Mouryou no Hako – 03

by psgels, posted in Mouryou no Hako



Short Synopsis: Yoriko calms down a bit and contacts the detective again.
Highlights: Too many to just list here.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (excellent)
With this episode I’m convinced: Mouryou no Hako is going to be THE hit of the Autumn 2008-season. It’s already a very good season, but none of the new shows matches up to it, and in three episodes it accomplished what usually takes three times that length. I’m already engrossed with the characters so far. At first, I was a bit worried about the short airtime, but this series has definitely shown that it knows how to tell a story. The director hasn’t directed a series before, but he’s definitely shown so far that he knows what he’s talking about.

As usual, my Japanese isn’t perfect so I might have missed certain parts (especially that letter that was sent to Yoko. But it seems that the episode starts with Kanako, being brought to a strange hospital that might be able to save her. The detective, Yoko and the guy with glasses whose name I can’t seem to find accompany her. Meanwhile, we get some flashbacks about Shuutarou’s past, when he was still involved with that war that’s still giving him nightmares.

What caught my attention is that there’s a surprising amount of police guards around the place when Shuutarou comes back a few days later. It seems that the explanation for that is that strange letter that Yoko received, though unfortunately my Kanji’s pretty much crappy. What I understood was that someone’s after Kanako. The entire hospital is pretty much strange and unconventional, looking more like some sort of military base. Joshino Suzaki seems to be the most talented doctor around the place.

Yoriko meanwhile has her own problems after wishing her mother do die, while caught up in her emotions. After that, her mother started seeing spirits (Mouryou), and even hires a priest to get rid of them. After that part has calmed down a bit, she remembers how Kanako had some sort of boyfriend. She contacts Shuutarou (who right before that moment sees Kanako’s acquaintance with glasses, who disappears right afterwards). This boyfriend could quite possibly be the one who sent the threat letter.

Yoriko is then brought to see Kanako, who seems to have regained consciousness. It’s faint, but she can recognize her (although the room in which she’s stored is really creepy. What kind of hospital is that anyway?), and she tries to talk to her, but sound doesn’t come out. Yoriko is removed to give Kanako some more rest, but apparently, one of the main detectives in the hospital can lip-read, and it seems that Kanako said something pretty disturbing. When two doctors come to examine her afterwards, Kanako somehow disappears and turns to stone, with two butterflies flying above her bed.

So, there are three people in here that definitely have something to hide: Kanako, her boyfriend and the guy with glasses. I think the latter is merely obsessed and confused with everything that happened, but that boyfriend could possibly form the key to a lot of the mysteries that happened. Although there’s also the matter of Kanako’s body simply disappearing. I think that her boyfriend was the one who introduced Kanako to these strange beliefs, of wanting to ascend to heaven.

I just want to ask one thing: whose idea was it to do with CG? The art in this series is absolutely amazing, and yet there ugly CG-trucks ruin the entire mood. Can’t these people just stick to ordinary drawings or something? CG-trucks are something you’d expect from Gonzo, not from Madhouse.

What also seems strange for this series is that the manga has only been running since past December, and there are only two volumes complete at this point. Will there be enough material to fill this series, and will there be a second season once the manga gets ahead enough? But then again, this is Madhouse, not Studio Deen, and they very rarely go for sequels if they can also go for new concepts. In a way, that’s also admirable, to see that the studio continues to seek out new and fresh concepts instead of milking its own cash-cows, but in this case it remains a pity to see this series end so soon.

Blade of the Immortal – 08

by psgels, posted in Blade of the Immortal



Short Synopsis: The Ittou-Ryuu now starts sending women after Manji.
Highlights: This show can both be funny and romantic if it wants to.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Quite a unique episode for Blade of the Immortal. Manji and Rin are purposefully kept in the background, in order to focus on some of the other characters: Kagehisa Anotsu and a new one: Makie Otono-Tachibana. There was a lot of dialogue between them, but if I picked up things correctly, the two of them have a crush on each other, but aren’t in an official relationship. Makie is a Geisha who seems to work for the Ittou-Ryuu in order to make money, but I’m not sure about her exact role yet, or who it was that ordered her to go and take care of Manji. In any case, it seems that in this episode, Makie finally managed to cut whatever ties she had with the Ittou-Ryuu, or vice versa. I think that Kagehisa just tried to love her because of her combat skills.

The fact that this episode focused on different characters also had another very nice result: there was a bit of time left to flesh out Manji and Rin. Really, Manji is getting ruder with every episode, and especially their banter about Manji’s sexual escapades was pretty funny, and how Rin tried to take that too seriously. It was a bit awkward to see that from a fourteen year-old girl, but then again: Rin didn’t exactly grow up normally, having witnessed her mother being raped and all.

I also loved the directing-style of this episode. the animation is still not really impressive, but especially in this episode, the creators really made u for it with some very nice poses and visual imagery. It works especially well with the already excellent sound of this series.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – 28

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam 00



Short Synopsis: Allelujah is found and this episode shows how the Celestial Beings go and rescue him.
Highlights: Lots of different characters get a bit of development.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10
We’re three episodes in, and I’ve got a huge question burning on my mind: what the heck happened to Ali al Sarshes!? I mean, he was a pretty big villain in the first season. I can’t just imagine how he would have suddenly decided to retire or something. I can understand how the guy wouldn’t have a big role in the past few episodes, but not even one shot of him?

In any case, in this episode it becomes clear why the creators went through such lengths of making Setsuna meet up Saji and Marina Ismael: so that he could pick both of them up in the second season. In this episode, it’s Marina’s turn, as it seems that she screwed up with her country, and coincidentally ended up in the same prison. While that’s a bit questionable, I’m interested in what the two of them will turn into once they’re pas their angst-phase. Right now, it’s pretty logical for them to be confused about Setsuna’s ideals and stuff, but it mustn’t take too long.

One major advantage of the second season over the first season is that the characters are already fleshed out in the second one. I remember how the characters spent a lot of time warming up to the viewer in the first season, and that’s one problem we don’t have here. I originally thought that the second season would introduce lots of new characters, but to my surprise, the amount of new characters has been really low. None of the major characters of the second season didn’t appear in the first, and the only important new ones that I could pinpoint were the new young crewmembers of the Celestial Being, probably to replace Liechty and the other one who died at the end of the first season. The other big advantage of this is of course that now, there are hardly any teenagers left in the series. Always a good thing. ^^;

It’s a bit cheap to replace the dead Lockon with his twin brother, to not anger the guy’s fans too much, but then again this IS Sunrise after all. I appreciate that the creators at least give a bit of effort into reviving their characters, and don’t let them just appear from out of nowhere. Lyle also adds an interesting element to the group dynamic of the Celestial Beings: he didn’t go through the same things as the others, so he isn’t on the same line as the others yet. My only real complaint is the following: how the heck did he know how to pilot a Gundam right off the start? I really would have preferred to see the guy train a bit more and get used to the controls.

Oh, and is it just me, or did this episode have a different ED than the previous two? The song still really isn’t to my tastes, but some of the artwork that appears in it is downright gorgeous.

(* Note to self: Gundam 00 continues with some new material after the ED. I usually skip that part to avoid the next-episode preview and potential spoilers, but that’s not something that should be done with this series. *)

Telepathy Shoujo Ran – 17

by psgels, posted in Telepathy Shoujo Ran



Short Synopsis: Ran&co win a trip to a tropical island and lots of toilet paper.
Highlights: Nothing really new here…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10 (Solid)
One thing that’s always bugged me with this anime is how as a mystery-series, it never really tries to hide its bad guys: so far, they’ve all got the bad guy evil-grin. I mean, this series is fun enough while exploring why they’ve got such an evil grin, but a bit more ambiguity on the scale between good and bad definitely WOULDN’T HURT. I mean, the bad guy in this episode would have made for a pretty interesting character, if his expression didn’t scream out “Evil!”. Thankfully, the creators realized that and wasted no time in establishing that he’s possessed by an evil snake.

There’s another thing that’s bugging me: this series is about to run out of episodes. Right now, it’s taken two episodes per volume, there are nine volumes and it’s currently doing the seventh one. If it were to continue with this pace, it’d run out of stories by episode 22, so how are the creators planning to fill its final four episodes? I imagine that it’s going to be some more original stories, but I hope that they’re going to be better than the first wave of original stories. They weren’t necessarily bad, but thinking back, they were the least memorable of the stories in this series. Since the original novels didn’t seem to have one big conclusion, ideally, those four episodes should focus on the development of Ran, Rui and Midori. I hate to say it, but none of them really developed through the series. Thankfully the creators have made up for it by fleshing the cast out really nicely, but I’d still like to see some sort of development at the end.

Nevertheless, this arc again promises to deliver a solid story, although perhaps not the best. It’s another building-up episode where the real meat will take place in the next episode, and in the meantime we get to enjoy some nice slice-of-life scenes as Ran and the others enjoy the island, known as Snake Island. The most interesting is of course that snake-spirit: what does it have to do with that shell Ran found, why does it stick to that evil guy and are the snake we see in the flashback and the snake around the evil guy the same snake?

Jigoku Shoujo – 55

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A famous idol has a past she’d like to not think back to.
Highlights: The theme of growing up versus staying the same.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Good)
Okay, so in my next attempt to make the episode-rating a bit less confusing and more expressive, I’m trying to associate a word-rating with each number. It’s obviously incredibly inaccurate, but I hope it helps both the reader and me a little. Basically, the rule of thumb is that if the episode rating is six or higher, it means that I liked it.

In any case, in this episode a famous idol becomes the victim of Jigoku Shoujo. When she was a middle schooler, she was pretty much your typical teenager, and she grew up together with her best friend, as they both aspired to become idols. At one point, she ditched her best friend and went on to become a famous idol. Over the years, she grew up and realized what an idiot she’s been, though her best friend still can’t forgive her, and she also longs to be a famous idol as well, even though she can’t sing to save her life. Since she never grew up, she acts like the teenager she is and sends her former friend to hell.

In the meantime, it seems like the new boy on Ai’s party comes from Kikuri’s side, and is something like a servant to her (calling her “Hime”). One thing that felt a bit off in this episode was how Mikage just keeps running into potential Jigoku Shoujo-victims. I mean, I can understand how the Ai inside of her is directing her towards these cases or something, but I’d like to have that actually confirmed WITHIN the show.

In essence, the general formula of this episode was pretty much the same as in the previous two episodes, but that’s of course something to be expected, since the first and second season did this too. Right now, this series is busy creating a solid base, and of course the real fun is only going to begin when the stories start diverging from this base, and it’s always going to be a mystery as to when that’s going to happen. The base for this season seems to be a bit different from the previous seasons. Even though there were quite a few exceptions, the general formula was basically Ai and her minions handing out a strange sort of justice. In the third season though, Ai has only been carrying out the wishes of whiny and spoiled teenagers, with the great thing being that the creators seem to be having lots of fun to make all sorts of teenagers suffer as much as possible. I sense a strange sort of sadism in this season, which gives off a pretty nice effect.

I’m also glad to finally see another series that shows that recycled scenes aren’t necessarily a bad thing: you just have to know how to use them. Obviously, if they’re used as an impulsive way to save a bit of budget, it’s a bad thing, and at the same time the technique has been made infamous by various mahou shoujo. However, when they’re used for creating a sort of ritualistic feeling, they can actually contribute to the series they’re in. It doesn’t happen often, I only noticed this effect in Jigoku Shoujo and Revolutionary Girl Utena so far, but repetitive shows like these are excellent at creating a ritual that appears in every other episode. The fun then comes from everything that plays around it.

Oh, and one final comment: three episodes in, and I obviously can’t say yet whether this is going to be the best season of Jigoku Shoujo, but I can say one thing: it’s definitely going to be the season with the best visuals. It’s incredible: the graphics for this series already looked great, and the creators managed to succeed in making things look even better.

Starship Operators Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Well, when I first started watching Starship Operators, I wasn’t exactly positive: the premise told about a spaceship, piloted by unqualified teenagers with extravagant hairstyles. My first thought was something along the lines of “oh, here we go again, with the subplot of having teenagers save the world because of some convenient superpower they receive”. Afterwards, Starship Operators continued to violently mutilate any sort of stereotype I could have had about the premise and threw them unceremoniously in the garbage bin.

Really, this is something I never suspected, but the focus on politics and realistic space-battles is huge. In fact, the creators actually succeeded in making a spaceship that’s piloted by teenagers plausible, by resorting to legal actions, and letting them buy their own spaceship with the help of a sponsor (a media-broadcasting network, which also makes sure for a number of subtle jabs against the modern media-culture). The rest of the series also continues to be moved very heavily through complex politics. It happens often when an entire episode is spent, just trying to sink one ship, because of all the preparation and planning that goes into trying to defeat the enemy.

Also, make no mistake: this is a series where people die when they’re killed, and the creators have made sure to let this sink in with both the viewers and the cast. None of the characters individually are particularly well-developed, but as a group, they absolutely shine. There are so many different characters with all their own roles. There’s a bit of angst here and there, but it never distracts from what’s important (which is exactly how you should handle angst: it can really make you care about a character, but if it’s overused it becomes disastrous and just plain annoying, which is something this series manages to avoid excellently).

Also, if you want to watch this series, you obviously have to like politics, because the production-values aren’t going to make up for it, save for a few very powerful songs (the ED, for example). Some of the CG doesn’t blend in well when it’s used alongside regular drawings, and there really isn’t any budget wasted on making the fight scenes flashier and more sensational. In this series, you have to be captured by the characters and politics, otherwise it’ll become a bore-fest.

Still, the power of politics is especially apparent in the excellent final episode, which definitely is the best one of the entire series, which is something nearly every series should aspire; everything the series has built up comes together like a charm, leaving no bad taste whatsoever. Overall, what we have here is a short but very powerful space-opera with an incredible focus on planning, rather than brainless action. It’s something you have to like, but if you do, then it’s going to be an excellent watch.

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

Some quick first impressions: Junjo Romantica 2, Michiko e Hatchin and Goku Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei

by psgels, posted in Michiko e Hatchin, Some Quick First Impressions

(note that I’m still experimenting with rating scale, so the numbers are meant to be low, though GSZS deserves it somewhat)
Junjo Romantica 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets Usagi’s brother.
Highlights: Nice banter.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10
This season really is the season of sequels for Studio Deen (APART FROM AMATSUKI!), where their only new series are continuations of some of their past franchises. Junjo Romantica pretty much continues where the first season leaves off, and introduces Usagi’s brother, who was mentioned a few times in the first season. I’m looking forward to more of this, because it’s one of the few series that takes a realistic view at being in a relationship with someone as it explores the give-and-take aspect of dating someone. Okay, so what if the characters are gay. It might make for a few disturbing scenes, but nonetheless there’s some nice chemistry between the characters, just like in the first series.

Michiko e Hatchin

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets picked up by someone who claims to be her mother.
Highlights: Rather one-sided.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 5,5/10
Well, so far it really looks like we’re dealing with the spiritual successor of El Cazador here. Both feature a strong woman, travelling with a weaker girl, they’re both about gunfights, they both have a strong emphasis on music and they both play in Mexico. The big difference is that the music is rather jazzy with Michiko e Hatchin, and it’s much more dramatic. And that’s my problem a bit here: the whole abuse of Hana is just too one-sided. It’s already established that Hana’s family abuses her after one minute. We don’t need 20 more minutes of this same abuse if that’s all that these characters do. Flesh them out a little more than that! Les Miserables did this the right way: even though Cosette was abused, there was a lot more going on inside the family than just that, while with Michiko e Hatchin, the whole life purpose of that family seems to be to abuse Hana as much as possible.

Goku Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is in despair.
Highlights: Much of the same, but with this series that’s a BAD THING.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 4/10
Well, so for this OVA, I decided to not wait for the subs and just watch it raw. The disadvantage of that obviously is that it becomes much more difficult to understand (especially with a series as focused on dialogue as this one), but the advantage is that the visual direction stands out more, since you don’t have to frantically try to keep up with the huge lines of dialogue. In any case, this pretty much was a standalone episode of the series, and that’s my big problem with it: this series has already gone way past its expiration-date, and it still tries to squeeze some cash out of the viewer. The jokes that once were hilarious have become stale because this series simply refused to develop its characters. And am I the only one who feels that the Otaku-jokes have passed their freshness by now? I mean, it was nice and all when they appeared the first time, but what the heck do the Lucky Star and Haruhi-references in this episode really add? Why show a bunch of stereotypical otaku when a truckload of other series have already done the same? I appreciate how Chaos;Head is trying to make an original story out of them, but this OVA was just nothing. It contributed in no way, and was overall just pointless.

Tytania – 02

by psgels, posted in Tytania



Short Synopsis: Ariabart screwed up, so he now has to face the consequences.
Highlights: No battles this time.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10
Okay, first of all, about the rating. After dunno’s comments I got thinking a bit, and I’m experimenting right now with a different rating-scale for episodes, that uses a bit more of the available numbers. I still need to tweak this a bit, but in a nutshell:
5 – lacking
6 – solid, good, but nothing special
8 – excellent

So yes, this episode was pretty much a good one, and I liked it, although it mostly was an episode of building up without any real battles. Over the next few episodes, I’m going to tweak that rating a bit.

In any case, for those who remember my little contest: this series ended up winning it, so it’s going to be blogged Tytania is most likely going to be my “why the heck am I watching this raw”-series of the season, with the huge amount of political dialogue and all.

In a way, I was pretty surprised when I found out that Artland is handling the animation for this series. Still, it might actually be the perfect company for this series: we’ve already seen in Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino that they pretty much suck at fluid and high-budget action-scenes, but these guys really try to make up for it with some excellent fight coordination, which is EXACTLY what this series needs. With this, we’re assured that this series isn’t going to feature some impossibly moving spacecrafts, but instead a very large focus on tactics. I mean, the animation of To Aru Majutsu no Index was nice and all, but in essence it’s just about a bunch of people who throw a bunch of photoshop-filters at each other until one of them goes down, which isn’t really my idea of an excellent action-series.

And there’s also that strange talent of Artland to choose the exact soundtrack that fits their series the best. Apart from perhaps Happiness or Hakushaku to Yousei, each of their soundtracks has fit the mood of their series perfectly: the very subtle natural sounds in Mushishi, the dreamy music of Bokura ga Ita, the folky music for Il Teatrino. And Tytania really has a soundtrack that screams “build-up” and “epic”, which basically is the essence of this series.

In any case, about this episode. I managed to pick up that Fan Hulic was supposed to lose his battle of the previous episode, because of some deal that his superior had made with the Tytania-family, which brings even more shame to Ariabart. If I understood correctly, this means that Ariabart will be degraded in ranks, and he’s going to have to keep an eye on Fan Hulic. The question is of course: if any other member of the Tytania-family would have commanded that ship, would he have lost as well?

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 41

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: Porfy goes along to the salesman’s home and wrecks a potential marriage.
Highlights: The pacing really gets faster and faster as the show goes on!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Well, there you have it. A few episodes ago, I wondered whether the soundtrack would change, now that Porfy’s in France. And here you go: this episode starts playing the accordions; I should have known.

In any case, the salesman grabs Porfy firmly, but he does offer him a ride to his house. There, it turns out that he has a daughter and two sons, who are living in a rather poor house. They offer him a couch to sleep on, and when he wakes up, the two sons have drawn a moustache on it. The salesman has already left for another job. Porfy then goes with the two of them (after having washed his face of course) into the town, to ask for Mina. He then finds out that they too don’t have a mother. When they look at one of the cars at the local toy store, he decides to make one from wood for them.

Back home, it turns out that Cecile, the daughter, is quite similar to Mina. She’s gentle, and likes acting and movies. She also dreams to become an actress, but she knows that she’s never going to make it. She even recites her favourite movie in front of Porfy just like Mina did. When she does, however, the owner of the house they’re living in pops up and tells her that her father is three months behind on rent.

A little while later, Porfy’s done with the car, and the two sons are very enthusiastic to see it, especially because it’s modelled after their father’s truck. Cecile offers Porfy to stay for as long as he wants, but Porfy leaves immediately after he realizes that he’s taking food from a very poor family, especially after the little sons start complaining that they haven’t had enough dinner.

We then see Porfy as he walks across a (beautiful) lake, and he sees a boat there. The only problem is that his money has finally run out, so he just goes there to look. He there meets a couple that’s about to marry, though the guy is telling a bunch of lies about his supposed family in Greece that was struck by an earthquake, in order to get some money from the woman, Matilda. Porfy, coming from Greece and having endured that earthquake, unknowingly exposes these lies while worrying about them, and Matila slaps the guy. But as it turns out, Matila was the one who was rejected because of Porfy’s meddling, and not the other way around. Matilda actually liked how he was nice to her.

Still, Matilda ends up buying a ticket for Porfy. (At this point, we don’t hear Porfy telling about his sister anymore, so I assume this gets omitted from now on). Matilda asks him what he’s going to do next, and so Porfy says that he needs to work for a bit of more money, and she happens to know someone who can hire him. The episode then ends as the boat arrives at yet another beautifully drawn town.

That beginning of the episode was really a nostalgic moment, which anyone will probably recognize from their childhood. That “oh, I screwed up and he’s going to punish me”-feeling, while the salesman just kept silent. He’s quite an interesting character; he hardly said anything and just accepted that he was fooled by Porfy.

This is also a thing that only took me so long to realize, but the pacing of this series just keeps going faster and faster. The series started off with a very sloooooooow slice-of-life arc that took up 12 episodes. The disaster-arc was also pretty long. Then came travel-arcs from three to four episodes, until Rome, after which the show became episodic. And now, as the series enters its final quarter, the stories become even too short for individual episodes, and every episode shows Porfy as he meets two different places. The only exception was when Porfy met the car mechanic and the woman in the abandoned city, but if you consider those as one standalone arc, then everything falls into pieces perfectly. Let me just say that this definitely ISN’T something I expected this series’ finale to turn into!

At this point, I consider Les Miserables to be a bit better than Porfy no Nagai Tabi, but that’s only because of the longer travel-arcs. Not only was their pacing slow, but their writing was just way too sloppy for this series, whereas Les Miserables was very thoroughly built up through its entire story, and had some very effective climaxes because of it. I don’t expect Porfy to become better than Les Miserables in its final quarter, simply because Les Miserables surpassed itself in just about every aspect for its final quarter, but it’s nevertheless getting interesting where the creators will be going. The pacing will definitely something to look forward to, as it removed just about the only flaw of this series out of these travel-arcs: the incredibly slow pacing. The creators have also shown that they’re masters at building up, so really… what the heck could they be planning?

Shikabane Hime – 03

by psgels, posted in Shikabane Hime



Short Synopsis: A number of people get killed after hearing the cries of a baby.
Highlights: Makina and Kagami
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
I think we’ve got ourselves a record here: it’s episode three, and the male and female lead still haven’t become a couple. Sure, they might meet each other a lot, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the bond between the two, but rather that cat which keeps pulling the strings from behind the scenes. The two of them are being fleshed out pretty nicely overall, with this episode giving a cold for Kagami to deal with. It’s also nice to see that his whining actually was justified in this episode, where the baby actually wasn’t the culprit. That removes the one-sided part about their relationship, where Makina was the strong one and Kagami the weak one. I believe that they’re going to grow nicely so that they can complement for each other’s weaknesses.

What I also like about this series is that apart from Makina and Kagami, there are actually lots of different and more characters. These first three episodes have introduced a significant amount of returning characters, even though we’re talking about episodic stories here. The cat and the strange guy who killed this episode’s bad guy, what are they plotting? This series is especially going to be interesting if the creators manage to give everyone on Kagami’s brother’s organization his and her own identity (the unimportant ones still feel too much like one single character at this point: replace them with one guy and you’d never know the difference).

I must say that with this, Gainax has clearly shown that they can make more than brainless action-shows, which I like a lot. What it needs to pay attention to is that male lead, Kagami. So far, he hasn’t been that annoying, but the FACT REMAINS that he’s an angsty teenager. The guy needs to develop quickly before the angst gets annoying.