RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 12

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu


Aww, such a charming episode this time. This one’s about Minamo again, and a blind girl who she meets at the beach. The girl turns out to be a former classmate of Minamo’s classmates, and she’s blind. This was an interesting episode to show how blind people have been dealing with the metal and all.

The dialogue writers were in their element again, so it was another one of those hard-to-understand episodes, but from what I managed to understand: the girl is a metal-artist. She’s used her imagination that she got from her blindness to create unique world, concepts and objects that people with vision would never think about, which is why she got a lot of fans. If I understood correctly, then this went out of hand a bit when one of her rivals caused her to go brain-down.

The next episode-preview was a really interesting one: all it showed was a shot of Haru and Minamo, relaxing. Nothing more. Due to the nature of these previews, and the fact that series usually seem to save something special for episode 13, I’m really looking forward to it, and something’s telling me that something major is going to happen to the two of them. And even if that doesn’t happen, the episode still will focus a lot on the two of them, which is good enough for me. 🙂

Kishin Taisen Gigantic Formula – 73/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Spring 2007 was a big year for the epic mecha-series. There were plenty of huge-scale battles between mechas, space-ships and other sorts of futuristic technology, ranging from amazing (Toward the Terra, Bokura no), to the entertaining (Gurren Lagann, Heroic Age) to the downright cheesy (Kiss Dum). Among them was a series with a premise that could give Code Geass a run for its money in terms of political incorrectness:

Far into the future, twelve of the major countries enter a battle royale: every one has one overpowered mecha, and the goal is to be the last one standing, and be the country to rule the world. Whoop-dee-doo… guess which two countries will end up being the only two left? This series is way too full of nationalistic messages like “Japan rocks!”. This of course isn’t really the message that an international medium like anime should have.

Credit has to be given for the creators in their attempt to solve the language barrier in such an international series, but even that turns into a disaster once the characters start talking horrible Engrish. So indeed, in the final episodes, the creators just turn to universal translators in order to solve this problem. Eventually, they give up completely and make supposed English people talk Japanese without any reason whatsoever.

The saving grace for this series, however, is its characterization. Gigantic Formula would have been a total train-wreck if it wasn’t for the characters. Every single pilot of the mecha of each different country gets sufficient attention and development, in a way that surprisingly goes beyond all stereotypes. Every pilot has his or her own problems, and the creators do a really good job of making the viewer empathize with them, despite the ridiculous premise of the story. My personal favourite was the episode about the Venezuelans. At that point, I was actually willing to call this series a success…

Unfortunately, these thoughts got completely bashed into the ground by the ending. To be blunt: the final climax of this series is utter crap. Even compared to other series with disappointing endings, this ending was just bad. It forsakes nearly everything that the series has built up for, it descends into a boring cheese-fest with overmoralistic views that were most likely pasted together at the last minute. I guess I should have known that there was no way to get a satisfying climax out of such a premise as this…

I’m not sure who to recommend this series to. It’s obviously got a number of good points, especially around the middle when the nationalistic messages weren’t so god damn obvious, but at the same time it’s got an equal amount of bad or downright painful points. Even if you want cheese, you can better check out Kiss Dum. I guess that this is one for the mecha-fans, because it does have mecha-designs, coming from 14 different famous mecha-designers.

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 25

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi


Ah, I should have known. There are no villains in Porfy no Nagai Tabi. A simple fight over the toilet doesn’t cause one to become mortal enemies. Everyone has his or her own reasons for acting. I so expected the mayor to come up with a terrible scheme to humiliate or hurt Porfy. Instead, he just looked for the quickest way to get rid of him, aka help him search for Mina. I totally forgot that possibility existed as well.

This episode was really heart-warming. It starts as Porfy helps around Iralia’s farm with all kinds of chores, and looks at the trees which in a few weeks will give off some ripe fruits. This reminds him of home again, and gets his spirit down. At the city hall meanwhile, Maximilian removes a poster that has been put over Mina’s poster, as the Mayor runs into him again, thinking how ridiculous it must be to keep searching, through Maximilian says that any piece of information is welcome.

Unfortunately, at this point there’s still no sign of Mina. Iralia’s father makes a proposal, that if Porfy doesn’t end up finding Mina, whether he’d stay with them or not. Porfy, however, declines and says that he’s going to find Mina, no matter what. Iralia’s father figures that this would have been the obvious thing to say. Then Maximilian returns home, and he brings along Daisy, and Daisy proposes to introduce Porfy to her father’s shop. In there, Maximilian orders a new bag for Iralia, to give her for Christmas.

Daisy then mentions how she wants to see the new bag when it’s done, though Porfy then notes that by the time the bag finishes, Porfy will already be gone, though Daisy says that he shouldn’t be thinking that way, and when he finds Mina, he could come back to this city again. They then visit what I guess is the storehouse for Iralia’s farm, or something similar. Maximilian then starts telling ghost stories, as the Mayor suddenly pops up with the news that he might have seen someone with news about Mina. Ironically, he’s carrying the same bag model that Maximilian ordered.

Porfy wonders whether the mayor still is angry about the time with the toilet, but the mayor quickly changes subject. Apparently, a guy who works at a local funfair thinks he saw a person who looked like Mina. Porfy immediately wants to go to that person. After Porfy shows this person the picture of Mina, and tells her that a guy with cards was with her, the guy says that this might possibly have been Mina, and they went to a city in the west.

After hearing this, Porfy wants to leave immediately. Iralia suggests Porfy to leave the next morning, but Porfy wants to chase after Mina as fast as possible. With that, comes saying goodbye, but first Porfy gets to ride a merry-go-round along with Daisy. As it’s the first time he’s seen such a thing, he had the time of his live while riding it.

A bit later, Porfy says goodbye to Iralia’s parents, who give him a bit of payment for the chores that he did, and Rebecca is actually crying to see him leave. Iralia, Maximilian and Daisy then drive Porfy and Apollo to the station. When they do, they say goodbye and Porfy heads off to the train, with Daisy being the saddest to see Porfy leave. After waiting a bit, however, Porfy finds out that the train he was supposed to take was cancelled. A freight train which was on the station is also heading in the same direction, so Porfy jumps on it and lands on a pile of bags, and the episode ends.

Porfy no Nagai Tabi has two different faces: heart-wrenching drama and warm slice-of-life. This episode showed the best of the latter, where the themes of saying goodbye in the final parts brought a really nice conclusion to this arc that I really didn’t see coming. With this, I also have no idea what the creators have been planning for episode twenty six, because it doesn’t look like it’s going for the big climax now that it just rounded up the longest arc ever since Porfy started travelling.

Soul Eater – 12

by psgels, posted in Soul Eater


This was another one of those building-up episodes, mostly dedicated to show how l33t the powers of Medusa are. That’s one thing I rather dislike of shounen-series: it takes ages to get to the good stuff, and the building-up episodes hardly provide anything interesting.

This episode was decent enough, I suppose: we see the identity of the head witch and Maka finally stops angsting over Soul and in the next episode, she and Soul will get some special training in order to power up. I really hope that the creators won’t end up god-moding their characters this way… a common pitfall of these shounen-series is that they power up their lead characters way too much, instead of choosing for the more continuous growth. Claymore is one of the few who actually avoided this one.

Nijuu Mensou no Musume – 10

by psgels, posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume


Now this is more like it. I’m not a big fan of the new and angsty Ken, but he does spice up things a bit if he continues to develop like that (which is very likely, considering the nature of this series). This episode pushes the plot forward again, and I’m glad to see that some actual meaningful villains appear, rather than those goons of the previous episode.

It also seems that the supernatural research for the past world war is going to play a big theme in the rest of this series. In this episode, a doll, carrying Nijuu Mensou’s pendant appears in front of Chiko. In the meantime, Chiko’s aunt is still trying to poison and kill her (if I understood correctly, Chiko faints in this episode due to the poison that she was fed). Tome and Chiko also get a lot closer together in this episode.

The next episode is going to be the halfway-point of this series, so I hope that that one will give a few more hints as to where this series seems to be going. There are a lot of storylines going on, but no goals, apart from finding Nijuu Mensou. I want to know why the creators bothered to forcefully introduce such a supernatural element in this series, and what difference it would have made if they were just excluded.

Some quick first impressions: Hoshi no Umi no Amuri, Candy Boy and Chocolate Underground

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Hoshi no Umi no Amuri

Well… it certainly is original. I’m really not sure what to think about this series. It’s definitely better than I expected: I expected another one of those cheap fanservice OVAs like Koharu Biyori or Ryofuko-chan, and what I got was… well… I’m not even sure what I got. The best thing to compare this series with is a very strange acid-trip that’s gotten way out of hand. Throughout the 30 minutes of airtime, the creators toss all kinds of flashy graphics at your face, they literally bounce from one strange thing to another (including what’s probably the most bizarre parody of Dragon Ball Z EVER). I’m still not sure what the point of the plot was supposed to be, but I guess that this is one of those anime as art OVAS. I must say that I admire the creativity, but the huge wtf-factor of Hoshi no Umi no Amuri DOES REMAIN.

Candy Boy

Oh my god, I am SO late with this anime. It’s good to see another yuri-series again, they’ve been painfully absent since El Cazador and Blue Drop. Candy Boy is another one of those very short series (episodes are only 12 minutes long and there seem to be only 7 episodes in total…), but it’s focused and rather charming, especially when the two main characters are together. There’s a very annoying side-character, though. Whenever she pops up, she breaks the flow of this series with her endless rambling. I feel that Candy Boy could have been better if it just left out this character, especially considering the length.

Chocolate Underground

This is one of those “What if”-series. It asks the question: what if the government massively banned all sorts of chocolate. It does make sense in a strange kind of way. Kids these days keep getting fatter due to lazy parents and the overabundance of sweets, so it would be interesting to see what would happen… but that giant robot really came from nowhere. With five minutes per episode, this series also is criminally short, so I wonder whether it’ll really be able to go into the depths of its topic. Still, it’s fun to watch (especially seeing those government people tease the hell out of these children).

Some quick first impressions: Gosenzosama Banbanzai, Ikkitousen – Great Guardians and Telepathy Shoujo Ran

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions, Telepathy Shoujo Ran

Gosenzosama Banbanzai

Yeah, I know that this ova is already two decades old, but I just had to mention it. Liam recommended it to me, and after watching it, I have to agree that this one’s brilliant! I think the only thing you need to know about it is that it’s basically Mamoru Oshii’s attempt at comedy. Despite its age, this OVA was still a breath of fresh air. If you liked Mamoru’s work on Twilight Q, then you’ll love Gosenzosama. The entire thing feels like it’s being performed inside a theatre, rather than a cinema. Combined with a smashing soundtrack from Kawai Kenji, Gosenzosama is an excellent recommendation if you’re looking for an OVA that’s something different.

Ikkitousen – Great Guardians

There’s a fine line between a bit of innocent fanservice here and there and tasteless fanservice meant to milk money from otaku. Ikkitousen crossed this line and then kept going for forty more miles before it realized the concept of “brakes”. I admit, the soundtrack has some good tracks among it and the story about the Chinese mythology is at least interesting enough, but the characters ruin any trace of potential in this series. Scenarios are written way too obvious, the yuri lacks a lot of subtlety and ends up as just plain old fanboy-bait, and I’ve lost count as to how much time I wanted to punch Hakufu, her mother, the blue-haired girl, etc etc in the face for being so god damn annoying. I’m not a big fan of fanservice, but if it has to be included, it should be inserted into the story, not the other way around. What surprises me the most is the huge amount of fansubs this series is getting: six groups have already released the first episode after it aired. I mean, what?!

Telepathy Shoujo Ran

The first thing that catches attention is the unusual art style: there’s a stark contrast between the very simple character-designs and the rich and colourful background art, and the result works pretty well. Overall, I must say I’m impressed so far. This series is like a cross between Kamichu and Kaze no Shoujo Emily: it’s got the heart-warming slice-of-life feel of the former, and this episode already showed the powerful drama of the latter. Especially the slice-of-life parts in this episode were really nicely done, and they’ll probably form a good base for this series to work with. I did fear a bit when this series suddenly introduced the pretty transfer-student (a way too overused cliché, IMO), but I’m glad to see that this isn’t one of these series where the powers of the main characters are kept secret.

Kaiba – 09

by psgels, posted in Kaiba


What can I say? This episode was just incredible, no question possible. Spoilers obviously follow.

As it turns out, the memory-guy plays a vital role in the entire story. He never was aligned to Popo, but made it believe like he was. Popo probably ordered him to use the plant Kaiba on Neiro, in order to mask all of her memories and change all appearances of Warp/Kaiba into Popo. Behind his back, the memory-guy put the remains of these memories into Hyohyo. The ostrich was also a servant of the memory-guy, who indeed helped out Popo back in the first episode. That’s why he secretly let Hyohyo join Kaiba without Popo knowing about it.

And Heck, only now I realize that in Neiro’s memories, Warp’s images are also blackened out! We only saw the evil Warp shoot Neiro, but the rest of it are all images of a black-on-white caricature. I’m getting some strong urges here that Popo was the guy who really ended up killing Neiro’s parents. Why would he want to mask them otherwise? Especially since this episode shows how easily he can just kill people.

A few questions remain with this, mostly: who was the Neiro that evil Kaiba shot, and why is Neiro still alive. In this episode, we also get confirmed that Kaiba wasn’t the Warp that killed everyone, because Neiro addresses him as “Kaiba”. That leaves the biggest question that still needs to be answered: where the heck did Kaiba come from? What also seems strange is how the memory guy seems to think that Warp changed after he met Neiro, because it obviously conflicts with Neiro calling Kaiba Kaiba…

I must say that my biggest fear for Kaiba would be the episodes before the finale, simply because Kemonozume screwed up so badly at that point. It dived way too deep into melodrama for it to remain believable. Still, thankfully Kaiba has managed to avoid this flaw entirely, and this episode really used the building-up of the previous episodes wonderfully.

Amatsuki – 12

by psgels, posted in Amatsuki


In true Amatsuki-fashion, the big climax of this series (or at least the first half… I’m still waiting for that second season announcement…) is not about action at all, but instead about dialogue. And of course, it wasn’t just a matter of the tree being cut down by evil people, there seems to be a huge backstory behind even that, and that’s where Heihachi fits into things, as he was there when the decision was made to cut it down. If I understood things correctly, it was also used to smuggle dangerous stuff, though I didn’t pick up exactly what that was.

It’s interesting how Bonten didn’t turn out to be the bad guy, even though everything about his appearance screams “typical bad guy” at first. He too just wanted to get his idiot companion Tsuyukusa back. What’s also interesting is how the fourth heavenly being (or however these guys are called) decides to show himself.

At the moment, I’m SO hoping for a second season, especially after learning that Druaga no Tou also gets to have a continuation. Amatsuki already is amazing, so I’m really interested in seeing what it can do once the characters start developing. I know the other works of the director, and seeing how awesome Chevalier became in its second half, I’m really curious to see how a second season of Amatsuki will turn out.

Druaga no Tou ~The Aegis of Uruk~ Review – 86/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Fantasy Game adaptations have always been a rather notorious genre, due to the huge amount of lazy productions. These series seem to think that “fantasy” means “lack of realism”, and where the end result is almost always an uninspired story about a young swordsman travelling from A to B, saving the world and getting the girl. There are two animation-companies who have managed to break this tradition: Bee-train and Gonzo. Even though .Hack//Roots and .Hack//Dusk were rather questionable, Bee-train did produce .Hack//Sign, which looked more at the philosophy-part of gaming, and the charming adventure story Popolocrois. Then Gonzo came and delivered the hilarious MMORPG-parody Master of Epic, and with Druaga no Tou (or the Tower of Druaga) they did it again.

Druaga no Tou is based on an arcade-game from the eighties. It follows a band of questionable heroes as they try to climb a tower to save the world, but that’s where the generic stuff ends. Finally there’s another series that’s put a bit of thought into its setting, and a lot of ideas went into it to keep things interesting. I especially liked the magician who fights with golf-clubs.

The real charm of this series, however, is that it knows exactly how much it should take itself seriously. It’s not entirely silly, because you can never get a good story out of it, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously at times, which helps swallow the fact that this remains a story about a young inexperienced male on his first adventure. There are a few hilarious episode that successfully parody and homage a number of classic games, but there are enough episodes that focus on the more realistic side of the setting, and Jil (the male lead) is constantly reminded that he’s just an inexperienced attention-seeker, both by the other characters and by the story itself.

When compared to other similar series, Druaga no Tou did a pretty good job, but the fact remains that it’s a miracle that the main party survived, considering that they all were just inexperienced, especially considering the huge amount of people who failed to do the things that they did.

Gonzo had been quite pathetic ever since Bokura no ended, with their only contributions to the past Autumn and Winter season being the crappy Dragonaut and Rosario to Vampire. Special A also went nowhere, and Blassreiter still misses something because it keeps focusing too much on emo, but Druaga no Tou really delivered once it caught steam. I’m glad to see that 2009 will see a second season, because there’s enough left for this series to play with, and with a bit of luck the characters will really warm up and develop significantly there.