RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 02

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu


As usual, the shows I’m not blogging this season:
– I’ve heard many diverging opinions about the manga of Vampire Knight. The arguments against it say that the manga is just your average angst-fest, and how it’s nothing special. The only argument in favour of it that I could find was “Bishies! Bishies! Bishies!” Really, just as with Haruhi Suzumiya, it feels like the fans are hyping the wrong parts of the series!
– Monochrome Factor is really weird, though the main female lead gets really on my nerves.

In any case, it was pretty obvious that I’d end up blogging this series. Personally, I LOVE series with a high amount of imagination, and RD has along with Kaiba been the most imaginative series of the new season. It’s going to be difficult as usual to try and understand it, but I see this as an interesting challenge.

The OP also rocks, and the ED as well. In any case, this episode shows us more about the female heroine Minamo Aoi and it introduces the concept of cyber-diving, as the power of the house for the elder-care needs to be restored. Meanwhile, Masamichi is still an old man (I like how this series doesn’t play all of its trumps in the first two episodes, yet packs a punch).

It turns out that Minamo grew up in Australia with her grandmother, while her mother worked on the “Metal” in Japan. If I had to guess, then she came to work at the home for elders because of her brother (Souta) and her mother’s influences. But I think that the fact that her grandmother used to know Eiichiro and Masamichi also played a role. She also turns out to be someone who likes to learn a lot, although she is your typical girl who hit puberty. Still, she isn’t as annoying as some of her counterparts, and my only real gripe with this series is the really strange placement of fanservice. We get random crotch-shots, panty-shots that come out of nowhere. That’s not something I expected from Production IG and the director of Chevalier. I mean, they had nudity before, but it has always felt rather natural up till now.

There’s also one bit that I failed to pick up: why did Minamo’s grandmother age, while Eiichi still looks the same as he did, fifty years before? Is this because some people have access to better health-care facilities than others?

Soul Eater – 02

by psgels, posted in Soul Eater


As for the series I won’t be blogging this season:
– Kanokon: Obviously not. Please Xebec, I know that you’re good at adapting mangas and light-novels, you showed that with The Third, but stop picking out these crappy premises!
– I apparently like Blassreiter a lot more than others do. Really, what’s so wrong with it? The plot has potential, the characters may not be the best, but they’re not the worst anyway, and the CG is impressive to look at. Still, I do admit that it still has the potential to fall apart.
– Zettai Karen Children spends way too much attention on its most boring character: the red-haired girl, voiced by Hirano Aya.
– Wagaya no Oinarisama has terrific music, but I’m still not sure whether it knows what it wants to be: just random slice-of-life stories or something with an actual plot.
– The second episode of Nabari no Ou is just boring.
– The second episode of Kamen no Maid Guy is even worse.
– Special A has great main characters, but I’m not convinced about the side-characters yet.

For Soul Eater, after the first episode, I was really doubting whether or not to blog this series. On one hand, it’s a 51-episoded shounen-series, but on the other hand I heard a lot of good things about this series, like how the characters abandon the subplot of collecting these 100 souls to become a death scythe rather early on, and it seems that there are 11 volumes of the manga so far. Seeing as that within a year, it’s quite probable for a twelfth volume to come out, and that should be just enough to fill up 51 episodes.

Still, that does mean that there’ll be a chance for this series to have a disappointing ending. But on the other hand again, the fact remains that this series has a terrific sense of style, great characters and an actually good soundtrack (that’s one thing I really missed in the previous Autumn-season: there were hardly any series with a really good soundtrack, apart from Gunslinger Girl, perhaps). There’s also the fact that this has been the very first shounen-series that I considered to have any potential at all to beat the Law of Ueki as my favourite shounen-fighting series. Overall, these are enough reasons for me to blog it. And if it does delve into fillers, I can always drop it like I did with Shugo Chara. It’s also good to blog a series that does not air on tuesday or thursday.

This episode wasn’t as good as the first one, but it was still a great one. This one introduces the second couple of weapon “meister” and weapon. Their main weakness turns out to be that the male (who is the weapon meister this time) doesn’t know the meaning of “subtlety”. Whenever he tries to sneak up to someone, he makes no attempts whatsoever to hide his presence. Their strength is that the weapon likes to change into more than just a scythe, and she makes use of lots of different weapons, instead of how the guy in the previous episode liked to be a scythe for most of the time. The end of this episode also introduced the third couple that this series will be focusing on. In their case, it’s the weapon meister who’s the brilliant one (the son of Shinigami, if I understood correctly), but his weapons leave much to be desired.

Also, on a side-note: am I the only one who actually liked the voice-acting of the main couple in the first episode? Really, especially the girl had a refreshing voice that didn’t sound over-rehearsed. So what if she doesn’t sound like a j-pop idol? Its great to hear different voices for anime and not the same squeaky voice over and over again. That’s why I also like the deep voice of the male weapon.

It’s also good to see that the director has experience with series that span 52 episodes: he did direct Ashita no Nadja (note to self: continue that one. It’s good!), and judging on Wyrdwad’s comments on that series, it never lost any steam at all. It’s also good to see that he worked on mostly shoujo-series before, so the chance of this one heading towards bleach is also minimal. The only fear for this guy would be the insertion of pointless fillers and a crappy ending, like he did with Ouran High School Host Club, but at least Soul Eater has characters with enough potential, that don’t just rely on their quirks, and characters like Honey are missing.

The guy behind the series composition (Akatsuki Yamatoya, who also wrote the script for the first episode) also sounds very promising. He may have worked on a couple of crappy series like Blue Dragon, Busou Renkin and To Love-Ru, but this guy really gets on fire when he gets to work with a series with potential: he worked on the script of Gintama and wrote the script of episodes 10 and 12 (both hilarious). So for now, I’m confident, although I probably won’t feel like checking out the late-night airing of this series to find out the subtle changes that were made. I heard that the changes that were made weren’t impressive anyways.

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 15

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi


So now we know why Porfy started his travels. Finally, everything makes perfect sense. But the real highlight of this episode was without a doubt Mina. Never have I seen a character act so genuine as she did in this episode. The loss of her parents blocked out everything, apart from her deepest feelings. I’ve said it before, but the refugee-camp arc was just gut-wrenchingly sad. And to think that the real meat of this series has only just started.

Inside the refugee-camp, Mina is sitting with Apollo on her shoulder, smiling at the creature, while nearby Porfy and Zaimis are washing dishes. Zaimis wonders when he can go back to Simitra, though Porfy doesn’t want to go back to that place anymore (with his house being destroyed and all). Helena then takes over from them, so that Porfy and Zaimis can take care of their sisters. It turns out that Mina does have a few physical scars as well, but these will probably disappear completely when she becomes an adult. The same can’t be said from her mental scars, though.

A guy from the village named Lucas, delivering supplies for the refugee-camp then arrives. As he starts up his car to go back, it malfunctions. Porfy then runs to his and Mina’s bed (ignoring Mina’s greetings and leaving her behind, looking disappointed), and grabs his father’s toolkit, and fixes the car. Lucas then gives him his very first self-earned fee. When Porfy goes back to Mina to show this fee, she’s gone.

Porfy looks for her, but he can’t find her. He then runs into Zaimis and he also helps searching, and soon a lot of the people who take care of the refugee-camp are searching for her. Eventually, Porfy finds her behind a rock near the sea, singing the song that she used to like when her parents were still alive. Mina may have lost a lot, but it looks like she’s desperately holding onto her love for theatre. Porfy scolds her, and she suddenly looks much gloomier again, so Porfy tries to cheer her up a bit more.

It actually works, especially when Porfy tries to act out other parts from that play. Mina even joins him with the acting, looking very happy. Then, however, Porfy shows her the money he earned from Lucas’s car, and immediately Mina feels down again. I suspected this before, but it’s really true: Mina doesn’t like Porfy’s obsession with cars. I always had the feeling that she felt left out whenever Porfy started rambling about cars, and this scene indeed confirms this.

In any case, Mina is brought back to the camp, and falls asleep. A little while later, Helena passes out different letters to the refugees. Zaimis’s mother (finally I know her name! It’s Dori) also gets one, and it comes from her aunt (either that, or Zaimis’s aunt). It turns out that the two can live with her. Zaimis is shocked when he finds out that he isn’t going back to Simitra, but after all there’s no way in which they can go and fix their house just like that. Porfy tries to cheer Zaimis up when he finds out, but it’s clear that Porfy himself is also very unhappy with this turn of events.

It’s then when Barnes arrives, and he immediately goes to Helena, so that Porfy doesn’t have the time to greet him. Porfy then goes to eavesdrop on the conversation between these two. He hears how Helena finds that things aren’t going well with Mina, and how she doesn’t speak at all. Barnes then says that he’s find a very nice family for Porfy and Mina, though there’s one thing: this family only wants to take care of a girl. In other words: Porfy and Mina will separate, and Mina will go all the way to America!

This news devastates Porfy. He runs to Mina to tell her the bad news, and he suggests to run away from the camp. His plan is for her to run away when she’s taking care of the dishes away. Porfy will then leave the camp with his own excuse, and they’ll meet up later at a certain landmark. During dinner, they eat more than usual, to strengthen them for the trip, while Zaimis still laments the fact that they’re not going to see each other anymore. Porfy obviously couldn’t care less, because he has more urgent things to worry about.

Then, it’s time to carry out Porfy’s plan. Porfy, unfortunately, runs into Zaimis, and barely manages to come up with a good excuse, and is also helped by the fact that Zaimis is holding his little sister. Porfy then says goodbye to Zaimis in a cryptic way, and heads off.

The plan, however, turns out to be a disaster. Mina sees a nearby bicycle and gets fascinated by it (because there was a bicycle in the movie that they watched as well). The angry owner of that bike then turns up, however, and Mina runs away, terrified at what to do against such an angry strange man. Unfortunately for her, she runs towards a village, where all sorts of scary people walk around. Porfy meanwhile realizes that something’s wrong, and starts searching for her, guided by Apollo and the episode ends.

The amount of building-up that this series did in its first quarter is just overwhelming. More and more scenes that once just seemed to just fill time now turn out to have an incredible meaning. I don’t just mean Mina’s visit to the movie, and the scene at the theatre, but also in episode three, where Mina got separated from Porfy. That too lays a parallel to the events that happened in this episode: back then, Mina just played a prank, but in this episode, her fears are everything but a joke.

I’ve also began to wonder: where will Porfy and Mina sleep? How will they get food? I originally thought that Mina and Porfy would be separated from each other, but now it really looks like the two of them will travel together, which makes things only sadder. Not only is Mina without a doubt the best-developed character in this entire series, but it also means that Porfy is going to not only take care of himself, but Mina as well. I can see how he’ll end up trying to repair cars to get some money, but will people really trust their car with a small boy? And what will Mina be doing when Porfy is out there, trying to make money, even though she hates his obsession for cars.

Seriously, the more I think about it, the more I realize what an amazing amount of potential this series has. Spring may have come with a very good collection of interesting series, but even the BEST of them are going to have to try really hard if they want to be able to top this series.

1000000 Visitors!

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

And now for something completely different. It’s taken me nearly two and a half year, but Star Crossed has finally received one million pageviews! To be precise, as of 10:00, GMT, there have been 1884531 pageviews, 1000047 unique visitors, of which 631120 are first-time visitors and 368927 are returning visitors.

Okay, enough self-whoring. I’d like to use this post to thank all my visitors and especially the ones who stuck around, because I wouldn’t have been able to reach this milestone. Heck, I dout that when I started, I ever imagined to get this far.

Some quick first impressions: Golgo 13, Kyouran Kazoku Nikki and Nijuu Mensou no Musume

by psgels, posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume, Some Quick First Impressions

Golgo 13

Well, this turned out better than expected, but that may also be because I expected nothing from this series anyway. Golgo may have a laughable name, but it does have a certain style. The soundtrack is effective, though I feel that the manga-chapters don’t really fit the 24-episode formats. In this episode, the only thing that Golgo does is that he comes, he shoots, and then he leaves again. The creators clearly struggle with filling up the remaining 23 minutes of this episode so they just show a random sex-scene. I hope that the future assignments for the guy are a bit more challenging to overcome; otherwise it’d make a pretty boring series. Still, this series has no real flaws so far, apart from the fact that Golgo’s character-design makes it looks like he’s suffering from a bad case of constipation.

Kyouran Kazoku Nikki

Boy… the shounen-comedies sure are dull this season. I’m sick and tired of females that rely just on their energy and moe-ness to deliver comedy. Really, a series needs more than that to be funny, and still there are heaps of series that don’t seem to understand this. Kyouran Kazoku Nikki at least tries to add this extra substance though its side-characters and I guess that they do have potential, but really, how many times haven’t we seen male lead X being beaten up and abused by the female lead? Is it really that hard to come up with something original?

Nijuu Mensou no Musume

Ah, too bad. I had high hopes for this series, being animated by Bones and all, but in the end this one turned into a big mess. This series has nice action and screenplay and all, but it’s mercilessly shatters your suspense of disbelief within the first minute of this episode. This is indeed the problem with thief-series: they’re portrayed in a way too elegant manner. When you steal something, you’re supposed to be hiding in the shadows, making use of the flaws in security, not just use a zeppelin to lift the roof of a building. Again it’s just one character who ruins the entire series. I mean, Chico was nice to watch, the henchmen were very interesting, but that thief… I still can’t believe that the creators were serious with that guy.

Macross Frontier – 02

by psgels, posted in Macross Frontier


Ah, why not? I’m going to blog this series. Thanks to L.A. for pointing out that I missed this series. This series is basically THE powerhouse in animation-budget for this season, plus Yoko Kanno’s work is very impressive as well. The second episode was also much better than the rather underwhelming first episode, something of which I’m very glad. The series isn’t perfect: it still combines military with teenagers and characters tend to coincidentally run into each other (how often do you meet a famous pop idol that happens to be near anyway?), but I really like how the creators showed the fear in that female character’s eyes when she got dragged into the sky during the big fight.

The staff behind this also looks quite promising. The animation-company behind this series is Satelight. The thing with Satelight is that their most recent series have been really underwhelming. Their line-up from the past few years just consisted out of Shugo Chara, Kamichama Karin, KISS DUM, Angelique, Galaxy Angel-Rune and Glass Fleet. On the other hand, they DID produce the stellar Noein (which was absolutely beautiful), Chikyuu Shoujo Arjuna, and two series with rumoured excellent graphics, but which I still have to see: Aquarion and HeatGuy J. It looks like they’re really trying to go back to their old roots with Macross Frontier, back to their quality-series. I now know why Kiss Dum, Kamichama Karin and Shugo Chara managed to win me over when they first aired: Satelight definitely know how to make graphics look good, it’s just the execution that was really buggy.

The other staff behind this series is interesting as well, but my biggest worry right now is Shoji Kawamori, the chief director. I’ve checked his profile on ANN a bit, and he’s really worked on a lot of different series, but mostly as the mechanical designs. So, yes, he does know how to produce good graphics, but I was a bit disappointed to see the series he directed before. While I can’t judge on anything of Macross that he’s done, I have heard some things about how Aquarion was to be a series with great production-values, but hardly anything else. Arjuna also could have been much better in my opinion, Spring and Chaos was a disappointing adaptation of one of Kenji Miyazawa’s stories because it didn’t know where it wanted to go, and in the end the only non-graphical thing that I can really praise him for is his role in the creation, screenplay and supervision (but NOT the direction) of Visions of Escaflowne.

Luckily, the director of this series looks more promising. He did some pretty strange series as a hentai-one, Saint Seiya, but his repertoire also includes episode 15 and 22 of none other than Noein (especially the last one was nothing but awesomeness), he directed Black Heaven (talk about something completely different) and strangely enough he was also behind the key animation of episode 11 of Ergo Proxy, which was without a doubt the trippiest one of that entire series.

So, yeah, this series can go both ways, but I’m interested to find out in which direction this series will go. This also means, however, that my Thursdays will be absolutely packed from now on. I’m not entirely sure on which other shows I’ll be blogging this season, but if Toshokan Sensou also has a good second episode, that means that I’ll be blogging SIX shows on the same day. I think that some kind of new personal record. So, you can indeed expect lots of activity from me around Tuesday and Thursday, while the other days will end up relatively quiet. Seriously, why do all the good shows air at the same time?!

Amatsuki – 02

by psgels, posted in Amatsuki


As for the reasons why I won’t blog some other shows:
– If there weren’t already enough reasons not to watch To Love-Ru: it airs on freaking Thursday, which already features four, possibly five excellent shows, which already are too many shows on the same day!
– Itazura na Kiss is hands-down hilarious. Fans of traps might want to check out the second episode, because there appears one. However, I can’t see myself blogging this week after week.
– Druaga no Tou can really go both ways. Like anyone could have expected, this is no comedy at all. It’s got a lot to like, but for every good point there’s also a bad point. If you want to see Gonzo do RPG-parodies, then go check out Master of Epic. That’s one series that’s fully geared to parodies and doesn’t have an overall storyline.

Besides, Amatsuki is better than Druaga no Tou in every single aspect apart from two: sense of humour and background art. And it of course seems that Druaga played all of its trumps in the first episode, that just leaves the background art, which just isn’t enough. I think that the thing that Druaga no Tou can learn the most from Amatsuki lies in the storytelling. Amatsuki really packs a punch in its climaxes. It knows how to time its lines and optimally use its characters to keep me glued to the screen, and that’s something I really missed in Druaga.

Toki is also inexperienced, but he’s also really different from the male lead in Druaga (whose name I already forgot, even though I watched the second episode half an hour ago). He’s not the only one who’s special, it seems. There have been more people who have been through the same thing he has been, and even worse, with the other guy losing his arm and all. He’s also naive, yet he’s not a complete idiot. I also really like the female lead, but that may be because I often like strong female characters. She really stands miles above that ditzy healer from Druaga no Tou. That really was the worst part about the second episode of that series.

This is really going to be my main series to follow from Studio Deen. While they were my favourite production-company during the previous Autumn- and Winter-season, mostly due to their magnificent performance with Shion no Ou (with the addition of the really solid Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai) this season looks to give that title to Madhouse, who actually have the potential to surpass themselves with all the different series they picked out to animate. Production IG also looks forward to an excellent season.

Some quick first impressions: Toshokan Sensou, Junjo Romantica and Kaiba

by psgels, posted in Kaiba, Some Quick First Impressions

Toshokan Sensou

With Noitamina, I just knew that this series would be worthwhile. Toshokan Sensou has proven to have the best soundtrack this season, and with Production IG, the art looks terrific. This series also smartly spent its first episode fleshing out its main characters, instead of focusing on a story-heavy start. So instead the characters already feel dynamic for when the story starts kicking in. This series has a limited time to work with, and yet it’s got quite a large premise, so this will probably be one of the most fast-paced series to come out of the Noitamina-timeslot.

Junjo Romantica

Okay, so this was a really weird combination between hilarious and disturbing. This series does have a sense of humour, and there’s some good chemistry between the characters. The only problem is that the chemistry between them might be a bit too good, because the characters wasted no time to get it on with each other. What surprises me, by the way, is that this series has the best OP song this season, strangely enough. The song is standard J-rock, but it works surprisingly well. It’ll be interesting to keep watching this series, if only to laugh at the hot passion that will erupt from it.

Kaiba

Oh my god, I can’t believe how well this series turned out! Even with the fantastic line-up that this season already has, Kaiba has delivered the best first episode of them all! This is EXACTLY the reason why I love experimental anime. Anime should be used as a medium to showcase creative ideas, not to just copy everyone else. On top of that, the mystery in this series is downright excellent. Since 2007 was so disappointing in terms of mystery, my inner-fanboy is loving all the different mystery-series that this season has offered so far! I really urge everyone to check out this series, because it’s without a doubt the most unique anime to come out this year, even taking Hakaba Kitarou in consideration. Don’t be discouraged by the childish-looking character-designs. This series is exactly the reason why simple character-designs don’t mean that the series will be for children.

xxxHolic – 26

by psgels, posted in xxxHolic


I am so glad that this series is back, if only for the banter between Watanuki and the different members of the cast. And to make things even better, this arc promises to be among the best, if not the best arc of xxxHolic yet. It’s also the longest one yet, as the original one never went beyond two episodes per arc.

Also, here’s an interesting link, with some interesting news, for those who haven’t seen it yet: http://www.xxxholicanime.net/2008/04/xxxholic-kei-13-episodes-long.php – It’s a bit disappointing to see that this series just has thirteen episodes to work with, but at least in this was it’ll be short and sweet, and there’ll be no way for it to get boring, as there seems to be enough inspiration to fill these 13 episodes.

On a side-note, I never understood why people hated the long limbs of this series. It’s not like anime-faces are the most realistically drawn anyway, with their exaggerated eyes and all, so what’s wrong with exaggerating the limbs as well? In my opinion, it’s much better than just going with character-designs in the same style of every other series.

Kurenai – 02

by psgels, posted in Kurenai


After the first episode, I was pretty sure that I’d end up blogging this series. The second episode of Kurenai is less impressive then the first one, but that’s only natural. If you’re going to start with a bang, you obviously need to take things easy in the second episode so that the characters can be fleshed out a bit. Especially Murasaki and Shinkuro got a lot of attention in this episode.

What immediately stands out for this series, apart from the art-style, is that these two main characters don’t act their age at all. I can imagine how Murasaki was educated early on, as she already speaks Japanese at adult-level, though at the same time she’s just like a princess who has been pampered for all her life. And yet she’s more than your typical spoiled princess, because most of her arrogance comes from her ignorance, and not her need to feel superior to all lower life-forms.

Shinkuro on the other hand, doesn’t show any signs of puberty at all (something of which I’m REALLY glad). We still don’t know much about him, but he’s seen his dead mother right in front of his eyes, he probably lost his father as well, he’s turned into a killing-machine with purple blood and strange elbows.

Another thing about this series is the use of dialogue. When the tension increases, the characters hardly let the others finish speaking before they say something. Where you’d usually hear a one-second pause between one sentence and the next, Kurenai shortens this to a quarter of a second. I’m not sure whether this series is the first one to do this, but it is the first time I’ve noticed it.

One thing I’m quite curious about is the length of this series: will it be 13 or 26 episodes, and if there are 26 episodes, then how does this series plan to fill its time? Some series are quite sneaky about it. For Persona, for example, I realized really late that it was supposed to run for two seasons, instead of just one.