Birdy the Mighty Decode – 12

by psgels, posted in Birdy the Mighty Decode



Short Synopsis: Syamalan + Ryunka = Destruction.
Highlights: Awesome animation and music and a less annoying Senkawa. What more could you want?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Now this is more like it! Senkawa acted much less of a teenager in this episode, which made him much more enjoyable to watch. It’s really such a pity that this series has to work with a typical loser as the lead character, because there aren’t many roads you can go to with such a guy, and he’s already overplayed a lot. I think it would have been better to make Senkawa more like the male lead of True Tears.

And the twist, where Syamalan died so easily after executing his plans was a pretty nice one. It also shows that the finale of the first season will be between its three main characters: Birdy, Senkawa and Nakasugi. It’s really a finale that can go anywhere: it can become utter crap, where Senkawa spends the entire episode in a pointless argument with Birdy over whether or not to kill Nakasugi, or it can become amazing, like the director has shown many times before with Noein and Escaflowne with the help of some heavy-hitting character-development.

I also love the use of music in this series. The director is very much like Bee-Train, in the way that he puts a lot of emphasis on the music, but the difference between the two is that the music here is at its best when the tension is slowly rising, instead of the actual climaxes in Bee-Train’s case. The composer, Yuugo Kanno, is relatively unknown, and he’s only composed the music of a small amount of series, among which Hataraki Man and Library War. It’s interesting, because I remember noting in the first episode of Library Wars how great the music was, and then strangely enough the music dulled out afterwards. Now that the guy has teamed up with such an excellent director, it’s great to hear what he can really do for a soundtrack.

Telepathy Shoujo Ran – 13

by psgels, posted in Telepathy Shoujo Ran



Short Synopsis: A ghost with a mask on her elbow haunts various seemingly unrelated people.
Highlights: Quite a complex episode for this series’ standards.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Ooh, I must say that I’m impressed. Apart from the flower-arc, the stories of Telepathy Shoujo Ran have never been that impressive, and it’s always been the characters that were the selling-point for this series for me, but this episode really intrigued me. I really liked how this episode just kept introducing new people, when at first the mystery seemed so simple.

My guess is that the salary-man who was put in coma just happened to be a random victim of the ghost, and his worries at his job were just meant as a red herring. With the real central character to this story being that old woman, who was apparently the sister to the ghost when she was still alive, and it looks like she did some pretty horrible things to her. In any case, I’m a big fan of ghost stories, and I’ve been waiting for this show to make one of its arcs centre around one, so it’s natural that I’m looking forward to more.

Now that this series has passed its second half, I really wonder what it’s planning for its second half. The characters are now fleshed out sufficiently so the question remains whether the creators will be using this in the next arcs, or just continue the series at the same pace. My big fear for this series is that the inspiration will run out in that second half, so please let me be wrong in this.

In other news, I also loved Midori’s eat-fest that got misunderstood as a serious case.

Antique Bakery Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Bishounen-series are in a way much like bishoujo-series. It’s just too easy to just treat the fanboys or fangirls to a lot of fanservice and get things over with, but of course the real challenge is to put them in interesting situations, develop them properly and flesh them out like real characters, otherwise you could just as well start selling paper bags. Antique Bakery is an example of how to do this right, although it’s rather unconventional.

I’ve said this before, but the series of the past spring- and summer season often had theme of fooling the viewer. Quite a few series defied expectations by focusing on something different from what you’d expect them to. Antique Bakery for example, looks all the way like a yaoi-series. Instead, it’s just an iyashi-kei series with a bit of mystery, where one of the characters just happens to be gay.

It really knows how to handle its cast of characters. At first, it starts out like a rather cheesy series, but very soon the cheese turns into genuine drama. Every character gets enough attention to show what he’s got. Because the series deals with such an original setting of a cake-store, the characters really have the ability to move away fro the stereotypes, and develop in the way they want. There’s this strange bond that develops between them as the series goes on, and it just seems to fit perfectly.

The mystery-part of the series is also delightfully unpredictable. How often do you see a guy with a trauma, because he had once been kidnapped in his past by someone who forced to make him eat cakes all the time? At first, it might seem like a bit of good cheese, but interestingly enough as the show goes on, this develops into genuine drama, with an actually very nice ending that prefers logical progression over a sensational ending, and yet puts a satisfying conclusion to everything.

There’s one character who feels a bit out of place in this series. This series is mostly about adults, but there’s one teenager amongst them, but he just doesn’t feel as part of the cast as the others. All attempts to flesh him out feel a bit shallow, and the moments that focus on him are mostly the less exciting of the series. An ex-boxer who loves cakes may sound good on paper, but the creators just didn’t use his character well enough.

This also isn’t a series for everyone. The fact remains that one of the characters is gay, so if you hate gay people with the intensity of one thousand suns, then you’re not going to like this series, even though the fact that the guy’s gay is used very nicely to symbolize the anxieties of gay people in the modern society. There’s also one particularly wrong scene where the guy carries his fantasies a bit too far, but apart from that the creators nicely balanced his feelings, to prevent the shounen-ai tones from getting too big of a focus.

Overall, though, Antique Bakery is another example of why Noitamina rocks. It comes with the most unconventional premises that actually work out somehow. It’s an inspired series that’s sometimes relaxing, and sometimes it shines with powerful drama, and the creators showed that they knew exactly how to use their limited time of 12 episodes. While it’s not going to break any records, it’s another good example of a nice quick watch.

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

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 37

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: Porfy meets an old dog who stubbornly keeps following him.
Highlights: An episode for the animals, and what a lovely episode it is!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Awww, that was such an adorable episode. It was incredibly cute and at the same time the conclusion was so powerful and awesome. What an adorable dog. What an absolutely adorable dog. To prevent myself from repeating myself even further, here’s this week’s summary:

Porfy is camping out again, wondering why he didn’t take a bus. Apollo meanwhile catches himself a mouse, and suddenly a huge dog appears, and cuddles up to Porfy. The two fall asleep that way, and the next day the dog continues to follow Porfy on his journey, even though Apollo doesn’t like it. When he sees a passing vehicle, he manages to get the driver to ride him to the next village, but the dog won’t move out of the car’s way until Porfy gives in and lets him ride as well, with Porfy obviously having to explain that the dog isn’t his.

Then, when the driver drops him off, Porfy gets hungry and buys a sandwich. He at first doesn’t want to give the dog anything, but eventually he shares his second sandwich with the animal. A local pastor then arrives, and takes interest in the dog. He notes that it’s already quite an old do, and how it could be following Porfy because it’s also travelling around. Apollo, while watching, meanwhile runs into a pretty female owl, which he begins to follow around and try to appease. When it starts raining, the two spend their time inside a hollow tree, while the female starts to like Apollo more and more.

The dog meanwhile decided to show Porfy around a bit, and takes him to a local stream where he could fresh him up a bit. While he’s taking a nap, Bernardo runs off with his bag, and Porfy chases it over and over. When Apollo hears Porfy, he decides to leave his new lover for Porfy. Porfy meanwhile is very angry at the dog for takng away his bag (including the tools from his father; always a touchy subject for the guy). But as it turns out, the dog just wanted to show Porfy a beautiful scenery (and beautiful it is!).

Porfy then looks around, and the dog has died. He creates a proper grave for it, and continues on with his journey with Apollo and the episode ends.

The creators made clever use of Apollo in this episode. Uusally, he’s the voice of reason for this series: whenever he’s freaking out, something bad is about to happen. In this case, he just didn’t like the dog, period. That did give the feeling that something was fishy about that dog, which the creaotrs really used to make it look a bit ambiguous. While in fact, the dog just knew it was about to die, and wanted to do this with some great scenery, next to someone who treated him well until the end.

I also finally noticed the pattern of this series: arc-climax-arc-climax-arc, where the arcs mostly are long, and the climaxes are short and powerful, although the first climax did take up quite a few episodes. What’s more interesting though is that each successive arc takes a different focus. The first one was slice of life, the second multi-episoded travel arcs, and now the third one features single-episoded travel arcs. I think that around episode 40 or 43, the next climax is going to come, where the final arc is going to wrap everything up.

My prediction is that the next climax will feature the bomb finally exploding between Isabella and Carlos. It’s probably going to be an arc where he finally had enough of Mina. In the final episodes, Porfy will then finally meet her (I get more and more the feeling that this will happen as late as possible) and run into Alecia.

So yes, something tells me that the final quarter of this series is going to be an amazing one. 🙂

Strike Witches Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Well, it’s time to review the latest Gonzo-series. It really is a production-studio with its ups and downs: some of its series are amazing (Bokura no, for example), while at other times they screw up completely (Dragonaut). Strike Witches is a very strange combination between those two extremes.

Basically, this series follows Sky Girls in the mecha musume franchise, but it did put some more effort into creating its setting, both in the good ways and the bad ways. To start with the latter: for some unfathomable reason, every girl in the show doesn’t wear any pants. Throughout the entire series, everyone walks around in panties, without any explanation whatsoever of how this came to be. After one episode revealed that all these girls only have one single pair of panties, you have to wonder what those creators were smoking when they came up with the concept for this series.

However, there are a lot of good things about the setting of this series when you look at the cultural aspects of the series. It attempts to put the traditional Japanese concepts of kemonomimi and mecha-musume in a European setting, with a lot of references to European war heroes and machinery. Basically, the series attempts to unify the east with the west, and succeeds pretty well at it. The cultural references from both sides are very interesting to watch, much more than I expected when I started watching this series.

Through the series, our heroes need to take care of so-called “Neuroi”, which are wreaking havoc and threatening to destroy the world. Overall, it’s not that special and often boring, with a rushed conclusion, but what it does is give enough support for the cast of characters, which thankfully is much more interesting. There’s quite a large cast of major characters for such a short series, and the most impressive is that they’re surprisingly genuine throughout the series. They often say what they think, and never really feel forced.

It’s just a shame that there seems to be one guy on the production-staff who kept yelling “I WANT FANSERVICE” over and over again, which resulted into a bunch of very questionable fanservice-episodes. These episodes don’t only ignore much of what makes the series enjoyable, but the general stupidity of the characters increases ten-fold in these sorts of episodes, so that it becomes even embarrassing to watch. And frankly, this happens way too often.

So overall: this series shines when A) there’s not much focus on the story and instead on the characters and B) when it manages to take its mind out of the gutter and stops focusing at fanservice. At these times, it’s a real gem. Whenever it’s not the case… its quality decreases drastically, though. It’s a real series with its ups and downs. If you can stomach the downs, then the ups are well worth it.

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

Macross Frontier – 24

by psgels, posted in Macross Frontier



Short Synopsis: The final assault on the Vajra home planet begins. You don’t want to read this entry before watching this episode, so be warned.
Highlights: Not going to spoil that here.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Oh, okay. I admit Kawamori: you have me. I give up, and I was in the wrong.

Ah, the irony. I was about to give up hope on this series. I kept rambling on how the creators had the guts to kill off Ranka, and that they’d just go with the predictable paths. And then this episode comes and kills of none other than Alto! That’s just about the best plot twist that you can think of at this point. I mean, how often do you see the main character getting killed off before the final episode of a series?

Seriously, that twist is made of nothing but win. I’ve actually never seen Alto as a well-written character. All of the best moments in this series were either about Ranka, Sheryl, Kuran, Michel, Ozma, etc, but Alto never managed to impress me. In a way, he’s the dullest character in this series, especially when compared to the amount of screen-time he got. In a way, it’s quite ironic: my dislike for Ranka comes from the way that she was used, but her actual character is pretty good. I really wonder what would have happened if she got more screen-time than that she actually got, and Alto would be more reduced to the background.

In any case, now that that annoying factor is gone, I’m actually looking forward to that final episode a lot. But Satelight: if you’re planning to revive the guy, then I’ll kill you!

RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 24

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu



Short Synopsis: Jennie tries to execute his plans, and I finally found out what the bugger’s trying to do!
Highlights: Nice fight scenes!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Okay, so this series blew its chances at being a masterpiece due to some uncoordinated build-up, but it still can end the series with a strong finale, if everything goes right. It started the build-up for the finale thankfully at least a bit in time, and right now it needs to deliver an interesting finale in its final two episodes. This requires the creators to take what they’ve been building up to, and push this into an entirely new or further direction, because I’m not convinced whether a character-based or straightforward ending is going to work for this series. The fact remains that the most fleshed out entity in this series is Minamo, and she never played a central role in the final arc.

Ooh, but I finally found out what the eventual plan of Jennie is, thanks to some very appreciated English words that appeared on the screen. It’s really a shame that this series has stopped being subbed, because the finale was just full of elaborate dialogues. In any case, Jennie has been trying to use the plant he and the secretary general have been developing in order to send nano-machines into the atmosphere, in an attempt to control the weather. And I must say that this is a perfect issue about which differences of opinions could arise. On one hand, think of the possibilities when you can fully control the weather. On the other hand, you’ll be disrupting the eco-system of the entire planet this way. It’s the basic environmentalist vs. progression debate, in a very interesting coat, if I had to say so myself. At least the messages in this series are rock-solid, but I wish I could say the same about the storytelling-technical aspects of the series, but ah well. You can’t change what’s already done, so at least I’ll try to enjoy the finale of this series for what it is.

Another interesting thing is the huge amount of parallels with Nijuu Mensou no Musume that are popping up. In its final arc, Chiko is also trying to prevent a scientist from launching a particle beam, and what’s even more coincidental: both in their latest episodes, these attempts have succeeded. Overall though, RD’s attempt at its particle beam is more interesting, because Jennie still is more of a villain than that scientist of Nijuu Mensou no Musume. At least I’ll grant it that. Jennie at least feels part of the show, rather than him being just another villain. In the end, I do admit that his lack of attention wasn’t as bad as I originally thought it was. I think that the reason that this series has disappointed is simply the fact that it went from character-based to story-based, and that progression wasn’t that smooth. This series is about its setting and characters. When the story takes over, it’s going to feel a bit awkward. That finale just arrived to abrupt. What should have been a time when all the character-development came together turned out to be a time where the characters are ignored in favour of the storyline. And that’s just a pity.

Bonen no Xamdou – 10

by psgels, posted in Bonen no Xamdou



Short Synopsis: Raigyo gives Akiyuki a few “tips” on being Xam’d, and Haru tries to close off her past.
Highlights: Haru’s new haircut looks awesome. Nakiami’s… doesn’t. ^^;
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Often in anime, a change of haircut means that the person in question is about to enter a new stage of his or her life, and emerges as a different person. This was very much emphasized on this episode in Haru’s case: she continues to be held behind by her past, and in this episode, she attempts to close her memories off for the time being, and not being influenced by them.

The rest of this episode was a bit of background on Raigyo, showing how he became a Xamdou. It was very interesting to see the different cast members at that time. The girl wasn’t there, the boy was only just born, and Nakiami looked really young. Still, I’m surprised at how long she’s already been at the Zanbani: it’s been more than five years already.

This clearly was a building up episode. My prediction is that the next episode will start the introduction of what’s supposed to be the midway climax of this series. I’m interested at what the creators can do, and especially how Haru’s going to tie in everything. The girl definitely is my favourite character in this series at this point, and I’m really looking forward to see her growth.

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 11

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: Nyanko and Natsume get into a fight.
Highlights: The lightest episode so far, but unfortunately also the most disappointing one.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
Ah, I don’t know. This episode was supposed to be hilarious, but it just felt off somehow. Basically, there is no case, here, and most of the episode just follows Nyanko as he sulks after having left Natsume, and I laughed at quite a few times, but it’s the whole timing of this episode that bugs me. There are only two episodes left, and then the creators suddenly come with an episode that’s solely meant to flesh out the characters. Why couldn’t they just have done this earlier, or chosen a different story from the manga, considering the very limited amount of time this series has to work with.

There was one little girl that Nyanko met, who ran away from home, but she merely served for him to come back to Natsume. She was cute a bit, but she really needed more airtime than what she got. I’m reminded of the finale of Kekkaishi: there’s supposed to be a huge climax coming, and suddenly the creators start to introduce all sorts of background for the bad guys. I mean, it’s needed, but it shouldn’t appear this late at the series. Such a light episode, I really think that it would have been more appropriate for episode five or six. Not eleven.

Ah well, at least I got some good laughs out of this episode, but this isn’t something I expect from my favourite series this summer-season. Those final two episodes had better be really good to make up for it.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 24

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~



Short Synopsis: There is NO WAY I’m going to spoil this episode in front of the blog aggregators. MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW. READ AT OWN RISK!
Highlights: Why did I ever say that this series was bad at characterization?!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9/10
That was one AWESOME episode. It really fitted for a finale, it packed a punch, and it wasn’t afraid to go for the worst-case scenario. After the previous episode, I really expected the creators to find some way to revive Amachi. Guess what? She actually didn’t make it! She’d goddanmed died!

Basically, what happened is the following: after Amachi saw the extra set of footage that got saved from the victim’s brains, she went to investigate on the research facility of that woman that came to claim the body. That’s the reason why she was captured and her brains taken away from her. It turns out that the woman had a personal vendetta against Daiku, and that’s why she brought back the brain, in order to lure more Daiku members who’d come rushing in to save her.

Which Aoki does, of course. She captures him, but she didn’t take into account that the rest of Daiku would also chase after Aoki, and after that, her practices of human experimentation are brought down quite quickly, so she kills herself and destroys her brains. Amachi, unfortunately, had already died. Her body stayed away from her brains for too long. The thing is that when Aoki got captured, she actually was still alive! The two of them shared a dream, if I recall correctly.

I’m really impressed by how this series turned out. At first, it may seem like a strange idea to just go with anime-original stories, instead of keeping to the manga, but in this way, the creators were able to plan EXACTLY the sufficient airtime for each character, so that each one of them got enough attention. The result is an absolutely awesome cast in the end, even though there were enough times where I lost faith in this series.

And I’m really curious: what the heck did the creators have planned for the final two episodes? The first one will be another aftermath to the Kainuma-case, but what is the second going to be? Ooh, so many possibilities!