White Album – 06

by psgels, posted in White Album



Short Synopsis: Touya helps Misaki with her story, while Yuki records her new song.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
I really have hardly anything to say about this episode. It was over before I knew it, and mostly spent its time building up for the future episodes. My brain feels kind-of empty after watching this episode, which quite possibly is a good thing.

This episode was all about Tooya, spending time with Misaki, while trying to keep this a secret from Yuki. The only real cheating that Touya has done so far is with Yuki’s manager, though at the same time, I think that Yuki isn’t going to be happy when she finds out about how Touya has been spending his time with all these girls. Oh, and the creators did give Hirano Aya a small chance to sing in this episode. She did it quite well, and remained within her subtle voice. I also liked how the producers made Yuki do the song over and over. Most of the times in these idol-anime, the lead characters get these songs immediately right after one or two takes, while in reality it probably takes much longer to get a satisfying result.

Jigoku Shoujo – 70

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A girl who likes to send her stories to a well-known radio-host calls Jigoku Tsuushin.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
I really wonder what Ai is doing behind that computer of hers. “Ippen Shinde Miru… wait, let me check my e-mail first”.

In any case, we have another standard episode again, this time about teenaged girls and their idols, where we have a young teenaged girl whose hopes are crushed when she finds out that her idol simply reads a pre-written script. Well, that’s multimedia. Even “reality”-shows are written by professional scriptwriters nowadays, but it must have been quite a shock for the poor girl to find out about this.

Okay, and so I was wrong: Yuzuki most definitely isn’t going to be the next Tsugumi, this series is simply using her to build u for this series’ finale. She hasn’t done anything to stop the revenges at this point. All she’s done so far is failing. You’d think that at episode 18 she’d at least book some sort of progress, but now I’m sure that the creators are really saving the best of her for the show’s finale.

Overall, now that the finale is about to begin, it’s time to look back at the past season. Overall, the random stories in the third season have been the weakest of the three seasons of Jigoku Shoujo so far. The good thing about them is that they always picked out some extreme taboo and started playing with it. The bad thing is the lack of variety. Compared to the first season, the cases now all look like each other, while the first season had a number of very creative and surprising stories, despite the show’s formula. Nevertheless, this series never lost track of its atmosphere, and the stories never fail to entertain, so even though it’s not as good as the previous seasons, I’m not disappointed by this series at all and would love to see a fourth season. ^^;

Some quick first Impressions: Hetalia: Axis Powers, Fresh Precure and Denpateki Kanojo

by psgels, posted in Hetalia: Axis Powers, Some Quick First Impressions

Hetalia: Axis Powers

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters… are a bunch of countries.
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (yeah, because I’m already blogging it)
I’m still a bit bitter that Holland wasn’t made fun of in this series so far (especially when even Estonia has its own character), but sarcasm aside, I really liked this series. You can trust Studio Deen to come up with the more crazy mangas to adapt, and the huge amount of country references was hilarious to watch. It’s going to be interesting if this series can keep this up. As for the ones who got offended by this series: you should start poking fun at other countries yourself.

Fresh Precure!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character receives the power to become a magical girl.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Obviously not)
So yeah, I checked this out in the hope that it might actually be something worthwhile, but in the end I couldn’t really find anything to really make me keep watching it, although it did turn out a bit better than your generic mahou shoujo series. I particularly liked how one of the bad guys put too much sugar in his tea because he had never seen it before, and the costume design is nice enough, but overall it really doesn’t try much to set itself apart in the mahou shoujo genre. Especially the lead character just tries too hard to be funny, the mascot character too. Not to mention the abysmally animated concert scene, the the downright painful ED and how everyone conveniently disappears when a monster shows up. I could also whine about the very bad physics in this series, but hey, this is a mahou shoujo series for kids. What else could you expect?

Denpateki na Kanojo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a legendary king who happens to be stuck in the body of a random high school boy.
Chance of me Blogging: 40% (Perhaps)
Yeah, the way this one started definitely got me worried. Here we have a legendary demon king inside a high school boy, and guess what: a cute girl arrives from out of nowhere to protect him. Still, this OVA is good stuff. The episode was well told and pretty nicely built up with some pretty good suspense parts. The lead characters slowly grew likable, and the action doesn’t aim to be as over the top as possible, but kept all the fight subtle but believable (I love it when a character actually gets disabled when hit by a very hard and solid object). Some parts were a bit too emo for my liking, but this is going to be a pretty good OVA if the rest of the episodes can keep up this pace.

Birdy the Mighty Decode – 18

by psgels, posted in Birdy the Mighty Decode



Short Synopsis: Well… just watch the episode…
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Zomg…. what the heck happened here?! I was already expecting a lot of great stuff from the second season, but that Kazuki Akane would actually go this far… Oh my god, I still can’t believe the potential of it all. To those who were all whining about the predictability of the end of the first season, which stuffed Senkawa back in Birdy’s body. Well, let’s just say that IT WAS ALL DONE WITH A REASON!

Because of that, Senkawa has now been inside Birdy’s body for a bit too long, and the two of them have begun to merge with each other, effectively causing Senkaway’s consciousness to overwrite Birdy’s! This leads to a hilarious episode in which Senkawa has to take over Shion’s tasks, but he also lost his own real body, meaning that he’s not going to be able to show himself in front of his friends, and Birdy’s going to disappear as well.

Normally, this sort of issue will probably solve itself within the next episode or so with some quick Deus ex Machina, but this is KAZUKI AKANE we’re talking about! We’re only at the fifth episode at this point. Who knows what he’s going to pull in the rest of this series!? Something also tells me that we should be fearing for the girl in the wheelchair. She’s getting way too much along with Natoru. I just feel that something’s going to happen to her. After all, she’s the perfect bait for hostages.

And also, that was one awesomely animated fight scene!

Michiko e Hatchin – 15

by psgels, posted in Michiko e Hatchin



Short Synopsis: Hatchin meets a boy of her age at a local bookstore.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
It’s the episodes like this one that make this series so deceptive. One episode tells a cute love story between a bunch of kids, and yet the next one can focus on the incredibly dark Michiko-storyline. This really is a very varied show. Perhaps not the most balanced one, but you’ll never know what you’re going to get with every episode.

This episode definitely focused on the cute side of this show. while Hatchin’s stories generally lack a part in the overall storyline of this series, her character more than makes up for it. In this episode she also for the first time gets to find out what it means to have a crush on someone, ,though she more shies away from it. Especially the final shot of this episode made some impact. You could see that Michiko felt Hatchin’s sadness because it didn’t work out with the boy, and yet it was done with some great subtlety so that it didn’t turn out into an endless angst-fest.

And some more random comments: nice Ergo Proxy-reference with Vincent Law the author (he seems to have written quite a few books, they were really all over the bookstore ^^;). This episode also showed that it’s got a very talented musical producer: the background music never really stood out, but it was very varied and subtle, and overall it added really well to the different scenes.

Oh, and in this episode something finally happened that made Michiko and Hatchin sound like mother and daughter: Michiko wanted to have something, (a book in this case), and asked Michiko for permission to get it. That was definitely the sign (even more than the hug at the end of this episode) that they’re growing closer together. Oh, and next week should prove to be fun: another double-episode. Woo!

Genji Monogatari Sennenki – 04

by psgels, posted in Genji Monogatari Sennenki



Short Synopsis: Genji gets a chance to see the princess (the one he kissed in the first episode) again.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
So yeah, you can pretty much consider me a fan of Osamu Dezaki right now. First he did a great job on Ultraviolet, and now he promises to do an even better job with Genji Monogatari. These episodes really keep getting better and better. It’s interesting, though, because based on the stories I’ve read about his other works, his series and movies are either incredibly good or incredibly bad. It seems that in the seventies and eighties, he established himself as an incredibly strong director. Then in the nineties, something went terribly wrong and he produced one terrible anime after the others, but with the new millennium he has managed to pick up himself really nicely, with the Air and Clannad Movie, the Snow Queen and Ultraviolet. It’s always interesting to see what happens when an already established director learns from his mistakes.

Anyway, in this episode, Genji feels pretty much down from what happened in the previous episode, when the ghost of the hatred of one of his neglected loves ends up killing his current love. He however, becomes his old self again when he meets the one he kissed as a fourteen year-old (I believe her name was Lady Fujitsubo). It seems that both of them are still heavily affected by that moment.

There’s also a young girl he meets (she probably will play a bigger part later in this series, but it’s quite disturbing that age really seems to not matter for Genji…), but the biggest event of this episode was of course when Genji forced himself upon the Fujitsubo, even though he probably wasn’t allowed to come near her at all (especially since she’s married to his father).

Andersen Monogatari Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Saiei is of course a great source for the raw watcher who’s interested in ancient gems that nobody’s heard of. They recently added three new movies, among which is Andersen Monogatari. Having never heard of the movie, I expected to see some WMT-esque kaleidoscope through Hans Christian Andersen’s most well known stories.

What I got… was something completely different.

For those who thought that anime in its infancy has no creativity whatsoever when compared to today’s standards…. this movie is here to prove you wrong. The movie was produced in 1968, and seriously: it’s one heck of a crack job. The movie somehow features Hans Christan Andersen as a ten year old boy, and we see his childhood through all sorts of references to the stories and characters that he later was going to write, helped by… a bratty cat, a bunch of mice and a very weird old guy who flies with an umbrella. I wouldn’t be surprised if the creators were under influence of god knows what sort of drug when they wrote this.

Ultimately though, despite all of the weirdness it’s a pretty good fantasy movie, and especially the kids will love the singing and all of the random ideas and fantasies thrown at the screen. As for the more older viewers, it’s obviously going to be a matter of taste: it’s not for everyone, but if you’re into the childish stuff (and don’t care how childish you can get) and happen to locate this movie, then it’s a pretty good recommendation. The animation is also its time very far ahead for an anime that was produced in the sixties. As for myself, there were some particular scenes where I really burst out with laughing (that dog was awesome), and the few serious parts are also really nicely integrated with the randomness of the rest of the movie. Just don’t expect any common sense in this one.

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

Bonen no Xamdou Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Bonen no Xamdou


Bones’ latest series is one full of ambition. Aired on the PS3-network, Bonen no Xamdou tells the epic story of a war between two warring countries, centred around a bunch of different main characters and some of the most amazing production values. While not everything went well for this series, and it’s got quite some big flaws here and there, it gets so many points for trying.

What makes this series so awesome is how it prefers natural progression of story-lines above forced climaxes, especially in the first three quarters of the series. Instead of focusing on battle after battle, the creators let everything flow very smoothly, with especially care to flesh out the world that this series takes place in. Akiyuki, the lead character, while he’s a typical teenager at the beginning of the series soon grows into someone as far from your average lead character as you can get. While the story focuses on him, he hardly ever stands in the centre of attention, and instead various of the side characters get to play the hero-part.

This allows for a unique storyline with a fantastic attention to detail that’s the closest to the levels of Seirei no Moribito that I’ve seen so far. The characters also live in a very imaginative world that’s very interesting to explore, with lots of new concepts and ideas. Things like Hirukos, Humanforms and Xam’ds are nice takes on the usual superpowers and super-weapons that you usually see.

The problem, however, is that even though this series is an incredibly solid one, it’s also a series that bit off a bit more than it could chew. The 26 episodes are way too short in order to fully develop everything that’s in this show, and the results of this start showing up in the final quarter of this series. It features the one big climax after the other, but when you look at the big picture it just feels lacking and incomplete because the different settings and characters couldn’t be fully developed. As a result, characters pull random powers and plot twists out of nowhere and big deaths that would make lots of emotional impact with the right amount of development and foreshadowing simply feel like they could have been done better.

In terms of production values, however, this series is really as good as it can possibly get, especially for such a relatively long series. Because the series originally wasn’t aired on local TV, it didn’t have to spend a lot of money on the broadcasting rights, and all of this excess money was put into the series’ animation, with some absolutely gorgeous results. The animation is consistently through 26 episodes of top-notch HD quality, characters are very expressive and every single one of the many action scenes are simply godly animated.

So overall, there’s plenty of great stuff left in this series, but at the same time I’m also a bit bitter: if it had simply gotten more episodes, this really could have been a contender for the best series of the year, possibly the decade. It would have been truly outstanding in every aspect, while right now it’s simply a well written but incomplete series that has a rushed finale.

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

Bonen no Xamdou – 26

by psgels, posted in Bonen no Xamdou



Short Synopsis: Bonen no Xamdou’s finale.
Episode Rating: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
Well, there we have it. This unique series is finished at last, even though the finish comes way too soon. Still, this episode did a good job of providing closure to the different characters, so while not a great ending, it wasn’t a bad or rushed either.

But let me first focus on the one big disappointment of this episode: Akiyuki. What the heck was up with him? His character had so much potential in this series, and yet his death felt so… insignificant. It’s the main character everyone should be caring about, and yet when he died, I was more interested in Yango. But that would have been excused if not for the incredibly blatant deus ex machina that the creators pulled at the episode. I really expected better from this series…

Okay, now the good stuff. The characters I really liked in this episode was the Zanbani crew minus Benikawa and Yango. Not haru, or any of the other main characters, only they were the ones who received good closure in this series. I think that that’s the result of the very strong first half of this series, and all of the attention it focused on fleshing out their characters, and with that I suddenly realize how little we came to know about the rest of the cast.

I’m not really sure what kind of rating I’m going to give this show at this point. At one side, this show had some really good points and parts, but on the other hand it would have been so much better if it were longer. I’m not sure who found it a good idea to only give this series a scope of 26 episodes, because that sole decision caused this series to simply become a great series, instead of the incredible, genre-breaking one that it could have been. I remember how Eureka 7 also had some pacing issues, but at least that one had enough time to fully flesh out its characters for its amazing finale, while in comparison I’m going to remember Bonen no Xamdou’s final quarter, despite its godly animation, as the weakest part of this series.

Shikabane Hime – 19

by psgels, posted in Shikabane Hime



Short Synopsis: Ouri vs. Keisei & Keisei & Keisei & Keisei & etc.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
I’m really glad that my fears that the extra shounen roots would ruin the second season proved to be unnecessary, because the creators have found more than enough inspiration to keep this series interesting and exciting, so in the end the only big problem of the second season is simply the lack of subtlety in the fanservice.

This episode eliminates one of the seven stars, and what I especially liked was that the creators managed to squeeze in a bit of background about her before she died. Her death also had quite a bit of impact due to some particularly nice voice acting. Next episode should prove to be even more fun, because finally “boob”-sama is going to play a big role. It’s very nice: the past few episodes have so emphasized that shikabane aren’t humans, and because of that Ouri had no problems with killing all of the fake Keiseis. But here we have the case where a living being has been possessed by the balloon guy (who looked really scary this episode, by the way). Now that’s going even further. On top of that, it’s revealed that Akira and Mabuhiro are planning to kill the head priest, so there’s plenty of fun stuff left for this series.

The only thing that’s a shame about this second season apart from the fanservice is that the animation has also become much worse. It’s still good enough, but nowhere near as dynamic as the animation of the first season. That second episode got me hungry, but apart from the visual effects most of the eye candy isn’t as impressive anymore. Still, in order to make up for it, the creators decided to focus much more on the music. It’s strange, most of the tracks were also there in the first season, but somehow they sound even better right now.