Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 28

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: Jack, André and their families help Porfy in his search for Mina.
Highlights: The themes of saying goodbye pop up again.
Overall Enjoyment Value:7,5/10
Really, it seems like for every season, half of the good shows seem to concentrate themselves on the same day. This time it’s… Tuesday. Especially since Mission-E, Natsume Yuujin-Chou and Porfy’s raws will always show up too late for Monday, and in the evening there’s Ultraviolet, RD and Himitsu for me to blog… and here I wondered why the rest of the week was so quiet. ^^;

In any case, my usual summary for this show may get shorter, because there are so many other series to blog today. This episode starts as Jack, Michael and Porfy search the different coastal cities for any trace of Mina. A big person in Palermo shows up, who turns out to be acquainted with Jack’s father, and who’ll promise to search for Mina as well. He doesn’t seem to like André and his hate for Americans.

The next day, it’s time to go to the church again, though the focus falls at Jacks father and André’s father. I couldn’t fully understand it, but they took a note-book and crossed a few names out. At the end of the church session, the pastor took a moment to ask those who were present whether they’ve seen anything about Mina, but nobody turned up. When Porfy, Michael and Jack return back home, their father suddenly appears in an apron (it seems that he felt like cooking a bit) and Bobby (Jack and Michael’s older brother) has gone to America. André meanwhile makes his people search Sicily for Mina. It’s his father who finds the clue they need.

When Michael learns about it, he quickly wakes Porfy and André tells him the things he knows: apparently, she was in the company of a woman and two gamblers, and she went from Palermo to Rome. Porfy then immediately prepares to got o Rome, but Jack has a little surprise left, as it seems that jack’s father has his own private plane, which makes Porfy able to catch up a lot of lost time if Mina went to Rome, just by boat. Jack checks what the plane’s code-name is (“Heart Thief” :P) as the plane takes off, Porfy says goodbye to Sicily and the episode ends.

I’m not quite sure what was up with Jack’s father, but I do have a hunch. This episode showed how Bobby left to America, and in the near future, Jack and Michael too will depart to the United States, leaving their father behind. This seems to suggest that their father has problems of his own, and the list of names probably is the list of his subordinates, who were probably all sent away, so that he’d be the only one to take the blame of whatever trouble he’s in.

Overall, the big theme of this arc was the concepts of family. Now that this arc has finished, it does make sense, and I now understand how this arc and the previous arc are linked to each other: they both showed Porfy a different concept of a “family”, something that he lost entirely. The current arc showed how important the bonds are to the big families that live in Sicily, and how one would go through fire for the sake of his own family, while the previous arc was about having the warmth of a place to return to.

My interest in Porfy has been rather low for the past months, because I feared that the rest of the series would just be a string of random arcs, but thankfully they all turn out to have their own meaning to develop Porfy. And of course, this series is at its best after countless episodes of building-up, so I’m wondering where the Rome-arc will take this series.

Mission-E – 02

by psgels, posted in Mission-E



Short Synopsis: Chinami and Maori investigate some rumours of Type-E being located in a random school in Hokkaido
Highlights: Interesting how Maori took over the role of “shy one”.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
I didn’t blog the first season because at the time of airing, there were too many other good shows. But this time, since I can blog so many different shows this season, I’m not going to pass up this chance. The thing I liked about Code-E was the sharp contrast between the light moments and the climaxes, so I’m really wondering what this series can do now that it moved out of high-school and moved on to some sort of serious plot.

This episode was less impressive than the first one, but that’s to be expected. We do get plenty of new information, though. One of Chinami’s former classmates in the first season has now become a teacher at Maori’s school, and we now know that Sonomi is responsible for finding reports for people with type-E. Ever since the previous episode, I kept wondering how Chinami and Maori would find these people with type-E, and I hope that the future episodes shed some light into how Sonomi actually does her job, but it seems that Koutaro also plays a role in this.

One point of criticism is that the characters may have changed, but their voices have hardly matured. The voice-actors should have put a bit more effort in making their characters sound a bit older, because they still sound like the high-school girls of the first season, though this shouldn’t be a problem to get used to in a few episodes. This series probably isn’t going to make it to Studio Deen’s list of masterpieces, but it’s fun to watch nonetheless.

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 02

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: This episode shows how Ayakashi also can friendly ask their names back from Natsume’s Book of Friends.
Highlights: Storytelling at its finest.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
As for the shows I’m not going to blog:
– Hidamari Sketch is nice, but I’m getting a bit bored of Shinbou’s style ever since Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei.
– Strike Witches has an interesting view at modern Japanese folklore with its kemonomimi-ish mecha musume, but I wonder whether it can live up to its sister-series, Sky Girls.
– Ryouko’s case files has “I have no life so I’ll just tell my evil plans to any random Joe who happens to be passing by”-villains. It lacks subtlety, that snake came from nowhere, and it’s the big disappointment this season for me.

Natsume Yuujin-chou, however, is well on its way to becoming one of my favourite series this season, along with Blade of the Immortal. I really liked this episode. Like expected, the creators have a great way of characterization, and the entire episode is a bit unconventional, but it works perfectly. This episode’s message was also a pretty interesting one.

This series follows in the same veins as Mokke, where Youkai and gods have entire personalities, and only a select amount of people can see it. It’s a bit more mature, but that’s to be expected with the lack of ten-year old children. This episode sees how a small local god wants to get its name back, though when Reiko collected his name, she stuck it along with the name of another Ayakashi, who needs to be found first if he wants to get his name back.

Along with that, this episode addresses how people nowadays visit their local gods less and less. Our god in this episode only has one person who regularly visits him, and this is an old woman. At the end of the episode, she ends up at a hospital, making her unable to visit the shrine of said god anymore. Because of that, this god disappears in the end, despite having finally gotten his name back.

It’s interesting how important names are for these Youkai, and this isn’t the first series to address this fact. Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi and Mononoke also played around with words like this, though Natsume Yuujin-chou is the most personal of the bunch.

Some quick first impressions: Koihime Musou, Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu and Blade of the Immortal

by psgels, posted in Blade of the Immortal, Some Quick First Impressions

Koihime Musou

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters finds a twelve-year old orphan who is a genius at fighting.
Highlights: Overglorifies its own setting
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10
This sort-of reminds me of Prism Ark, and although I admit that the writing is more solid, it does have the same weaknesses. At least there’s no country named “The Untied Kingdom” or “Poleland”, but as things look now, it seems that all the major army commanders are a bunch of little girls in frilly dresses. First of all, who in his right mind would take such a thing seriously? And second: what happened to the males or older females? Did some kind of disease wipe them all out or something? Still, this could have been ignored if it wasn’t for the little girl, mentioned above. She’s living in a regular village, her parents died, and she’s been living by herself for a while now. Then why the heck is she wearing the fanciest clothes in the entire village? How did she become so good at fighting? Who taught her? Why the heck is her house all nice and clean, why does she have a futon that’s not worn out in any single way? I mean, I know that this series isn’t supposed to take itself seriously, but in my opinion, being a comedy is no excuse to be lazy or historically inaccurate. Besides, this episode wasn’t that funny anyway.

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu

Short Synopsis: Our lead character discovers that the most popular girl at school is a closet otaku.
Highlights: Oh boy…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 3/10
I must say that I’m surprised at how the series this season featured a very low amount of stereotypes, even series as Seikirei, Koihime Musou and Antique Bakery had at least an enjoyable cast, with perhaps a typical loser male here and there. I was happy with this, but then Nogizaka Haruka came and ruined everything. Seriously, so many stereotypes come together in this series: horny teachers, a clumsy girl, a male lead who isn’t bothered by his hormones, the entire male school population who is, the perfect girl, and I could go on and on for a while. To make matters worse, these stereotypes don’t make any sense either. The above-mentioned horny teachers have the amazing ability to drink as much as they want and never get a hangover. If Haruka is so incredibly clumsy and a cry-baby, why did it take this long for her secret to be discovered? It’s not like this episode described her as a master of keeping secrets. How did such a shy girl become the most popular girl anyway? I could rant on an on about this series. The animation may have a considerable budget, but the characters end up looking dull and uninspired. The OP and ED are incredibly annoying. In other words, I don’t like one bit of this series. Every season has its worst show, and the worst show of Summer 2008 is for me without a doubt Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu.

Blade of the Immortal

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters has a curse on him that makes him immortal.
Highlights: Awesome soundtrack, excellent atmosphere, terrific OP.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
I’m an absolute sucker for samurai-stories and Bee-train, so when the two are combined, there was no way for me not to love this series. The summer-season has already brought a lot of good stuff, but Blade of the Immortal has without a doubt delivered the best first episode of all the new series. It’s great to see that Bee-train is willing to experiment with new styles, because this series is absolutely nothing like their previous works, and the only similarity it shares is the same attention to the awesome soundtrack that this series has. The animation itself was quite decent, but especially the OP features some beautifully choreographed swordfights. Still, everything looks really nice. Great to see Bee-Train back!

Nijuu Mensou no Musume – 13

by psgels, posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume



Short Synopsis: The doll arc finally ends
Highlights: Have I already said how amazing this series is for its climaxes?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9/10
Oh my god… when I thought that the previous episode was good. I may have my problems with this series during the quiet parts, but boy… does it deliver when it gets serious. Like mentioned above, this episode closes off the doll-arc, but there’s much more to be said than just that.

We learn how during the war, Nijuu Mensou worked as an investigator of these supernatural weapons. At one time, he worked together with the doll-woman, when she was still human, and there they exchanged their two necklaces. The doll-woman really was in love with the guy, it seems, and underwent the operation that turned her body into that of a doll for him, but in the end he betrayed her.

It’s indeed like I thought: Nijuu Mensou was involved with a lot of supernatural research during the war, and he just left everything without cleaning it up, and now his past is back to bite at him. He tried to live his life as a famous thief, probably in order to forget his past, but after the mass-murder in episode 6, he realized that he couldn’t just ignore his past. This is why he abandoned Chiko and Ken: to not involve them with his problems. Unfortunately, Chiko is now known as his daughter, so all of his enemies will now be going after Chiko because he makes himself unfindable. Nice strategy. The guy is screwed, and a perfect example of the proverb “you reap what you sow”. The fact that he left again at the end of this episode shows how his problems are far from over.

Also, it turns out that Akechi really does exist, but Nijuu Mensou likes to dress up as him. The big question is of course: who was the one who gave Chiko Nijuu Mensou’s necklace. It’s obvious now that Nijuu Mensou has been doing other things ever since he faked his own death, but to what extend did he keep in contact with Chiko?

I must applaud the creators for coming up with such a dynamic cast. Out of all th series that aired during the past spring season, Nijuu Menosu no Musume and Real Drive have a cast of characters that feels most away from any stereotypes, and now that these have hit their second halves, you can really see the results of that. Stereotypes may be best and funniest when they first appear, but they falter in the long run, whereas the developed and fleshed out characters only get better as the series progresses.

Telepathy Shoujo Ran – 04

by psgels, posted in Telepathy Shoujo Ran



Short Synopsis: Ran, Rui and Midori look for a way to spend the Golden Week. They end up in a suspicious looking village.
Highlights: No signs of subtlety yet, but the quiet moments is as solid as ever.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
Well, it doesn’t look like this series is going to be a subtle one: Ran, Rui, Midori and Ran’s father arrive at the village, and they’re immediately attacked by an army of zombified villagers. Thankfully, it does know how to build up a good mystery-plot that keeps you interested. Since the characters have gotten such huge powers, this series also needs to come with some big and complicated enemies.

Also, I’d love to see the face of someone who watched episode 1 and 2, and then skipped episode 3 to move on to the fourth one. You wouldn’t be able to recognize Midori back. I knew that she’d turned good quite soon, but this episode shows her fangirling over how cute Ran’s brother is. It’s interesting how she does know how to speak in regular Japanese, but just switches to Kansai-ben when she’s in a trusted environment. Makes it harder for me to understand, though. One thing I also like about this series is how the word jokes are easy enough for my limited Japanese to understand. I agree how it’s funnier if you manage to pick them out yourself.

In any case, what I’m most surprised about in this series is the huge role that Ran’s family plays in this series, where most families in show about middle or high-schoolers are virtually non-existent. This episode features Ran’s father, as he seems to know one of the people in this village (incidentally, this also turns to be the one who’s linked to the village’s mysteries. A bit sloppy, in my opinion).

Glass Mask Review – 45/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


The second half of Glass Mask is easy to review: a plot-hole here and there, but nonetheless evolving characters keep your attention till the end that comes way too abrupt. Nonetheless, standalone it remains an enjoyable though somewhat dramatic look at the career of a young theatre actress. So… why the abysmally low score? Well, you can blame that on the first half…

Because Glass Mask starts out downright terrible. It’s not the case of a series like NHK ni Youkoso, where the first half goofs off, after which a much stronger second half takes over. Glass Mask’s first half was much, much worse, an insult to theatre plays. At episode 13, I was ready to label this one amongst the worst series that I’ve managed to finish. Here’s why:

The first thing that will immediately catch your attention is the ridiculously overblown melodrama that would make Kannadzuki no Miko and Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora cheerful. Of course, a bit of angst is always healthy, but even during the smallest snide remark, everyone suddenly behaves like a Christian who just discovered that the pope is pregnant. Especially when the Mc Guffin play “The Crimson Goddess” gets mentioned, the melodrama gets blown to ridiculous proportions.

Then there’s the horrible botched-up storytelling of the first few episodes. There’s a reason why all stories have their light moments. They’re not only meant to give the audience a breather, but also to flesh out the characters, and show what they’re like when they’re not risking their lives/ trying their best/whatever. Glass Mask doesn’t think that these things are worthy of itself, and so it starts behaving like a soap-opera, diving from one disaster into the other. Honestly, the first half features obviously a number of plays that our lead character (Maya) has to act out, and only the last one had everything going smoothly. At the others, there was always someone or something with ill-intentions who tried to ruin the play somehow. Along with the melodrama… the result was a predictable mess.

And there’s more. I’ve always rather criticized those anime where the lead character finds his/her love a bit too easily, but all of that falls into nothing when compared to the sloppy excuse of romance that the creators try to showcase here. Maya’s boyfriend comes from absolutely nowhere. He’s just… there, without any explanation of how the bugger fell in love with her, or why he even got to know her for that matter!

But the thing that got under my nails the most was the following: this is supposed to be an anime about the rise of a talented actress, but the way she is presented shows all the signs that the staff behind this series didn’t know anything about good acting. Every time that Maya was on the stage, she caught the awes of her audience, where everyone comments and admires how good her acting is. All I saw, however, was a hopelessly overacting teenager without any sense of subtlety. One particularly bad scene showed Maya as an unimportant extra in a small movie. The result was a hospital-patient who had the time of her life while trying to climb a pair of stairs. How would you feel if you were watching a movie, and suddenly a close-up followed of some random dude who stands out way too much? What I watched wasn’t a immensely talented actress, it was a blatant Mary Sue with way too little experience to make any impact. This can also partly be blamed to Maya’s voice-actress. Who the heck in his right mind would cast someone who can’t act as the voice of a talented actress?

To my relief, the second half gives a notable attempt to fix these flaws, when the creators suddenly realize that a good story needs build-up and characters with weaknesses. The romance smartly turns into a romance with no future and the characters learn from their mistakes. The melodrama’s still there, but at least it’s better than before. Still, the question remains whether or not you want to sit through the pain for the better second half, and it’s not even that good anyway.

I’ve been wondering what makes a series really bad. I mean, I may have disliked series as To Love-Ru, but I can see how other can enjoy the light entertainment. Still, a series that fails to understand its own themes like Glass Mask… I don’t think that you can get much worse than that. I agree how the eighties brought a lot of good stuff to the world of anime, but this one was definitely not a part of it. The second half is just not worth it, because of that God-awful first half.

Storytelling: 3/10
Characters: 6/10
Production-Values: 6/10
Setting: 3/10

Birdy the Mighty Decode – 02

by psgels, posted in Birdy the Mighty Decode



Short Synopsis: Obligatory introduction episode.
Highlights: Nice fight-scene, though.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Antique Bakery is hilarious, and knows exactly when to take itself seriously, but I feel that I won’t have much to write about it.
– Okay, I’m willing to give Sekirei a chance and watch it till the end, but in no way am I going to blog it.
– I’m not a slayers-fanboy yet, and even though it’s cute, it hasn’t sold me yet.

About Birdy the Mighty, this episode obviously had to pull back the pacing a bit, and explain things for those who haven’t read the premise of this series yet. Still, I’m going to blog this series. The series that aired in the summer-season aren’t as deep as in the previous season, but a common theme is that they’re nearly all fun to watch.

The director of this series is the genius behind Noein and Escaflowne: two of my three favourite series. How could I let this chance go by? A short series like this one has no chance of creating the same success as the two above, who had both 24 and 26 episodes, but overall I’m expecting a fun short series with great fight scenes.

This episode was of course a step back when compared to the first episode, but that’s to be expected. It did a good job of introducing a lot of new characters, and I appreciate how it did manage to be more than just countless expositions and Senkawa’s first days at school, while trying to hide his secret. What caught my interest was how Senkawa managed to stop Birdy from going after a bad guy due to a possible victim that might have ended up dead. It shows the beginning of how they try to understand each other.

Macross Frontier – 14

by psgels, posted in Macross Frontier



Short Synopsis: Romances bloom as the Vajra unleash another attack on the Macross fleet.
Highlights: Action-packed climax to the first half of Macross Frontier.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
I think that this episode marks the end of the first half of Macross Frontier, but I guess that for that to be certain, we need to watch episode 15. I’m very interested into what sort of series the second half will evolve, and where its story will be going from now on. In any case, this episode did its job pretty nicely and delivered a very enjoyable episode.

For a moment, I was afraid that Ranka would turn into a dull damsel in distress, but there was a very good reason for her kidnapping, it seems. There’s more to her than just being Brera’s brother, as she shares some sort of hidden connection with the Vajra that Brera doesn’t. It’s almost as if she unknowingly stands on the side of the Vajra.

This episode also sparked a bunch of cute romances between the side-characters. The captain turns out to have an admirer, and Luca and Nanase also seem to fancy each other. I’m a fan of these quick romances between the side-characters somehow. Probably because when compared to romances between lea characters, they’re much less inclined to get in the way of what’s really important, and they hardly ever feel annoying or forced for some strange reason.

Also, who was that woman that Ranka met, while inside her trance in the Vajra’s ship? Is it someone that was already introduced in an earlier macros-series, or is her identity still unknown?

Kaiba – 10

by psgels, posted in Kaiba



Short Synopsis: Thankfully, the hiatus “only” took two weeks. This week: Neiro’s background.
Highlights: Kaiba’s back! Kaiba’s back! Kaiba’s back!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, this time I didn’t care about the raws. I just wanted to watch Kaiba again as soon as possible, so I just settled for a horrible one. For this episode, we were promised Neiro’s background, and it doesn’t disappoint at all. This anime very cleverly wraps up about 50% of the questions that the previous episodes left hanging, while keeping the vital questions still a mystery, for the final two episodes to answer.

As it turns out, my theories were wrong. Kaiba is the real Warp, and he got the name Kaiba for no particularly important reason: Neiro gave it to him, because when the two met, he again had lost his memory when he met Neiro for the first time. Therefore, he didn’t know his name, so Neiro named him after the legendary plant, and only later he started to remember again. How this exactly works is unknown, but Kaiba possesses some sort of power that unconsciously erases and recovers his memory, which gets activated with either a huge mental of physical shock. Every time this power gets activated, the hole in his body increases in size.

Also, the fake Warp didn’t shoot Neiro at all, it was the real Kaiba, in order to protect her from that AI-manager who we’ve seen bothering the fake Warp a few episodes back. He properly revived her and brought her back afterwards. And as it turns out, Warp never killed Neiro’s parents in the first place. That too was just some alteration by Popo (or the memory guy, on request by Popo). That AI-manager also turned out to be one of the villains in this series. It used the fake warp to prevent Kaiba from finding out information about his parents, whom he thought he killed himself. Kaiba turns out to never have been evil, but this image was just spread by this AI-manager.

We now also know why Popo didn’t kill Kaiba when he had the hance. I can imagine how the guy needed to get a weapon strong enough to destroy Kaiba’s indestructible body, and failed to get there on time before Kaiba woke up. The shot he fired was indeed aimed at Kaiba, and not at the enemy. This gave the memory-guy the chance to escape with Kaiba, and with the help of that girl in dress (forgot her name), they managed to smuggle Kaiba away from Popo.

Now, the question remains: how did Kaiba get his first hole. Before he crashed in front of Neiro, he already had a hole inside of him, which suggests that he lost his memory due to some sort of shock before that. Also, what role is the plant Kaiba going to play in the end? And why did the memory-guy alter Neiro’s memory, if he was on her side? Was it to fool Popo?

Aagh, only two more episodes to go. I demand a second season. Or at least a series in the same style that goes on for longer than just 12 episodes! This series is too good for the treatment it’s getting.