Some quick first impressions: Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae, Shugo Chara Doki and Kannagi

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo, Shugo Chara, Some Quick First Impressions

Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae

Short Synopsis: Our lead character returns for a third season.
Highlights: You can count on Jigoku Shoujo to make a bunch of angsty teenagers work
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,75/10
Time for some very biased fanboyism! I am SO glad to see more of this, and Mitsuganae promises to be the best season of Jigoku Shoujo yet. This episode wasn’t just an episode that would fit into Futakomori: it would have felt so out of place at that time. The creators are really planning to evolve the show with this season, most importantly in its style of direction. While Futakomori was very solid, the direction of this episode was all over the place. The visual effects were awesome (especially Ai in a Bee-suit immediately beat the teethed toilet). The only sacrifice that had to be made was that the stellar character-designer seems to have left the series, but if the creators were going for a chaotic third season, then I can understand how such a solid character-designer wouldn’t fit the mood. I honestly feel that this episode was just an awesome first episode, and it ranks after Hakaba Kitarou as the best first episode of 2008. Ack, I want more!!!

Shugo Chara Doki

Short Synopsis: Our lead character… doesn’t do anything.
Highlights: Bloody recaps.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 4/10
After this episode, I just have to wonder yet again: is there really no way to transfer some of Shugo Chara’s episodes over to Zombie-Loan? Really, it’s a win-win situation: Zombie Loan gets continued just as its plot and characters really get interesting, and Shugo Chara is relieved from its enormous amounts of fillers. Overall, I think that blogging Shugo Chara was one of the biggest mistakes I made with this blog after blogging Bleach, and this episode, instead of trying to win back my interest ends up recapping the things that MADE ME DROP THIS SERIES IN THE FIRST PLACE. And really, from the few original scenes that were in this episode, it seemed that the only thing the past fifty-two episodes have been doing is introducing new characters. The characters that I knew were exactly the same as when I dropped this series (at about episode 15). Okay, apart from that Nadeshiko finally decided to give in to his real gender. And I do admit, it was nice to see a bit of a kaleidoscope of what I missed in that final quarter, but none of that really impressed me.

Kannagi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is supposed to be a crazy shrine maiden.
Highlights: Sometimes funny, sometimes dull.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10
Here’s my dilemma: based on my own experiences, 90% of the comedies abide by the following rule: all mediocre comedies start with hilarious first episodes (example: Potemayo), all good comedies start with dull first episodes (example: Gintama) and all bad comedies start with dull first episodes (example: too many to list). Kannagi’s first episode was dull, so it’s going to be either good or bad. I just have no idea which one it’s going to be. This episode showed a few small hints of potential and chemistry, and some jokes were quite funny, although it pretty much went south as soon as it tried to make fanservice-jokes. Based on the OP, this will also turn into a cute idol-show, which also doesn’t seem like the most interesting and original premise. And really, I don’t feel like sitting through a 26-episode bore-fest.

Some quick first impressions: Tales of the Abyss, Tentai Senshi Sunred and Kurogane no Linebarrels

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Tales of the Abyss

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a prince and has special.
Highlights: Bad first half, second half with promise.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6,5/10
I’m pretty much a fan of the Tales of-franchise, but I’ve never played Tales of the Abyss or Vesperia, so this was all new to me. At first, this promised to violently ruin my love for this series. The main character is incredibly annoying; he’s a prince with generic servants and a generic master, and worst of all: he’s got special powers. The setting also screamed “epic”, so there was no doubt that our little prince and his female friend will end up saving this world in the end. Then, however, he was removed from his cosy little palace, and the creators actually showed that they knew how to develop the guy: he acts like a total idiot when he’s not amongst his servants. Now that can prove to be some great character-development. Still, the reason why I became a fan of the Tales-series is that they all were thought-provoking somehow, and knew how to tell a story. Let’s hope that the creators can stuff that in. For now, I’ll remain sceptical, as I don’t want to see yet another World Destruction. And most importantly, I really think that the creators should have done a bit more effort in trying to hide their spoilers from the OP. Really, if that’s what this series will boil down to, I’m quickly going to drop this thing. I also really have to say that out of all the Tales-stories, this really has the worst character-designs of the bunch. Who the heck fired those awesome character-designers?

Tentai Senshi Sunred

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is super sentai who fights for justice.
Highlights: Horrible! Terrible! Not an ounce of potential!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
For this season, I managed to avoid all the previews, so I had no idea what the selection of new series would be. Still, even if I did end up preparing myself for the upcoming season, I don’t think I would have ever suspected that my favourite first episode so far would come from such a god-awful series. Sarcasm aside, the parodies in this episode were absolutely brilliant, and it’s quite possibly been one of the funniest first episodes of this year. The way this series took the premise of a super sentai series and made the main characters a yakuza characters and the villains a bunch of incompetent fools was hilarious, but the best part about this episode was the awesome sense of timing that the creators have. They knew EXACTLY when to deliver their jokes. Really, the rest of this series had better really good, because I don’t want this series to go down as the one that made the best impression of the entire season! There’s also the issue of potential with this series: how long can it remain funny? Still, whether it’ll turn dull or remain brilliant, I’m happy enough that I’ve watched just this episode.

Kurogane no Linebarrels

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets a cute girl who can summon a giant mecha.
Highlights: Typical bad Gonzo.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 5/10
Oh, Gonzo; what have you done? You had Blassreiter, and you go back to Dragonaut. You had a number of adults who fought each other with passion and lighting-fast action scenes, and you go back to an angsty teenaged couple who can summon an overpowered mecha with horrible CG-sequences and action-scenes. Seriously, even when talking about first episode, I can’t think of even one thing that Kurogane no Linebarrels did better than Blassreiter. The thing that stood out the most was the following: the main character stands right where the main female is supposed to crash. We see a huge blow, and he’s fine. So far, I guess it’s excusable, BUT the guy has huge blood-stains, all over his clothes AND HE DOESN”T EVEN NOTICE THEM. In fact, nobody pays attention to them. I don’t know about you, but if I saw an explosion, and later someone with blood all over his shirt, I’d freak out, or at least find it strange that someone drenched in blood walks around. Okay, so this has a bit of potential left, but this time, I just don’t feel like giving this series another chance. Goodbye Gonzo.

Some quick first impressions: Yozakura Quartet, Noramimi 2 and Hokuto no Ken Raoh Gaiden Ten no Haoh

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Yozakura Quartet

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a human with superpowers that fights against youkai.
Highlights: Excellent soundtrack.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10
The thing that immediately catches your attention for this series: it’s awesome soundtrack. This series also has a nice sense of style, but I’m not sold on its premise yet. My big problem with this episode was that the powers of these main characters are a bit too uber: in order to give them a challenge, you need to give their opponents even stronger powers, and I’m a bit afraid that it’ll just lose itself in its own superpowers. The bad guys in this episode were decent, but nothing really special. What I did like was these huge wooden pillars that are all over the town. That’s original and has some nice potential.

Noramimi 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a mascot who works at a mascot agency, if that makes any sense.
Highlights: Very childish, but charming.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
If I recall correctly, I dropped the original series not because it was bad, but because I had to drop something. Nevertheless, it’s good to see this series back again, because there definitely are a few things to like about it. The creators know how to write children surprisingly well, and a lot of this series is a nostalgic trip back to the time when we were still children, and the world seemed so simple. But yeah, this series will never become popular. The big problem with it is the following: if it works, it really works: it’s hilarious, charming and fun, much like the first half of this episode: that radish was just SO adorable. However, when it doesn’t work, it really becomes embarrassing to watch. This series has the nasty tendency to be a bit too sentimental and soppy for its own good, and at those times, you really want to turn this thing off as soon as possible.

Hokuto no Ken Raoh Gaiden Ten no Haoh

Short Synopsis: Is a big manly man who takes control over a country.
Highlights: A very manly series.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6,5/10
After Noramimi, it’s good to watch such a manly series as this one. Still, I do have to wonder, since this series is based on such a huge franchise, then why didn’t the creators get a hold of a bigger budget? I mean, I’m not asking for much, but when the blood starts to look like ketchup, then you have to wonder what the creators were thinking. In any case, this probably is the first thing I’ve seen of the Hokuto no Ken franchise, and I can understand where its reputation came from. If it wasn’t for that bad animation, then Raoh really would be able to kill his opponents in the most violent ways imaginable. The rest of the episode was decent: nothing bad, but nothing special either. It merely served to set up the story for this series, but at the same time, it didn’t really show me anything that made me want to keep watching. It’s just a bunch of oversized men killing each other. Still, it’s in any case good to finally see a series that’s NOT ABOUT TEENAGERS (or children, in Noramimi’s case).

Some quick first impressions: Clannad ~After Story~, Kuroshitsuji and Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Clannad ~After Story~

Short Synopsis: Our lead character and his friends enter a baseball match.
Highlights: Fun episode to start the second season.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
And so the second season of Clannad has begun. This episode basically shows the lead characters as they play a baseball-match against a professional team, which is a fun way to start the series and get familiar with the characters again. This episode definitely beats Haruhi’s baseball-episode. Overall, the new OP is better than the first one, while the ED has become much worse. The graphics still look solid, although the few instances of CG looked horribly out of place. Ah well, the thing I liked about Clannad were its climaxes, so we may have to wait a bit for this series to get really good. I loved Air, I hated Kanon and I liked Clannad, so let’s see what the after story can do once it catches steam.

Kuroshitsuji

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the butler of a mysterious kid.
Highlights: Ah, the cheese!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Okay, you know that anime creators are getting desperate when they start to rip off Hiroshi Watanabe’s works! Seriously, anyone who’s even remotely seen Suteki Tantei Labyrinth will recognize the obvious resemblances: both Mayuki and this series’ kid live in a huge mansion and lost their parents. Sebastian is Seiran, Hatsumi is the clumsy maid, Sanae is the gardener, the kid has powers, the butler too, and let’s not forget THE TEA. I mean, this just begs the question: if you’re going to pick a series to rip off, for god’s sake: Why Suteki Tantei Labyrinth?! But I digress: this series will be plenty enough to satisfy my inner-cheese-fanboy. The over-exaggerated glamour of Sebastian the butler was hilarious, and the three servants were just awesome. The background music was just awesome and over the top, fitting the cheesy mood exactly. Seriously, don’t watch this series unless you want to laugh at it. Not with it. This series does have to live up to its expectations, though. I’d better see something that surpasses a pet alligator in a closet and unfortunately placed dog poo (you’ll understand these references if you’ve seen Suteki Tantei Labyrinth). But what probably baffles me the most about this series: people were actually looking forward to it!?

Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live with a cute girl (no, really).
Highlights: Horrible character-designs, but at least the dialogue is nice enough.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10
I keep wondering why the creators of these harem-anime spend so much time to make their female character-designs as extravagant and ridiculous as possible, while it’s most often the simple designs that look best. I mean, Real Drive showed this perfectly: even though you don’t have main characters with the perfect bodies, they still can look great. Really, in this series, it just seems like the creators took one body, copied it about twenty times and gave them different ridiculous hairstyles and eye-colours in an attempt to make them cute. Still, I have to admit that this series isn’t all bad. I enjoyed it more than Toradora, and the director seems to be good at the slice-of-life moments. The problem, however, is that he’s pretty much terrible at everything else, including setting up his story. Having cute girls swarm over you is one thing, but letting all of them be the most popular girls in school is a whole different story. The comedy is funny, but not for the reasons it’s supposed to be; the action downright sucks and the drama makes no bloody sense at all and feels forced. Overall, this episode was enjoyable enough, but it just doesn’t have any potential at all, and I suspect it to go downhill very soon.

Some quick first impressions: Casshern Sins, Rosario to Vampire Capu 2 and Shikabane Hime Aka

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins, Shikabane Hime, Some Quick First Impressions

Casshern Sins

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has upset a lot of (or robots in this case) by killing someone.
Highlights: That Casshern-guy is rather dull.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6,5/10
As much as I’d like to fanboy over the unusual art style and setting, I just can’t. There were too many parts of this episode that just didn’t sit right with me. The tune that the creators picked for the OP doesn’t seem to fit the dark mood of the rest of the series, and most importantly Casshern striked me as a very dull main character. All he does in this episode is fight and angst. Come on, flesh the guy out a bit! Right now he just is another one of those angsty teens with an unknown past, even though he’s a robot. What I also don’t like about this series is its “good guys pretty bad guys ugly”-mentality. Even though they seem to have reasons for their anger at this Casshern, every bad guy ultimately becomes just target practice for this Casshern, none of them have any depth so far. The only thing I did like was that little robot girl and her caretaker. They were nice.

Rosario to Vampire Capu 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character enters his second year at the “youkai school”.
Highlights: WHY?! WHY did this thing get a second season!?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 2/10
Christ. Here I thought that this series couldn’t possibly get any worse, and here this episode proved me wrong. This episode was downright terrible, with non-sensical characters, stereotypes all over the place and a downright ridiculous plot, not to mention the horrible setting that it inherited from the first season. It’s one thing to bore me, but a series has to be really bad if I end up face-palming through the majority of the episodes, just to get distracted from the pain that is going on on the screen. The only thing that was even remotely interesting was the “Moka-Tsukune-Moka-Tsukune”, but even that felt forced. I mean, I really want to give these bishoujo-series a chance and all, but it’s series like this one that really make it difficult for me to take them seriously.

Shikabane Hime Aka

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has yet to get involved with a group of “Shikabane”-hunters.
Highlights: A few flaws here and there, but nonetheless very solid.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Ooh, I’m impressed. There’s a lot to like about this series: excellent soundtrack, very nice fights, a great air of mystery. I also really like the voices of the male and female leads: their voice-actors aren’t trying to be overly cute, but instead believable, which really works. The rest of the cast is a bit less, but that can be forgiven. I also like how this episode closed off with the two of them NOT staying together, and they’re still relative strangers to each other; it’s always good not to rush these things. There were a few coincidences here and there, like when the lead female fell right where the lead male happened to be, but it can be forgiven if they merely served to set up the story and characters. The two classmates were probably the most annoying about this series, but even they got a bit of development at the end of the episode. Overall, good series so far; nice potential, just don’t let this turn into a cheesy love triangle.

Some quick first impressions: Hakushaku to Yousei, Toradora and Hyakko

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Hakushaku to Yousei

Short Synopsis: Our lead character can see fairies and gets kidnapped by a bunch of bishies.
Highlights: Is too busy trying to make its characters look “cool”.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6,5/10
It’s a shame that this series started right after a bunch of awesome cat-shows as Chi’s Sweet Home and Natsume Yuujin-chou: the talking cat in this episode is nowhere near as awesome as Chi or Nyanko-sensei. In any case, this is your typical shoujo-series: female lead goes on an adventure and meets lots of bishies. There’s hardly anything that stands out, though. This series is way too busy with hairstyles that gently wave in the wind, and trying to look cool and charming. Terms as “Fairy Doctor” are needlessly translated to Engrish in an attempt to sound cool. The bishies all look way too much like each other, and none of the character-designs was really that appealing. What can save this series is that in the next couple of episodes is the way that it’s going to explore the European Folkore. If it can explore that in an interesting way, it might still stand a chance, but something tells me that our female lead is going to be too busy being saved by whatever bishie that comes near her.

Toradora

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live next to a cute tsundere girl who tries to beat him up (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).
Highlights: Parrots are awesome. This one isn’t.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 5/10
Oooooh… Kugimiya Rie… please stop doing these annoying tsundere roles that all look and sound the bloody same. They don’t get less annoying if you do more of them. I love your work at Gintama, but stop working yourself into a corner with these Shana-clones. In any case, I think it’s pretty clear that I didn’t like this series. It’s nicely animated, but that’s just about the only positive thing I can say about it. Nothing else stood out, the humour felt flat, and just about every female character annoyed the hell out of me. Considering that we’re still missing one of the lead females (I don’t even want to guess what her role in this series will be…), this promises to be one of your typical high-school romances/harems. I’ve seen enough series with overly cute females for the past summer-season, so I really doubt whether I’m going to continue watching this thing.

Hyakko

Short Synopsis: Our lead character… is lost.
Highlights: Cute.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
My first thought on seeing this series, with yet again a bunch of high-school-girl was “oh god, here we go again”. And then the episode actually started, and it actually proved me wrong. Hyakko is really a breath of fresh air after Toradora and Hakushaku to Yousei and their stereotypes, with genuinely interesting characters, with good chemistry between them. Nothing feels forced, and instead it’s just a lot of fun to just watch them interact. The characters may seem like stereotypes at first, but already within this episode, they managed to turn into something beyond the clichés. I first imagined how this would turn into some sort of Bamboo-Blade-Lucky-Star clone, but this episode proved to be really enjoyable. Let’s hope that it can keep it that way!

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ Review – 92,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Himitsu ~The Revelation~


This is probably going to be the most difficult review of the past month for me. First of all, it’s always difficult to review your favourite series without delving into plain rambling, but this also isn’t a case where I just sum up the points I loved about it and get things over with. Himitsu is a series with a lot of weaknesses, and yet after Kaiba, it stood out for me as the best series of the past half year.

Let me first get these weaknesses out of the way. Himitsu is basically a crime series, where the main characters try to find the culprit of a crime by looking into the mind of the victims. Its biggest mistake is that can be a bit over-theatrical at times. Its got an excellent soundtrack that can however sound a bit too cheesy when put into practice, and it’s got those nasty tendencies of showing some strange instances of fanservice for the fangirls (why this is considered to be worse than blasphemy, while female fanservice is always praised, I don’t know).

Then there are the issues with the series’ messages. Because it involves policemen who look inside the brains, you’d expect a lot of ethical debates. A series that makes you think about whether or not it’s right to look into the privacy of a deceased. This however, doesn’t turn out to be the case: Himitsu merely just lists a large number of taboos that even Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei didn’t dare to touch, and presents its own views about them, but it doesn’t try to spark any discussion.

So, despite all this, why did I like this series so much? Well, first of all: it just is an excellent mystery-series. Every case keeps you guessing what’s going on. Because in the series, the memory-recovery system is a very advanced technology, people often need to wait a couple of hours before a new piece of the victim’s brains are loaded in the computer. This series is a master in timing its revelations, and keeping the viewer busy and wondering what’s going on.

This also is a very inconsistent series, for the good and the bad. If you liked one case, you can be sure that the next case is going to focus on something completely different. This isn’t exactly good for your expectations, but at the same time it makes the series extremely unpredictable: you’re never going to know what’s going to happen next. You’ll never know what the next episode will focus on. Every episode is different, and focuses on something else, and this makes for a very varied episodic series.
This series is also excellent in the few times it delves into horror. If you thought that Code Geass was shocking, just wait until you see a few particular episodes of this series. Madhouse has always been a production studio with very little censorship, and this series ranks along with Shigurui to their least censored series, making for a few gruesome cases that pop up once in a while and take you by surprise.

And then the characters. They really are a case on their own. For a long time, you’ll be wondering what the series is planning to do with them. Because this is a series that focus mostly on the people that are involved with the case, the actual main characters, the investigating policemen, at first sight seem to be neglected a bit. But as it turns out, the creators knew exactly what they were doing with their characters. Because they moved away from the manga this series is based on, they were able to plan this series exactly for the length of 26 episodes, and they’ve been fleshing out the main cast very subtly throughout the series.

The result is that the cast of this series comes together wonderfully in the final quarter of this series. All of them are developed very subtly, and each of them becomes memorable somehow, and overall they become a lot of fun to watch as they try to solve their cases. The finale of this series forms an excellent conclusion for this series, where this development is used to its full extent.

In terms of graphics, a lot of people may disagree with me, but I absolutely loved them. Madhouse has always had the reputation of straying away from the overly moe or GAR character-designs, and it’s the same here. The character-designs look excellent, and never seem to be trying to be overly cute. Overall, this is one series where the foreground characters and background art really mesh excellently with each other, making sure for some awesome shots.

Overall, it’s really a shame that the subs stopped right before the best episode of the entire series, and Himitsu has definitely been the most underrated series from the spring-season for me. It can be surprisingly intense at times, while surprisingly touching at others, fully tying in with the “fooling the viewer”-theme of the past half year that I’ve mentioned a few times already. It knows very much how to tell a story, got an awesome set of main characters and definitely turned into my favourite series after Kaiba ended.

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

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 26

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~



Short Synopsis: Maki rushes in to find the hidden pieces of Suzuki’s memory.
Highlights: A bit over-exaggerated, but an incredibly tense ending.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, so this episode loses points for over-exaggerating a bit too much, but thankfully it turned into that over-the-top ending that I’d hoped for. In the end, it didn’t beat RD’s ending, but it really took second place. If it had a bit more subtlety, this episode really could have been incredible, but that field of flowers really was a bit too much. The hypnotism also was unrealistic, and the episode’s end was a bit too theatrical for its own good (why didn’t the MRI explode the way it did when Suzuki shoot it?).

But really, that climax between Aoki and Maki was SO intense that it made up for everything. Now everything really is clear: Kainuma’s final plan wasn’t to just proclaim his love for Maki and go for just the shock factor. He wanted to shock the guy, and then hypnotize him into murdering the entire of Daiku. Because Suzuki saw it, he went berserk instead.

The final bad guy? Daiku’s boss. It turns out that he’s been trading people’s memories for money. Now he’s had enough and wants to close it off by having Daiku kill off each other. He probably sealed Suzuki’s memory of Kainuma, because that’d be the perfect way to time their deaths. Unfortunately, this went wrong because Aoki realized in time that Kainuma was trying to hypnotize them.

Bonen no Xamdou – 12

by psgels, posted in Bonen no Xamdou



Short Synopsis: The pieces start moving for the second half of this series.
Highlights: Furuichi’s development.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, so this was probably the last time I make use of the 10-01 raw providers. Their quality is horrible-raws level, but the worst is that their resolution is way too stretched in terms of height. It’s like having a 4:3 resolution with a 16:9 video. Thankfully this episode made up for it. It’s a typical intermezzo, but at the same time it really pushes the plot forward for the second half of this series.

Big development #1: Nakiami and Akiyuki leave the Zanbani, for Tessik Village. Benikawa turns out to have had an affair with the guy who controls the strange Xam’d tower, and she seems to be hiding much more about her past. “Writer of the Crimson Revolution”? Nakiami’s goodbye was really touching, and at the same time this has left a lot of potential for that second half, because Benikawa is just too important for the story for the Zanbani-crew to just become secondary characters.

Big development #2: Furuichi seems to be infected by an imperfect Xam’d, or something similar. It probably was awakened due to the way he kept pushing himself over the limits, but whatever he was, it made him see what kind of an idiot he’s been. I should have known that the creators knew exactly that he was being an asshole. They’d of course never let him be just a simple rival to stand in Akiyuki’s path, and so he successfully removed one of the few problems I had with this show.

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 39

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: Porfy travels.
Highlights: Just when you thought that the background artists couldn’t get any better, they surpass themselves.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, the summary can be very short this time, seeing as this is one of these episodes where hardly anything happens. Porfy travels, and he once meets an angry farmer because he picked up olives that reminded him of home, and he runs into a woman later, who also lives alone just like Porfy. This episode really was all about its atmosphere, and the psychological aspects of travelling, and it did an excellent job at that.

Porfy finally enters France, but at the same time he also lost Mina’s picture, the only thing he had to remind of her. He also gets quite arrogant when he talks to the farmer, and I finally noticed that his development hasn’t just made him stronger. He may have matured, but he throws away all reasons when he’s reminded of his sister, and for the past number of episodes, this still hasn’t gotten better (foreshadowing, anyone?)

Also, was it just me, or was the woman Porfy ran into some sort of subtle revenge for Fantine in Les Miserables, how the creators weren’t able to show her becoming a prostitute due to the censors? It’s never explicitly said, but a lot of hints pointed towards that woman being some sort of prostitute, especially the way in which she wouldn’t let Porfy enter her car. It’s a very subtle addition from the creators: the children are never going to notice it, while it’s a bit of extra realism added for the adults.

And oh my god, I already suspected this, but the background art was absolutely gorgeous in this episode. Especially the time Porfy spent in the forest, and that final beautiful shot of the town at the foot of the Alps was just awesome. In any case, this definitely was the quietest episode of Porfy yet, but its storytelling was wonderfully subtle.