Guin Saga – 07

by psgels, posted in Guin Saga



Now this was supposed to be the episode to make or break this series; with this episode, we would know whether or not this series is able to animate large-scale fights that put armies against each other, and which will probably become the biggest focus of this series. We’ve already seen how Valkyria Chronicles screwed up when it didn’t seem to know whether its enemies were tactical geniuses or incredibly stupid, but I must say that Guin Saga gracefully avoided this flaw. This was such a great episode, and I’m even more hungry to see the next episode.

So as it turns out, Guin’s plans consisted partly out of psychological warfare, and partly out of using the local monsters near Nosferas. They attacked in small groups in order to draw out the Mongol Army, Guin also showed himself a few times, and when they became angry, they unleashed carefully timed giant blob monsters on them.

The thing is that this plan mostly worked so easily because of Amnelis’ incompetence. The way she’s dressed and the way she acts suggest that she’s never really lost a battle, or came close to it. The Mongol army really seems like an army that uses pure numbers in order to overcome its foes, and that means that they’ve never really had to use smart tactics in order to win: they’d just overwhelm their enemies and get things over with. My favourite scene this episode came when Guin actually nearly killed Amnelis when she moved too close to the front lines.

This episode was basically one very big wake-up call for Amnelis. Her numbers meant that she was overconfident, and with such a huge chunk eaten out of her army, this now means that she has to get serious and start using her head and listen to the advice of her companions, who are much more experienced than she is. Guin may have his giant slime blob, but now it’s also known that fire will repel it.

With Valkyria Chronicles, the characters in charge just felt too much like stereotypes: there was nothing that really set them apart. Amnelis, incompetent as she may be, is slightly different. We can really see what’s going on inside her head and where her weaknesses lie. She’s a flawed character, there’s no mistake about that, but she doesn’t have the personality of a paper bag.

Usually in anime when battles between huge armies are portrayed, they fail to impress because the creators are trying to rush through them too much and fail to keep track of this army. I often have no idea how large these armies are: all we see is just a bunch of people fighting here and there. And here this series comes, and simply by saying how many soldiers are involved, I feel much more able to imagine the sheer amount of soldiers that play a part of this.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
This episode had one of the best battles on a really large scale I’ve seen in a long while.

Konnichiwa Anne – 07

by psgels, posted in Konnichiwa Anne



Okay, so I had my doubts, but now I’m for sure: Anne is AWESOME. Even in an episode in which nothing major happens, she never fails to charm, and that really is the strength of the WMT-series: at times it really can be about nothing, and yet the characters rock beyond belief. Anne was downright adorable in this episode, simply because her talking really never seemed to stop!

With episodes like this, I’m not crazy enough to summarize every single thing that Anne rambles on and on about, I’m just going to discuss the important points of the episode. The episode starts as Anne is holding Noah and talking to Katie Morris (a cupboard). She tells that Katie once was a friend of Elisa who she told everything to, and so Anne is also going to tell everything she experiences to that the cupboard in the same fashion.

In the meantime we return to the house of the old lady that we saw in the first or second episode. Her name is Minton (or however it’s spelled), and we see two of her relatives paying a visit to her house. Not knowing that she’s there, they start talking about how she’s known to be very grumpy and greedy, when in fact she fell on the floor because her back went out. the house is also a mess because she hasn’t been able to clean up because of this, even though she refuses to take on help.

Next up we switch to a local shop in which her relatives are worrying about her in front of the shop owner, about how she really needs someone to help her out, but the shop owner says that it’s practically impossible since she’s known to be greedy and probably the most disliked person in the entire town. Anne then hears this and offers to take up the task to work for her. The relatives don’t really believe in her, but take her along anyway.

When they arrive at the house, Anne quickly forces herself in the house and starts cleaning and annoying Minton a the same time). At the same time there’s also a cat that runs wild, and Minton quickly sends her away when she gets distracted by some pretty drawings on a plate. It’s pretty hilarious to see that Anne doesn’t have any shame, and still thinks that Minton is just a friend of the “real” Minton, like how she introduced herself in the first episode, and so she calls Minton all sorts of things that her relatives have been calling her.

Anne of course doesn’t leave that easily and doesn’t understand at all that Minton doesn’t want her. She just keeps rambling on and on. Minton eventually gets to sleep, but that evening Anne comes and says that she has to leave. Later Minton finds out that Anne spent the afternoon cleaning up. The next morning, Anne is up early and Minton finds her talking to another cupboard: Alisa Morris, Katie’s twin.

When Minton starts eating her breakfast, she’s finding it hard to eat because Anne keeps looking at her. When she offers her a bit of bread, Anne refuses it since she can’t take away other people’s breakfasts. In the end, Minton gives in because of this, and promises to give Anne her breakfast when she finishes cleaning in order to make her accept this breakfast. But she also says that she’s never allowed inside one of the rooms in her house.

A week later, the shop owner talks to Bert about how he’s surprised that he’s still working. He then tells Bert that Minton used to have a daughter, but she changed after this daughter died. At the same time, Anne screws up by letting the cat inside the secret room, and ends up entering it. This room indeed turns out to be the room of Minton’s late daughter, and when Minton finds out about it she gets angry and immediately sends Anne away.

Anne runs away to Bert, of all people, and there Bert tells about Rosa, Minton’s daughter. She died 34 years ago and ever since Minton locked herself in and became the greedy old lady she is now. The next morning, Anne asking Horace and Edward to look around for a couple of roses. She then gives these roses to Minton as she visits Rosa’s grave, as a bit of a strange birthday present. It turns out that Minton had even forgotten her birthday, and so the two of them make up and the episode ends.

So yeah, the episode ended on a pretty sappy note, but I don’t care! This was such a sweet episode and in fact, this has been the pattern of this series for the past four episodes now. Sure at times it’s a bit too dramatic, and the same flaw turned me off from watching Kemono no Souja Erin, which also was just too formulaic, and yet I just CAN’T bring myself to dislike this series. Anne is such an awesome character that she SO makes up for some of the overly sappy moments. With more than thirty episodes still to go, I foresee lots of awesomeness in this series’ future.

I also like how Budge Wilson decided to write this story. She announced clearly that she wasn’t going to mimic Lucy Maud Montgomery’s writing style, but instead went with her own. But still she did include quite a few homages to some of Montgomery’s other works. This episode shows some parallels to Emily of the New Moon, and especially Elisabeth’s secret room of her lost sister.

My only real problem with this series is that the animation doesn’t look as solid as it’s supposed to. There quite a few points at which character drawings looked rushed. Porfy and Les Miserables were able to cover this up, but in this series, it unfortunately does stand out.

Rating: *** (Awesome)
With most other characters, this kind of episode would have been dull, but Anne single-handedly made it awesome.

Natsu no Arashi – 07

by psgels, posted in Natsu no Arashi



What started out as a seemingly silly episode in which Hajime and Arashi break the metal bird on top of the cafeteria and muscle guy being ordered to buy women’s underwear, it gradually turned out to be an episode that added even more depth to Kaja and Jun’s characters. I really must say that Jun is one of the most convincing cross-dressers out there, because for once she has a very solid reason to act as a boy, compared to most of the other cross-dressers, who seem to be only there for fan-service.

In this episode you could really see that she feels insecure about regular girls: she doesn’t like their style and fears that she might end up as the same. While the source of it is still unknown, but it seems to be strong enough for her have to endure the other side of the coin: Hajime’s abuse. It’s also strange that Jun’s classmates didn’t feel like stereotypes at all.

And at the same time we learn that Kaja is very uncomfortable among men, due to the way she was raised in her time. She’s probably fine with Hajime because he only has eyes for Arashi, but when those students showed up she really came into a situation she never was in before. The episode then continues as she tells how she believes that she appeared in this time for no reason, and that they’re just there to relive their summer. Jun then however, realizes that they’re both just thinking too much of others, and refuse to think about themselves. Basically, what Hajime and Arashi have been doing all along.

There also was a lot of building up in this episode. We now know that Arashi and Kaja died on the same day. It probably was because of a bombing, but I doubt whether it was that simple. We also know now why Kaja came back, but what about Arashi? We have yet to see what her regrets are, and she’s very good in hiding this. On top of that, there has to be some sort of role for the muscle-guy, has there?

This series will probably be only thirteen episodes long, since Shinbo seems to have yet another show scheduled for Summer, plus the original manga only seems to have released three volumes so far. If this is true, then we’ve just passed the halfway point of this series, and there are actually lots of ways for the creators to settle this series. Let’s hope that everything can come together.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
Very nice episode for Jun and Kaja and the visuals still are very good.

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 07

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



Well, the pacing is subtly getting slower, which is a good sign. The storytelling has as much energy as usual, but this episode spent quite a bit of scenes to the lighter comedy scenes when compared to the previous episodes so far. That’s definitely a good sign as we approach the point where first series went into its own direction.

In any case, this episode shows the library-arc and introduces Sheska. I liked her when she was first introduced, though her role in the second half of the series was just terribly redundant. Nevertheless, in this episode she was fun to watch, even though she only appeared for like, three minutes or something.

I also was surprised that Barry the Chopper does exist in the manga, meaning that the creators wrote an entire filler-episode just to introduce the guy. It was a nice idea, but the problem was that his story was just too filled with coincidences: he just “happens” to kidnap Winry who just “happens” to visit Central City, then he gets sent to prison and just “happens” to get turned into an armour rather than being turned into food for the Philosopher’s stone and after that he just “happens” to meet Ed again. Really, the creators of the first series had good intentions, but they simply weren’t the best storytellers out there.

And yeah, there was a lot of comedy and deformed characters in this episode. The contrast with the otherwise dark nature of this series works surprisingly well and it’s made this series much lighter than the original one. The downside of the new season is of course that the characters aren’t as fleshed out as they were in the original series at this point, with more than eleven episodes cut and all, but technically it’s been doing a very fine job: there haven’t been any headdesk-worthy moments, Ed and Al aren’t getting on my nerves and overall, the animation now is much more solid and detailed and overall I like it a lot more.

Rating: * (Good)
Lots of light moments, and we’re finally getting near the part we’ve all been waiting for.

Cross Game – 07

by psgels, posted in Cross Game



At times, it really looks like Aoba is the lead character of this series, rather than Kou. Especially when it comes to baseball, it’s her who keeps stealing the show, while Kou, who is supposed to be the main character, just keeps hiding, watching and staying in the background. Really if it wasn’t for the fact that he gets the most screentime you really wouldn’t suspect that he was supposed to be the central character in this show. He just feels so far away from your average male lead. The only thing he has in common with them is his huge talents.

And yet again, this episode rocked. In the current spring season, there are three shows against which I have yet to find a single significant complaint: Eden of the East, Basquash and this one (Phantom has its questionable portrayal of the mafia, Pandora Hearts has its cheese and Natsu no Arashi had its first episode; all excellent shows too, but these do have their flaws, in comparison to the three mentioned above). This episode shows how the coach of the high school team visits the middle school team, and notices how solid Aoba’s performance is, and so he invites her for a few practice pitches, though not with the best of intentions.

This episode really did an excellent job of making me feel sorry for Aoba. For one, she’s never going to get as good as Kou, she’s not going to have any chance of playing solid baseball as soon as she hits high school, and she was really made fun of this in this episode, even though you can see that she has passion for the sports in the way that she continued pitching despite being terribly exhausted.

Kou meanwhile continues to shine in a completely different way. I absolutely LOVE his sense of humour. This episode reveals that he has yet another talent of impersonating voices of other people, which he puts to great use in teasing the hell out of Senda.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
Especially great episode for Aoba, but all of the characters still rock.

Phantom – 07

by psgels, posted in Phantom



I think that shows like Valkyria Chronicles at the moment really show how hard it can be to successfully adapt a game into animation. Unlike novels and mangas, where the only thing you have to worry about is how to properly translate the pages into animation, in most cases it just isn’t sufficient to just copy and paste the storyline (since it’s usually too short and overshadowed by the game-play) and especially the game-play. At this point, the creators are going to have to insert their own additions in order to flesh out the cast, and this usually fails so badly, descending the show into a string of uninspired fillers.

And here Bee-Train comes and yet again they pull off a very successful adaptation like it’s nothing. They did the same with .Hack//Sign, which completely dropped all of the fighting and instead went on to focus on its brilliant story, Popolocrois also wouldn’t make you suspect that it’s about an RPG, and instead turned into a fun and charming fantasy adventure and character-study and Wild Arms featured some of the best fillers out there in its second half. These all showed that they knew exactly what to do in order to spice these games up and make them work as an anime, and the same is done in Phantom, with the large emphasis on characterization and atmosphere. I’m not exactly sure how the original game played, but I have a really hard time imagining what the heck the game-play was about.

This episode builds up for the next one, and at the same time we fully get to see what happened with Zwei that made him end up as part of the Phantom. What’s also interesting is that Zwei is beginning to recover his memories, and turning into the guy he was before his mind-wipe. the thing is, though, that even if he were to fully recover his memories, he’s so far in the mafia, he’s already killed so many people that it’s going to be impossible for him to return to Japan and the life he left behind.

And the tension between Ein and Zwei really continues to increase, especially when Ein keeps distancing herself from Zwei since she’s scared of his skills. Before his mind-wipe, he already was able to outrun her for a couple of days, so something tells me that she’s fearing what he can turn into. In the next episode we’re going to see them in different missions, which makes me wonder how that’s going to end.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
Really solid and subtle art, great build-up episode, though lacking in action perhaps.

Basquash! – 07

by psgels, posted in Basquash!



Oh my god… when I first started out this series, I never thought that I’d say this but… this show rocks. This seriously was an awesome episode and this series shows no signs yet of slowing down at all. At first sight, this might be yet another shounen sports series… but it really is so much more. Basquash! is a satire of shounen series that yet takes itself seriously and yet at the same time knows when to be a bit silly.

A common theme of these shounen heroes is their motivation to be the best [whatever] of the world: to get enough money to help out one of their poor friends. Dan is the same, but the major difference here is that Coco doesn’t want help. Dan was probably turned off by Coco’s initial disappointment of having lost her legs (which isn’t surprising: anyone would get incredibly upset after suddenly losing such important limbs). From that moment, Coco was able to accept her disability and grow further, while Dan simply stayed the same. Because Coco didn’t want any sympathy from the one who caused her her injuries, the two of them just grew apart more and more without ever trying to understand each other. In this episode, it’s indeed shown that their communication really is the biggest problem between those two, because you can really see that Coco is proud of her brother when he does what he likes: basketball.

Another common theme of shounen series is their “cheating is bad! you should follow clearly set rules!”-mentality. Well, that too gets completely smashed in this episode when James Loane tries to impose his own rules on basketball. Dan is very quick to remind him how basketball is meant to have fun, not be bound by all sorts of restrictive rules that fail to get the best out of the characters. Real fun basketball is supposed to be the kind that takes risk. And in that way, this series couldn’t possibly have chosen a better fitting lead character than Dan, because he may not be the most technically skilled basketball player, but his sheer guts and creativity when playing are what makes him unique. And really: a lot of shounen series struggle so badly to make their characters stand out. Yay! We’ve seen a teenager change the world. Why him? Why couldn’t anyone else do it? Nine out of ten shounen series simply fails to answer that, or has such a ludicrous answer for it that it’s hard to take seriously.

Some other shounen-tropes that are made completely ridiculous in this series: “screw the rules I have money” (which is really taken to the extreme by James Loane’s incredible wealth), the evil overlord who tries to look as cool as possible (James again, as he tries to look cool while blowing bubbles) and the overly obvious romance. Really, with so many girls in this series, with so much fanservice, there hasn’t been a sign of romance at all. Dan and Miyuki for once behave like real childhood friends, rather than them using it for cheap romance. Sera, while she has the hots for Dan as he plays baseball, she gets turned on by every good baseball match. I really hope that this series can continue this, because it’s felt SO refreshing so far.

But what I like the most in this series is the setting: it really feels alive: it really feels like this series takes place in a city with lots of different people, rather than a television set with a bunch of extras here and there. This has LOTS of promise for the future of this series. For example, the eye catch in this episode showed two people who I couldn’t recognize at all: I had no idea who they were. As it turns out, they were some random townsfolk who appear every once in a while and are just living their daily lives. It just shows how important Rollingtown is for this series.

Rating: *** (Awesome)
In this episode, Dan really showed why he is this series’ main character. Lots of extra depth for both the characters and setting, one heck of a successful episode.

Pandora Hearts – 07

by psgels, posted in Pandora Hearts



I’m not sure what exactly this series has done to only warrant very low quality releases like this, because after last week’s cheese the show really is as good as it once was, and it really deserves some files of higher quality. Ah well, while the cliff-hanger of the previous episode ended with a bit of an anti-climax, the rest of the episode really rocked.

It really was meant as an episode to strengthen the bonds between Oz and Gilbert, who distanced himself from Oz out of the fear that he might not have liked the way he changed, and Oz and Alice, who has been continuously wondering whether or not to trust Oz, especially now that he seems to have found his childhood friend back.

In the meantime we learn a bit about Alice’s past as well, which indeed seem to have taken place in the house of Bezarius. The person she once was with looks like another member of the Bezarius-family. A hint is given that we’ve seen the guy before, but I can’t exactly place my finger on when that happened. And we also learn that there’s another Alice, who my guess would be was either the one Oz met in the first episode, or responsible for Alice’s memory loss.

With this episode, the introduction now seems really over and the characters are established, so I’m curious to see what the real meat of the story will be about.

Rating: * (Good)
The cheese is gone, good character-development and the mystery got a little deeper again amount to a very enjoyable episode. Plus, that bunny looked awesome.

Eden of the East – 06

by psgels, posted in Eden of the East



Yet another episode of building up, but really: that’s exactly what this series needs to be doing at one point. I watched this episode raw, so I probably missed quite a few things, but it’s always good to see an episode dedicated to fleshing out the side-cast. There’s plenty of time for the climaxes during the final episodes of the series and the movie, so I’m happy with how this show has turned out so far. It’s definitely the series with the most solid execution of the entire spring season, even though it’s not the most exciting one.

This pattern really reminds me of how brilliantly Mouryou no Hako turned out. Its middle part also had SO much building up, and yet it finished off with such an awesome climax, and Eden of the East is shaping up to become the same. This episode shows how Saki gets dropped off by Akira near her friends, so that she can introduce them to him. Among her friends are a female programmer and two NEETs, of which one has lots of resemblances to a hikkikomori. In a way, especially her male friends are exactly those targeted by Akira’s “saving the world” programme.

Also correct me if I’m wrong, but “Eden of the East” turns out to be Saki’s friends’ programming club. At the moment, I’m not sure whether Saki herself is also a computer geek, but she sure did befriend a lot of them. When the show started, I thought that it was some sarcastic reference to Japan, with all of the bombings and all. The theme of young people trying to find the place that they belong turns out to be surprisingly large for a series that first seemed like just a fascinating mystery-series. The “Eden” more means something like a heaven for NEETs.

Also, this episode sure gave an even more macabre image of the white-haired woman, as we learn that she kills her victims by cutting off their “Johnnies”. I really am not sure how a selfish bitch like her managed to escape the supporter for that long. My guess would be that she made some sort of deal with number one, who pretty much everyone suspects to be the supporter.

Rating: * (Good)
Building up and fleshing out the cast with still all-out excellent production-values.

Ristorante Paradiso – 05

by psgels, posted in Ristorante Paradiso



This really was an excellent episode for this series. It’s really clear that this is a character-study, and this time it’s Gigi’s turn to be placed under the loop, and I must say that he has quite an interesting backstory, and I think that this was one of the first convincing stories of adultery I’ve seen in anime.

So as it turns out, Gigi is Lorenzo’s half-brother. Lorenzo was born because Gigi’s father committed adultery with his own brother’s wife. The interesting thing though, is that none of them really hold a grudge against each other, and the two of them actually grew to be really close. It was Lorenzo’s father’s winery that fueled Gigi’s passion for liquor, and what’s also ironic is that Gigi’s father himself, even though he was outraged by his brother, did commit adultery himself with another woman, which gave Gigi another half-sibling.

I’m also starting to get the central theme of this series: the past. Sure, every character here has his or her own past, and collection of bad memories, but this series asks the question: why would one still hold a grudge for these events? Nicoletta came to Rome in the first place to smack her mother for the things she did to her, but then she came to understand how her mother found happiness that way, and she just stopped with trying to make her mother’s life miserable. Claudio and his wife must have shared a few sad memories when they broke up, and yet the two of them still are on good terms with each other. And this episode shows the same with Lorenzo and Gigi: sure, their parents did some stupid things, but is that really enough to hate them and get emo over it? The only one who got worked up over it was Gigi’s father.

This really is a-typical of most anime, who most often put lots of angst in these sad past events, but this series shows that they can also be very well used in order to flesh out characters without any angst whatsoever. Vito’s up in the next episode, so I’m interested to see what he can offer to this.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
Excellent art direction, combined with Gigi’s fascinating backstory.