Some quick first Impressions: Shinkyoku Soukai Polyphonica Crimson S, Senjou no Valkyria and Dragonball Kai

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions, Valkyria Chronicles

Shinkyoku Soukai Polyphonica Crimson S

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a wimp and gets his own magical girl.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Haven’t seen the first season…)
I remember how I quickly dropped the first season after the first episode because of the large amount of clichés and annoying characters. I was rather reluctant to check out the second season, but I do have to admit: this episode was better than expected. But yeah, my expectations were pretty damn low from the first place. Even though this show seems to deal with a completely different storyline than the first season, the only character that really felt annoying was that lead female who appeared in the final minute (not that that’s a good thing, but at least this episode was enjoyable enough in her absence). There still are lots of cut corners, but at least the plot is decent enough for a first episode. There were some nice quiet slice of life moments that prevented this from turning into your regular harem-fest. But yeah, at the end of the episode your typical annoying tsundere bonded herself to the male lead, so I really doubt whether the rest of this series will be as quiet as this episode was.

Senjou no Valkyria

Short Synopsis: Our lead character accidentally mistakes a hero for an evil spy.
Chance of me Blogging: 50% (Could be interesting)
This is a big season for fantasy-anime, apparently. And so far, Valkyria Chronicles feels like the best so far: it actually tries to portray a convincing setting, characters are slightly different from your average stereotypes, girls wear clothes that actually make sense for those kinds of people to wear, rather than those ridiculously coloured outfits, the use of guns is believable so far and there’s quite a bit of time spent on slow slice of life moments to flesh out the characters. The only problem is that the main characters remain a bunch of teenagers. Still, if the creators continue to flesh out the characters like this, we could have ourselves a very interesting series here.

Dragonball Kai

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is very strong and turns out to be an alien.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Obviously not)
Ah, the nostalgia. While I hate to admit it, Dragonball Z played a big role in making me an anime fan. And I guess that if the show simply ended after the first arc, it would at least have been a pretty decent fighting series. Instead, it just had to develop into one of those shows that goes on and on and on, in which characters take bloody ages to see who is the best at making constipated faces. While it would have been interesting to see a modern-day remake of this that just condenses the series in 26 episodes, this attempt feels half-assed at best: the entire episode was just the exact first episode of the original series. Although it was kindof weird hearing the different characters suddenly with extremely high-pitched voices and I was also surprised to suddenly see blood in this series, so far this show is nothing more than a glorified recap.

Some quick first Impressions: Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou, Isekai no Seikichi Monogatari and Shin Mazinger Shougenki! Z-Hen

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is pretty and gets invited to join the club of pretty people (no, seriously)
Chance of me Blogging: -30% (…)
This season I again avoided all the previews out there. I quite like this strategy, but the only downside is that I have absolutely no idea which series is which, and so I end up watching virtually everything… including the crap that nobody would want to watch in the first place. With a title as Mecha Mote Iinchou, I was expecting something with giant robots or something. What I got was a very cheesy shoujo series. And oh my god, this series truly shows the utter horrors of CG abuse. While if used well, you can get some nice effects, but the characters here are cell shaded 75% of the bloody time! Not only does the contrast with their regular drawings sting with the pain of a thousand needles, the creators also lack the budget to make them look good. The result is that people look more like strange marionettes than people: the way they move is just creepy. In the story-department, this show also sucks beyond belief: the lead female tries to reform a bunch of rebellious youths (and of course falling in love with one of them who had a tragic accident in his past that makes him all emo right now) and she tries to fight the super elite club in the school in which only pretty people can join. Even when compared to your average shoujo, this series is the epitome of blatant stupidity.

Isekai no Seikichi Monogatari

Short Synopsis: Our lead character attacks a very short-staffed flying island with his mecha.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No)
If I had to use one word to characterize this OVA, then it’d be ‘shallow’. Here we yet again have a generic fantasy OVA that doesn’t stand out at any part whatsoever, not to mention the amount of time it tests the viewer’s suspense of disbelief. The lead character is only a teenager, and yet he can knock a small army of armed soldiers unconscious in less than a minute, and the special treatment he receives from all of the cute girls on the flying island makes no sense whatsoever. If this were a series, it might have grown into something interesting over time, but what can an OVA really add to this with its limited amount of time?

Shin Mazinger Shougenki! Z-Hen

Short Synopsis: Our lead character pilots a giant robot.
Chance of me Blogging: 20% (Depends on the rest of the season, really)
Remakes of ancient Sci-fi shows can be extremely different, depending on what they decide to focus on. Shows as Toward the Terra and Casshern Sins showed how good the genre can be. The new Mazinger clearly goes for the homage route, and it clearly wants to start the series with an as big of a bang as possible. What I really liked was the GAR-ness of just about every single scene of this episode. the manly passion really flowed continuously through the screen. And so what if it’s a cheesy save the world plot: it worked at least in this episode. My question is going to be: what are the creators planning for the rest of the show: this episode definitely was interesting and had a really fast pacing, but it also assumed that the viewers knew lots of the established characters already (which in my case wasn’t the case). Can it remain interesting, or fall down horribly in just a random string of monsters that have to be defeated each episode?

Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Jigoku Shoujo



It’s quite a challenge to review the third instalment of Jigoku Shoujo, since I’m so incredibly biased for it. The third season basically continues with the same formula, of having 26 episodes, nearly all of them about someone taking a revenge against someone else. The show is evolving, though: the third season does feature a bunch of differences from the previous two, though. A few subtle differences… and a bunch of not-so-subtle ones.

The big difference in which the third season sets itself apart is the nature of all of the different revenges. There never really was a distinct line between good and evil in the Jigoku Shoujo, but at least you could see that the most of the (with a number of notable exceptions of course) ones asking for revenge sort-of deserved some sort of help. This completely disappears in the third season, when the people taking revenge turn into total misguided and deluded bastards, often sending people to hell who haven’t even done anything wrong.

This has several effects. On one side, some of the revenges become totally ludicrous: the formula quickly gets predictable, and sometimes the creators make a bit too generous use of their artistic lisences to send people to hell for the most bizarre reasons. On the other hand, though: it allows them to explore the boundaries of political incorrectness. The only thing it doesn’t touch is racism, but apart from that it confronts the viewer with countless of modern-day taboos, and presents them in a politically incorrect, and yet somewhat realistic manner; and that’s the creepy bit.

Jigoku Shoujo has also been known for its particularly strong climaxes, and Mitsuganae is no different. while I’m not going to spoil anything here, the eventual finale makes optimal use of the huge amounts of building up that the rest of the season put into it, up to the final minute of the show, and this has definitely been the best finale that Jigoku Shoujo has shown us thus far.

So yeah, the first half is mostly nothing special for Jigoku Shoujo’s standards, but the final quarter SO makes up for it. Obviously, in order to enjoy Jigoku Shoujo, you must be aware that it’s an incredibly repetitive series: in nearly every episode, you know for sure that someone is going to get sent to hell. But what makes this such a special series is that even though it has this weakness, its atmosphere totally makes up for it: it’s very consistent and thanks to an excellent sense of build-up, it only gets tighter as the show goes on. And that’s really the strength I see in horror-series: using creepy atmosphere and storytelling to draw the viewer inside the story, and Jigoku Shoujo doesn’t just succeed in it. It succeeds in it for 78 episodes.

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

Jigoku Shoujo – 78

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A certain character‘s father calls Jigoku Tsuushin.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
And with this, the Winter-season is really over for me. this was the second best final episode after Birdy the Mighty, but then again, when the entire season has been building up to this point, in a season where there only were a few endings that really impressed me, Ai had to start acting like an overly energetic schoolgirl to for me to change my opinion of this series. Jigoku Shoujo has a great personal value for me: after Mahou Shoujotai it was the major reason for me to start blogging, and more than three years and 78 episodes later and it’s still going strong as an awesome series. If there is going to be some sort of fourth season, I’ll definitely be up for it.

So, the big twist? The spider is Kikuri!?!? This seems to be a major case of split personality here, but it turns out that ever since Ai and the others left from Ai’s grandmother’s house, the spider has been happily camping inside of Kikuri’s head, who does seem to be a completely different person, say, a doll. This explains why she’s always causing trouble: it was as a means for her to resist the almighty spider.

As for Yuzuki: in the end she turns out to involve herself with her clients way too much. She turns against the spider and ends up getting punished. Ai then takes the blame, and becomes Jigoku Shoujo, even after finally becoming free, in order to let Yuzuki’s spirit die in peace. A very nice and creative ending, and it does make sense if you link it to the ending of the second season: Ai is mostly emotionless, but the people she spends a lot of time with she develops a bond. This was first started with Tsugumi, and the strength of the bond only became stronger in the successive seasons, in which in the second one she had to endure a punishment of losing her body, and in the third one she had to give up her chance to finally be free of being Jigoku Shoujo.

So, I have no idea what Studio Deen is up to for the current spring season, but these guys always manage to surprise me and they have produced many of my favourites. The past half year has been relatively weak for them, since all of their shows were simply sequels apart from Hetalia, so it’s about time for them to put some new stuff on the table again. Jigoku Shoujo has once again been a joy to watch despite the repetitiveness, and Ai’s character-design has to rank among the top-10 of best character-designs ever.

Oh, and we have a prime here after this post: the part on the right side-bar under “Currently Watching” is completely empty. I’ve never had that case in all the years that I’ve been blogging so far, there were always one or two oddballs every season at least. In any case this means that I can blog 12 episodes for the new season. Definitely going to be interesting.

Some quick first Impressions: Hayate no Gotoku 2nd Season, Examurai Sengoku and Slap Up Party ~Arad Senki~

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Hayate no Gotoku – 2nd Season

Short Synopsis: Our lead character still is the butler of a rich but athletically hopeless girl.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Haven’t seen the first season…)
I remember how when the first season aired, I wrote a rather *ahem*biased first impression of it. Because of this, I figured that it would be a good opportunity to give this show a second chance with the airing of a second season, and I have to say that this episode was pretty enjoyable. It wasn’t anythings special, but it got a bunch of good snickers out of me, and didn’t feel boring at all. It really makes me wonder why the heck I hated the first season with a fiery passion…

Examurai Sengoku

Short Synopsis: Our lead character still is your average tough samurai with a thirst for sake
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Obviously not)
Here’s one I missed during the past winter-Season (or rather: couldn’t find anywhere), but it finally has received some subs. Right from the bat, it’s obvious why this series hasn’t received any attention whatsoever: all it does is look pretty. The utter amounts of cheese in this first episode were almost unbelievable, the voice-acting is terrible and the editing is way too sloppy. I did get a good laugh out of it, though. The dialogue is so utterly ridiculous and cheesy that it becomes funny. Especially that lead character is hilarious: he tries so hard to look like your average cool and bad-ass protagonist-samurai, but he fails in this completely.

Slap Up Party ~Arad Senki~

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has demon powers and travels across the land
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (If he rest of the season is really bad…)
Um… yeah. The start of this episode really was too painful to watch, and really typical of Bad Gonzo. The biggest thing was all of the hopelessly overacting characters and uninspired scripts of these people. Oh, this was even beyond cheese, this was utterly terrible. Having said that, though: the comedy does work, surprisingly enough. This show is so incredibly stupid, but it is hilarious in the process. And it’s true that Gonzo has always had a knack for combining fantasy with comedy, and this is just a case where they take this to the extreme: the fantasy is incredibly bad, though the comedy is surprisingly good.

Some quick first Impressions: Phantom ~Requiem of the Phantom~, Pandora Hearts and Higepiyo

by psgels, posted in Pandora Hearts, Phantom, Some Quick First Impressions

Phantom ~Requiem of the Phantom~

Short Synopsis: Our lead character wakes up with amnesia and becomes an assassin.
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (BEE-TRAIN ROCKS)
Okay, so I said before that this season was disappointing so far. After Phantom, though, I’m going to take that statement back: this season rocks, if only because this show’s in it. I’ve SO been dying to see another Bee-Train series, and this series was everything I could have hoped for: a fantastic soundtrack, very addictive and slow storytelling, lots and lots of mystery and two already likable lead characters. This quite possibly was one of the best first episodes I’ve seen this year. The entire episode just screamed style. And even though the graphics look simple and down to earth, what I liked about the action was that everything is so much down to earth: sure, the main characters so have strange powers, but still you can see that without them pulling ludicrous powers or regeneration out of thin air: the battles here are realistic: a gunshot kills people; knives make wounds. Now that’s my kind of action!

Pandora Hearts

Short Synopsis: Our lead character finds a strange watch.
Chance of me Blogging: 60% (Nice potential)
Ooh, nice. Pandora Hearts is promising to be quite the interesting anime. This first episode had a very nice combination between quiet slice-of-life scenes and tenseful drama. This episode was very nicely told with charming characters and a pacing that didn’t drag at all. There’s a nice soundtrack, solid animation and even though the character-designs look a bit childish, they do the job they’re supposed to do. It’s also good to hear Yuki Kajiura again, although this show isn’t her best work by far. My only worry so far is how the creators are going to use the fact that the main characters are a bunch of teenagers: it’s clear that they know hardly anything about fighting, so please don’t make them grow into battle experts by the end of the series.

Higepiyo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is supposed to be a cute chick (as in bird, not girl)
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Uh… yeah)
As if this season didn’t already have enough series of five-minute episodes, there’s more! Higepiyo is… some sort of bizarre bastardization of Chi’s Sweet Home, in which an average family takes in a chick. The twist? The chick has the mentality of your average middle aged guy in his midlife crisis. With such a ridiculous concept, I do have to agree that out of all the five-minute episodes this season, this one made me laugh hardest. The hilarious thing about this show is the incredibly deadpan sense of humour that the titular Higepiyo has. He never changes expressions, and that makes the contrast to the things he does (reading the newspaper, eating curry, etc) hilarious. The reactions of the family he’s adopted might be a bit exaggerated, but it’s going to be a fun show if the creators manage to keep the rest of the series fresh.

Some quick first Impressions: Infinite Space, K-On and Basquash!

by psgels, posted in Basquash!, Some Quick First Impressions

Infinite Space

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets a space-ship from a mysterious lady
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Again, only if the rest of the season is bad)
Well what do you know? Yet another show with episodes of only five minutes. This one seems to go for a fully fledged storyline, though. That makes me wonder a bit whether it’s trying to bite off more than it can chew, but the potential is there at least. What it really needs to do now is make optimal use of the fact that it only has a very limited airtime, and seriously improve on the bad GC here. There’s actually quite a bit of potential in the story, but after only five minutes there’s hardly a lot to say about it. I do hope, though, that it’s going to last longer than simply 13 episodes that really is going to be the recipe for disaster.
EDIT: oh crap, it’s just a generic promotion for a video game of only 4 episodes long. Scratch all that I said above. This thing sucks.

K-On

Short Synopsis: Our lead character joins the light music club at her high school.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Waah waah I hate mainstream anime waah waah)
Well, there you have it: this series yet again has the typical flaws of a Kyoani-show: it just consists out of a rip-off of some of their other franchises, most notably Lucky Star and the concert episode of Haruhi. The personality of the four main characters in this series can quite effectively be mapped to the personalities of the four lead characters of Lucky Star, and it’s a series about a school band. Granted, the one thing that was new here is a much more messy style of animation: at least that’s something new from them. The show could grow into an enjoyable slice of life series, but my big problem with it so far (aside from the lack of originality) is the female lead character. There’s actually lots of potential in a school band, but instead of choosing a lead character with a passion for music, the creators here went for a clueless and clumsy ditz without any musical talents whatsoever. I foresee some forced developments here.

Basquash!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has spiky hairs and plays basketball in a huge car-like mecha.
Chance of me Blogging: 25% (Depends on what the heck it’s going to focus on)
Well, so this is incredibly stupid: here we have a spunky spiky-haired teenager… who is playing terrorist with a basketball of all things as a weapon. Seriously, he takes out an army of police officers with that thing. But hey: at least it’s fun! This was at least the best episode I’ve seen in this so far lackluster season, so at least that’s something. Even though there are huge amounts of bad logic and questionable plot twists (kids being able to control mechas better than trained adults? of course!), there are actually huge amounts of ideas in this series. The lead character may very well be your typical lead, but what I liked about him was his fiery passion for basketball. And I also loved the random ducks that showed up every once in a while. The visuals also looked totally sweet, but then again the question remains whether the creators can keep this up. My question for this series is the following: is the rest of the series just going to be a string of random basketball matches (very likely, considering his rival that got introduced in this episode), or is the basketball just going to be a vehicle to the real meat of the plot? Is this going to be a Buzzer Beater or a Gad Guard?

Some quick first impressions: Queen’s Blade, Sengoku Basara and Asura Cryin’

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Queen’s Blade

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has boobs.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No)
Seriously, what the heck happened to the clothes of those women? Even the characters of Ikkitousen wore more than these… things. Every single thing in this show is simply to generate as much fanservice as possible. Evil demons don’t specialize in easy and efficient ways to kill, but instead on ways to dissolve clothing while preventing any flesh wounds from forming. Characters’ bodies are apparently very oily (courtesy of very bad shading), but I guess that the weather must be very hot around these parts. That makes me feel sorry for those fully dressed male guards, though. Obviously, this show is going to be bad, and I have no intention to wait to see how badly the plot falls apart in the end.

Sengoku Basara

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is young, has lots of powers and leads an army.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (The rest of the season has to be really bad for that to happen)
Okay, while this is at least a bit more like it, the only thing about Sengoku Basara that didn’t feel utterly generic was the bit with the CG dancing samurai in the OP, and that isn’t exactly something to be proud of. Here we yet again have an extremely powerful teenager who can take on armies at a time, and the gimmick of this show seems to be lots of exciting medieval warfare. Unfortunately there’s nothing that really catches your attention. The characters were just way too busy trying to look cool, instead of trying to go somewhere. In fact, I really wonder why everyone walks around accompanied by half an army in these series. I mean, the main characters can each wipe out half a city in an instant if they wanted to. What kind of difference did they really think that those puny men without any powers could make on the opponent? In fact, since this is a show about medieval warfare… how come those characters aren’t massively wiping out cities in the first place?

Asura Cryin’

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets lots of cure girls including a ghost one.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Only if the rest of the season is really bad)
Oh, the incredibly generic character-designs! Throughout the entire episode I was facepalming at all of the incredibly bad and overdone clichés that appeared throughout this episode. To just name a few: the house with romantic cherry blossoms growing next to it, an OP with the lead female naked for no reason whatsoever, an OP that actually tries to rip off the ALI-project of all things, the generic male lead surrounded by lots of cute girls, the big breasted classmate who gets admired by every single guy in school APART from the male lead, the very annoying male classmate who never stops whining, et cetera. But, the good news is that there’s potential! There’s a huge back-story behind everything, which actually sounds mysterious enough to work. Let’s hope that the future episodes will cut down on the stereotypes, but there’s a chance that this could turn into something worthwhile.

Some quick first Impressions: Charady no Joke na Mainichi, Cookin’Idol Ai! Mai! Main! and Mainichi Kaasan

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Charady no Joke na Mainichi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character tells jokes.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Um… yeah)
What is it with this season and series with five-minute episodes? This is the third one already, and to my surprise, all three of them have been strangely enjoyable so far. Charady no Joke na Mainichi looks very childish at first sight, with very bad animation, CG and characters, but then it really surprised me when it turned out to be surprisingly witty. The show’s only purpose is to tell jokes, and in that part it succeeded somehow.

Cookin’ Idol Ai! Mai! Main!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is an incompetent idol.
Chance of me Blogging: -10% (No way)
Continuing the string of series with only five-minute episodes is a silly show about an idol who ends up presenting a cooking-show, but unfortunately unlike the others, this one is just baaad. And okay, I admit that I’m not exactly the target audience for his show, but that didn’t stop Chi, Marie and Charady from charming me. While I admit I liked the Cabbage-song, the acting here feels absolutely horrible, especially in the live-action bits are a pain to watch.

Mainichi Kaasan

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is in her mid-life crisis.
Chance of me Blogging: -20% (Absolutely not)
Oh my god… I thought it’d never stop! Mainichi Kaasan basically tells the story of an overstressed mother of two children and her every day life, but it just goes on and on for too damn long. The season started off with so many surprisingly good series of only 5 minutes per episode, and this series would have been much better if they compacted everything in bite-size chunks of these five minutes. Right now, the show repeats itself way too often, jokes often don’t fall or are badly timed and it goes on way too long. Never have I been this glad for an episode to end because it’s such an incredible chore to get through it. That’s not what a slice of life is supposed to be!

One Outs Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



In a way, One outs is much like Death Note or Code Geass: it’s a show that isn’t exactly smart, but loves to make others think that it’s the smartest kid on the block. It comes from the creators of Akagi and Kaiji, meaning that we get lots of mind games surrounding a god-like character, this time focusing on baseball. If you’re expecing much of the same, though, you’ll find yourself surprised: unlike the above mentioned series, which are all dark and gritty, One Outs goes for a much lighter tone, with a much bigger focus on entertainment, rather than suspense.

Overall, One Outs is a very strange beast. It’s the type of series that has no depth whatsoever. While the different baseball strategies may seem impressive at first sight, it’s simply an extreme version of common baseball tactics, just made more exciting for non-baseball fans. The characters receive no development whatsoever, and the series basically is a string of baseball matches in which Tokuchi (the lead character) always wins.

Instead, the fun in this series comes from seeing tokuchi pwn everyone and his dog repeatedly. while they lack development, the characters in this series have prescence, and it’s always fun to see how badly the enemy teams will be beaten. The series knows that it has a very good combination of suspense and fun, and its got lots and lots of self-confidence. It doesn’t really care of being the deepest series out there, it just wants to have fun, and that’s what it accomplishes here.

By far my favourite part of the show was the faces of everyone after Tokuchi comes up with his umpth plan. When I first started watching, I was a bit afraid that the creators would just copy their own styles used in Akagi and Kaiji, but One Outs was surprisingly refreshing, while still remaining a series that’s typical of these guys.

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