Cross Game – 14

by psgels, posted in Cross Game



So yeah, I was a bit lazy today so this post is a tad on the late side, apologies for that (*glares at Julian*). In any case, this was a pretty silly episode, but again it added so much to the series. First of all we see the introduction to two new characters, who both have their parallels in Touch: the annoying guy who keeps pestering one of the females and the captain of the boxing club. The differences here are that the annoying guy happens to be Azuma’s brother, and is bugging Ichiyou instead of Aoba. Aoba on her turn gets bugged by the boxing guy, who pretty much is the complete opposite of Harada in terms of personality.

Another parallel with Touch is the way that the baseball matches are built up: it’s his first year in high school, and instead of getting an early shot at getting to Koushien, Kou isn’t involved at all with this tournament and instead is in the middle of summer camp in order to get his skills at the correct level. Azuma at the same time fails to get to Koushien in this episode, which makes his desire to get there even bigger. I must say that this episode did a good job of subtly showing his frustrations. He’s never been a guy to openly show his emotions, so he just takes them out on some unfortunate baseballs at the Tsukishima batting center.

And so this episode also took place in the local pool for a while. It was pretty amusing, and this is actually a good example of how there can be much more to fanservice. From the outside this might seem like yet another pool episode, but this also gave the creators the opportunity to show how the characters are not just mentally starting to mature, but also physically: they’re not the naive children they were at the beginning of this series anymore. The ED showed this even more, and I believe that it was exactly for this purpose that they made the characters look very mature. It may even be what they’re eventually going to look like, when Kou is in his third year.

And by the way, I also loved how Momiji kept driving the annoying guys away from her sisters. She doesn’t appear often, but she’s such an adorable character when she does.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Excellent pool episode with very amusing chemistry between the characters.

Some quick first Impressions: Element Hunters, Canaan and Zan Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei

by psgels, posted in Canaan, Some Quick First Impressions

Element Hunters

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters travel to another world and hunt monsters.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Nope)
Well, so finally we have a bad series again. Element Hunters is an attempt to bring back the parallel world children’s adventures genre (like Digimon, Flint the Time Detective and others), but in the end it’s just lazy and uninspired. Basically we have a bunch of kids who travel to some parallel world with chemical element themes, but the reason why they end up there is virtually non-existent: from out of nowhere, they just run into a gate that transports them, and from out of nowhere they just start fighting some weird monsters like they’ve been doing since they were three. While I admit that the characters have their charms and nice voice actors, but that’s also the only thing that’s inspired about this episode. Also, for a series about chemistry this episode also showed that the creators know absolutely nothing of their subject: this episode was about nitrogen, and instead of discussing its practical uses, or the fact that 80% of the air we breathe consists of it, the only thing it can think of is some weird nitroglycerin flowers. I mean, seriously? This series is in every single way inferior to that other science show that’s currently airing (Marie & Gali).

Canaan

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters kills a bunch of people during a big festival
Chance of me Blogging: 70% (Choosing the shows to blog this season is going to be HELL)
As if this season didn’t already have enough awesome shows: here’s the next one. It’s awesome to see P.A. Works back with their next series, and it shows. This episode had by far the best animation of the season so far. But that’s not what I’m excited about. What really set this series apart was how well it portrayed such a big festival, in which so many things were happening at the same time. The creators didn’t just tell a story, but they also brought the entire festival alive during this episode. Everything and everyone was moving and there was always something going on, from random people having fun to people shooting each other and others going insane and poking their own eyes out. There were so many details stuffed into just this episode, it’s really amazing and it’s going to be awesome if the rest of the climaxes of this series are going to be the same thing. This series has now already shown that it can deliver a great action scene. Now all that’s left is to develop the plot and characters.

Zan Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is in despair.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (haven’t blogged the first two seasons, ain’t gonna blog it this time either)
And so, the third installment of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei has started. I do have to say that the creators are going to have to put in some real effort to prevent this from turning into one of those franchises that refuses to bloody DIE. The original premise went past its expiration date halfway through the second season, and with this season the creators are really going to have to do more than just repeat the same formula over and over yet again. This episode was… decent. It wasn’t good nor bad, it had some amusing moments, but I really fear that I’m going to get tired of the series in no time if it doesn’t get more interesting.

Phantom – 14

by psgels, posted in Phantom



Whoa, it’s really her!? Or does this episode show the mysterious “Drei” that the fans of the original game have been talking about? Anyway, this was another excellent episode from this series, even ignoring that final plot twist in the end. It was all about seeing the relationship between Reiji and Cal, and just watching the two of them grow closer together is worth the watch.

It’s interesting how episodes like these show how much the creators know about marksmanship, and the correct way of using a gun, even though in El Cazador they simply glossed over it. In any case, it’s really charming that Reiji recognizes Cal’s talents, and is planning her to get as far away from Inferno as possible when everything is over, so that she isn’t going to end up the same as him. You can really see in this episode that Cal is opening up his shell, even though she was completely different from Ein.

I also liked the references to well known actors (deNiro, etc). I guess that the creators can’t use titles of movies due to copyright, but this works as well, especially since action movies are a major part of the American culture. It would have been weirder for these movie references to not pop up.

It’s just a shame that this episode again got the shorter end of the budget. There again were lots of far away shots that makes the characters easier to animate. Ah well, at least it’s better than showing lots and lots of still frames. Overall I do think that the graphics budget is handled pretty nicely: there’s no money wasted on “cool” shots like hair and clothes moving in the wind, and instead the animation is focused to making the characters come alive.

One thing I noticed is that this series has gotten quite a bit lighter since Cal arrived, but that of course can also be attributed to the very cold relationship between Ein and Zwei: they hardly talked, and were constantly trying to figure out each other. Reiji and Cal are much more open to each other, but their excellent characterization still remains.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Cal + Reiji = awesome. Very nice build-up episode.

Pandora Hearts – 14

by psgels, posted in Pandora Hearts



What an amazing episode. It may have had a bad episode director, but even he couldn’t stop the awesomeness of this episode. The build-up in this episode was just perfect, and the revelations that were pulled were stunning. This series has a bit of a lull after Oz came back from the Abyss, but it’s really been getting better and better ever since!

So the Jack Bezarius of the previous episode was just a fragment of Alice’s memories; we have yet to find out what happened to the real bugger. I really thought that he was going to be one of the major bad guys in this series, but the complete opposite seems to be true, and he seemed pretty genuine in this episode.

But damn… to think that the tragedy at … was caused by Break, of all people. And Gil was there too?! For some reason, that tragedy caused them to plunge into the abyss, and return 100 years later (if I assume correctly, Break appeared 10 years before Gilbert; at the moment I can’t remember whether we saw him along with Sharon in episode 1). To make things even worse, one of them killed Alice, when she still was A NORMAL PERSON. Something then happened that not only turned Alice into B-Rabbit, but also created white Alice, and possibly even that Dark Alice that we saw in one of these shots… Alice then got plunged into the Abyss and remained there until Oz came along for who knows how many years.

Damn, I have to say that I’m impressed. Pandora Hearts is turning into a really well-crafted mystery-series. I really hope that Xebec is going to be smart enough to make a second season of this one, because it truly deserves it.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
An awesome string of new developments and revelations.

Eureka 7 – Pocket Full of Rainbows Review – 70/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



I haven’t been looking forward to the Eureka7 movie, for the following reason: the series was pretty conclusive, wasn’t it? Why ruin it with a movie. I therefore just assumed that it was going to be one of those recap movies like with Gurren Lagann, but as it turns out it takes place in an alternative universe. Alternative universe movies are always a bit tricky to do, as they tend to be completely different from their original source material. When inspired of course, this can lead to awesome stuff as the Utena movie. Now, did the same happen with Eureka7?

Errm, no.

While not entirely bad, this movie certainly isn’t a good one. It’s mediocre: it entertains but its content is flawed and often nonsensical. The best way I’d describe it is “shallow”. This is the sort of story that I’d label as pretentious. There is A LOT of dialogue throughout the movie, but you quickly realize that it’s not really about anything.

There’s a lot of talking spent on explaining the setting for the movie, but hardly anything is done to develop it or go in-depth. The movie also has its share of symbolism and moralism, but the symbolism either is overly obvious or doesn’t make any sense (especially Anemone’s ramblings are part of the latter), while in terms of morals this series never really gets further than saying “killing is bad” over and over, being a hypocrite in the process when Renton kills a bunch of enemies while he didn’t really need to do so.

But the biggest offender is the relationship between Renton and Eureka, because BOY has it turned cheesy. 99% of the lines between the two are directly copied from any other romance story. The lines they use are so incredibly ambiguous that they fit in any sort of situation. When they’re not angsting and repeating these lines over and over, they behave totally incomprehensible; their actions make no bloody sense and feel like they have been thought up on the spot by the creators.

Since this is a movie, it does have a number of kickass action scenes, whenever the characters aren’t talking. But here’s the deal: this is Bones. When you compare the animation in this movie to what they showed in Eureka 7 and especially Bonen no Xamdou the animation actually feels inferior. It really makes you wonder where the budget for this movie went, if the TV-episodes were animated so beautifully.

So yeah, when the story is supposed to come together in the end… it doesn’t. the plot twists, revelations and insights don’t make any bloody sense and the movie falls flat on its face. I usually like anime with lots and lots of dialogue (see Amatsuki and especially Mouryou no Hako), but this was just… shallow and rushed. Do yourself a favour, watch the amazing series, skip the movie.

Storytelling: 6/10
Characters: 7/10
Production-Values: 8/10
Setting: 7/10

Basquash! – 14

by psgels, posted in Basquash!



Okay, so while this episode itself wasn’t that special, and just another basketball match, it did pique my interest again. This series was really into a bit of a mid-season lull for the past few episodes, with the plot really at a standstill because of that tournament, but this episode showed hints that this series is going to pick itself back up again.

Looking back, the only thing that the tournament arc was good for was the character-development: the actual matches themselves weren’t that interesting, but if you can see this as a way of character-building, then it did accomplish its task. In this episode, Dan matured up, he finally passed a ball to Sera so that he wouldn’t be the one to score and take the credit. Sera herself wanted to take revenge on her father, but in this episode some random dude comes up and kills the guy, and with this episode Iceman’s worries about his past have also been solved and we know that he has a fake arm. So yeah, while this episode itself wasn’t that interesting, it did create a lot of potential for the future. I’m glad that this arc is over, though. Aside from episode 12, it was a bit tiring to have to sit through it.

What this show needs to do now is make this second half interesting. This is also where the new director comes in when he’s going to take over: he needs to understand what this series is good at, and needs to make a storyline that brings out the best of this, instead of simply degenerating the series into “Dan’s quest to save his beloved Rouge”. It’s going to be really boring if that turns into the main focus for the rest of the series.

On a side-note: this episode showed a new OP and ED. To be honest though, they weren’t as good as the first ones. The OP is a cheesy j-rock song, and especially the new ED isn’t as catchy as the old ED, and simply became a generic j-pop song. Reeeaaaally not my taste.
Rating: (Enjoyable)
Rather dull basketball match, but lots of character-development

Some quick first Impressions: Taishou Yakyuu Musume, Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou and Bakemonogatari

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Okay, so I have decided to change the format of these quick first impressions a bit. Instead of waiting for three episodes to air before posting them, I’m just going to post what I have, and edit in the remaining ones when they air.

Taishou Yakyuu Musume

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets invited to play baseball by one of her friends.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (With such a strong season it’s unlikely)
I really have to say that this has to be one of the best starts of a season in a long while. Of the seven shows I’ve seen so far, only two of them weren’t interesting and fun to watch. There hardly have been any annoyances so far. Anyway, Taishou Yakyuu Musume is the winner of this season’s WTF-moment when the lead character starts singing and dancing rather badly from out of nowhere (those poor typesetters, by the way). It’s a really nice series, though. It’s a slice of life shows about a bunch of girls, living around eighty years ago who plan to start up a baseball club. It’s an interesting premise, and while the slice of life hasn’t been as good as in Aoi Hana, it’s still enjoyable and relaxing. The lead characters are naturally charming without being forced or overly moe, so overall I’m quite pleased with this show so far.

Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters know magic.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (There are too many good shows this season)
The only thing that sucks in this season is the character-designs: all so far are bland, don’t try anything new and lack a visual identity. Apart from that, nearly every series has been enjoyable for me (and besides, the character-design problem will probably go away once I watch Bakemonogatari). I think that that’s a prime for me. Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou granted is the second-worst TV-show this season, and yet I enjoyed this episode. It’s strange: it’s a premise that I usually hate with passion. Here we have a bunch of teenagers who happen to know magic and do… stuff. But strangely this episode really amused me. At first sight we do have a bunch of stereotypes, but they work well together and I liked the chemistry between them a lot. What made this series better than the average moe comedy for me is that it never felt forced: it was the characters who wrote this series, not the scriptwriters. It’s a series that doesn’t pretend to be anything more than it already is: it’s just a bunch of girls having fun with magic, nothing more. Granted, the hot spring part at the end was a bit too much, but heck; I liked the rest of this episode. What’s happening to me!?

Bakemonogatari

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets a girl who has no weight.
Chance of me Blogging: 70% (I’m impressed)
Whoa, people weren’t kidding that Bakemonogatari was going to rock this season. This episode only gave a small taste of what is to come, and yet I’m very intrigued already. It has pretty much the best OP of the season. Horror series have always had downright excellent first episodes, and this episode really proved the same, as this episode was my second to only Aoi Hana this season so far. It’s great to see that Shinbo still has enough inspiration to try out new kinds of animation and visuals, so this series doesn’t feel like a rehash of one of his previous shows. It’s also great to see that he has planned out this series very well, and is even willing to extend the amount of episodes beyond the amount that can be broadcast, simply to avoid this show getting rushed. Seriously, more series should do that.

Some quick first Impressions: Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Aoi Hana and Needless

by psgels, posted in Aoi Hana, Some Quick First Impressions, Umineko no Naku Koro ni

Umineko no Naku Koro ni

Short Synopsis: Our lead character visits an island owned by his grandfather, along with the rest of his mysterious family.
Chance of me Blogging: 70% (It’s from the creators of Higurashi, so yeah)
Well, the series with the biggest amount of hype around it has finally aired. First of all I have to ask: out of all possible lead characters, could the creators have chosen one that is even more bland than “Battler”? He may be eighteen years old, but he still acts like an immature teenager and keeps making boob-jokes. In all seriousness though, this first episode was a bit of a disappointment, and well for the following reason: the acting. This episode suffered from a cast of bad voice actors that hardly know to use any subtlety in their voices. This goes for the lead character, but also for just about the entire rest of the cast. These kinds of stories require the characters to be able to switch to a lot of emotions, but the change from one of these emotions in the others feels woody at best. Ok, sure there could be a chance that everyone in the family is infected with the “hopelessly bad acting virus”, but the voice acting cast really needs to do a better job in the rest of the episodes if they want to do justice to this excellent storyline.

Aoi Hana

Short Synopsis: Our lead character enters high-school and meets with an old childhood friend.
Chance of me Blogging: 80% (Lots of potential)
Now this is more like it. Noise has done it again, as this seems likely to be the third hit in a row for the time-slot. It’s obviously not going to be for those who want a fast-paced storyline, but I personally loved the subtle yet poignant drama between the two lead characters who meet each other again after having been separated when they were kids. The tall girl is a bit of a crybaby, but she definitely has her charms. The rest of the cast also feels alive, rather than being a bunch of 2D Stereotypes. There wasn’t any annoyance about this episode, aside from the fact that I just know that the rich and detailed animation of this episode is probably going to disappear after the next episode.

Needless

Short Synopsis: Our lead character loses his sister and meets a weird priest with strange powers.
Chance of me Blogging: 20% (With so many other great shows this season? Not likely)
It’s strange: the character-designs in this series are abysmal; their style is uninspired and too similar to most other anime and the costumes make EVERONE look like an incredibly ridiculous fashion-victim. The rest of the visuals however, are really sweet. The animation was really good, the gun-designs rocked, and the shots in which the characters weren’t doing bland things really rocked with their visual style. Overall, this was a typical first episode in which the creators go all out to make it as exciting as possible, and for me they did a pretty good job: this episode was a lot of fun to watch, with a lot of adrenaline-pumping action and an interesting cast of characters so far. This series feels the most like the next Koukaku no Regios, so let’s hope that this time the creators do know how to handle the rest of the story, as it definitely has the potential for a fast-paced action story. I liked how the main characters are of all kinds of different ages: we have a kid, a teenager, a guy in his thirties and an old guy. Definitely makes the series varied.

Igano Kabamaru Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Igano Kabamaru is a unique anime, in the way that it’s only popular among the Greek community, and virtually unheard of in the rest of the world. I’ve been meaning to want to check it out, but the only version I could find was a crappy Greek dub. Since my Greek is virtually non-existent (the only word I know is “nè”, which means “yes” and sounds a lot like “no” in Dutch), so I unfortunately had to pass it up.

Cue the awesome people at Saiei who were nice enough to bring out a Japanese version of the series. So yeah, this is another one of those raw-reviews, so unless you happen to know Greek or Japanese, don’t bother to ask me where to get it. One of the purposes of this review is to give some more attention to this series, with the hope that it might get subbed one day, because this series has a lot to like. Sure, it also has its share of things not to like, but it’s one of those crazy and wacky comedies that definitely demonstrate that the eighties had a great sense of humour.

So yeah, this series is basically another one of those high-school comedies with a weird cast of characters. It runs around the premise of a kid who has been trained as a ninja for all his life by his evil grandfather, moving into a school whose headmistress has a crush on said grandfather (who now is dead, by the way). The big twist is that this kid (Igano Kabamaru, hence the title) is the most incredible goofball you have ever seen. He runs around the series screaming, yelling, making the silliest jokes, behaving like a little kid, and eating.

The major fun in the series comes not from him, but from the rest of the cast. These people are all some sort of parody of the romantic genre (we have the cute girlfriend, the rival, the pretty boy, the elite ojou-sama, and a lot more). Every character has something amusing about him or her, and they’re also hilarious in their attempts to deal with such a weird and uncontrollable lead character, and be sure to expect lots of nervous breakdowns. Hopeless overacting in most cases is a bad thing, but in this case it makes for a number of hilarious scenes, with my personal favourite being the marathon-episode.

Unfortunately for this series, it also has that nasty thing called a plot. The show gets really dull when the focus falls back to Igano’s traumatic past, and the time he spent with his best friend Hayate. It just keeps dragging on, and nearly completely takes over the series once it hits its second half. Because of that reason, the second half is a lot less fun than the first one, and the comedy that’s there is nowhere near as fun as in the first half.

To the show’s credit though, it does have a kickass finale. It’s worth watching through the second half, if only because of the awesomeness of the final two episodes. I was originally planning to give this series a much more negative review before I watched these two episodes, but they really make up for the rest of the disappointing second half. Episode 24 feels like the creators wanted to stuff as much creativity in 20 minutes as possible, while episode 23 has a brilliant conclusion that nobody will see coming.

So yeah, don’t expect much innovative parts, since there are a lot of clichés in this series, even for a comedy (like how this show proves that the Tsundere was already a staple more than twenty years ago). The serious parts suck, but there are a certain number of comedy episodes that are absolutely hilarious, and are in no way inferior to the comedies of the past ten years. This series is crazy, but in a good way.

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

Umi Monogatari – 02

by psgels, posted in Special Articles



You know, wasn’t this summer season supposed to suck? I mean, from the things I caught here and there this seemed to be a rather small and underwhelming season. And yet, I have only seen five new series so far (four if you don’t count the umpth Saint Seiya), of which three of them are already interesting enough to blog, and have a lot of potential to become great series. Is the rest of the season going to be filled with dumb harems and Code Geass clones or something?

In any case, with series airing a week before the rest of the season, it’s always hard for me to decide whether or not to blog them, because I have no idea whether or not there are going to be any better series turning up later. For Umi Monogatari it’s the same, as the majority of the new season has yet to air. Still, this episode definitely showed me that this series has a lot going for it, and I can always drop it if even more better shows pop up.

I’m obviously not blogging this series for the aestetics. While the animation is great, I first want to see it remain great for the next couple of episodes, and the art style itself is rather plain, with your average collection of moe stereotypes (one of the lead characters has yellow hair, one has red hair and one blue hair. Gee, those are the three primary colours, where have I seen that one before?). There’s lots of fanservice and all, but thankfully it’s handled tastefully: you don’t see any close-ups to jiggling boobs or strange crotch shots. That’s enough to keep it from getting annoying.

What caught my interest with this series was its characterization. The spring season already had a lot of series with an excellent cast of characters, and Umi Monogatari sounds like a nice addition to them. The three main characters feel realistic and very sympathetic. There are a lot of emotions in this series, but none of it feels like cheese, and it’s surprisingly genuine. It’s the charms of the main cast that really makes me want to watch more, and it makes for a pretty relaxing series with still a lot of drama.

The storyline is obviously going to need a bit more work (evil demons have been unsealed and need to be stopped by a certain sea priestess and air priestess), but I like how this series toys with your expectations. Along with unsealing those evil powers, the little mermaid also unsealed a rather strange turtle. That one I didn’t see coming.

Rating: * (Good)
Successfully carries the atmosphere further with some great animation and characters, even though the plot is a bit clichéd.