Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 20

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: Natsume loses something as he and Taki try to get rid of the evil youkai.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Ah, another adorable episode. It’s a good thing that Taki seems to be a recurring character, because there’s still so much potential left in her even though her story already took up two episodes. I’m especially hoping for a bit more romance (which really doesn’t happen often). It’s going to be interesting how she’s planning to make up for the time she lost, and spent without any friends whatsoever.

I was surprised when it turned out that the youkai had no intention to keep its promises. You don’t usually see that: most of them act very much according to a pattern, and promises are usually very important to them, but I guess that the malicious ones are different from that.

Now that the first half of the second season is over, I do have to say that I still like the series, but it does seem to be missing something when compared to the first season. I just can’t exactly put my finger onto what that is. Of course, the Tama-chapters and some others were awesome, but I don’t know… I just can’t call the second season on the same level of goodness as the first season…

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – 44

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam 00



Short Synopsis: Blah blah, Saji Louise, blah blah blah…
Episode Rating: 6/10 (Disappointing)
Oh, and I so hoped that this series’ finale wouldn’t go into this direction. This episode was just one big bad sign. It just consisted out of a bunch of people screaming and going emo, and in the end most of the parties simply ended up retreating without still not saving anything. I really hoped that the finale would be more like Gundam Wing, rather than Zeta Gundam, but right now all the signs are pointing to the fact that the creators are going for an emo-ending, rather than a political one.

Saji and Louise obviously were annoying yet again. This episode was supposed to be one of their big climaxes, and with the huge build-up they already had it still failed to capture me. Afterwards, Saji yelling of “Stop! Revenge isn’t going to solve anything!!!1!!” also felt so out of place in this series. I can only hope that Soma Pieres somehow listened to the guy.

And the ending of this episode only increased my fears. Wang Lui Ming had a great plan: give Veda’s location to the Celestial Beings. This would be something that completely shifted Ribbons’ plans and finally give the guy a bit of a challenge. But all of this was ruined when Nena went emo and killed her and her brother. Ribbons in the meantime still is the evil overlord he was twenty episodes ago, and Anew’s “big twist” was just shallow at best. One big problem with these innovators as well is that they’re hardly fleshed out. I mean, what do we really know about these people, other than that they’ve strange haircuts and weird names?

Oh god, I so hope that my fears are wrong with this. This series went on such a good path for it to be ruined by such a crappy finale. My only hope is the revelation of Aeolia Shenberg’s ultimate motives. It’d better be something really good and innovative.

Jigoku Shoujo – 71

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A famous flower arranger calls Jigoku Tsuushin
Episode Rating: 8/10 (if only because of that awesome plot twist at the end)
Muahaha! Oh, this is going to be awesome! I guess that I should have seen it coming, but the end of this episode finally reveals the purpose of Yuzuki, something that the show has been building up for nineteen episodes so far: She’s going to be the next Jigoku Shoujo! Oh, this is going to mean two things:
– How the heck is she going to accept the revenges that she loathes? How the heck is she going to accept her job?
– If she’s going to take over Jigoku Shoujo’s role, then what the heck is going to happen to Ai!? Was she just brought back by the spider temporarily in order to find a replacement for her? Talk about cruel.

Oh, and here I thought that she was simply going to be the next Tsugumi. I guess that that now reveals that the final scene of the second season: it probably was a flash-forward (or whatever that’s called) to the future in which Yuzuki has taken up her role as Jigoku Shoujo. The finales of Jigoku Shoujo are always excellent due to the immense amount of build-up that goes into them, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how the creators are planning to instate her as the next Jigoku Shoujo.

Anyway, the rest of this episode was the standard though solid revenge. The theme is yet another one of the evils of society: heritages. Oh, those things can be real bitches if both parties can’t agree on what they want. If I understood correctly, in this episode two sisters try to respectively poison and send the other to hell because of it. The boyfriend was a bit crazy, though: why couldn’t he just point out that the drink was poisoned, rather than gobble everything up in order to prove his point?

White Album – 07

by psgels, posted in White Album



Short Synopsis: The identity of the mysterious high school girl gets revealed and Rina invites Touya to his own recording session.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
So in the end, this remains a harem, though it also remains a damn good one. I’m not watching this series to see how many girls Touya can screw, and I don’t care whether this series ends with Touya ends up breaking up with Yuki, making up with her, or even if he ends up screwing everyone and his dog (not exactly the most appropriate figure of speech to use here, but you get the point). Right now, I’m satisfied enough with the show’s execution and how well it captured the different emotions of the different characters.

If School Days was blessed with the same execution, I bet that I wouldn’t have hated it as much as I did in the end. Especially in the harem genre, where it’s WAY too easy to throw a bunch of girls together near one protagonist, making them fall in love with him for the shallowest reasons, you NEED this good execution, otherwise you’ll just end up with a copy of all the fifty or so (how many are there anyway?) harems that are already out there.

Anyway, the mysterious high school girl turns out to be the girl that Touya was supposed to tutor. It turns out to be an easy job, since she seems to be a very good student and her mother simply hired him in an attempt do do her daughter a favour. She’s a typical girl whose parents are always out, and stands out the most in the surprisingly direct comments she makes towards Touya.

I think that this episode also showed that Touya doesn’t believe he’s cheating, but simply was helping out a friend in need. However later, he does behave a bit obsessive when Rina suddenly pops up, up to the point where Misaki just walks out of him. Haruka also turns out to have feelings for the guy. We really need to see a bit more about her.

One thing that I feel like is missing here is other males. True tears did this quite well, where the female characters also had feelings for other males apart from the lead character, but here Touya is the only one for the female characters to fall in love with. Are there no other childhood friends for both Haruka and Misaki? How come we never see Yuki hanging out with other boys? Ah well, it must have been a conscious decision from the creators to not make this into an overly convoluted soap opera love polygon, but it does feel a bit jarring at times.

Birdy the Mighty Decode – 19

by psgels, posted in Birdy the Mighty Decode



Short Synopsis: In order to save Birdy, Senkawa needs to learn about her past.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Ah, it’s finally time to reveal Birdy’s past. Something that the past five episodes kept hinting at. Since her story couldn’t be squeezed into one episode, this episode is mostly building up, and setting up the basics of how she grew up and met Natoru. Not the most exciting episode, but definitely a necessary one.

So as it turns out, Birdy was really raised as one of the elite. For her entire life, she was trained to become part of the intergalactic police. Natoru turns out to be an Aruta of a much lower class, which explains how the two former friends ended up on the opposite sides of the law: they just happened to meet each other, but they grew up in completely different environments.

Interestingly, this also forces Senkawa to reveal to Birdy’s superiors that Nataru and especially his father are on the planet earth (and subsequently that his father died). This probably is going to mean that the intergalactic police is going to involve itself heavily in the final part of this series.

Overall, albeit uneventful this was an adorable episode, and a bit sad, I guess: Birdy was hardly given the time to grow up like a normal girl, or choose what she wanted to be because she seemed to have been specifically bred to be a weapon. I’m interested in what the big secret of her past is. This episode, along with all the other flashbacks are building up to something… I just can’t put my finger to exactly what.

Full Metal Alchemist – The Conqueror of Shamballa Review – 50/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



So even though it seems that the new FMA-series to air this April is going to be a remake rather than a continuation (do correct me if I’m wrong; I’d hate to spread false rumours like this), I might as well watch the movie that concluded the original series. And really, I do hope that the new series is going to be better than this… thing.

God, the amount of plot-holes in this movie is nearly unbelievable. The original series may have had its share of eye-brow raising plot twists, but it was never as bad as here. Characters just happen to meet each other for the sake of the new plot, there’s hardly any time spent on explaining what the heck is going on, the creators pull random powers out of thin air, characters start acting either incredibly stupid or out of character in order to push the plot in the “right” direction, and this happens throughout the entire movie!

The new characters aren’t fleshed out at all. The old ones all have changed a bit from their characters in the TV-series, but instead of becoming more dynamic they’ve all turned into useless stereotypes. Especially Colonel Mustang has turned bad. But nearly every time a character experiences heavy emotions the drama just becomes emo and laughable.

All of it is filled with the most improbable physics ever. Ed can leap up hundreds of meters from a flying plane and just crawl up without a scratch. In a world where people have invented guns, rockets and even atom bombs, people still walk around in medieval armors (strangely enough, all of them seem to become zombies when they do so).

And then the graphics. They are serviceable for your average TV-Series, but this is a MOVIE we’re talking about. It’s a continuation of one of the biggest commercial successes in anime outside of Ghibli. You’d expect the creators to receive a huge budget for it, but I can’t remember any place where I was really impressed by the animation of this thing. Heck, the CG in this movie is downright crap at times , of the level of your average Trans-Arts CG-Horse.

This really is typical of Bad Bones. They come with premises that are destined for greatness, but along the way shoddy execution just turns them into lackluster caricatures that could have been so much better. The second season in April has a lot to make up for after this mess.

Storytelling: 4/10
Characters: 4/10
Production-Values: 7/10
Setting: 5/10

Dai Guard Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Dai Guard is another Evangelion-inspired series: throughout the series, a bunch of strange huge monsters starts wreaking havoc, and it’s up to some private corporation to get rid of it. An Evangelion (or whatever series was the first one to come with such a concept) rip-off however, this isn’t: you can see it more as a combination between satire and homage of the Giant Robot genre of the seventies. And it works pretty nicely.

This series tries to set itself apart through its large focus on the inner politics of influential corporations. The titular Dai Guard is owned by a huge company, and therefore restricted by all sorts of rules and regulations, which led to the priceless situation in which its launch was delayed because one of the business officials who was supposed to give his approval happened to be golfing on a business trip. There’s also a large focus on the company’s struggles with the military, who hold very different ideas from the overmoralistic lead characters of this series.

But even though they’re very moralistic at times, the lead cast of this show is a really lovable bunch of people. At first, they may seem a bit strange and clichéd, but they’re the type of people that’ll grow on you. There isn’t really one person who stands out in particular: every single member of the division that this series focuses on has his or her moments of greatness.

Overall, this is just a fun series for those who are looking for action that’s a bit more than simply handing out punches or throwing beams until the other party goes down. Strategies are a large part of the battles in this series, not to mention that the army also likes get in the lead characters’ way. It’s not without its flaws, though. In fact, it’s got a pretty big one, aside from how the premise gets formulaic after a while.

The big problem with this series is that the people from the army really are portrayed like a bunch of incompetent idiots. I can understand their own situation, but every time they get the chance to show themselves, they either behave like complete morons or the enemy robots do things that would have screwed the lead characters over completely as well if they had to deal with it. While the scriptwriters do provide them with enough chances to show themselves, they also subsequently write any battle in favour of the lead characters, even when the odds are completely against them.

The ending also feels forced as well. The creators created a monster there that may have been a bit too strong, so obviously the operation to get rid of it introduces quite a few plot-holes. So while this show has a lot do dislike, it’s also got a lot to like, and it especially captured the working environment of the lead characters quite nicely. It’s not going to make any top 10 lists, but it does what it intends to do: entertain. It’s a great series as long as you don’t think too much behind it. ^^;

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

Michiko e Hatchin – 17

by psgels, posted in Michiko e Hatchin



Short Synopsis: Michiko screws up while trying to get some passports and Hatchin meets a bunch of weirdos.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Awesome to see that both installments of Michiko e Hatchin hit the mark exactly this week. This episode combines the dark parts of the Michiko-stories with the adorable parts of the Hatchin-story-lines. So what does that mean? A bunch of cross-dressers, of course!

Hatchin, while lost and searching for Michiko (who got herself into trouble yet again (nice restaurant, by the way: every table had a live canary on it) meets a guy who is willing to offer her a place to stay. He turns out to have a very kind daughter, and at first there seems nothing wrong with them… until it becomes clear that the guy is a stage cross-dresser performer, and his “daughter” is actually an ill-mannered boy. It was just adorable to see how much this boy looked up to his father: he behaved like an angel in front of him, and when he was alone with Hatchin he just kept bragging about how good and awesome his father was (which in a way was true: at the end of the episode he managed to get Michiko out of a tight spot while placing his life on the line for her).

I also like the subtlety in which some of the more negative sides of Brazil were highlighted, with the mother who simply used her baby as a beggar in order to get some money. I like how it got its point across without being overly preachy or moralistic about it.

We also see the guy with the weird hairdo back in this episode, and he’s shaping up to be not just a threat to Michiko, but Satoshi as well, making friends with the guys who caused Michiko problems in this episode. Since the creators didn’t use them at all in this episode, my guess would be that they’re going to play a major part in this episode. And in that aspect, I think that this series beats Samurai Champloo. while the action is less stylized, in SC the major antagonists really came from out of nowhere at the last possible moment, while here they appear every once in a while too do something.

Also, Michiko has a very strange sense of Rock Paper Scissors… And was it me, or was this episode obsessed with food? Seriously, the most detailed shots came from the various dishes that passed the screen…

Michiko e Hatchin – 16

by psgels, posted in Michiko e Hatchin



Short Synopsis: Michiko and Hatchin run into the woman who appeared with Hiroshi in the paper (Elis Michaela).
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
This post is going to be short, since I’m hungry for that next episode, but I do want to say: Michiko Rocks! It’s always fun when her character clashes with that of another one. While this is usually Hatchin, this episode showed that the formula also works with others. The bitchfight between her and Elis was downright awesome (not to mention that kiss. ^^;).

And man, that Hiroshi is one bastard, who seems to be systematically on the run for either Michiko or Hatchin. He probably also faked his own death because of that, though it makes you wonder why he became stupid enough to be featured in a newspaper article. Did he do that because he fell in love with Elis?

Genji Monogatari Sennenki – 05

by psgels, posted in Genji Monogatari Sennenki



Short Synopsis: Genji has done it now: he’s gotten the princess pregnant.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Now THIS is Noitamina! This show has really been consistently excellent so far, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get worse any time soon. The only part that’s still left for it to screw up is the ending, which has a lot of potential to end up rushed or unfinished. But until then, I’m really going to enjoy the rest of this series.

And so, it had to happen some time: Genji has gotten someone pregnant. To be precise, he has given birth to the future king, it seems. Because Lady Fujitsubo refused to make public that the two of them had sex, she decided to pretend that the baby came from Mikado, the king, even if Genji was the real father.

I still can’t quite get inside Genji’s head, though. On one hand, the guy seems so genuine, he seems to care so much about the women he sleeps with, and yet at the same time he seemed so upset when he learned that Fujitsubo had a baby from someone other than himself.