Shikabane Hime – 10

by psgels, posted in Shikabane Hime



Short Synopsis: A TV-priest uses his Shikabane Powers to impress viewers.
Highlights: Finally it looks like the show’s about to arrive at the real meat of the story.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
Well, like Birdy the Mighty Decode, it looks like the whole first season is just meant as one big build-up for the second season. This episode finally introduced the major antagonists: the seven blacked out people from the OP. Half of the episode portrayed them as Shikabane who track other Shikabane down and kill them, the other half portrayed them as ruthless schoolgirl killers. Yeah, they were the ones who killed Makina, and they’re probably the real reason why she’s fighting as Shikabane Hime.

The rest of the episode was pretty quiet, but that makes sense. If the creators want to end the first season with a big climax, then this is the perfect place for a bit of a quiet pace before the final arc. My guess is that there, Ouri is going to get his own Shikabane. Whether he’s going to take over Makina, or his big boobed classmate is going to play that role is still the question.

Speaking of which, they were nice and all but these boob jokes really have to end at some point. It’s not really those jokes themselves that get me, but rather that Ouri’s classmates has been turned into a paper bag by them. He started out as quite an enthusiastic classmate, but nowadays all he’s good for is to oogle over all the pretty girls that surround Ouri. Really, get a life!

Casshern Sins – 10

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: Dio prepares an army to go against Casshern.
Highlights: Good! Focus on the bad guy!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Well, I should have known. As awesome as this series is, it still has to obey the Golden Rule of Anime: a character is dead, only when you get to see the dead body appears on screen some way. Luna is alive, although I’m not sure how Casshern found out about that one, but I probably missed a vital piece of dialogue in the previous episode.

In any case, this episode wasn’t the best of this series by far, but it nevertheless was an excellent one, and a very important one as well. Too often I see anime whose bad guys are hardly fleshed out at all. There’s hardly any chance to get to know them, and that’s why they very often fall into the pit of stereotypes. That’s why I’m glad that Dio’s development starts relatively early in the series, when this episode gives him a full episode of attention. I’m already beginning to warm up to the guy.

Also, there really is lots of hugging in this series. I think that this has multiple purposes. For one, it’s very cute, but it also symbolizes warmth; a stark contrast to the cold and dead world that the series is set in, and fully connected to the series’ themes, of trying to do something with your life, even though the world is only getting destroyed.

Michiko e Hatchin – 07

by psgels, posted in Michiko e Hatchin



Short Synopsis: Michiko finds love while Hatchin’s shoes get stolen yet again.
Highlights: Very subtle romance.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
You know, usually in travelling series that have more than one main character, the different episodes usually centre either around one of these characters, or multiple characters involve themselves with the same storyline, while the others play cannon fodder and stay in the background. In Michiko to Hatchin however, both Michiko and Hatchin have their own stories for the past few episodes.

This episode too: Michiko developed a crush on a married guy who was planning on committing adultery, and Hatchin yet again got attacked by childpunks who stole her shoes. And even during the episodes that are really focused at one of the two, you can see that the other one isn’t just doing nothing or watching paint dry.

This episode was also about the growing conflict between Michiko and Hatchin. Michiko obviously isn’t suited to raise a child (she slapped her like what, four times just this episode?), while Hatchin has finally someone that she consider as a mother that she doesn’t seem to get that Michiko just isn’t fit for raising her. And yet at the end of this episode, Michiko does show that she cares about her (although ow did she know that Hatchin was about to drown?).

Bonen no Xamdou – 17

by psgels, posted in Bonen no Xamdou



Short Synopsis: Nakiami arrives at Tessik, Haru starts moving again, Akiyuki still really doesn’t do anything, his mother discovers her ex-husband’s little secret and Kagisu is one big bastard.
Highlights: Still surprisingly quiet, and still surprisingly engaging.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
I must say that with the current arc, Bonen no Xamdou has really set itself apart from all other anime. Sure, this isn’t the first time where a middle arc takes a step back in favour of a quiet atmosphere, dedicated to fleshing out the side stories, but I can’t recall having such an arc so well done as this one. This arc not only gets the chance to flesh out a number of the side-plots and set up for the finale, but it also pushes the story more forward and especially it never stops developing the characters.

I also now understand what the title of this series means. When Akiyuki first showed up with that mask, I really didn’t suspect that the creators actually had the guts to just put him into a vegetable state for more than three episodes, and who knows when he’s going to recover? The “Lost Memories”-part of the title seems to suggest that his lost memories will form a central theme and focus in the series, so the chance might be that it’s going to take until episode 26 for that to happen.

If this series is ultimately about Akiyuki’s lost memories, then we can also predict a bit what will happen to Furuichi. He’s been continuously portrayed as Akiyuki’s rival, or antagonist, and both of their “senses” disappeared around the same time, suggesting that they’re meant to show the same process through different roads. Incidentally, both of them threw away their faces, they just did it in different ways. We’re going to have to wait a bit to see what this actually means, but the eye-ball is definitely a huge clue, especially since it started talking and eating in this episode. My suspicion is that this eye-ball is Akiyuki’s Hiruko, who’s managing to free himself from his arm. This episode revealed that those strange wobbly thingies are actually the Hiruko who are unbound to a human being, and who knows: perhaps there are more forms of these creatures?

Also, Haru seems to be coming into action again in the next episode! That sudden laugh of her seems to suggest that she hasn’t just grown stronger, but still, like everything in this series I really doubt that that hysterical laugh was what it looked like. She really does have guts, though, and I wonder what she’s going to do after escaping: saving her sister, searching for Akiyuki or doing something completely different?

An Attempt to Hype Konnichiwa Anne: The Upcoming 26th World Masterpiece Theatre Series

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

Just for the information, for the upcoming winter-season I’m again planning to not look at any of the promo material of the upcoming series, so again I won’t be writing a preview for it. I’m going to make one exception for this, though: Konnichiwa Anne, the next instalment of the World Masterpiece Theatre. I figure with such a title, and the “kids”-label most people who might be potentially interested in the series will be turned off before the series even started.

For those of you who don’t know about the World Masterpiece Theatre, here’s a short description. They started back in 1975, and each year, a new series of usually around 52 episodes would be shown as an adaptation of a famous children’s novel. One of the big trademarks of the franchise was the huge focus on creating “real” characters: characters that felt like real people. The different series come in all sorts of different sizes: sometimes they get gut-wrenchingly sad, others are quite light-hearted, others are inspirational. They can be surprisingly mature for mere children’s’ series, and therefore are also an excellent watch for the older viewers.

This has both its good and bad points. The good side of the franchise is that because the characters are so well fleshed out, they become a delight to watch, and they’re very easy to identify with as a viewer. The bad side is that nearly every series of the franchise is very slow paced. There are a lot of slice of life moments that help to identify and define the characters in question, and if you can’t enjoy those, you probably won’t find much enjoyment, and the series will most likely bore you to death.

Anyway, about Konnichiwa Anne. It’s based on the novel “Before Green Gables”, which is the prequel of the famous children’s novel “Anne of Green Gables“, a novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and adapted in 1979 into an anime by Isao Takahata of Ghibli-fame. The original series was a slice of life series, which depicted five years out of Anne’s teenaged life.

Before Green Gables actually wasn’t written by Lucy Maud Montgomery herself, but instead by a completely different woman: Budge Wilson. She wrote it in 2008 as the 100th anniversary of the original novel, and it can be very well considered as professional fan fiction, telling about the first eleven years of Anne’s life, which only had been hinted at in the novels (or the anime, at least). What the tv-series told us about Anne’s past was that her parents died when she was only three months old. She then moved from family to family, living there as something as an unwanted child for those already overcrowded families, eventually ending up at an orphanage.

So my prediction is that this series is going to be completely different from the original Anne of Green Gables anime, and that instead it’s going to be a very dark but heart-warming slice-of-life series with quite a bit of drama every now and then.

The problem with this series is obviously going to be that there’s a very low chance of it actually getting subbed or licensed. I was hoping that the fanbase of Akage no Anne would at least give this series a small advantage over Les Miserables and Porfy no Nagai Tabi, but it’s nearly one month until broadcast and the information about the production staff hasn’t even been announced yet for goodness’ sake. All we know is that it’s going to be the next WMT and that it’ll be based on the book Before Green Gables.

However, if you’re a fan of sad slice of life series, then I do urge you to give this series a chance if it does get subbed somehow. In any case I’ll probably be providing a detailed summary for each of the episodes, for those who want to watch it raw but are still uncomfortable with Japanese. The World Masterpiece Theatre Series are actually relatively easy to understand.

Kurozuka – 09

by psgels, posted in Kurozuka



Short Synopsis: The attack on the headquarters of the bad guys.
Highlights: Turtle dude rocks
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
You know, I really consider this episode to have the best action-scenes of the entire series so far. Okay, so they still weren’t as well animated as episode one, but they were one thing: incredibly fun to watch. Really, so much went on, and more especially, the major characters involved showed their best sides. It’s strange, the fights definitely weren’t the most well animated, or intense, or had the best fight coordination out there, but they kept my interest throughout the entire episode.

This episode felt so out of place in this series, but yet it worked. The car-chase-scene, the motorbike, it all fitted, and just about everything in this episode was really creative. The characters aren’t deep at all, but they’re fleshed out just enough to make us care about them. And I think that that was why I enjoyed this episode so much.

The problem is of course where this series is going to go after this point. The fact remains that the two characters who made this episode so much fun to watch are dead now, and we know hardly anything about the big bad guy. Seriously, WHO IS HE?! This guy seriously lacks fleshing out. I really wonder where the creators can be able to take him as such a stereotypical evil overlord. But then again, I do have high hopes for the reunion with Kuromitsu, and the deaths of the final two partners of Kuro (I mean, there’s no way that those two are going to make it to the end of the series with this pace ;P).

Mouryou no Hako – 09

by psgels, posted in Mouryou no Hako



Short Synopsis: The killer’s identity is confirmed, Yoriko’s mother is in despair and a rather big spoiler happens that you don’t want to find out before you’ve seen episode eight.
Highlights: Talk about a change of pacing!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Oh, how I love this series. It’s not like other series, where the emotional power of the characters is huge (Casshern Sins for example). In contrast, this is a very quiet series, even during the fast-paced parts like for example this episode. But the writing is so incredibly solid that I’m regarding this series as one of the best series of the season. The creators don’t aim attempt awkward drama that feels forced, but instead have really succeeded in creating a very subtle atmosphere. I don’t know about others, but I personally love it when anime uses subtlety. The more the better.

The big event of this episode was of course Yoriko’s death, although we never actually get to see her die, it’s more that her presence lurks over the episode like a very gloomy ghost. As it turns out, the real killer is a friend of Sekiguchi: Kubo Shunko. It was pretty interesting how Eno simply walked up to Kubo, asking him about Kanako, about an hour before he went on to take Yoriko with him. We also saw Kubo from a very different angle in this episode, when Eno showed him a picture of Kanako, suggesting that there’s much more to this mystery than just Kubo being a serial killer.

What I also like in this episode was that they showed the exact same footage as in the end of the previous episode, but this time from the perspective of Eno and Sekiguchi, where it’s Yoriko who’s acting strange. It was also awesome to see that the two of them (especially Eno) went on to raid her house right after she left, finding her mother about to commit suicide. It seems that she’s much more than just the delusional mother we saw in episode two and three: she really feels guilty of calling her a Mouryou (apparently she did this by mistake, I believe that it can all be blamed on an eye-problem of hers(?)

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 48

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: Mina finishes her parts of the recordings and Porfy gets into a bunch of fights.
Highlights: Finally it’s time to address the Rose vs. Tiffany subplot.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
I must say that the World Masterpiece Theatre series have a unique sense of endings. While you would expect the final parts of a 52-episode series to be full of tension, where everything the series has built up for comes together, the endings I’ve seen so far do something completely different: Akage no Anne’s climax only popped up something like four episodes before the end, completely unexpected, and Les Miserables’ climax ended seven episodes before the series was supposed to end. Porfy’s the same: I really expected a continuously sad final arc, much like what happened at the earthquake arc. Instead of that, it builds up, features a big climax when Porfy runs into Alecia, and then goes into a completely different direction with a final arc that starts with a very careful and quiet build-up. It really does feel like Porfy is only going to meet Mina in episode 52 this way.

Anyway, summary: The waiter is counting the money for the day, and something is missing. He immediately blames Porfy, who obviously never took anything. He threatens with the police, but the cook comes in to the rescue by pointing out that the missing coin is in one of the beer glasses, apparently a few customers did this to re-enact a scene from a certain movie.

The waiter then looks strangely at Porfy, wondering aloud why he’s in the wrong: money was missing, he didn’t know about the beer glass, so it’s obvious that he suspected Porfy for it. He then starts randomly complaining, and eventually insults Porfy’s father. Like always, Porfy can’t take this at all, and would have attacked the waiter if the cook hadn’t stopped him. Porfy quits immediately. When he asks for his pay for the day, he gets denied again, because he dirtied his apron in his rage. When Porfy comes home, he’s obviously in a bad mood, but initially doesn’t want to talk about it. When Rose asks further, he starts crying and Rose tries to comfort him a bit.

Mina meanwhile is still in a totally different world. Mina asks whether the filming of the movie gets completed that day (I can only guess that a few weeks or months have passed since the previous episode), and Tiffany confirms that. Mina then gets excited, thinking that the movie is already ready to be broadcast, but Tiffany then explains her that it takes much more to reach the final product.

The final scene that needs to be shot is one where only Tiffany is needed, where her character gets poetic a bit inside a field of corn. Mina makes for quite a cute action by forgetting that Tiffany’s supposed to be on stage and standing right next to her like a little sheep. The production crew cal her back a bit, since her job is already finished by now. The scene gets shot, and the entire production crew celebrates that the shooting of the movie has finished, Mina and Tiffany get flowers and the whole crew goes out to have dinner that next evening.

Porfy meanwhile has been cleaning for two evenings because he doesn’t have anything left to do. Because of that, Rose offers to take him to a roller-skate park after she’s taken a shower. During that time, Porfy looks at the picture again, and manages to confirm his suspicions that the other person with Rose is Tiffany. Rose then comes out of the shower, and Porfy starts talking about that picture, though this falls really wrong with Rose, and she starts yelling at him. Porfy doesn’t know when to quit, and eventually Rose kicks him out of her house, refusing to let him back in.

The rest of the episode doesn’t really need a summary because hardly anything is said in it, though in the end Rose is finally about to tell why she hates Tiffany so much. I’ve been waiting for this: Tiffany has been portrayed as such a perfect woman, that I’m eager to see her more darker parts. She’s most definitely an ambitious woman, but how ambitious exactly that is, we have to wait for that one more week.

One of the things that I’m impressed about with this series is how the creators decided to handle the weaknesses of the characters. Usually in anime, characters only have small weaknesses, no weaknesses at all, or the weaknesses are so exaggerated that they become either annoying or stereotypes. It really takes skill to portray a character with serious weaknesses, and still maintain the characters interest as to not delve into a hopeless emo-fest. After all, flawed characters are interesting to watch when you first meet them, and they only start to shine as they develop and learn from their flaws. Porfy and Mina are really good examples of good characters with serious flaws: Porfy doesn’t know when to stop talking and completely flips when his parents get mentioned, while Mina can hardly think of her own, and always needs to be near an adult or mother-figure. Their flaws feel real, provide some nice conflicts and yet they don’t appear too often to overshadow their entire personalities.

Blade of the Immortal – 11

by psgels, posted in Blade of the Immortal



Short Synopsis: Rin vs. Kawakami part II
Highlights: Excellent fight.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
It’s episodes like this one that convince me that Bee-Train can still make good fights when they want to; especially when backed up by such an excellent manga as this one. I’m beginning to see why they chose such a strange manga-series to adapt this time, because it’s of course perfect to experiment with in terms of artistic direction. The fights in this series aren’t impressive because of their animation-quality (which in fact still rather sucks), but because it turns simple fights like this one into pieces of art.

I must say that it must have taken a lot of guts to make such an excellent manga into a sort-of experimental anime like this. But on the other hand you have to wonder why for ten years nobody had stepped up to adapt it before Bee-Train did. I mean, I’ve seen comments about this series that it would have been best when in the hands of the Madhouse animation studio. And while I sort-of agree with it, I do think that if Madhouse really wanted to adapt this series, they would have done so already.

In any case, the use of music was typical Bee-Train in this episode, and yet it wasn’t like most of their other series. The whole episode had a huge contrast between silence and fast-paced music. It’s been like this for nearly the entire series so far: there are silent moments at very strange parts of the fights, and it definitely has an interesting effect. But then again, Bee-Train has always been known to play up-beat music at very strange scenes as well, so I guess that it was only a matter of time before they would go the opposite.

And regarding the story, it continues its thought-provoking look at revenge, and I really liked how Rin was about to create a kid, just like her by robbing him of his parent. Even though she changed her mind about killing a father like him. She solved it in a pretty interesting way, by pretending that she had killed Manji afterwards for the guy, so that he wouldn’t become like her.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – 34

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam 00



Short Synopsis: Ptolemy launches into space again.
Highlights: Mostly build-up, but solid build-up.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
And so the Ptolemy is back into space again. Most of this episode was spent on building up, and a few small fight, like Tieria vs Ali al Sarshes. What especially striked me was that Tieria is turning from the most mature member of the four Gundam-pilots into he least mature one. At this point, he’s the only one who is still being driven by negative emotions as revenge: Setsuna grew up, Allelujah got rid of Hallelujah and met Marie, and Neil got replaced by Lyle, who was even more mature than himself.

On other news, my fears got confirmed in this episode by showing the male version of Nena (ugh… guys with pink hair should NEVER be allowed in anime). My guess is that there are eight innovators in total, where the final two are the new pilot recruited by A-Laws and the mysterious man or woman in the preview are the final two. The question still remains where they came from. With the original Gundam-series, this was explained by a simple genetic trait that only pops up very rarely, but with every innovator having a male and female version, you have to wonder whether Nena’s brothers were her genuine brothers, or that she simply was adopted. It’s also interesting that unlike newtypes, innovators don’t have improved physical abilities, but instead have “The Third”-like powers, of being able to hack into any machinery you’d like.