Just a small note

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

Now that the discussions about the autumn anime season have started, I might as well note that for those who are wondering: I’m not planning to make a preview of the upcoming season.

It just feels like everyone and his dog is already doing one, so I don’t see what my attempts can add, since they were never that good anyway. The only advantage I had was that I wrote my previews always relatively early, but this time the first previews for the autumn season already popped up around the half of July. There’s no way I’m going to compete with that. If you want to see an autumn season preview, just go to Animenano and search for “fall preview”. I personally recommend waiting until Hashihime publishes his/hers (I’m still not sure about his/her gender…), as his/her thoughts are always very interesting to read.

The second reason is that I wanted to try a little experiment. For the past few years, I’ve always tried to prepare myself as best as possible, by reading synopsises, staff lists, et cetera, so that I knew what to expect. That doesn’t make much sense, though. I mean, I can understand how someone who’s only planning to watch a handful of series needs to separate the cream from the crop, but I’m going to watch the first episode of every new series anyway. Then what’s the point about getting excited about a series that might disappoint, or dismissing a potential gem because it doesn’t look interesting enough at first glance. Quite a few of my favourite series actually didn’t make too good of a first impression when I first saw them (Simoun, Shion no Ou, Kaiba, Mahou Shoujotai), and I’ve often been disappointed by a series that looked good because of its staff list and promo-art, but turned out to be complete garbage.

Hence why for this season, I wondered what it’d be like to go into a season without knowing anything about the upcoming series, save from possible sequels of course. With that mindset, I obviously can’t write a fall preview at the same time. I personally love being surprised by a series, so who knows? All I know is that I’m going to be enjoying the second seasons of Gundam 00 and Jigoku Shoujo, and for now I’ll just assume that the rest of the season will consist out of dull and uninspired shounen-series.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 20

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~



Short Synopsis: Aoki tries to catch the culprit of this arc’s crime red-handed.
Highlights: A solid conclusion.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
This arc really took its time to tell its story, and it worked out pretty well. The thing I liked about this arc wasn’t the characterizations or the intensity that some of the other arcs of Himitsu showed, but rather the complexity of its storyline. The previous episodes showed lots of question-marks, and this episode answered them very nicely, even though I had trouble as usual, trying to understand those elaborate dialogues. ^^;

So in the end, it was indeed the bald guy with the hat. The first incident on the train wasn’t because of him, but a girl he really liked was assaulted by a knife. When he tried to stop it, the girl got stabbed, and a bottle that contained the disease got slashed open, spreading the disease through the various people on the train. The following murderers were him, trying to erase the evidence. I didn’t like it when the characters started talking Chinese, though. It was already hard enough for me to grasp what that dialogue was about without some Japanized Chinese translated in Kanji…

I also liked how this episode addressed the sardine-can syndrome of the Japanese trains and subways. They are notorious for how nobody ever seems to talk there, and when such a major incident happens as someone getting threatened with a knife or something, most of them try to ignore it, instead of trying to do something to resolve it.

Then there’s that idiot Aoki. As it turns out, he never kissed and got himself infected, but he just made his fingernails look like they were infected. He did jump right in front of a train in order to save the culprit, though, in a desperate attempt to save Miyoshi from her disease. In the end, there was a romantic tension between the two, but Aoki reminded Miyoshi too much of Suzuki. That doesn’t really work when he wants to get a relation with her to make her forget about the guy.

I think I also finally get why this series feels weird at times, and I can’t seem to fully enjoy it like I did when it first started. I first thought that it was because of bad characterization, but that’s not quite right: even in the first half, this show has seen some great cases. The thing with this series is that it’s incredibly inconsistent: one episode focuses at characterization, while the next focuses on mystery, then the next one is all about horror, then there’s one that aims to disturb, then there’s a thought-provoking one, et cetera. The things that made a previous episode great aren’t the focus of the following. The best example of it is episode eight: possibly the best episode of the entire series because it was so bloody disturbing, but it also caused me to expect the same of the rest of the series.

In other words: this series is incredibly unpredictable: you’ll never know what an episode will be about. It’s both so in the good ways and the bad ways. On one hand, those bloody expectations don’t always cooperate you expect tension but instead get a fairly quiet episode that aims to be more thought-provoking, et cetera. On the other hand, it does show great writing to be so incredibly versatile with this series. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, that’ll probably cause Himitsu to never really make it to my favourites, but it’s a great series nonetheless.

Ultraviolet: Code 044 – 08

by psgels, posted in Ultraviolet: Code 044



Short Synopsis: The scale is upped as 724 reveals an army’s worth of allies.
Highlights: Mostly building up… and still no Luka?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Ooh, it really looks like this series is planning to go all out for its finale. This is the second building-up episode in a row, with just four episodes remaining. In this episode, 724 reveals that much more clones and numbers have followed him to that distant planet, and that he’s regarded as their hero. This episode also gave some more background to Daxus II, and if I say so myself, it was an episode well spent.

724 is really a person who attracts others. He not only did that with his clone comrades, but also the people who work in his mine greatly look up to him, to the point where they were actually willing to fight to the death. It was interesting how didn’t even give them the chance to bury their comrades. 044 didn’t do much in this episode (this episode was really meant to flesh out the side-characters), but that one fight scene of hers was pretty impressive; she actually wants to be stopped.

Also, I really wonder when Luka’s going to pop up. It’s surprising that there hasn’t been any sign of him for the past two episodes. He’s probably frantically looking for Ultraviolet, but as long as there’s no news about her, he obviously can’t do much. It would perhaps have been better to show a bit of footage of him, looking for 044, but on the other hand, this does add to the mystery of it all.

RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 20

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu



Short Synopsis: To synopsis this episode would be a bit too spoilerific, but let’s just say that it sheds more light on the concept of cyberbrains.
Highlights: Ooh, the character-development!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
You have to wonder: what the heck are the creators planning for the finale of this series? There’s no bad guy, no approaching apocalypse, there no cast member that’s in danger of losing his/her life, there’s no evil plot to take over the world/organization/town, there’s no goal to overcome, there’s been NOTHING that hinted at a standard conclusion whatsoever. The only thing I can think of is that Souta’s sleeping with his boss, and I can imagine how that would go wrong, but it feels nothing like any other conclusion of a story I’ve seen so far.

This episode too: it was all about Minamo’s and Haru’s character-development, while the next episode seems to go back Souta (whose bracelet was that!?). But then again, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I really like Real Drive’s episodic nature, and this episode really showed that this series is evolving, now that Haru’s got the power in his legs back. He spends the entire episodes, trying to learn to walk again (which obviously takes A LOT of effort after fifty years without walking). He sure does it in an unorthodox way: no crutches, he doesn’t try to hold any solid object around him, nothing. In medical terms, that’s obviously not advisable, but I can imagine how after fifty years, he really wanted to try and walk without any help from other people or things.

Minamo meanwhile also surprised me when she decided to get a cyber-brain in this episode. And oh my god, the transition to a cyber-brain is much more complicated than I expected. I originally thought that they were just going to plant some chips into your brain and stuff, but it looks like your entire brain is getting replaced by a device. I can imagine that Kushima’s adjustments to his body are even bigger, to prevent him from aging and all. Through the entire series, this “cyberbrain” had seemed like some sort of magic, but when this episode showed what’s inside a person’s head, it suddenly got a whole new dimension.

I also loved the random chatter Minamo made with one of the other people who wanted to get a cyber-brain, although it also was a bit disturbing to learn that Minamo has actually fallen for Haru. Now that he’s about to learn to walk again, and might not need Minamo anymore, Minamo seriously started thinking about him, and realized that she felt for him. I really hope that she meant “as a friend”, rather than the other thing. ^^;

Also, I do wonder what’s up with that guy that Minamo talked to. He lied to her about getting a cyberbrain (he already had one), he used a fake name and he looks like Haru when he was younger. Could this be the first hint as to what the creators are planning for that ending?

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 33

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: It’s back to travel-arcs as Porfy runs into a bunch of streetpunks.
Highlights: A travel-arc it may be, but there’s plenty of development for Porfy.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, so the inevitable happened: this series returned to the travel-arcs. Still, this episode was definitely among the better travel-stories of Porfy’s journey. It’s interesting: the smaller the arcs are, the more impact they make. This episode was excellent, and let’s hope that the next arcs will be so as well.

Porfy walks around a bit, and meets a guy who has trouble with his car. The guy acts very annoyed, but when Porfy fixes it he suddenly becomes very nice. It seems that he mistook Porfy for a bunch of street punks. He offers Porfy to come by for dinner, but Porfy needs to continue on and ask for Mina. A guy, a few years older than Porfy then offers Porfy a bit of bread, and he offers to help Porfy search for his sister. The two spend some time together, and they get some ice cream together (Porfy obviously notes that his mother’s ice cream was better).

As it turns out, Guido (the guy)’s parents are gone. He lives together with other guys who like him lost his parents. He offers Porfy to spend the night there. The guys all seem scary at first, but they greet Porfy nicely, apart from one of them, who keeps glaring at him. They turn out to be travelling, just like Porfy.

That night, they eat bread and soup (which of course doesn’t taste that well). Later, when everyone’s asleep, Porfy thinks how nice it must be to be together with everyone. Guido offers Porfy to join them, but Porfy declines. He needs to search for his sister. He also reveals that when he’s found Mina, he plans to return to Greece and restart the gasoline stand (foreshadowing?).

Georgio (the angry guy) then also, when nobody watches, threatens Porfy to leave as soon as possible the next day, saying that this isn’t the place for him to be. Porfy shrugs it off, but he does intend to leave the next morning. Guido is up early enough to accompany Porfy for a bit. He then tells Porfy a story about how his parents used to love cars before they died, but that car was taken away from them. They finally managed to track down the people who stole away that car. Porfy then says that he’ll help them retrieve that car.

Guido then gives him his purple jacket to wear, while Georgio looks at him very angrily. Later, Porfy and Guido arrive at a rich-looking house and Porfy manages to break into it, and they drive away. They split up later, where Guido says that he’ll hide the car, and Porfy tells him to take care. When he returns at the hideout, everyone’s suddenly gone. After a while, a couple of angry people (among the man from before) come looking for he car. They confuse Porfy for the leader of the pack due to the purple jumper that he’s wearing.

They chase him, until Porfy reaches a dead end, but Georgio manages to save him by distracting the men with a bunch of firecrackers, and they manage to escape. Porfy asks whether Guido has betrayed him, and why he did it, but Georgio just tells him to go away as soon as possible. He then gets beaten up by Guido for being so soft on Porfy. He was the idiot that let himself get betrayed. Guido meanwhile has already forgotten Porfy’s name and the episode ends.

Trust and betrayal is really a HUGE theme of the travel-arcs in this series. They lacked in the Sicily-arc and the Maximilian-arc, which probably is another reason why they felt dull. In this episode, everything comes together, though. Porfy gives his entire trust to the street punks, and never once critically thinks of why they’re so nice to him. Why would they give him bread if they have to feed so many mouths? And I guess that that was the purpose of the Sicily-arc and the Maximilian-arc: they meant to show the niceness of people: people are willing to take care of others, but there are just as many people who take advantage of this.

Porfy’s really going to emerge as a stronger person after this. This episode and episode 31 were a real example of his naivety ending him up in trouble. It’s also awesome to see that the background artists could flex their creative muscles again for this episode. Some of the shots looked absolutely gorgeous, and amongst the best that this series has shown.

Oh, and on a side-note, I got rather disturbed when I checked on my google-hits a few days ago. For the past seven and a half months, the term “Porfy Sucks” has generated 1487 friggin’ hits! Fouteen hundred! I mean, I can understand why someone would want to search for the term once or twice, but what are fourteen hundred people doing searching for a show that sucks? That’s likely even more than the people who are watching it, for christ’s sake! I’d love to hear from one of these people who entered the search term what made them search for it, because I’m baffled right now. I mean, I can understand that not many people are interested in this series, but this is getting ridiculous.

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 07

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: Natsume meets a young fox-spirit.
Highlights: That fox-spirit was SO adorable.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Seriously, this series just keeps getting better and better. I couldn’t call Kurenai among the best that Brains Base has produced, but Natsume Yuujin-chou is definitely among their best work, along with Baccano. Incidentally, they were both directed by the same guy, the one who also directed Jigoku Shoujo. The result is an excellent characterization that really makes this series come alive.

The little fox-spirit was so incredibly adorable in this episode. It yet again enforced how one meeting for a youkai means much more than what it does for a human, and the fox-spirit, even though she’s so young, is brave enough to come and look for Natsume (who lives in a different town) to make sure that he isn’t lonely. That’s so sweet.

It’s a huge shame that there only seem to be 12 or 13 episodes, considering that this series is occupying Vampire Knight’s timeslot (which will be taking over the timeslot again when October starts). It’s too damn short for such an awesome series. It’s a shame that Brains Base series are only one season long, because this series has enough material for 13 more episodes.

Mission-E – 07

by psgels, posted in Mission-E



Short Synopsis: Chinami and Maori “try” to retrieve hacked information from the foundation.
Highlights: Outsourcing ftw.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
That was an interesting fight-scene, and it looked actually really nice. A changing animation-style can either work really well or completely flop, there’s no in-between, but it looked very nice here. Mission-E’s artwork is perfect for a bit of experimenting, and I hope to see more of it.

In any case, there was a lot of good stuff in this episode. First of all, it turns out that the woman from Osaka and Mils Brimberg were two very different persons. Mils seemed to have suffered serious brain-damage from that accident at Amazawa village, and still remains at the hospital. Well, I guess that makes sense as to why Adol wants revenge for Chinami, although I wonder where the woman from Osaka fits in all of this.

Maori running away and running into Adol was perhaps a bit forced, but I do like how Maori can use her head, and be critical of the situation. I do wonder whether the creators are going to pull a Wellber and make her go back to Chinami, or that she’s going to be eloping with Adol. It’s probably going to be the first option, but I’m secretly hoping that the creators will pick that second option.

Nijuu Mensou no Musume – 17

by psgels, posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume



Short Synopsis: The old guy reveals his connections with Nijuu Mensou
Highlights: Deja vu?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
This episode started out excellent: Chiko is being accompanied by Nijuu Mensou’s former research professor, and Ken gets attacked by one of his minions when he tries to follow her. One thing I love about this series is how brutal the fight scenes are. There are supernatural elements, but it knows full well that superpowers alone don’t make a good fight. The animation is subtle, but it knows where to be detailed. I’d much rather watch a fight scene of Nijuu Mensou than one of Soul Eater, for example. These are fights between people that can get wounded very easily, and don’t have some sort of plot-device that automatically heals their wounds/makes them able to block a sword with their bare hands.

But as the episode went on and the focus got back to Chiko, I got a strange feeling… didn’t this already happen before? Someone from Nijuu Mensou’s past? Check. Grudge against Nijuu Mensou’s betrayal? Check. Hostage? Check. Nijuu Mensou appears from out of nowhere? Check. Everything just sounds awfully familiar to the doll-arc, apart from how the scientist doesn’t have any powers and so has to use two cyborgs. What exactly is this arc planning to add?

The other big difference here is that there was a huge emphasis on Chiko, thinking for herself. The doll clearly wanted revenge against both Chiko and Nijuu Mensou, but the professor (what was his name again?) wanted Chiko to side with him for his goals. Still, what could the creators be planning for that next episode. This series’ strength was how its plot often took 180-degree twists, but this turn it looks more like 360 degrees

Telepathy Shoujo Ran – 08

by psgels, posted in Telepathy Shoujo Ran



Short Synopsis: Having never heard of privacy, Ran involves herself in a romance between two of her classmates.
Highlights: Surprisingly down to earth for this series’ standards.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Aww, what a sweet episode. The story was small enough for just one episode, but it so made up for the fact that this series took a break last week. It tells the story about two of Ran’s classmates (both rather outcasts) who get separated from each other. It looked a bit shallow at the start, but for some strange reason it turned out really enjoyable. On one hand, this show is so incredibly childish, but on the other hand it does have an awesome cast of characters. ^^;

The moment that stood out of course was when Ran and Midori tried to talk to the guy using his stuffed alien animal. What would you do if an alien suddenly started yelling about your loved ones in Kansai-ben (or any other dialect)? It was so awesome to see Midori lose patience and forget about her accent. ^^;

It’s also interesting how at first sight, this was a rather standard episode about bullying, but at the end of the episode, this turned out to be a bit deeper. Bullying is after all an often used plot-device in order to create sad characters, so I’m glad that the creators put more thought into it than just that: the girl was insecure and never had the courage to make friends and so an easy target, while the guy never got bullied in the first place: he was just frustrated when he heard that the girl was moving away.

Tsukuyomi Moon Phase Review – 65/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Ugh… what a mess. Before watching, I already had a hunch that watching Tsukuyomi Moon Phase wouldn’t be easy, but I decided to have faith in Akiyuki Shinbo, its director. I’ve loved most of his other works so far: Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, Pani Poni Dash and Soul Taker were excellent, so there would be a good chance for Tsukuyomi Moon Phase to be good as well, right?

Well, I’d like to thank this series for destroying my faith in Shinbo. While it’s not utter crap, Tsukuyomi Moon Phase is dull, annoying and just not worth it.

Let me start with the good part: character-development. Surprisingly, the part where Shinbo screwed up at Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei is one of the better points in this series. The cast of Tsukuyomi Moon Phase isn’t static, and it changes notably as the show goes on. Unfortunately, all the character-development in the world isn’t going to help if you can’t care about these characters, and that’s the big problem with this series.

Bluntly said, just about half of the cast of this series is incredibly annoying. Hazuki is a whiny brat, Koukei is a lacklustre male lead, Kaoru has the depth of a paper bag, Art is a shallow, dull and predictable main villain, and so on. The interesting characters do try to brighten up the mood a bit, but they’re almost always overshadowed by the dull ones. The central theme in this series, the chemistry between Kouhei and Hazuki (the two main characters) also feels fake. It felt to me like they were arguing for the sake of arguing, rather than that their personalities were clashing.

If that wasn’t enough, I also have my issues with the storytelling. The entire story is full of plot holes – both large and small. According to this series, the best way to clean out an oil-stain in your clothes is to enter a hot spring for a while. The ending also leaves too many things unanswered. Apparently the manga went on after that point, but Shinbo could at least have tried to wrap them up a bit.

Then there are the fights, probably the most blatant part of this series. On paper, it looked good: the combat system combines vampires with Shinto-styled spells and magical seals. The different characters receive a number of interesting powers that are perfect for forming intricate strategies against the enemies. The problem, however, is that for nearly every major fight, these strategies fail and eventually either Hazuki or Kouhei ends up saving the day with some hastily explained convenient godmode-power that basically renders all of these carefully thought-out plans useless. I can understand how a series would want to make its main characters a bit stronger than usual, but the powers that our main couple receives borders the ridiculous and they feel just downright lazy.

But well, at least since this is a Shinbo-series, the art and animation-style at least look great, right? Well, even with that I’ve got problems. The animation style indeed is typical Shinbo, with nice poses and camera-angles, but at the same time it pales in comparison to the visuals of both his previous and his later works: Petit Cosette, Soul Taker, Pani Poni Dash and Zetsubou-Sensei all looked ten times better than what was shown here. The animation for Moon Phase is inconsistent and all over the place: sometimes it’s normal, at other times it’s Shinbo’s typical style and yet at other times it looks like a desperate attempt to save budget. It can’t seem to choose for one proper style.

At least I can be positive about the music: while nothing special, there are a number of very sweet tracks that especially pop up during the climaxes. Overall, though, I just can’t recommend Moon Phase. It has its decent moments, but it never really stands out at anything. It went too far at trying to be “moe” that it rather lost sight of what was really important for this series, so much that I even couldn’t understand what it was trying to achieve in the first place.

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