Bonen no Xamdou – 19

by psgels, posted in Bonen no Xamdou



Short Synopsis: Haru buys a flying jetbike and searches for Akiyuki.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6,5/10 (Lacking)
Ah, COME ON! Things went so well! The past few episodes followed so naturally on each other, and then the series comes with this. How did Haru know the exact place Akiyuki would be at? Why the heck did she appear on the exact moment that he reached his limit and jumped to his death. I really expected better from this series at this point.

I mean, what’s wrong with just Haru, arriving at the village, searching around a bit and finally finding Akiyuki? They could have still used the failing flying motorbike as an excuse to explain Akiyuki’s flying powers. I think that the producers here made a slight error. This episode was a clear ending to the third quarter of the series (the next episode looks like the start of the return of the storyline!), and the creators realized too late that they reserved too little time for the reunion between Akiyuki and Haru in the final episode of that quarter.

Thankfully it’s doesn’t seem that this error is going to snowball itself into the rest of the series, it’s only the reunion between Haru and Akiyuki that felt really rushed, nothing more. The next episode looks like it’s going to be just as good as the rest of the series, but it really remains annoying. It breaks flow, in a way to have such a blemish at such a late point of a thus far perfect series. Ack, such a shame!

Bonen no Xamdou – 18

by psgels, posted in Bonen no Xamdou



Short Synopsis: Haru heads off to find Akiyuki.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
I must say that this has turned into a really emancipated series. While there are enough male characters, and this definitely isn’t a shoujo or josei-series, it’s nevertheless the females who do most of the work in this case. I originally thought that Haru would end up being the damsel in distress, but in the end this honour was for Akiyuki. In fact, he really has been atypical of your typical lead character. He’s not someone who’s out there to change the world, but he’s just a victim himself. Instead, it’s up to Nakiami to prevent the destruction of the Tessik people, although I do suspect that Akiyuki once he wakes up isn’t going to sit still and let the northern empire just do as it pleases.

So in the end, Nakiami’s sister (half-sister, I guess, based on her skin colour) has also started making Xam’d, and plans to head into war as well. I already suspected that something was not kosher about her, and I guess that that’s it. In the meantime, Akiyuki’s Hiruko (or at least, that’s what I suspect it is) does seem to be interested in Akiyuki getting his name back. I believe that it’s in the interest for both of them surviving, and I think that it knocking away the teacup is a sign that it’s going into berserk-mode if Akiyuki doesn’t hurry up and remembers his own name.

Michiko e Hatchin – 10

by psgels, posted in Michiko e Hatchin




Short Synopsis: Satoshi plans to hand Michiko over to the police.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Wow.

I must say, that I’m really impressed by this episode. The huge intensity of this episode was amazing, considering it’s finally showing the development of the past nine episodes. The entire episode was really intense, and formed a huge contrast with the heart-warming previous Hatchin-episode. On top of that, the art looked better than ever in this episode.

I also really appreciated the bit of background about the time when Hiroshi and Satoshi met each other. They’re really fleshing out these characters, and I can’t wait to see the second half of this series. According to MyAnimelist, this series is going to be only 22 episodes, but I want to wait for other sources to confirm that before believing it. The problem with MyAnimelist and especially its episode numbers is that they just take any rumour, without checking whether it comes from a valid source.

Heh, I remember how I compared this series to El Cazador when I first saw it. How wrong I was to assume that. The beatings that Michiko received in this episode were downright gruesome, and nowhere near the cheerful tone that El Cazador brought us. I’ve probably said this before, but damn, that OP is misleading!

Atsuko’s change of heart may have been a bit too sudden, but at least I can understand it, having been betrayed by her superiors like that. I just think that she was a bit too burned on catching Michiko in order to just forgive her and let her escape.

I also think that there’s much more to Hatchin than her being a simple random girl. On top of that, we’re still not sure whether Hiroshi lives or not. Satoshi is convinced that the guy died at the bus accident, and yet Michiko seems convinced that he’s still alive somewhere. But then again, that could also be simple lovesickness.

Michiko e Hatchin – 09

by psgels, posted in Michiko e Hatchin



Short Synopsis: Hana meets a circus girl of her age.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Oh, this series makes writing random stories seem so easy, even though there are plenty of anime who suffer from being unable to put in a satisfying filler episode, or fill up their airtime. This was a wonderful episode, and the creators really managed to bring Rita (the circus girl) to life, along with her love for the person who raised her, even though he’s in love with someone else.

And at the same time this episode also made sure of some good development for Hatchin. She really is a strange character in Brazil, being raised in such an uptight family. She’s incredibly polite, and this episode really helped her to open up to someone, and loose up a bit. It feels to me that she’s finally found someone she can trust. How the heck is Michiko going to get her back like this?

What also caught my attention is that Hana isn’t quite able to get rid of her real name like that, since she introduced herself to Rita as Hana, rather than Hatchin. At first she began using Hatchin to forget about her foster parents, now ironically she stopped using it to forget about Michiko.

Michiko e Hatchin – 08

by psgels, posted in Michiko e Hatchin



Short Synopsis: Michiko arrives at a city where Satoshi might be.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
This series has a really strange broadcasting protocol. I’m away for less than two weeks and suddenly there are three new episodes… I really wonder where that third one came from…

In any case, this episode was mostly building up, although it featured some interesting chase scenes through the trams of a Brazilian city. Michiko and Hatchin’s relationship is really different from most other series where a strong character takes care of a weak one, since Hatchin really seems to hate Michiko. Only when she’s really in danger and is scared for her life, she forgets about her anger and accepts Michiko as her guardian.

We also finally get to see more of Atsuko, who seems to have chased after Michiko for the time that she was away from the screen. I like that: when she’s away from the screen, she just continues with her own agenda instead of randomly sitting somewhere until the storyline focuses on her again.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – 37

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam 00



Short Synopsis: Saji and Louise angst about each other.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6,5/10 (Lacking)
So, yeah. As the synopsis does suspect: this wasn’t the most exciting episode. I really hoped that Saji and Louise grew up during the past twelve episodes, but they still kept angsting like there was no tomorrow. The concept between the two of them really is fine: two former lovers who end up at opposing sides; it really has potential. If only the two of them weren’t such immature brats. What actually gets me the most is the huge amount of airtime that’s spent on the two of them, while the series really has so many better uses for that.

Anyway, what I did like was the one-sidedness of the war against Kataron. These guys really don’t stand a chance against the super-weapons, especially now that their main space fleet has been wiped out. After they’re taken care of, Kataron is going to run out of opponents aside from the celestial beings, so it’s about time that we’re introduced to the final party in this series. With all the references to past Gundam Franchises, I’m almost positive that the creators are also going to use a few Gundam Wing references, where the Roquefeller foundation was simply brought down by inner conflict. We’ve already seen that a lot of the members of A-Laws don’t agree with their extreme measures, so who knows?

It’s also interesting that finally Ribbons is running into something that he didn’t expect. Finally we see more sides of the guy, which is a good thing.

Telepathy Shoujo Ran Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Telepathy Shoujo Ran


The latest NHK-series: Telepathy Shoujo Ran, a charming mystery shoujo series about the titular character who is blessed with the gift of telepathy, among others. With Yoshiiro Ike’s soundtrack, it features an adaptation of a set of children’s novels; it had the potential to be either a fun little series or a gigantic flop. Thankfully it became the former.

However, you do need to realize that you do not want to watch this series because of its mystery part. The different stories that are presented throughout the series aren’t exactly bad, but they don’t stand out either. They’re often cheesy, involve Ran&co mostly by coincidences or suffer from overmoralistic confession speeches. They’re just… there; in order to support what really makes this series stand out.

What really made me return to this series for every single week is the cast of characters, and then especially the banter that occurs between them. The four lead characters form an excellent team that’s always fun to watch. While this series is not strictly a comedy, there were enough hilarious moments between them, and this remains through the entire length of the series. Hardly any attempt at a joke falls flat. Overall, the point where this series excels at is in fleshing out its characters. Even when there’s no comedy, the creators and the lead characters manage to keep everything going along smoothly to prevent the viewer from getting bored.

The graphics in this series are also pretty decent. Even though there’s lots of epilepsy-inducing CG, characters move smooth and their facial expressions show a very wide range of subtle emotions. It makes use of very bright and varied colours, which makes for a very aesthetically pleasing series. Ike Yoshihiro’s soundtrack also brings this series to life, even though it may not be among his best works.

Overall, expect anything from the story here and you will be disappointed, but nevertheless this series managed to achieve what it set out to do: despite the storylines that usually fail to capture, it’s a continuously fun series from beginning to end. Ran, Rui, Rin and Midori are a set of wonderful characters, with especially wonderful banter between them.

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

Telepathy Shoujo Ran – 26

by psgels, posted in Telepathy Shoujo Ran



Short Synopsis: Ran and Midori use the power of love to get rid of the fox deity (hey, what else did you expect? An “Everyone dies”-ending?)
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
Ah crap. Of course, I should have noticed. That’s one major headdesk moment. Remember the episode where Midori met the old lady who was abandoned by her grandchild who turned out to have powers? Yeah. That child turned out to be the evil teacher. Duh.

In any case, it does turn out that the creators decided to safe the story with the cheesiest ending for last. Ran literally managed to win with the power of friendship, turning everyone from animals back into humans. This episode definitely was one of the cheesiest of the series yet, so I’m not going to talk about the storyline.

What I do want to praise in this episode are the visuals. The animation wasn’t exceptional, but nonetheless this was one pretty episode with lots of subtle touches and nice ideas. That floated-city-scenery for example: it was really nice to look at, with an excellent use of CG for the water. The growing tree also looked really nicely.

And I’m also really impressed that the creators managed to get away with actual blood on an NHK-series, even though a bite by a real army of tigers is going to be a bit more severe than just a simple cut. What I especially liked is that the blood here actually looks like blood. I swear, there are just too many anime that stuff their characters with galleons of ketchup.

Overall, I really don’t often blog fun shoujo series like this one. It’s not because I hate the genre, but with these kinds of series it’s very hard to guess whether or not they can remain fresh for their entire airtime (something which Shugo Chara showed me the hard way). With Telepathy Shoujo Ran, I decided to give it a whirl, though. What especially attracted me in the beginning was the colourful characters, and the amount of attention that was put in the slice of life scenes. Always good to flesh out your characters, and indeed: the characters never turned boring. Okay, so the stories for the different episodes were just too cheesy for their own good, the real fun of this series comes from the excellent chemistry between Ran and Midori. For that I’m glad to have watched and blogged this series.

Jigoku Shoujo – 64

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A loser who works part time at a swimming pool “tries” to access Jigoku Tsuushin.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9/10 (Uhm… yeah…)
The best episode of Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae yet. This episode was awesome, but god… it is SO for the wrong reasons. This episode featured the single biggest idiot we’ve seen on Jigoku thus far, and his stupidity really reached epic levels in this episode. This guy is really the typical case of an emo teenager.

To give you a bit of an indication… he’s hiding a poster of a cute girl in swimsuit behind a picture of “the scream”. Every time someone pisses him off, he adds a sticker somewhere on this girl’s body, starting from her feet. The person that reaches “goal” (come on, it’s easy to guess where “that” is) first is the one he’s going to send to hell. In the end, when three people are about to reach the “goal” he chickens out and wants to savour the moment. And indeed: soon his mind becomes distracted by something entirely different and he completely forgets his plans with Jigoku Tsuushin in his enthusiasm.

And to think that in the end, he managed to find himself a date in a way that actually makes sense: simply asking the girl he likes! Dear harem leads: you can learn A LOT from this little idiot, remember that. And to think that in the end, he was the one to end up in hell because one of the girls he looked up to turned out to be even more emo than he was.

I also loved the little self-parody by Studio Deen, as the Magazine that was crazy enough to publish the work of this idiot. Also, I absolutely loved the “Tatanic” with “Hiroshi Watanahe” as the lead character. Could that be the creators’ way of saying “… yeah thanks.”?

But the real icing on the cake was the single best punishment scene that Jigoku Shoujo has shown us up till now aside from the one that took up the entire action. I mean… seeing the guy getting tortured in LIVE ACTION cardboard cut-outs! Brilliant!

On a more serious note, during the last episode I started to wonder what the second half of Mitsuganae would be focusing on. Of course, I should have known: it’s going to flesh out and develop Yuzuki’s classmates. This episode already made a small start with the shy girl in glasses, and this would also mean that there’s a very good chance of Tsugumi returning.

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 50

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: Porfy tries to find out what happened to Mina, while the creators are having the time of their lives teasing the hell out of us viewers.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
OMG! OMG OMG! This was such an awesome episode! Oh, the irony, this episode really showed the big strength of the World Masterpiece Theatre series: you SO want these kids to meet each other again, and time and time again, the creators find some thing that gets in their way.

Porfy is really excited as he brings Rose to the poster he found at the end of the last episode. Her hair changed, but he’s nearly sure that it’s Mina, though Rose doesn’t believe it (after all, what would she be doing in a movie?). She tells him that he’s going to be disappointed if it doesn’t turn out to be her, but in the end he manages to convince her to accompany him in order to watch the movie.

After watching the movie, Porfy’s sure: that Mina is his sister. Rose can still hardly believe it, and manages to convince him to get some sleep before trying to find her. Mina meanwhile gets complimented by Tiffany at her singing ability, and Tiffany assures her that she’ll once get the chance to sing in front of a large crowd. The manager then arrives, carrying a box of fan letters. Most of them are for Tiffany, but there also are a few for Mina among them. Unfortunately, none come from Porfy. But then again, the movie just premiered, so there’s plenty of time left.

The next morning Porfy is very early to bother Rose, who wants to sleep. So instead, she tells him to go and check out the movie studios, where she might be. When he arrives, he however is just taken as an ordinary fan by one of the guards, and even telling the guard about his sister obviously doesn’t help. Porfy tries a bit more, but eventually he gives up when the guard is distracted by other people.

Meanwhile, Natalie is happy for Mina for the amount of fan letters she received, but Mina is still feeling down because she didn’t see Porfy. Natalie then asks whether her brother was the only reason for her to start acting, and that she doesn’t seem to realize how special it is to be able to act with Tiffany. The fans might become disappointed when they learn about that.

Rose meanwhile didn’t realize that Porfy would take her seriously to go to the movie studio, and she’s really worried when he leaves. When Porfy fills her in about what happened, she offers him to contact a few former friends of her who still might know a thing or two. However, then she asks Porfy what he’s planning to do once he finds Mina. Porfy then answers that he’s going to return to Greece. This however is something that Rose didn’t anticipate, and even though Porfy doesn’t have anything he left behind there, he still wants to return, and she immediately starts acting all strange.

When Rose meets her friend Amelie, she really finds out that the child is called Mina. Instead of telling the good news to Porfy afterwards, though, she tells HIM THAT HE WAS WRONG, and the girl turned out to be SOMEONE ELSE! This was in the hope to get Porfy to stay with her, but in the end, it just means that he’s going to continue to search for her. Mina meanwhile is still thinking about how blunt Natalie was to her, and she’s beginning to take joy in acting, and is beginning to understand what Natalie told her.

The episode ends with Porfy, running into none other than ZAIMIS. Yes! Zaimis is back!

Really, I first thought that Rose would be able to get Porfy and Mina back together, but instead, she turned out to be getting in his way. This is why it was so important for her to be well developed, and for her to create a genuine bond with Porfy: her whole affair with Tiffany didn’t just make her to hate acting and Tiffany, but it also made her afraid to lose any more close friends, up to the point were she made such a foolish claim to Porfy. And also: Zaimis’ return has to have some sort of meaning. What exactly is his role in these final two episodes?

And holy crap! It only occurred just to me, but Porfy’s wishes to go back to Greece and Mina’s wishes to continue acting don’t go along together at all. The two may meet each other again, that’s for sure, but it’s a whole different question about whether the two of them are actually going to reunite, and live together. It would mean that Porfy would just follow Mina around, unable to do anything. I know this series at this point, and the creators wouldn’t have spent so much effort on Mina, accepting the acting business if there wasn’t some sort of hidden meaning.