Birdy the Mighty Decode – 15

by psgels, posted in Birdy the Mighty Decode



Short Synopsis: Birdy meets her childhood friend again.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Whoa!

I somewhat expected that the second season would be better than the first, but such a huge difference in quality, I never saw coming. The first two episodes were quiet and set up the basic premise for this series, with lots of Senkawa behind his teen-aged self. The second season however, immediately jumps into the action, the animation is consistently awesome, rather than usually average with awesome animation for the big action-scenes. Seriously, it looks like the second season is going to top the first season in just about every aspect, and with a bit of luck it’s going to be the best of the sequels that started airing in this Winter-season.

But my favourite change: Senkawa. The past two episodes showed no intention whatsoever to drag on his romantic relationship. In fact, it’s time for Birdy to have her romance, and that one’s also looking much more interesting than the romance of the first season. On top of that, Senkawa is now more experienced in love matters, so he can actually give Birdy a bit of advice here and there.

This episode also showed: the director of this series definitely also did Noein. The animation was fantastic, even during the quiet parts the characters are drawn in a very messy style, but this way they gestures and motions have extra expressivity, and they really make the cast come alive this time. It doesn’t make for the best screenshots, though. ^^;

I also love it when the writers go creative with ring-tones. It may be something small, but it’s fun to see what kind of tune the character in question has chosen, and it’s even small things like these that add to the fleshing out the character. It’s amazing how Natoru has only appeared for 2 episodes, and he already feels like a regular member of the cast. Especially during the big fight scene at the end of this episode. That was seriously brutal! Seriously, this second season has buckets of potential.

Tytania – 14

by psgels, posted in Tytania



Short Synopsis: Zalish’s mother goes crazy, Fan meets an old acquaintance again and the Estrads carry out their plans.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
I’m beginning to see what made Legend of Galactic Heroes such a loved anime. These creators are just really good storytellers. They know exactly when and what to build up, and from there they proceed and make everything snowball out of control. What simply started as an innocent plan of Alses to get his hands on Fan is escalating into chaos, which lead to the death of two people, and the arrest of countless, and there doesn’t seem to be an end to the bloodbath yet.

When this series started, I found all the tactical planning pretty lame and dull, but thankfully they were only building up for their second half. There was plenty of juicy character-development in this episode. The always so composed Zalish is starting to crack under the pressure of his brother’s death and his mother’s rages. Jouslan meanwhile shows his true colours: he didn’t simply lack ambition like I originally thought, but he’s much more someone who waits for the right moment in order to for a complete and utter checkmate. He resembles Idris in a way, with the only difference that his patience lasts longer than that of Idris. ^^;

Still, this episode did remove quite a few actors from the main stage when the entire Estrade family and their allies gets rounded up like it’s nothing. I really thought that they’d last longer than that. But at the same time, it’s about time for the creators to reveal the purpose of a certain princess. I mean, she can’t do nothing for much longer, can she?

Some quick first Impressions: Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai, Catman and Genji Monogatari Sennenki

by psgels, posted in Genji Monogatari Sennenki, Some Quick First Impressions, Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai

Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has the power to save a strange country of elf-people.
Chance of me Blogging: 50% (If the shows I’m planning to blog turn out bad, I’m going for this one)
Ooh, very nice! Kyoani is finally getting a bit out of its comfort zone. Sure, this series is just a rehash of one of their earliest franchises, but it’s at least a step along the way to get them to adapt something actually other than high school series (with the first step obviously being Clannad’s After Story). Overall I’d love to have seen the studio going for something completely new, but there’s no doubt about the potential of the Munto remake. This episode set the foundations of an epic storyline in a pretty interesting parallel world, with pretty nice animated effects that know when to be subtle and when to be over the top. What this series needs to do now is make its cast of characters a bit more interesting. All I saw in this episode was a bunch of people that are fighting a bunch of other people, and those other people are about to find a girl who can help them fight against those people. They lack an identity so far, despite their distinctive character-designs: give them more sides, life goals, motivations, weaknesses, whatever. Make them interesting!

Catman

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a solitary humanoid cat.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (But an interesting short nonetheless)
So, inspired by Touhou’s animation project (and trying to find something to cover so that I wouldn’t have to wait until the 24th before being able to post this entry…) I started looking for other short and experimental animation works. Eventually I fond this nice series of flash animations, called Catman. They’re basically a series of short videos without spoken dialogue, about a city of cat-people, following the titular Catman as he lives his life and gets himself into trouble. It’s nice and down to earth, but what especially caught my attention was the soundtrack that fully consists out of catchy ska-songs, which really works and creates a very nice mood for this series. Apparently, it also won some awards, so if you ever have the chance to watch something of this, then it’s a nice way to spend 3 minutes.

Genji Monogatari Sennenki

Short Synopsis: Our lead character grows up as the daughter of a prestigious household.
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (Noitamina + Feudal Japan + Osamu Dezaki? Hell yeah!)
Oh boy, this one’s going to get popular. When Ultraviolet already received so much hate, I don’t want to know how badly the character-designs of Genji Monogatari will be received. Still, I don’t care! This episode had by far the best visuals of the Winter season. Uniting Noitamina with Osamu Dezaki was a large gamble, but it really worked out so far. The pacing in this episode is slow, and yet lots of stuff has already happened and already two characters have received quite a bit of depth. With only 11 episodes, this series really wasts no scene, and I’m predicting lots of great stuff for the rest of this series.

Kara no Kyoukai – The Garden of Sinners – Hollowness Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kara no Kyoukai



Apologies for the delay on this one. The fourth Kara no Kyoukai movie is very much different from the three previous movies. While these all had the formula of “something mysterious is killing lots of people”, this one centres around something completely different: it takes place right after Shiki got involved in the car accident, and entirely focuses on Shiki getting back to her senses. It lacks the brutal action sequences of the previous movies, and probably required the least amount of budget to produce out of the first four installments, yet it’s been the most enjoyable of the bunch for me so far.

Because this chapter finally gives us insight in the three lead characters of this franchise. Finally we learn what they are, and especially in Shiki’s case, most of the pieces of the puzzle fall in place and finally get we get a god idea of who she is. Her process of recovery from the injury is long, but now we know exactly why she acted the way she did in the first and third movie.

This episode showed how both she and Mikiya came to work for Touko, where her strange eyes came from and more. It’s a very down to earth movie, and the action only happens for a reason, but that’s probably why I liked this one so much, because it can fly put its time into the development of Shiki and the ones around her.

There’s only one part where Mikiya starts singing “I’m singing in the rain” in really bad Engrish, so that may not have been the best idea of the creators. The fourth movie isn’t the most exciting of the bunch, but it is the most complete, and it does have the best characters so far. It’s interesting how on average, each successive movie has become better than the previous one, and it would be interesting if this pattern could continue.

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

Michiko e Hatchin – 12

by psgels, posted in Michiko e Hatchin



Short Synopsis: Michiko catches a cold.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9/10 (The clear winner of the “most original fish-placement”-award)
This episode showed that Hatchin isn’t the only one who is made out of awesome and win in this series. Hatchin may be the Wonder Woman of this series, but Michiko also has proven to be downright awesome to watch. Especially in this episode, where she caught a cold and was supposed to stay in bed, her stubbornness made the entire episode a delight to watch.

You also have to love the weird ideas that the creators put into this episode. A psychedelic doctor/fraud who pulls fish out of his patients’ bellies?What? The visions Michiko had were also hilarious. Never thought it would be this disturbing to see Hatchin with an evil laugh…

But progress has been booked! Michiko actually tried to hide from Hatchin that she’s been smoking and drinking, despite her cold. It might be because she didn’t want to get into any useless arguments with her, but at least it’s a start: she’s finally starting to take Hatchin into consideration. Hatchin on the other hand has started breaking rules because of Michiko’s cold. I loved that line “If you need to become an angel, I’ll become the devil”. It’s a phrase that you see in more anime (out of the top of my head, Kaleido Star also used it), but the context in this episode that it appeared in is most definitely interesting.

And it’s finally confirmed: Hiroshi’s still alive. Okay, so Michiko was drunk and sick when she saw him, but his images were somehow different from the visions she had after that.

Shikabane Hime – 16

by psgels, posted in Shikabane Hime



Short Synopsis: Ouri continues with his training to not die.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
The fanservice…. wtf… This series was supposed to be subtle. What the heck is up with the new ED? Why does the first scene of this episode start with a naked Makina? Seriously, I don’t mind a bit of fanservice here and there (the first season was pretty much fine here), but this is really becoming too much…

Nevertheless, this episode did well in exploring one of the main themes of the second season (besides the fanservice, that is): the relationship between a Shikabane Hime and her contractor. That’s another advantage of having so many Shikabane pairs as in this series: they all have a different relationship between themselves. They’re also equally important, and it’s not like the lead combo of Ouri and Makina gobbles up all of the attention in this series. The first season also had a number of annoying parts, so there’s still plenty of potential left for this series to work with. It’s a good thing that it’s still continuing to develop its characters, and that’s the most important part here.

I must say that Makina turned out to be completely different in the second season from what I imagined of her. Now that she lost the one she could depend on, she’s really totally lost it. Her quest to avenge her own death gets mixed up with a quest to avenge Keisei, up to the point where she loses sight of what’s best for herself. It’s going to be easy whether the creators can pull the scene between her and Ouri, where she finally accepts him as her contractor, off without any cheese.

Glass Mask (2005) Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



It was really hard for me to start watching this series. The 1984 version of the series was really bad, and I wasn’t looking forward to the same bad execution for 51 more episodes. Still, I’m glad that eventually I did give this series a chance. This isn’t simply a case where the new creators improved the show at certain areas. What we have here is two versions of the same story, where one of them is utter crap, while the other is downright awesome. This really shows what good execution can mean for the overall quality of a story.

Especially when you’re making an anime about a talented actress, you need to be extra careful to fully understand what you’re adopting. The creators of the 1984-series clearly didn’t, and turned the lead character (Maya) into some sort of hopelessly over-acting Mary Sue, and they failed to emphasize that Maya was just a frail little girl, and that her talents came not from being incredibly talented, but rather her one-mindedness and ability to completely shut herself off from the outside, which was perfectly portrayed in the 2005 version.

The new voice actress also really helped: Masako Katsuki as Maya was one of the biggest miscasts you could imagine (think in the order of magnitude of putting Norio Wakamoto in the role of a young school-boy). Sanae Kobayashi however, does a much better job at portraying Maya, and that’s an understatement. Both when she’s on stage and when she’s herself, her voice captures the right nuances and makes for a believable and captivating actress.

The biggest strength of this series is its cast of characters, and then especially Maya and Ayumi full well-rounded characters at the end of the series. The rivalry that develops between the two of them is definitely memorable, and a unique take on the “hard work versus talent” theme: for once, it’s the lead character who is the talented one and the main rival who achieved her successes by working very hard. This series has 51 episodes, and they make optimal use of this long length to fully develop the bond that develops between the two of them.

But also the rest of the cast is great to watch. With perhaps the exception of some of the very minor side characters who are jealous of Maya’s successes in the beginning perhaps, every character has a clear purpose, and evolves along with this series. My only complaint here is Tsukikage, and especially her heart problems, which feels like a simple plot device. This is up to the point where you find yourself able to predict exactly when her next heart attack (or whatever it was that attacked her) is going to happen.

For a 2005-series, the animation of this series isn’t anything special, though I do want to applaud the creators for going with down-to-earth character designs, rather than the overblown shoujo-ones of the 1984 series. Especially Ayumi’s character-designs changed from the look of a stuck up princess to someone with simply good looks, nothing more and nothing less. And while most of the animation of this series isn’t that much to write about, the show does have a number of very artistic and good-looking shots of the different characters. The soundtrack for this series is also awesome, but this is where I’m really biased, since the composer also created the soundtrack of Mahou Shoujotai. ^^;

Overall, I’m glad that I listened to Hashihime and the other fans of this series, because the 2005-version really makes up everything where the 1984 version went wrong. After watching this series, I’m definitely going to look at acting in a different way, and that’s something that should be the case with every anime that’s about such a focused subject as this one.

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

Bonen no Xamdou – 23

by psgels, posted in Bonen no Xamdou



Short Synopsis: The Southern Government launches its attack on the village where the Xam’ds are gathering.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (It’s finally beginning!)
Woo! It’s finally time for this series’ finale to start, and amazingly, every single plot and character is starting to come together again. The only one we’re still missing here is Furuichi, and I wonder whether the guy is going to show up in the end, or whether the creators really killed him off. Still, this series is definitely something else, when it’s been so well planned.

So, the Zanbani is finally airborne again, Nakiami and Yango finally arrived at the battlefield, the Hiruken emperor finally awakened due to a screw up from Benikawa, and Midori also was released on the battlefield at the end of the episode. All that’s left to wonder is what Akiyuki and Haru are going to do there. Something really tells me that the creators have saved their biggest parts for the end of the series, and smartly kept them away from most of the action, in order to prevent them from becoming clichéd lead characters, which always have to be at the centre of everything. And I must say, that it works really well. What I love of the two of them is that they complement each other’s weaknesses: Haru has received military training, so she’s more capable of handling the flying bikes and all, while Akiyuki is more mature and mentally stable, so he can give her support on that area.

But the big event of this episode was of course Raigyo’s death, and again I really liked the subtlety of that scene. It was just of the right length, and while emotionally powerful it didn’t go through huge lengths to squeeze some extra tears out of it, or making Raigyo into one of these characters who takes forever to die. That scene was of just the right length, and on top of that it also showed a bit of Benikawa’s background.

With three episodes left, the finale is one that promises to go all out. I really wonder how that one’s going to work out, when everything that this series has built up is finally coming together.

Casshern Sins – 15

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: A Dune-episode
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Awesome colours!)
You know, it might actually be the case that Casshern’s random encounters are not going to appear in second half of this series anymore, and instead this series is now going to full-time focus on the most important characters. This episode was entirely about Dune, the next episode seems to deal with Dio and Leda again, and so it seems that the random episodes in the first half were really meant to flesh out the setting of this series. Now that that’s happened, it’s time for the characters to develop, and I can’t wait to see both the lesser and the better characters of this series change.

This episode also yet again provides a piece of the puzzle on what happened to Luna: Casshern did stab her through the heart, and she fell into a pool of some sort, and Dune witnessed this. However, nobody said anything about Luna losing her immortality: her body simply sunk to the bottom of that pool, and somehow Dune assumed that she wouldn’t survive it. The big question is now: why did he care so much about protecting her in the first place when she’s immortal? Why didn’t he dive after her to rescue her body? It’s now obvious that she survived, although I guess that it took quite a bit of time for her to recover. The question also remains where the ruins came from and how Casshern became immortal himself.

I also absolutely loved the art in this episode. The art director really went all out on this one, and the use of bright colours forms a huge contrast with the dark and gritty colours that were used in the rest of the series. This again symbolizes the new direction this series is going to take, I assume: the first half of the show was full of despair, so it was mostly filled with grey colours, and perhaps red. The second half, however, confirmed that Luna is alive, and is filled with hope instead, so that’s going to make for bright and cheerful colours.

But the landscape that this episode took place in was also fantastic and truly original. I’m still not sure exactly what it was… some sort of dried up ocean that was filled with semi-glass transparent blue salt, or something?

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 15

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: Natsume teams up with a bunny-youkai in order to get rid of an evil spirit.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
It’s really good to see this series back again, and I’m interested whether the second season will be able to top the first season. Unlike shows as Shikabane Hime and Birdy the Mighty, there’s no real clear distinction between the first and second season of this series, but this really is the point where the show is going to have to evolve.

I think that the episodic storylines have already hit their height with the Hotaru-episode, but there’s still plenty of potential left for when a big storyline appears, so I’m keeping my eye out for Natori. Until that happens, I’m going to enjoy the stories as they flesh out Natsume and Nyanko-sensei, along with the setting. And laugh at Nyanko-sensei’s antics, of course.

This episode definitely showed a side of the world that we haven’t seen yet: where do evil spirits come from? This episode shows that most spirits start out without any malicious intentions, but some sort of grudge can turn them into evil one. Just as how one act of kindness can have a huge impact on them, they’ll never forget an act of malice and these acts influence them very strongly. I’m not exactly sure about the difference between regular Youkai and things like Nyanko-sensei, who behave very un-youkai-like, though I think that that’s because he’d had a lot more to experience, whereas most Youkai simply stay at one spot.

This episode may have been a bit too cheesy at the end and one-sided on the environmentalism messages, but nevertheless Gen was an adorable character, especially since he spent most of the episode in the form of a snow bunny. ^^; I liked the comment that Nyanko made at the end of the episode: youkai aren’t as fragile as you’d think.

I’m not sure whether I’m going to continue with HorribleSubs’s releases for this series. Sure, it’s nice to watch this show with subtitles for once, but I miss Natsume Yuujinchou in HD. ^^;