Anime nowadays is at a standstill. True or not?

by psgels, posted in Shoutbox Topics

Okay, so the discussion has been going on in a number of posts and shoutboxes, but the subject is interesting so I decided to make one post about it. Blogsome unfortunately doesn’t support the option to move comments, so I’ll instead quote what the different people have said about it. It first appeared in the shoutbox. Unfortunately the shoutbox stores everything in reverse order and the beginning of the discussion has already been eaten, but I’m too lazy to fix it.

Tracer: overlooked.
8 Jul 09, 22:33
Tracer: Also, PaTRiX’s point on not knowing a lot of the animes from the 80s and 90s is very true. Back then, fansubbing wasn’t as easy as prominent as it is now so the bad shows weren’t subbed and they were
8 Jul 09, 22:28
Tracer: Though regardless, like tealovertoma said, regardless of the low sales, someone will always make some creative and original series.
8 Jul 09, 22:27
Tracer: I’m not trying to say that all good anime sell well (for example, every anime by Yuasa is a failure in terms of DVD sales) but a lot more are successful than what people might think.
8 Jul 09, 22:25
Tracer: Baccano! sold on average about 2000 units per volume (decent numbers). Terra e was selling around 10k per volume. GiTS: SAC was selling near the 20k range. Mononoke was also about 8k-10k per volume.
8 Jul 09, 22:23
Tracer: I don’t think we have to worry about there being less innovative anime because they don’t sell. Believe it or not, some good anime actually sell quite a bit.
8 Jul 09, 21:13
PaTRiX: The thing about the ratio is probably true, but in the late 80’s and the 90’s we didn’t know about the crappy anime. So that makes it feel like there was more good anime.
8 Jul 09, 21:11
PaTRiX: and the animation style. That’s the main “problem” people complaining about “new anime” have even if they don’t even know it themselves. But the same is true form almost anything.
8 Jul 09, 21:11
tealovertoma: There will always be a market for creative and original ideas. Be it in anime, tv shows, movies or music. It’s not like it’ll die out, and I agree with Tracer, the ratio is higher. Great list btw.
8 Jul 09, 21:10
PaTRiX: But I’m going to repeat this, if you have watched anime for 10 – 20 years you have seen allmost all the stories that could possibly happen. The only thing that changes is how they are told …
8 Jul 09, 21:07
PaTRiX: And what people like reverse probably want to say is that some over the top 80’s or 90’s anime is still better than some generic harem anime. It’s a matter of taste probably, but I’m with them.
8 Jul 09, 21:04
PaTRiX: The last thing reverse said is true, the different and more interesting things sell less. So they are produced in lower quantity because they are harder to produce than say a generic harem anime.
8 Jul 09, 20:47
reverse: those innovative idea don’t sell well . so it not surprise, we will see less of them
8 Jul 09, 20:29
reverse: who you referring to tracer. yes we got innovative anime every year, i only disappointed that the anime consumer
8 Jul 09, 20:22
Tracer: It’s not like the ratio of good-to-bad shows is any less lower than befre.
8 Jul 09, 20:21
Tracer: We still get some very interesting and innovative anime every year like Kaiba, Kino’s Journey, Terra e, Nodame Cantabile, Samurai Champloo, GiTS: SAC, Dennou Coil, Baccano!, Mononoke, Gankutsuou etc.
8 Jul 09, 20:16
Tracer: I really don’t see some drop in quality in recent anime. It’s just that instead of the over the top anime of the 80’s and 90s, now it’s a lot of “moe” shows.
8 Jul 09, 20:14
Tracer: For every anime like LoGH, Rose of Versailles, Akira, Touch, you had some equally ****ty fanservice show or some horribly cliche super robot crap.
8 Jul 09, 20:08
Tracer: You’re simply being ignorant if you think the “good, old times” were full with masterpieces or some other ridiculous nonsense.
8 Jul 09, 19:15
tealovertoma: …companies. We still get the character development that old shows focus on, but more experimentation. But yes, there’s also a lot of bad shows.
8 Jul 09, 19:14
tealovertoma: … about old anime better than new anime; we’ve had loads of masterpieces in the past decade. Moreso than any decade before as far as I’m concerned. Plenty of creativity and freedom for production…
8 Jul 09, 19:13
tealovertoma: It sounds like you’ve just been disappointed by 2 (maybe a few more?) anime that seemed promising. Is that all? Cause we get several masterpieces every year. In that case you’re not really talking…
8 Jul 09, 19:11
Howling-kun: Hm, I gotta disagree with you reverse. Specially shows directed by Shinbo Akiyuki tend to have very weak first episodes.
8 Jul 09, 18:58
reverse: Howling-kun every anime nowadays have awesome first episode ( xamdd, eden ) just name it, the problem is their don’t deliver. anyway i will check Bakemonogatari
8 Jul 09, 18:44
PaTRiX: This happens with every kind of hobby you could have, the fact is that people complaining are probably people who have seen too much anime.
8 Jul 09, 18:42
PaTRiX: It’s not that anime nowadays is bad. In fact it’s probably better than before, but if you have seen, for example, 5 animes about football (soccer) how many new different ways can the story go after?
8 Jul 09, 18:39
PaTRiX: … That’s what I feel now. I need something that I really like (or that I am a fanboy of) or something that is really different to be excited about an anime.
8 Jul 09, 18:38
PaTRiX: … because the stories have not evolved that much. I say this because it happens to me. And even if I’m not searching anything fancy, just want some cool mindless violence I’ve kind of “seen it alll”
8 Jul 09, 18:35
Howling-kun: Bakemonogatari is out subbed. Excellent first episode.
8 Jul 09, 18:34
PaTRiX: I think that the fact is not that anime was better before but that the kind of people who watched akira on the big screen and dragon ball and dr slump on tv when they first aired are becoming bored ..
8 Jul 09, 17:59
PL: whereas, if the industry wasnt profitable, there wouldnt be any anime
8 Jul 09, 17:58
PL: but that leaves plenty of room for more artistic and intelligent shows
8 Jul 09, 17:58
PL: the best way to ensure an artform endures is to make it profitable, which unfortunately means you will have anime which appeals to the masses
8 Jul 09, 17:43
reverse: not to mention most anime fan don’t know what is a good animation even it hit them on the face. example anime fan are happy staring at unmoving pic for 5 second. none complain at that stuff in anime.
8 Jul 09, 17:28
tealovertoma: …anime try out some from the more experimental side. Yes, it’s true that a lot of masterpieces are overlooked and ****ty shows are popular, but it’s like that every where.
8 Jul 09, 17:27
tealovertoma: Easier to be pessimistic than optimistic, right? Stop being nostalgic about a time you weren’t even alive. We get more intelligent anime than ever before — if you’re tired of conventional harem….
8 Jul 09, 17:17
reverse: show like Sengoku BASARA sale like 10000+ dvd in a week. untalented people get pay more. anime industry is doomed i would say.
8 Jul 09, 14:13
Solaris: I also think nowadays anime are nice and flashing but are lacking of contents.
8 Jul 09, 08:54
psgels: I think the “empty of contents and spirit” is a bit vague. What does it mean for a series to have spirit? And isn’t this different for everyone?

The discussion basically began when Solaris claimed that anime nowadays is “empty of contents and spirit”, and reverse claimed that “now almost everything get animated. the standard sure is low.”, from which the above discussion erupted. It then continued in the Aoi Hana post:

“Bakemonogatari: Once you remove all of the fancy filters and confusion that the first episode threw at us, you remain with a story that lacks depth and characters that are just the average stereotypes”
Maybe it was this i sensed when i watched Bakemonogatari’s first episode. It’s a fancy colored box with nohing inside.
Pity it happens more and more often nowadays. Anime’s graphics continues improving but contenents keep decreasig

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 12:02
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“Pity it happens more and more often nowadays. Anime’s graphics continues improving but contenents keep decreasig”

Lol @ this being applied to Bakemonogatari, NisiOisin isn’t considered the god of light novels for nothing.

Comment by Westlo — July 11, 2009 @ 12:25
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@westlo.
I judge for what i watch to. Anime and novel are related only by topic. One could be utter crap while the other could be plain art.
My first impression on Bakemonogatari anime was negative, as they wanted to keep our interest with that flashing graphics, but that there wasn’t that much of a story to begin with.

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 12:38
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Solaris: nah. Bakemonogatari may be one example of a soulless series (which if we were to believe Westlo, doesn’t even seem to be true), but there are plenty of series with a soul this season (Aoi Hana, GA, Umineko, Tokyo Magnitude, Spice and Wolf and Umi Monogatari, not to mention the series from previous seasons).

I agree that the seventies and eighties had some wonderful series, but even those days had their share of disasters, which in most cases were even worse than the crap we see today. Glass Mask, for example, was a really bad series, and there are probably plenty more of those series back then.

Comment by psgels — July 11, 2009 @ 12:47
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Well, anime has always been a media for the crowd. Anime production surely grew up since 60’s both in graphic quality and in number of products. It eventually became well known worldwide too. Now after 50 years of anime we are reaching saturation. Crap haw always existed, but why now it looks like we have too much of it lately? Maybe is just a matter of quantity. We have little formats for anime and a huge amount of products now. We have too many products that resemble each other. We’re loosing originality. Soeone just told this before: now it’s no more a matter of creating new stories, but how well you can manage to tell them and how good you let them appear. So, focus is being biased from contenent to appearance. So it’s no more the matter of telling a story that it looks so generic, like in bakemonogatari. The matter is to capture the audience with good graphics, or moe char or whatever mean, but good storytelling. That’s the real issue.

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 13:43
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With “the amount of bad series has increased”, do you mean the total amount of bad series produced each year, or the amount of bad series in relation to the amount of good series? There are of course more bad series out there than twenty years ago, simply because much more anime are produced these days. Today however, there are still plenty of series with good storytelling IMO, also with a bigger quantity.

Comment by psgels — July 11, 2009 @ 14:00
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The main appeal of Bakemonogatari is the dialogue and conversations between characters which is never wasted… which is what you expect from light novels.. Hardly something I would classify as a pretty anime with no substance.

“Crap haw always existed, but why now it looks like we have too much of it lately?”

I’ll tell you why, can you name another show that aired in the same season as Evangelion did? You’ve had the best titles cherry picked from the 80-90’s without seeing the amount of crap that aired during the same time.

It’s pointless to say “Anime was consistently better back in the day” when you don’t even know the majority of shit that aired back than.

Here’s a list of what aired in 95

http://www.animenfo.com/animebyyear.php?pagenumber=1&action=Go&perpage=30&year=1995

Don’t tell me that’s better than 2006 or 2007 or you’re overdosing on nostaglia. Eva and GITS Movie are the only real notable shows from that year. Majority of 95 ranges from mediocre to crap if you look at it without rose tinted glasses.

Comment by Westlo — July 11, 2009 @ 14:04
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I’m not saying that I like the old show better. but i do agree with solaris to some extent, almost everything get animeted now, the standard sure is low.

Comment by reverse — July 11, 2009 @ 14:29
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Psgels i didn’t say that. I just say the amount of series overall increased, thus implied the bad series also increased. The question is, did the proportion between good and bad remained stable or not? I think it decreased a lot. That is to say you will find more bad series nowadays with respect to the good ones.

Westlo, if we take that is the real amount of anime produced in that whole year 1995, then notice that that’s average the number of series nowadays produced in a single season.
The question is, are there many more good series now with respect to back then? I think we have less, but luckily that’s my IMHO ;).

Of course whan we speak of good and bad we should make clear what we intend for. “good” is such a subjective matter. But this would generate another full thread, so let us it be by now.

I watched anime since 70’s. I could tell you a lot of what happened back then. The situation of 80’s was very interesting, as it resembled what it’s happening today. Back then the most popular format were Big Robots anime stile (not mecha) and magical girls show. After 10 years they exploited such genres there were a big lack of new ideas. So with the start of the new decade they searched new ideas and format to make anime. The market succeeded in renewing itself back them. New genres were made and the anime “maturity” also evolved. As anime public grew, there was the need of much mature series. It wasn’t anymore just a matter of kids show. Series like Sailor Moon or Evangelion also renewed the old magical girl and robot formats. Lodoss introduced western fantasy style and Tenchi Muyo invented the new harem genre. Now also these formats are coming to exaustion. Will the anime market be able to create new contents genres and stories in the future? From what i see now, the market is closing itself to those genres that are still popular and they know it will sell. There isn’t search for newa, just to wrap up something with a good container and sell that.

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 14:57
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That last paragraph is interesting, but at the time of the invention of these new genres, there also was a lot of bad stuff going on. Based on my impressions, if you look at 1995 the ratio of good to bad shows is about 11:27. Based on the same standard, the ratio of good to bad shows of the past spring season is for me 19:17, which is much higher. So I don’t agree that today’s anime lacks sould.

However, if you meant to say that today’s anime lacks originality, then okay, I can see more in that. The only series that really attempted to go beyond genres of the past spring season was Marie&Gali (Eden of the East, though impressive, was just another mystery-series in the end, although it did try). 1995 had Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, the beginning of CG, Memories and in a way also the Ping Pong Club (raunchiest fanservice ever in a TV-series at least) and Romeo’s Blue Skies (combining WMT with action). I agree that today’s anime should be more experimental, and daring to try out new stuff, but that’s not the same as today’s anime having lost its soul.

Comment by psgels — July 11, 2009 @ 15:35

I personally believe that anime could be more experimental and ambitious nowadays, but it has nothing to do with the quality: there are plenty of anime series with soul, and the ratio of good compared to bad series is much higher than it was twenty years ago. Still, I’d love to see what anime can evolve into.

So, what are your opinions on the matter? Are there too many harems and lazy adaptations of bishoujo games; is there an overload of moe in today’s anime market, or is it all just overly exaggerated and is moe underrated?

Aoi Hana – 02

by psgels, posted in Aoi Hana



You know, I said in my Umineko post that I’d be blogging Bakemonogatari… but its second episode was so underwhelming that I’ve nearly lost interest… I mean, the awesome OP was gone and instead we have a random J-Pop song about staplers, the entire first half of that episode was filled with pointless fanservice and the eventual conclusion was just… shallow. Once you remove all of the fancy filters and confusion that the first episode threw at us, you remain with a story that lacks depth and characters that are just the average stereotypes. Hitagi’s story was so easily solved that they needed to waste the entire first half with Hitagi getting dressed and embarrassing that lead character. I’m not sure whether I want to cover this series every week. I’m still going to watch it, and it still can become very enjoyable, but at the moment it just feels like an inferior version of Shikabane Hime, and I’m just going to casually enjoy it instead of having to blog about it every week.

For now I’m just going to continue with a story that I’m much more certain of that it will turn out awesome: Aoi Hana. It’s really been ages since I’ve seen a good yuri-series. Its only flaw at the moment is its so called “everyone is lesbian” syndrome, but that’s just a first impression I got from it, and there are plenty of episodes to fix this one. What really stands out in this episode is the colourful characters. There are lots of emotions and creative yet realistic situations that can really get the best out of the characters, and take a look at that director: Kenichi Kasai, the director of the first seasons of Nodame Cantabile and Honey and Clover (yeah, yeah: some day I will watch that one). Sure, he also did Major and Kimikiss, but with the supposedly excellent source material, I see little that he can do wrong.

What I’m expecting of Aoi Hana is that it’s going to continue being such an excellent character-study, on top of the shoujo ai. The characters all feel like they’re living their own life, and they’re already incredibly colourful. The Noise time-slot has a limited amount of episodes, and this show will probably like Ristorante Paradiso only last for eleven episodes, and in that time-span it’s going to have to be able to pull off some believable character-development and make at least Fumi and Akira a couple of well-rounded characters.

This episode was mostly about the new clubs that the two of them joined: Akira went for the drama club (it would be nice if we could see her perform in the end. Stage performances in anime have always rocked), while Fumi whimsically entered the basketball club because its captain impressed her. Her running away from her past relationship with Chizu has been influencing her nearly non-stop, from trying to stay around other strong people, to simply hiding from Chizu herself as much as possible.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Subtle and charming episode. Aoi Hana definitely is among the top shows of the Summer Season.

Genius Party – 09 – Moondrive Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



Moondrive is the oddball of Genius Party. It’s a full fledged comedy, much more than Shanghai Dragon was. It is really silly, and I got a great laugh out of it. The director of this one is a genius of aesthetics: Kazuto Nakazawa, who people may remember as the director of Comedy, one of the biggest visual masterpieces of the past decade. He also did the key animation for the OP of Ergo Proxy and the second OP of Blood+, the character-designs for Ashita no Nadja and was the animation director of Samurai Champloo. This is one guy who knows how to make things look good.

And it shows in Moondrive as well. The visuals in these fifteen minutes were absolutely fantastic. Don’t expect anything like what you saw in Comedy, but instead this time he went for a dark and gritty setting set on top of the moon. The character-designs are full of style and incredibly imaginative, and the animation is incredibly quirky: it knows exactly how to capture the comedic tone of this series, it’s quirkish and made to make you laugh at the black humour of this short movie.

So yeah, in terms of story and symbolism this short doesn’t match up to the other parts in Genius Party and a few of the jokes are rather predictable or repetitive, but the rest of the jokes and quirky characters really make up for it. This is another reason why I’m such a big fan of these collection of short stories: you’ll never know what’s going to turn up next, and you’ll never know when a short is going to make you roll on the floor laughing.

Storytelling: 8/10
Characters: 8/10
Production-Values: 9/10
Setting: 7/10

Phantom – 15

by psgels, posted in Phantom



The character-designs in this show kept bugging me. For some reason they looked different from usual anime, but I can’t exactly put my finger on why. It’s definitely something with the line art, though. In a lot of series, they’re shaded and coloured along with the colours around them, but in this series they’re all the same dark colour, and this series does nothing to mask or hide it. But then again, there are plenty of other series with the same, so that can’t be it. This effect especially stands out at some of the far away shots, where the line thickness is exactly the same as with the close-ups. The effect gives off something very old school, which combined with the modern CG shading and background art gives off a very down to earth feel for this series. It’s a very nice style for this series, although it is a bit of a pity that the animation budget isn’t as good as it used to be. The creators thankfully haven’t resorted to an increase of still frames, but the amount of distorted faces has increased drastically.

Anyway, about the rest of the episode: you can see that this series has changed A LOT since the Ein arc. While this of course is nothing new, it really doesn’t happen often for a series to have a really, really dark start, and then become much lighter in their atmosphere. There’s this warmth between Reiji and Cal that wasn’t there when Helen was still involved. Even when the characters are feeling down, it feels nothing like the tension between Ein and Zwei when they still were a team.

This episode was mostly light and quiet, but well worth that awesome climax of this episode, where the character-development really came together, and Reiji couldn’t shoot directly because he suspected the sniper to be Helen. He was about to both take revenge on the guys who killed Rose, complete a mission that would cause a lot of benefits for Inferno, but after being shaken up by Cal, the news that Helen might still be alive has really struck him. And ZOMG: Ein indeed is alive! I’m interested in how she survived: I could buy Reiji, but she was shot through the heart. That’s not something you can survive easily, can you?

Anyway, Cal obviously has the downside that she’s only been introduced a few episodes ago, and the majority of this episode therefore felt surprisingly light, but DAMN: seeing her crying when Reiji nearly got shot really was adorable. It was an excellent performance from her voice actress.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
A surprisingly light episode with some lacking animation, but chockful of character-development.

Pandora Hearts – 15

by psgels, posted in Pandora Hearts



This series just continues its string of downright excellent episodes. This episode was much more about the characters than the mystery, but that’s also one thing that this series stands out at. The reunion between Oz and Alice was nothing short of adorable, and made the rather annoying cheese of a few months ago well worth it.

Alice, Gilbert and Oz work really well as a lead trio. All three of them try to fill in, for better or for worse, to fill in for each other’s flaws and weaknesses, and when you have such a setting as with this series to play with, it works really well.

We also learned something new about Break and his chain: it’s a chain, made to negate any influences from the Abyss, and so a chain made to hunt other chains, and for some reason this power is similar to that of Oz and B-Rabbit. This episode also reveals that Vincent is indeed trying to make Break do something: bring Alice’s memories to the real world. Since Break’s powers are very hard to beat in a fight, he indeed seems to have resorted to just manipulating the guy. This episode also showed that Break isn’t perfect, and flawed just like all the others. Now we just need to see some flaws of Vincent, but there’s no doubt that those are going to appear when we get a bit of a bigger look into his mind.

The end of this episode also had a nice little twist: why did the horse just take Alice and Oz with it, and leave Break and Gil behind in that collapsing dimension. Break was smiling, so there obviously had to be something else that saved them, but why was this so important for Sharon, and why the heck did she teleport them in the middle of a big meeting involving Oscar?

Also, I’ve stopped caring about the bad animation by now. This series just looks so damn good that I don’t mind the cut corners in the animation.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
An excellent character-based episode, after last week’s major plot twists.

Basquash! – 15

by psgels, posted in Basquash!



I’m not sure what exactly it is, but Basquash has really been missing something lately. I know that I mentioned the lack of the chaos of the first few episodes and all, but there’s got to be something else… Still, despite this I definitely admit that this episode was a step into the right direction. There’s a lot of potential in this series’ second half if the creators pull it off right.

This episode started off with me facepalming at the complete rip-off of Gad Guard’s space cannon, though. I knew the two series were similar, but not in this way. While a simple rip-off is of course fine at times, and hardly unavoidable today with so many stories already created, the thing that bugs me the most is that while Gad Guard’s space cannon had a lot of hidden meanings and played a major role in the main storyline, Basquash’s Moon Cannon simply was a big cannon that transports people to the moon. Without any context, it suddenly becomes a whole lot less awesome.

But still, I have to admit that I liked the pathetic disguise of Mister Perfect, the show’s “new” hero. Very subtle indeed. On top of that, the princess got to meet her sister again, and I like the relationship between the two of them: her sister doesn’t hate her for leaving, and instead has understood that Flora has some very good reasons to follow Dan.

And then the actual trip to the moon. It was here where the mystery finally deepens a bit, and the moon indeed has more than just is advertised. For some reason, the unlit parts are filled with strange looking mechas, and for some reason a giant hand appeared and bounced the lead characters back to earth. Does this happen with every single cannonball that gets sent to the moon, do the moonpeople have some sort of grudge against Dan? Did the Moon Cannon people remotely adjust the trajectory of the cannonball to prevent intruders from getting to the moon? Or did the resistance caused by Dan, Iceman and Flora’s crazy attempts to climb on top of the cannonball and then into it create enough resistance to change the trajectory of the cannon ball so that it ended up in territories it shouldn’t be in, and therefore was bounced back.

I really hope it’s not the latter, since the cannon ball launch just broke every single law of physics imaginable…
Rating: * (Good)
Nice cliff-hanger.

Genius Party – 08 – Gala Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



Yeah, don’t mind about the order of these posts. I found out a bit too late about the real order of the shorts, so I’ll just label them accordingly and review the individual movies alphabetically… for as far as it’s possible. Gala was done by Mahiro Maida, the guy who founded Gonzo. This guy is basically a jack of all trades in the anime business: he animates, directs, designs, produces, draws mecha, writes screenplay, he’s tried out all sorts of stuff. The series he directed are also have no similarities at all, and range from incredibly bad (Final Fantasy Unlimited) to incredibly good (Gankutsuou, The Second Renaissance).

Yeah, that’s pretty much Studio Gonzo in a nutshell. ^^;

Anyway, Gala again is a great little movie of fifteen minutes long. It’s about a strange village with all kinds of weird and uniquely designed people living in it, where suddenly a giant seed drops from nowhere. First they want to destroy it, but gradually their attempts to destroy it turn into something completely different. For what happens next is something that you’re going to have to find out by watching it, but I’ll just say that there is a lot of symbolism in it, and leads up to a very good conclusion.

Music also plays a very big part in these fifteen minutes, but my one complaint is that the soundtrack nearly totally overshadows the music that’s played by the characters themselves. And don’t get me wrong, it really is a wonderful soundtrack, but this is a pitfall very common for anime, as it simply isn’t able to properly synchronize such complex moves as playing an instrument. Even a movie budget doesn’t turn out to be enough to get it right.

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

Umineko no Naku Koro ni – 02

by psgels, posted in Umineko no Naku Koro ni



Okay, so this is about half impressions on Umineko’s latest episode, and half a wrap up of the first episodes of the summer season. Overall I have to say that this is a very successful season, and the second-best Summer Season I have ever seen based on first impressions. The best was in 2006, but that one is nearly impossible to beat anyway: it had something of everything and about half of the series were ground-breaking, did something new and/or were just plain awesome.

This seasons stands out in its surprisingly large amount of great, nice and enjoyable series: only a small fraction of them was dull or uninteresting. This season actually shows an interesting effect of the economic recession that hit Japan so hard: you can see that the quantity of series is slowly decreasing (although it’s not even by that much; this season only has one or two shows fewer than last year). You can see that there has been a great increase of moe, because it’s been clear by now that moe sells. And yet on the other side of the coin, the amount of bad series has decreased dramatically as well.

This season only has four series that I’d classify as below average (Element Hunters, Princess Lover, Kanamemo and Juuden-Chan; okay, five if you consider Weiss Survive as a series, but I don’t). Compare that to previous years, in which those numbers are twice as large, even 2006 had more mediocre series the current season and this trend even continues in years as 2003 and 2004, where the amount of series that debuted in total was even smaller. So yes, I’m really happy with this season.

As for the shows I’m going to blog (I can only blog 4 new shows this season), I decided to go with the four shows with the most ambitious setting. That obviously includes Umineko no Naku Koro ni, and I’m also going to cover Bakemonogatari and Canaan (and yeah, Umi Monogatari is also dropped now). As for the fourth show, it’s all going to depend on whether Tokyo Magnitude (Noitamina) turns out to be good or not. If not, then I’m going to be covering Aoi Hana.

As for this episode: it was awesome. I’m now starting to see why people are liking the story so much. It was a real improvement over the first episode in terms of acting, not to mention the shocking plot twist at the end.

I was expecting people to die, but to see six people already killed off within the second episode… that definitely was something I didn’t see coming. So, we basically have twelve people left now:

– Battler, the red-headed protagonist of the series (or at least, that’s how he’s being portrayed). He indeed was much less annoying than in the first episode, although the boob-jokes remained.
– Kinzou, the grandfather, whose intentions still are a rather big puzzle in the way that he seems to be inviting his entire family in some morbid battle of wits. It’s a bit of a weird dying wish, if you ask me.
– George, the blue-haired guy who just lost the one he proposed to in the death frenzy.
– Maria, the annoying little girl who seems to function as either Beatrice’s medium or spokesperson, depending on whether Beatrice is a ghost or an actual person. I just do wish that the creators would handle her foreshadowing a bit more subtle. I mean, with those close-ups anyone can see coming that she’s going to turn evil at some point.
– Jessica, the yellow-haired girl. We still don’t know much about her either but she seems like she’s going to be an important character.
– Eva, the woman with Takano’s voice. She’s obviously meant to be the red herring for the first part of the story. I mean, she’s acting so obviously evil that there has to be more behind her.
– Hideyoshi, Eva’s husband, though we haven’t seen much of him yet.
– Chiyo Kumasawa, the older woman maid of the house. Did we see her in this episode at all?
– Kanon, the servant who feels himself to be just an object and likes to repeat this to everyone who wants and doesn’t want to listen.
– Genji Ronoue, the white-haired servant. Not much has been shown about him either.
– Natsuhi, Jessica’s mother and the one who kept freaking out and seems to be the most emotionally unstable of the main cast.
– That doctor whose name I can’t seem to find.

Meanwhile, Maria’s mother Rosa, Battler’s mother Kyrie (who SO doesn’t look her age), Battler’s father Rudolf, the butler Gouda, the maid Sharon and Jessica’s father Krauss seem to be killed off, not including the possibility that someone used a fake body somewhere. There are all just simple first impressions of course. While a lot of the characters seem innocent at this point, I’m positive that all of them have something to hide.

But yeah, this is really fun do to, and the exact reason why I love mystery. This episode really reminded me why I originally became a huge fan of the first season of Higurashi: there’s so much that’s going on, but at the same time the creators know how to make the viewers keep guessing and formulate theories. It feels like it’s Higurashi all over again and Ryuukishi07 has really proven himself to be an incredible writer: not only is he a master of keeping these mystery-stories entertaining, but when the mystery stops being the main focus he still manages to write intelligent and meaningful dialogue, like what happened in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai and Rei.

The only downside to this series so far are the character-designs. Studio Deen’s series usually look very good and they’ve got an array of unique looking series, but this just feels like a combination of their average styles. That was a bit of a disappointment, but this series is indeed one that shouldn’t be watched because of its graphics.

On a side-note: a small thing I liked in this episode were the small shots of seeing how all of the different characters like to spend their time while waiting (crosswords, puzzles, card games. Nice addition). I especially liked how Grandfather was playing chess with himself. That may give a hint that Beatrice indeed is something supernatural. Either that, or he’s just an incredibly boring guy.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Now this is why I originally became a fan of Higurashi

Genius Party – 12 – Dimension Bomb Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



Sorry for the lateness, but I’m finally ready to review the second batch of Genius Party shorts. Dimension Bomb features an all-star cast: it’s directed by Koji Morimoto, animated by Jamie Vickers and voiced by Yoko Kanno. Now, if this isn’t a recipe for success, then I don’t know anymore. And indeed, Dimension Bomb is by far the best short of Genius Party I’ve seen so far. And also the weirdest one.

Dimension Bomb is a visual masterpiece. Not in the way that there’s an extreme amount of detail in everything like in Eden of the East, but instead it’s like every single shot kicks ass: every single scene speaks to your imagination and is visually stunning and creative. The character-designs are amazing, and just about everything is a gorgeous visual feast. The characters are incredibly expressive and just about everything in the art is made to provoke a reaction from the audience.

Don’t expect the story to make a lot of sense, though. There is a general storyline, but without looking it up you’re going to have no idea what the heck is going on in this short, and instead the stuff that happens is open to all sorts of interpretations, depending on whoever watches it. Dimension bomb makes excellent use of its limited time by not just showing a story from A to B, but instead it tells a vague story with lots of symbolism. In order to like this one, you’re obviously going to have to like experimental animation and storytelling, otherwise you’ll feel incredibly lost.

It’s because of things like this that I keep saying that Studio 4C should make another full-length television series (one that takes itself seriously, not a silly one like DMC). If they do, it’s going to be an incredible amount of kickassness. I’m not sure if that’s a word, but it should be.

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

Shangri-La – 14

by psgels, posted in Shangri-La



What an incredibly awesome cliff-hanger in this episode. Absolutely fantastic how I never saw this coming. It has been a long while since I’ve been this impressed and shocked by a sudden plot twist. Obviously, MAJOR SPOILERS coming up. This sentence is there to prevent those spoilers from showing up in the blog aggregators.

Because holy hell! Kuniko’s grandmother was the first CEO of Atlas?! Now that gives a totally different meaning to the entire story. I just kept thinking that she in her early days worked as some sort of idol or something, and while I did suspect that there was more going on with her, I never expected this. That figurine turns out to have a completely different meaning now. It wasn’t just one of grandmother’s escapades when she was younger, instead she had quite a following in those days because she was similar to Kuniko, and hence why her loyal fans started to make figurines of her (something which I suspect is going to happen with Kuniko as well at this rate).

This now also explains why she has one of the daggers, and this makes it a bit more plausible as to why Kuniko of all people turned into a Digma. Something must have happened, involving her decision to step down and leave Atlas. Now we also know why Kuniko’s mother is in Atlas: for some reason she decided to stay, while Kuniko’s grandmother took Kuniko along with her for some reason. But really, it still baffles me that her initial ideas were so much different from Kuniko’s.

But the rest of this episode also kicked ass. The whole mind games that involved the strange machines that can fully alter their environments (to a certain limit of course: sand remains solid floor) gave a really nice effect to the infiltration scene this episode. Because the metal-age has broken up into three different groups, this sense of Kuniko not exactly knowing what’s going on and still having to hand out orders worked really well.

And then to think that Sayoko was released by some mysterious member of Ryouko’s assistants. Who exactly was behind it, and why? And what’s in the future for Shion? His lifetime as Ryouko’s personal toy really seems about finished. And Ryouko too is starting to become really interesting now that she can’t move freely anymore.

For me, I think that the reason why I’m enjoying this series so much despite its flaws is that I tend to overlook flaws in series, as long as it has enough to make up for it. Personally, I’d rather watch something with a lot of flaws, but very ambitious, creative and daring, rather than something flawless without ambitions. Although flawless series are definitely worth the watch, they really need to do something extra for me to consider them a classic. For that, it becomes much easier to make mistakes, but that’s exactly where anime needs to go.

So what if this series has its flaws? It’s imaginative, ambitious and it attempts to be ground-breaking despite Gonzo’s financial issues. Is it really that much worse than those solidly produced series that don’t take any risk and just repeat a tried and true formula? Heck, this episode reinforced even more that this is my favourite show this season. Phantom is going to have to try hard to be able to beat it.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Great cat and mouse game, followed by an awesome cliff-hanger at the end. The setting just keeps getting more intriguing by the minute.