Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 38

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: Erm… without going into spoilers: Porfy meets a market saleswoman in a town with horse-races.
Highlights: Hard to say without going into spoilers, but let’s just say that stuff that’s typical of the World Masterpiece Theatre happens.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,75/10
Awesome episode! This really showed that the creators are nowhere near finished with the development of the different characters, and even now they still continue to evolve. And this episode both progressed the development A LOT, while also symbolizing some of the changes that occurred within Porfy and Mina.

The episode starts with Mina and Isabella again, as Carlos prepares to go into the city. He asks Mina whether she’ll come with him, but she declines, which obviously isn’t the best way to get on his side. Porfy meanwhile walks IN THE SAME CITY, looking around at a big market. He accidentally steps on the clothes that one saleswoman is trying to sell, so he tries to pay this off by fixing her car.

Carlos meanwhile, lost big. So what does the bugger do? He finds Aneke’s watch and SELLS THE THING. Porfy meanwhile managed to get the saleswoman’s engine working again, so she treats him to a few delicious sandwiches. She wonders whether Porfy is staying for long in the city, and wonders whether Porfy wants to work a bit for her, so that he can gain some money, so Porfy agrees, as it seems that his original money is beginning to run out.

Mina meanwhile discovered that her watch is missing, and is searching for it like crazy. Isabella and her father try to stop her, but Carlos shrugs it off. In the end, they can barely convince her to search for it in the next morning. She then spends th rest of her time, curled up in bed, without talking to anyone while Carlos continues being an ass to her.

The next morning, the saleswoman explains Porfy how to draw customers, and she leaves to enjoy the local horse races. While Porfy is enthusiastically trying to sell stuff, he suddenly notices a certain watch at the stand of one of the other salesmen. He continues to bug the salesman to tell him who sold him it, which very quickly gets on the salesman’s nerves, especially when Porfy starts distracting him from another customer. When Porfy starts to forcefully take his watch back, the guy ends up shredding Mina’s picture: the only thing that Porfy had that people could recognize her by.

Carlos, meanwhile, lost all of his money at the horse races. When he returns, Isabella waits for him, and questions him about the watch. He then says that he sold it, and says some pretty bad things about Mina, while Mina’s listening. Mina starts desperately attacking Carlos, after which Isabella calms her down and smacks Carlos instead. Porfy meanwhile lost all his energy and refuses to sell anymore. Fortunately he made enough money from when he still was enthusiastic, so the saleswoman is grateful to him. Because she did win big at the local horse races, she pays him generously, with enough money for Porfy to buy back the watch. Unfortunately… it’s already sold.

Next episode, it’s time to say goodbye to Italy, as the series moves into France. I’m interested whether the soundtrack will change, because even in Italy, the background tunes still yelled “Greece”. 😛

But really, this was an excellent episode, and especially the reason why I fell in love with this series. It had two storytelling-techniques that are typical to the World Masterpiece Theatre, and which are part of the reason why I like this entire franchise so much. The first is the way that the creators keep teasing the viewer, by letting the characters miss meeting each other for just an instant, which was used a lot in Les Miserables. It worked even better there, because back then, you REALLY had no idea when the characters were supposed to meet, due to the huge storyline. Because Porfy’s story is a lot smaller, there are indeed going to be predictability issues, but because its main cast is so much smaller, it can spend much more time to flesh them out and develop them.

And the second is the way they manage to amplify setbacks so much: everything goes right most of the time, but when things go wrong, they really GO WRONG, which makes for a very big impact. Perrine was such a series that loved using this technique as well. With Porfy it’s the same: the creators love to tease the viewer. At the end of this episode as well: we don’t get to see how badly Mina was hurt by Carlos’ stupid actions, or how Carlos reacted to Isabella’s slap-fest. We’re going to have to wait till the next episode, or god knows when they’ll show up again. In fact, it seems that Porfy has managed to overtake them at this point, and will be entering France before the others do.

One thing I also love about this series is how the background scenery subtly changes, depending on the location. I’m especially looking forward to when Porfy manages to hit the alps and enters France, considering how beautiful the sceneries already were.

Slayers Revolution Review – 70/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



I’m what you’d call a “Slayers-noob”. Before the summer season started, I hadn’t seen anything of the franchise so far, so this series seemed like a good opportunity to check out what the hype was all about. As it turns out, Slayers Revolution definitely wasn’t the best place to start, and I’m still wondering where I found the patience to continue watching this series.

My big problem with Slayers Revolution is that there’s absolutely nothing that stands out: the characters are decent, but none of them is memorable or well developed, even the ones who are supposed to be new. The storyline also keeps the series going, but never did it really catch my interest. In terms of episodic stories, the best this series could come up with is rolling a bunch of giant balls up a hill. The comedy made me chuckle occasionally, but nothing more. The only battle that was even remotely interesting was the one at the final episode. Other than that, they’re just a bunch of people throwing spells at each other until one party dies.

Sure, Slayers may have been revolutionary when it first aired, but I’m judging this series, not the original one, and I’m doing it on today’s standards. In that case, there just isn’t anything remarkable about this series. The thing I like about fantasy is the interesting ideas that can be put in it, which only can be limited by the creator’s imagination. Not even once did this series try to be original. And okay, I can understand that the series couldn’t be original with its main characters, but even the storyline for this series, which could have been anything the creators would have liked, just feels uninspired and done before.

So overall, if you’re a slayers fan, you can just ignore this review and enjoy the series for what it is, because it seems to be much of the same and many of the characters that were fun to watch and fleshed out in the first seasons will return for more fun. However, if you aren’t a Slayers fan like me, then Slayers Revolution isn’t going to make you one. It’s a moderately entertaining fantasy-series in a genre that has much better to offer, and I can only hope that the next season is going to be a bit more exciting.

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

Bakuretsu Hunters Review – 72,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



While the eighties were the golden decade for the mecha-shows, the nineties were so for the fantasy-genre. While it’s technically no Bee-Train series, you can pretty much label Bakuretsu Hunters as one, because it’s another one of Koichi Masahino’s works, before he founded his now infamous animation studio. In Bakuretsu Hunters, you can see the beginnings of what made him an excellent director, but ironically, he also made a lot of mistakes at areas he’d excel at only years later.

Basically, Bakuretsu Hunters follows the pattern of random episodic stories with a major storyline that pops up once in a while. In these stories, our lead characters need to take out evil sorcerers who abuse their powers upon the less fortunate. A solid premise, if it weren’t for the fact that the main character is a horrible womanizer, and he really takes that to the extreme. For every single episode, you can find him running after cute girls like an idiot, and while it’s fun for the first and second time, it does get old after twenty times.

In fact, a lot more members of the cast have their own problems. Hardly anyone develops beyond their original character. The two lead females and their crush on the lead character can and will get on your nerves. It was a nice idea, to try and create a sympathetic pervert, but after Golden Boy, I’ve seen enough of these guys. The biggest offender, however, is a character called Big Momma (no, really; that’s her name), who drove me to the point of actually hating her. Her character isn’t fleshed out at all, she acts incredibly stupid in the series’ second half and never seems to learn from her mistakes. Her wishy-washy personality gets absolutely nowhere, her character makes no sense and she lacks way too much in background (I kept wondering what she was doing while she wasn’t ordering the Bakuretsu Hunters around…).

The only really satisfying character is the main villain. He’s nothing too deep, but he has a presence. You know he’s the antagonist of this series from the first moment you see him, and his character is fascinating enough to last through the entire series. Apart from that, this series really lives on its individual stories, which often toy around with irony and are admittedly entertaining. I also liked how this series plays around with names, often giving very strange Engrish names to its characters, with the result being a guy called Mr. Wacky, among others.

The production-values are also pretty nice. The character-designs may be a bit too much, but the animation certainly isn’t bad, and knowing Koichi Masahiro, the soundtrack is bound to be excellent.

But here’s my real beef with this series: less than five years after creating Bakuretsu Hunters, Koichi Masahino would create a series that would surpass it in every single way: Wild Arms, which had more interesting characters, setting, story, character-designs, individual episodic stories, was even more fun to watch and had a womanizing main character who actually worked. I just don’t see any reason why you would want to watch Bakuretsu Hunters if you can just watch Wild Arms instead. Bakuretsu Hunters just has way too buggy characters and too many plot-holes to really make an impact, even though its episodic stories are entertaining enough. Not to mention that Deus ex Machina ending…

Storytelling: 8/10
Characters: 6/10
Production-Values: 8/10
Setting: 7/10

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 25

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~



Short Synopsis: Someone is trying to get rid of Daiku, and uses some very extreme measures to get his way.
Highlights: Awesome set-up for a finale!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9/10
Ah, okay. This and the next episode may have different titles, but they turn out to be the two halves of one big arc that is going to be the finale of this series. But really, it’s promising to be an awesome finale, and with this, we can really see the power of the decision for this series to go into a different path than the manga: because of that, the creators could plan exactly what they want to place when and where, and thus they have managed to save the perfect story to close off this series. I’m really excited, seeing how this series is about to avoid the number one mistake made with manga- and novel-adaptations: the fact that the length of the manga and anime don’t match. Seriously, more series should do this, instead of creating an artificial ending that was pasted together in the last minute.

In any case, what happened in this episode: Maki turned out to have a heart-attack, but he managed to restore quite quickly, although a next attack would be fatal to him. In the meantime, someone has put some sort of virus in the main computer of Daiku, causing Kainuma’s face to pop up like it did in the previous episode, which points to the fact that a certain someone who knows about Maki and Kainuma is trying to get rid of Daiku. The main chief is also getting followed by someone.

Maki also discovered that a certain piece of Suzuki’s memory has been erased by someone. It is revealed that Michiru looked up to Onogida and that’s why she ended up joining Daiku. Onogida then DIES afterwards, and Maki is also nearly killed by a mystery attacker! Talk about plot twists!

Oh, to think that the creators had no intention to stop the massacre. It does make sense, though: what better time to attack Daiku when the members are already confused by the death of one of their comrades? But what bugs me the most is that missing piece of memory of Suzuki: that means that he saw something inside of Kainuma’s brains that was even MORE SCREWED UP than kissing his dead victims while scraping off their skin while proclaiming his love for Maki. Bloody hell!?

I’m not sure what exactly it is, but I’m very cynical about this season’s endings. I hardly look forward to any of them, and most of them just seem destined for a straightforward and predictable ending, but for Himitsu I’m willing to make an exception. The finale of this series has so far been downright excellent, and there are no signs at all that this series won’t finish with a huge climax. This is exactly what I look for in a good climax!

RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 25

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu



Short Synopsis: A calm-before-the-storm episode, which shows Haru right before he attempts to retrieve Kushima’s consciousness.
Highlights: Finally some focus on Minamo again!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
This was an excellent calm-before-the-storm episode. It did exactly what was needed to prelude the finale for this series, and it also found enough time to finis Minamo’s development. It’s still a pity that she got degraded to side-character when the finale of this series started, so I’m really glad that the creators managed to put a satisfying closure to her story arc. With this episode, her growth feels complete.

The question of course remains: will the creators be able to do the same thing with the subplots between Souta and Holon, Haru and Kushima, Souta and the Secretary General and Kushima and Jennie. That final episode needs to be really fastly paced in order to get everything in there, and this is where the director really has to show what he can do to prevent the ending from getting rushed. I think that his best choice would be a simple straightforward ending, much as with Seirei no Moribito, instead of that chaotic ending of Ghost Hound. He should just focus on providing a satisfying conclusion for all of the above-mentioned subplots.

The plant, breaking down also was really nicely animated, by the way. It shows the promise for a nicely animated finale.

Overall, I’m still glad that I decided to follow this series, and while it isn’t THE best series of the past half year, I’d easily include this series in my top-10 favourite series of the past spring and summer-season, which have overall been rather disappointing for Production IG. They once were my favourite of the big animation producers, but that drastically changed in 2008. I think it was just one big mistake to get affiliated with that small company of Trans Arts, because these guys have just wanted to do way too much in way too little time, and they just don’t fit Production IG’s specific style. Especially with that theatrical announcement for Chocolate Underground, I’m wondering who on the company still finds it a good idea to keep affiliating with Trans Arts. Even Wellber, which I loved when it aired, is starting to get less and less memorable, the more I think back about it.

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 12

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: Natsume gets a very nasty curse put on his arm.
Highlights: ZOMG Second Season!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Ah, thank goodness this series is getting its second season. The show is nice and all, but there’s so much potential left that still needs to be touched. This concept is just way too short for a mere 13 episodes, so it’s awesome to see that this series is getting 13 more to work with. The next winter-season is going to be a pretty interesting one, with both Birdy the Mighty and Natsume Yuujin-chou getting their continuations. Now all that’s left is that second season-announcement for Amatsuki, the series that needs a continuation even more badly than this one.

Just scrap my comments from the previous episode. When talking about 26 episode, that was indeed the perfect tme to introduce a lighter episode to flesh out one of the characters. This episode too eliminated any chance that this series would only last for one season as it introduces what seems to be two recurring characters. It’s the woman and big goat ayakashi from the OP, and they’ve got a lot of potential to shine in that second season.

Wat was especially funny about this episode was that the curse that struck Natsume also had a very interesting effect on Nyanko-sensei: he kept switching between an incredibly tiny and incredibly big version of himself, both with hilarious results.

I’m also glad to see that the book of friends played another role in this episode. My only problem with this series is how it has been ignored so much, even though it’s the central item in this series. This episode showed that you can do more with it than just collect a bunch of names, and Natsume uses it in this episode to summon the goat ayakashi.

Mission-E Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Mission-E



A major theme of the past season is fooling the viewer: going into an entirely different direction than what would be normally expected. Mission-E definitely has these themes: its predecessor (Code-E) was a cute little love-triangle set in a high school, so naturally you’d expect something similar for its sequel. As it turns out: I can’t remember a direct sequel that was more different from its predecessor than what Mission-E showed us.

Mission-E takes place five years after the end of Code-E: every character has grown up, and changed and matured significantly. Annoying love-triangle? Gone. High-school-antics? Gone. Lots of quiet moments? Gone. Instead, Mission-E focuses much more on action, and much less on slice-of-life. The pacing is much, much faster, and the overall storyline has a much larger focus, now that the characters are openly fighting the bad guys.

And therein lays the problem, though. Because five years have passed, the characters have developed tremendously. And because Code-E has already fleshed them out, they become really fun to watch. If it weren’t for those bloody bad guys that keep GETTING IN THEIR WAY. These guys lack so much in terms of development, they are evil because this series simply needs a villain, but they’re uninspired, stereotypical and generally useless.

The characters are at their best when they’re just interacting with each other, but too often they’re just busy fighting against this useless organization of bad guys. As a result, a lot of potential that was in them is never really realized, because the series is too damn busy in a desperate attempt to flesh out its story a bit. In addition, the new main character of Mission-E is someone who only appeared once or twice in Code-E, thus she doesn’t really live up to the others in terms of development.

Thankfully, the production-values are still solid, and the creators know how to make fun action-scenes. The graphics are typical Studio-Deen, with nice poses and simple but very stylish character-designs and nice poses. Everything gets accompanied by a spunky and energetic soundtrack, and the ED is probably the best ED of the past summer-season.

Overall, if you liked Code-E, like myself, then Mission-E is going to disappoint, because it takes the focus away a bit from the character that were so much fun to watch in the first season. However, if you hated Code-E, then you’ll have much less reasons to hate Mission-E, because it’s a lot more accessible than its predecessor with an increased pacing, no silly teenaged love or angst, and enough fun action-scenes to last through 12 episodes. This really is a franchise with a lot of potential, but due to its crappy villains, not all that potential got realized.

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

Mission-E – 12

by psgels, posted in Mission-E



Short Synopsis: Mission-E ends as Oz rushes in to prevent the foundation to carry out its plans.
Highlights: Predictable, plot-holes, but overall better than expected.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10
And so it has ended. I wasn’t expecting too much of this episode, because there isn’t much you can do with the underdeveloped villains of this series. There was a plot-hole here and there (who would actually buy that random television-broadcast of that foundation-guy? Why was nobody arrested?) and in the end, this was just a typical “Here she comes, to save the daaaaaaaaaay”-ending.

Still, there were quite a few things I did like. Especially the ones who were just watching and didn’t do anything: Kirik, Keiko and Akane, who just watched television and never had anything to do with the action. Especially Keiko, sulking because her Christmas date ran off was very enjoyable. I also really liked that the creators chose to not revive Mils, and instead keep her in the state she is. Yuma’s boyfriend also was a nice little twist, which I appreciated a lot. And finally, the few small references to Code-E also fitted nicely, and gave this series at least a decent closure.

Overall, the past season wasn’t the best for Studio Deen. Ever since Amatsuki ended, they’ve been in the background. Thankfully, they seem to be getting back on track for the fall-season with the start of the third season of Jigoku Shoujo. Mission-E overall was fun, but I still find it strange that it was the result of when the studio’s best directors came together to create a series. I dunno, but you’d expect something a bit more epic and well-written…

Blade of the Immortal – 06

by psgels, posted in Blade of the Immortal



Short Synopsis: This episode fleshes out some of the members of the Ittou-Ryuu
Highlights: The ending.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
So, the Ittou-Ryuu has its own enemies too, and this episode shows them as they get rid of those who are in their way. The first seems to be some sort of ronin, the second one looks to be a merchant. I didn’t quite catch what exactly it was that made them anger the Ittou-Ryuu, but they served as nice material to flesh out Hyakurin and Giichi, even though interestingly enough, the two of them don’t seem to be this series’ main characters. In fact, we haven’t even met two of the more important characters of this series yet.

This episode also properly introduces the monk, or Shizuma Eikuu, as he tries to get rid of Manji in the second half of this episode. The guy’s an immortal too, and he’s been living for 200 years, and he actually tries to get rid of Manji by hitting him with a poisoned dagger. What striked me the most was at the end, when Manji is actually writhing in pain, because his worms don’t work, and especially Rin’s voice-acting was excellent. Her voice-acting was powerful, without being melodramatic. Her voice-actor did Kakunojou from Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto before, which was another roe that sounded great and that was set in the Japanese history.

Nijuu Mensou no Musume – 21

by psgels, posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume



Short Synopsis: This episode features the climax of Nijuu Mensou no Musume.
Highlights: Blegh. Just blegh.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6.5/10
Wait? That’s it? We’ve had all this build-up, and the creators just end with such an ending? Talk about disappointing. There was this whole world open for this series, and yet it goes with the most predictable route. There were so many things that this series could have done, and yet it ends with such a dull finale. Such a bloody shame.

You know, I think it would have actually been better for this series to go with the “detective girls”-route. It would have fitted this series perfectly; it would have been unpredictable and allowed for many chances for the cast to develop further. Now that I really think about it, I believe I actually looked forward to that point when this series had just started.

The big problem with this series is that after the doll arc, the creators somehow found it a good idea to just get rid of the fast and unpredictable pacing of this show, and end the series with a solid continuous story. Unfortunately, the entire scientist-arc has just been one big rip-off of the doll-arc. There’s hardly anything original. And what’s worse: there was hardly any character-development at all. We’ve already established that Chiko can think for herself. All this arc did was confirm it.

Agh, what a bloody shame. My sole salvation is that there’s one episode left before this thing ends. Let’s hope that the creators manage to find something interesting to fill it with. Bones, you really disappoint me with this. I really hope that their next work is going to be more like Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi, and less like… this. This is why it’s so important to have a solid conclusion. The series may have had an awesome middle-part, but in the end I am going to be left with a sour aftertaste. I noticed the same with Wellber no Monogatari: solid series + baaaad ending = memorable in a bad way.