the characters, developing them slightly and wrapping up the past arc.
But seriously, more anime should have drinking episodes. They almost often result in hilarity and yet you hardly ever see them. Obviously with shows about kids this is understandable, but with series where the characters are sixteen years or older, I don’t see much harm. This episode really showed some interesting new things about the characters, like how half of the members of the main cast are terrible at handling alcohol. Only Oz and Oscar seem to be fine with it, and Break only pretends to be drunk, but Sharon turns into an even bigger narcissist than she already was, and especially Gilbert and Alice experienced really heavy mood-swings.
Something also tells me that in this episode, the creators were having the time of their lives trying to come up with all of the different facial expressions throughout this episode. They were all very creative, and really funny.
As for the main plot, there was only about a minute dedicated to it, but the twist we learned was pretty big: Eliot is yet another guy who was warped into the future during the tragedy of Sabrie. In fact, he was the one who wrote Alice’s song, and something tells me that the creators had a very good reason to keep Alice out of the action during the past Ada arc.
There is some bad news, though: next week is going to be a hiatus. Damn.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Phantom – 20
Hell yeah! This episode was all kinds of awesome stuck together! Talk about a complete change of atmosphere.
The way this episode started out… out of all the things that the Japan Arc would be about, the last thing I expected was that the show would end in a high school setting. The OP… was so much different from what I expected and fitted these final six episodes so well. There’s a lot of chaos going on, and yet this episode has been more slice of live than this series has ever shown! That shows some awesome possibilities, and I know that Koichi Mashimo is going to be able to get the best out of this.
So basically, two years (!) have passed since the last episode. Reiji and Helen have travelled the world; they first came to the Philippines and now have moved into Japan half a year ago, and they’ve been pretending to be brother and sister, since it would have been a bit awkward if a teenaged couple suddenly moved in and started following classes. They’re also back again acting, like they did in one of the beginning episodes. Especially Reiji has gotten a lot better at it now.
But yeah, just about everything in this episode was perfectly executed. Reiji’s time spent with his potential girlfriend did exactly what it needed to do: show how he and Helen changed, and how they’ve come to live their lives now. It’s a perfect build-up, since we also got to know much more about them, and the setting which they moved into.
But the real moment of epic in this episode was obviously the point at which Cal shows herself. Typical of Bee-Train’s storytelling, but it works so incredibly well.
And to think that even in this episode, so close to the ending, there still are new background tunes being played, and they rock just as much as the rest of the soundtrack while at the same time being completely different in tone: the first arc had a really dark and melancholic soundtrack, the second arc was more upbeat and pimpin’, while right now we got more… colourful atmosphere, if that makes any sense. The soundtrack here has a lot more warmth than we’ve seen so far.
In any case, this is one of these rare series in which you can really see that the creators spent lots of time thinking of how to make it work in the absolute best way, and where it actually works out incredibly well. In 2009, I can only recall 3 other series which managed to do the same: Ristorante Paradiso, Tokyo Magnitude and Birdy the Mighty 2.
Rating: *** (Awesome)]]>
Basquash! – 20
Okay, so with episodes like this one it may have been better to have recalled the old director, because with episodes like this one you need subtlety, and the new director sure as heck doesn’t have any. The result is that we have an episode full of character-development that may have been a bit too straightforward for its own good.
So yeah, my guess would be that this episode was the new director’s way to just get the character background over with, presumably because the first director either forgot it or didn’t find it too important. We learn how Haruka decided to become a shoe designer because she saw giant footprints when she was still a child. She also dated James Loan for a while because he was the first one to believe in her story about those giants. We also learn that Miyuki had lost her father in an accident when she was younger, and that’s why her grandfather ended up taking care of her.
On top of that, Flora’s sister busts our two male companions out of prison (finally), Flora herself starts realizing that she can’t just follow Dan and the other around for the rest of her life: she’s had her fun, so what’s next? Rouge also finally woke up again from her slumber. Overall, in terms of continuity this was a very valuable episode.
But yeah, the CHEESE. This also was a big episode for the romance, but without the subtlety that this series used to have it was just an onslaught of blushing, embarrassed faces and very cheesy smiles at each other. Oh, and lots of angst in Rouge’s case. That definitely was annoying and not near as good as the romance between Dan and Rouge during the beginning of the series. This is just waaaaay to predictable.
I’m really not sure what to think of the finale, the way it’s being set up. With a finale that’s going to be a cross between Kiss Dum and Macross Frontier, it really can go either way; it’s all going to depend on whether the new director decides to focus on his manly action… or his cheesy romance. Please let it be the former!
Rating: (Enjoyable)]]>
Umineko no Naku Koro ni – 07
Okay, so after last week’s little episode of background, we’re back to the island and get another clue to what’s going on with this series. This series’ set-up is indeed a bit like Higurashi, but with slight differences. Most notably that Higurashi focused at different people with each arc, while in Umineko instead keeps on looping the same story with perhaps one or two slight differences that we’re not even sure of.
So this episode shows a bit more of what happened in the first half of the first episode, with the big difference here the appearance of Beatrice. At this point, it’s still not clear whether these events happened exactly the way they did in the first arc, or whether Beatrice conveniently inserted herself into the story to make it seem to Battler that she indeed existed.
Since Higurashi also was a really layered story, I also suspect something similar to happen here: the basic world has no magic whatsoever, but outside of it Beatrice’s power has free range, and her ultimate purpose seems to be to have everyone acknowledge her, and my guess would be that she tries to make everyone believe that she has magic, while in fact she doesn’t have any at all in the “real world”. This episode would then show that she managed to get accepted her powers apart from Battler, which is probably going to be the main focus of this series.
If this indeed turns out to be true, then that must mean that Beatrice is a very talented illusionist. The way that she seemed to make Maria close her eyes while turning the candy back seems to suggest that, and I assume that she used some sort of trick to prevent Maria’s mother from seeing it. While it’s a bit far-fetched, the butterflies then could be the product of some sort of optical illusion concerning holograms.
This episode also paid a bit of attention to Maria and her mother, and learn that Maria may have an issue of multiple personalities that run in her family. Perhaps Kinzou is also bothered by it, or his mysterious wife could be the key in this. It also could have spontaneously appeared with her, but in any case you could see that the two of them were related to each other in this episode. Maria’s mother at one time is the worried and caring mother, and the next moment she starts beating her own child. With that, it’s somewhat understandable for Maria to develop a split personality as well. With the way she seems to be closed in her own world, her ramblings about Beatrice could be blamed on her imagination running wild.
In any case, while this episode did build up, I liked it a lot. Beatrice could have been a bit less stereotypically evil, but overall it was a very nice episode. Oh, but one thing: I know that we’re not supposed to expect much from the graphics in this series, but could the creators in the future please try to give Battler a less constipated face when he’s angry? This isn’t Dragonball Z, or anything.
Oh, and to close off, I want to put a little disclaimer here: THIS POST IS ABOUT THE ANIME VERSION OF UMINEKO. If you want to say something about events that happen after this episode, then GO FIND A BLOG THAT COVERS THE VISUAL NOVEL AND PUT IT THERE.
I really hate to put up this warning, but I’ve personally gotten really tired of all of the visual novel fans flaunting their superior knowledge to us simple mortals who haven’t played the game yet. I’m interested in seeing the speculations of other people who haven’t played the games yet, and are also in the dark of what’s going on here. What’s the point of hearing the speculations of someone who already knows what’s going to happen?!
And sure, normally I’m not such a Nazi with this. A subtle hint of what’s going to happen next of course isn’t bad, but the problem arises with popular franchises as this one, when seemingly every single fan of the visual novel is keen to drop a small hint of what’s going on. With hundreds of “small hints” like these, it just doesn’t remain fun anymore. Not to mention the few not-so-subtle hints that float among them.
I know that I’m confused, but isn’t that the whole point of this series? Then what are you doing trying to clarify things that were meant to be completely mind-boggling?
Rating: * (Good)]]>