So, the nominations are over, and it’s time for the real voting. I’d like to thank everyone who nominated me in te preliminaries, I never thought that this many people consider this blog among the best of the episodic ones.
Apparently, the reader’s choice and blogger’s choice don’t start at the same time. I guess that the polls for the reader’s choice will be set up in a few days or so.
This series continues to be absolutely stunning! Seriously, there hasn’t been a weak moment, ever since the earthquake. This episode finally finishes the introduction of this series, and shows Porfy starting his “Long Journey”. It really does seem like it’s going to take a long while until we see Mina again…
The episode starts with Porfy, not sure what to do. In the end, the one who’s able to remember Mina and tell him where she went was the old blind lady. She tells how the two of Porfy and Mina had the same scent, and how Mina boarded a ship that goes to Italy. Now that he finally knows what happened to his sister, Porfy runs to a quiet alley to cry his lungs out.
When Porfy comes back to the harbour to check up on the fees for the boat, they turn out to be too high for the small amount of money he carries with him. He heads into the city, to check whether people are looking for a job. The first person he asks comes with the sad news that nearly nobody in the city has a car, and they work mostly with horses and donkeys. The guy then nicely offers Porfy a part of his lunch, saying how children shouldn’t suffer. Porfy says how he’s looking for money to board a ship, and then the guy comes with the idea to bring Porfy to an old man whose house needs painting. At this point, Porfy is indeed willing to do anything.
When he arrives at the old man’s home, the old man thanks him. He’s apparently been living alone for a long time now. When he asks where Porfy came from, Porfy says he’s from Simitra. The old man remembers how that place was hit by a huge earthquake, and Porfy tells him about what happened to his parents; he starts crying when he talks about it. The old man then comforts him, and says how Porfy’d better start working. When Porfy’s halfway done, the old man asks him to buy some food for dinner.
When they’re having dinner, the old man offers a surprisingly large amount of his food to Porfy. When Porfy says how he shouldn’t bother, the man retorts that it’s nothing, and how it’s a delight to be young. Porfy works for two days, and on the second evening the old man asks Porfy whether he knows what Mina’s thinking. I turns out that Porfy didn’t even think of that yet. The old man then says how Mina should be feeling the same thing he is, being separated from her parents and all.
Porfy finishes on the third day. The old man then gives him a really big amount of money for the job, even more than that’s needed for the boat fee. Added to that, he also offers a backpack for Porfy to use. The old man says how once you get older, there are enough things that you won’t need anymore, and he feels that Porfy would make better use of it. Porfy then leaves and the episode ends, as the old man wishes him good luck.
Apologies for the rather rubbish summary this time. The dialogue in this episode was particularly difficult for a Porfy-episode, and it featured more monologues than usual, so I wasn’t able to understand everything perfectly, like I usually do with this series. That aside, this episode was yet again amazing. When I started watching this series, I originally thought that it would go down about the same path as Perrine Monogatari (which is currently being subbed by C1), but it turns out I was wrong. Perrine puts much more emphasis on the bad sides of money, while Porfy no Nagai Tabi just solves Porfy’s money issues in one half of an episode.
Old people also have a really interesting role in this series. They really serve as mental guides for the children. First Damon, and now we have the old blind woman and the old man who offer Porfy support, and they encourage him to go into the right direction, hardly knowing anything about him. It’s different from usual anime, who mostly have the mindset of “the old ones need to step aside for the young ones”. In this case, they really try to help Porfy get over the horrible things that happened to him, without ever trying to look important for the storyline.
I must say that this series is getting more interesting with every episode. The first episode was a huge disappointment for me because it didn’t really show the thought-pattern behind Nijuu Mensou’s plans, though thankfully the past two episodes have put a much bigger emphasis on planning and back-ups, in case something goes wrong. With this episode, I finally see that Nijuu Mensou isn’t inhumanly strong or smart. He’s just paranoid and a perfectionist.
I can indeed see why Chico will end up as Nijuu Mensou’s successor. Due to the way she’s raised, she’s ended up rather paranoid as well and doesn’t take anything for granted, and yet she’s willing to work hard for the person who saved her. This episode mainly meant to bring her a bit closer to Nijuu Mensou’s crew, and flesh out the different characters a bit.
What I’m waiting for right now is to see the always-composed Nijuu Mensou screw up. Obviously, this has to happen sometime, and I’m rather eager to see Chico, as she takes over his position. It’ll be interesting to see Chico evolve, and meet the other two girls we see in the ED. Like I said before, I like series that don’t play all of their trumps in the first episode.
The individual ingredients of Asagiri no Miko (or Shrine of the Morning Mist) are not that impressive: a sentai-team of priestesses takes on the role of main characters, and they’re the only ones who can stop an evil demon from breaking its seal and destroying the world. At first sight, it seems like a yawnfest, and yet somehow, it works.
Thankfully, despite the boring premise, this series knows how to build up, and it pretty nicely alters between comedy-episodes and serious ones, rather than save the serious parts only for the final episodes. Both the comedy and drama gets better as the series progresses and the episode length of 12 minutes helps keeping things fresh and avoid dragging on. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that this series actually knows how to tell a story.
Unfortunately, Asagiri no Miko does have its bad points. The main lead is horribly ignored in terms of fleshing out when compared to the other ones. That’s fine by me, and it actually helped to prevent this series from getting dragged into pointless romance. The major problem with this guy is however, that in the final two episodes he suddenly becomes the most important character; a role he just couldn’t live up to, considering his huge lack of development. The result is that the final two episodes descend into a boring cheese-fest that end the series with a fizz, rather than a bang.
Still, despite this the first 24 episodes are a nice example of an enjoyable series that never really hits any highs nor lows. Asagiri no Miko is just one of these series that’s great for just a light watch, and in the meantime you also get to enjoy a healthy share of Japanese culture. Obviously, you’ll never see this series on any top-10 list whatsoever, but the average rating that the users of AniDB gave it (a 5.90; amongst the worst ratings on that site) is just way too low in my opinion.
Okay… Amatsuki has a good chance of becoming Studio Deen’s next masterpiece. Yes, this episode was that good.
I’m left quite speechless by it. Amatsuki has really been the most emotionally intense series of the spring-season so far, and with series as Kaiba, xxxHolic, Kurenai and Himitsu, this HAS TO SAY SOMETHING. I really like how all the good series this season have their own points at which they excel.
It turns out that Toki was called by a god who is the head of a shrine. When he arrives there, the major bad guy first comes into contact with him, and he makes it clear that Toki’s eye is something very special. He does all this in some kind of strange dimension. When Toki returns from this dimension, he’s found inside the shrine. The priestesses of this shrine then get mistaken by the huge demon inside of Kuchiha and think that the threesome is an enemy. Then all hell breaks loose as they attempt to release the dormant powers inside both Toki and Kuchiha, in order to find out their origins, though I didn’t think that they expected to find such a huge beast inside of Kuchiha. The goddess of the temple then shows up, and almost gets crushed by said demon (in the shape of a huge dog). Bonten then appears as well, taking over one the priestesses.
After this episode, I know for sure: Amatsuki is going to be a really special series. Really, so many things happened at the same time, and the result is nothing short of stunning. If you’re doubting whether or not to check out this series, then at least wait till you’ve seen the fourth episode to decide whether or not you want to follow it.
Oh for Christ’s sake! This episode took freaking ages to show up on Share, and even longer to download. I really wonder: how popular is Kaiba in Japan anyways? I remember how even Kaze no Shoujo Emily didn’t run into these problems, and that series probably was one of the least viewed anime around at that time…
Still, this series is pure gold, and I love every single bit of it. I’m an absolute sucker for good series that show how random people deal with its concepts, and Kaiba combines it plot with these random stories in an excellent way. What I especially like his how Kaiba meets the random people, he watches them, but he never interferes with them. He just tries to understand them, and that’s all. The stories of these people would have ended in the same way if Kaiba was never there, and that’s REALLY rare in this genre. It’s a great way of symbolizing the whimsical nature of memory in this series.
I’ve probably said this before, but PLEASE let there be more series like this one in the future. 12 episodes is just criminally short for a series with such a terrific concept. This episode shows a girl who sells her body in order to feed her family. Her memory then gets sent into space, in the hope of someday reaching a new body. Kaiba then steals her body, and ironically enough gets a free ride from the guard, who was sadistic to everyone only an episode ago.
This episode masterfully explores first this case from the perspective of the girl, and once she’s dead it’s the perspective from her stepmother, who was probably the one who suggested the girl to sell her body. The mother first was happy that the girl went, but very soon afterwards, she was full of guilt about what she did.
Kaiba definitely is my top-recommendation for the spring-season. It’s got everything: great graphics, an excellent concept, a fitting soundtrack, terrific characterization, it’s thought-provoking, short enough for a quick watch, and I can go on and on with this list.
As much as I like the animation-style of the OP, the song does get annoying really fast! I’m hoping that if this series actually has more than 13 episodes, it’ll at least change the song for the OP.
In any case, this episode was chockfull of development and background. The big fight that takes place leads to Murasaki knocked out, and her guardian getting incredibly angry at Shikurou. What follows then is finally Shinkurou’s background, as both Murasaki and above mentioned guardian (forgot her name) learn more about the guy. It turns out that he not only lost his parents in that accident, but he also got picked up by what looks like child-smugglers. The interesting thing is that Ginko was with him at this time, and apparently he learned to fight because of Yuuno, who seemed to already posses a black belt in Judo when she was twelve.
There’s still no explanation of that strange body of Shinkrou, but now we at least know why he had trouble with his elbows: when he gets out of control, spikes not unlike those we see in Soul eater come out of his body, though for Shinkurou, this hurts like hell. Benika also tells about why she helped Murasaki escape, as it was basically a request by her late mother.
I’m also curious about the villains of this series, especially since Red Garden spent such an surprisingly large amount of time on Hervé, and yet we’ve seen hardly anything about the bad guys in Kurenai. I really hope that the director will give them the same treatment as Hervé, because this guy has really been one of the memorable villains I’ve watched.
And this episode is exactly why I fell in love with the first season! This episode features Watanuki and Yuuko, exploring a certain concept again, just like many episodes in the first season did. Now that I’m watching this series raw, I have even more respect to the fansubbers of this series. Not only do they have to translate, they also have to find out the different jargon that’s used to denote all the different spirits. It took myself quite a while that “Zasshiki Warashi” basically means “Vestal Sprite”.
There aren’t many series that take an in-depth look at their own themes, but the ones that do nearly always turn into real gems. Jigoku Shoujo, Ghost Hound, Mushishi, just to name a few. At first sight, the episodic format of Jigoku Shoujo, Mushishi and xxxHolic might seem distracting, but it’s much easier this way to explore your theme from different angles, rather than through one continuous storyline. That’s also another reason why Ghost Hound deserves so much credit with its looks at psychology.
This episode is about dreams, and about transferring the dreams of others to yourself. In this way, the creators also manage to slip in a bit of foreshadowing about Himawari’s upcoming story-arc (I have no idea what’s up with her, but the manga-readers seem to love her background). There must be at least something wrong with her, if she’s dreaming of giant one-eyed spirits that swallow her. We also manage to see for the first time Domeki’s grandfather, who reveals something interesting about Domeki as a child: he used to dress in girly kimonos. I can’t wait for the next episode to see Domeki’s reaction when he finds out, and even more to Watanuki’s reaction to Domeki’s reaction.
Okay, this episode was fair enough. It did a good job in pointing out the inexperience of the two main leads. I don’t like how easily Alto managed to learn to perfectly control his craft, but at least he still doesn’t understand tactics yet. What also surprised me was that Ranka didn’t end up winning the miss Macross Frontier-contest. At that point, things seemed so obvious that I thought that the creators were just trying to give her an important role in a quick way, but thank god I was wrong, and the creators turn out to be a bit more subtle than that. After all, it’s probably the first time she sang in front of such a huge audience, she felt out of place, she was full of nerves. It would have been a very glaring plot-hole if she did end up winning that contest.
This episode also introduces a bunch of new characters, among which a big-boobed giant with bright blue hair who can turn into a little girl whenever she’s not piloting. She offers another hint as to why Ranka’s special: her brother rescued her ten years ago from god knows where, so who knows what happened in her past? At the same time, this giant, when she’s in little-girl form also has bright hair that has a mind of its own and it’s just as brightly coloured. They could be of the same “race”.
We also learn that Saotome’s father is some kind of famous person, though they seem to hate each other. No sign of his mother yet, if I’m not mistaken. This episode also introduces a human factor in the enemies, as this time, a manned mecha comes to attack Macross Frontier. One thing I hope for this series is that it’ll provide enough attention to these “bad guys”, and doesn’t focus too much of its screen time on Ranka, Alto and Sheryl. I’ve seen many series that screwed up with their villains, simply because these people weren’t fleshed out enough. A damn shame.
In other news, the animation was different from usual. It seemed much messier than the previous three episodes. I like this kind of animation; it makes the characters feel alive, rather than a bunch of drawings in a series that just uses minimal animation.
This was definitely the best episode of Allison to Lillia yet. I’m really surprised and impressed by it: I thought that the entire Allison-arc would revolve around the war and the search for the treasure, and yet both storylines get resolved in just one episode. It really makes me wonder what the rest of this series will be about.
I think it’s clear by now that the plot-twists in this series take a lot of liberty, as symbolized by Allison’s whimsical nature. In this episode, Benedict also changes sides really easily, and the war is over before you know it. There’s not even a scene where the important people see the treasure; it just ends and we can only guess the real reason behind it. But I think that that’s one of the charms of this series, and it manages to keep its combination between a light-hearted mood and serious themes this way. I’ve been a rather large advocate of realism lately, but this series shows that you can be good even without a huge focus at realism.
Also, that airplane-fight in the first half of the episode was very impressive. It’s been a while since I watched a fight in mid-air that didn’t involve mecha. The music also showed some of its best sides so far in this episode. Overall, if these four episodes gave away a small taste of what’s left to come in this series, then I’m in!