Saiunkoku Monogatari – 73

by psgels, posted in Saiunkoku Monogatari


Haha! This has to be the most comprehensible Saiunkoku Monogatari-episode I’ve seen in months. Finally I can understand things again without the help of Impz’s summaries. ^^; Sure, there were a few things that I didn’t pick up, but I’m glad enough that at least this episode didn’t feel like a giant Rubik’s Cube.

The episode starts after what happened at the end of the last episode, and Ensei cheers Shuurei up a bit. He then also agrees to go along with her to the Ran-clan. Ensei also notices that Shuurei hasn’t been sleeping well, so he forces her to go to sleep, while Seiran notices this and threatens to kill the guy. After this, Seiran asks Ensei to make sure that Shuurei returns safely from the Ran-clan.

We then switch to Shouka, Juusanhime and Ryuuki, leaving the capital, with Seiran and Yuushun seeing them off. The next scene is between Shuurei and Ki Kouki, who asks Shuurei that now that she’s going to the Ran-province anyway, that she should investigate a guy named “Shiba Jin”, and I think that Shuurei knows fully well what this means if she goes in too deep, and Juusanhime’s lover might get arrested if she does her job of investigating too well. He also orders her to bring back a few souvenirs, and to not go after Ryuuki if he decides to agree with his engagement with Juusanhime. When Shuurei runs off, she passes Seiga, and the guy has a really suspicious grin on his face while she passes him.

Next up, we see Ensei, Shuurei and Suou in a carriage, heading to the port. They then get surprised by an overly worried father of Suou, who underwent a total change of characters since we saw him first. It seems that he’s really proud of his son now, and he’s still thankful to Shuurei on how sh got him out of prison, it seems. At least, I think that Shuurei was the one who did that, I could be wrong. In any case, he entrusts Suou to Shuurei for the trip. ^^;

The next scene shows Shun and Shusui, as they too seem to be heading for the Ran-province. Shusui isn’t doing well, though, and she struggles to go up the mountains. For some reason, Shun also puts up an eye-patch, to cover for the eye he’s missing. Shusui then mentions a number of strange characters, though that story is one I couldn’t pick up. What’s important, though, is that at one point, she gets possessed again by that strange thing that got hold of her a few episodes back. She calls this thing “Ruka-sama”.

Shuuei has meanwhile finally arrived at the Ran-palace. His triplet-brothers aren’t there, but his brother Ryuuren and his sister Gyoku (I think that’s how she was called) are present. Ryuuren takes off into the woods again, and Shuuei gets to reuinite with his sister. The thing is that he wasn’t really keen on that, and for some reason he was reluctant to meet her. I didn’t pick up exactly why, as she seemed like a really nice person (they even played together when they were kids), though if I had to guess then he did some thing to hurt her in the past. I didn’t pick up what exactly that was, though. Also, Setsuna, is that the name of one of Shuuei’s triplet-brothers, or is that yet another of his brothers?

The episode ends with the ship on which Shuurei, Suou and Ensei are sailing in order to get to the Ran-province. Suou gets seasick, and Ensei’s remedy is basically to knock the guy out so that he’s unconscious during the trip. ^^; The ship then gets struck by a whirlpool that the area is famous for. According to a local legend, one person once threw a manju in the whirlpools and they disappeared. For some reason, Shuurei thinks that this legend is important somehow.

On a side-note, those whirlpools were really badly animated, but then again, this is Madhouse. Their animation is either incredibly good or incredibly bad, and you can really see in this episode that it was meant to save a bit of animation-budget.

Alien Nine Review – 86/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


What a charming little OVA. Alien Nine gives the term “Alien Invasion” a whole new dimension. Here, aliens can come in lots of different sizes and shapes, and most of them have no real intention to take over the Earth at all. Instead, they cause small amounts of trouble here and there, especially around schools apparently. Because of that, random students get allocated for each school to be the local alien fighters. Alien Nine is about the three alien fighters for one particular grade school.

The beauty of this anime is that it’s a character-study, and it knows it. Every single scene is dedicated to flesh out the three main characters, and develop them through the short airtime of four episodes. There’s a lot of angst, but the creators never delve into pointless melodrama, and they know exactly when to time the big climaxes for this OVA. There’s no cheesy love-story that gets in the way of what’s really important either, and all in all, the creators made the optimum use of the short time that they had to work with.

The thing about the characters is that they would have failed horribly if they weren’t developed as well as this series did. There’s a cry-baby, a strong girl and a perfect girl. They’re all pretty clichéd when you first see them, but the storytelling is so refreshing that you hardly even notice this while watching. Do note that the cry-baby can get on people’s nerves at times, so that may be potentially off-putting. Her interaction with the other main characters is excellent, though. 😉

Unfortunately, and I’m afraid to say it, but Alien Nine does suffer from the “TOO SHORT!!”-syndrome, which I’ve seen on many other movies and OVAs. Some anime try to solve this by omitting important character-backgrounds, others don’t bother to explain their storylines properly, though Alien Nine manages to avoid this. Instead, it just stops. I assume that it’s based on a manga, and only the first X chapters of this manga made it into the OVA. It’s a darn shame, because I feel that yet again this series deserves so much more episodes.

Thankfully, this flaw never got in the way of the characters, and they make sure to keep this OVA interesting till the end. The creators know how to build up properly, and try their best with such a limited amount of time. You’d be surprised at how intense the drama can get at times, considering that we’re just dealing with ordinary grade-schoolers.

Hakaba Kitarou – 04

by psgels, posted in Hakaba Kitarou


Well, that was disappointing. This most definitely was the worst episode of Hakaba Kitarou yet when it half-degrades into a dating-sim series between Kitarou and Neko. What the heck were the creators thinking, turning this series into a cheesy love-drama? When Kitarou fell in love, he totally ruined his own evil anti-hero that I liked so much in the first three episodes.

Thankfully, the cat’s dead now, so thankfully she won’t ruin the series much further, though the preview for the next episode shows Kitarou being angsty and love-sick. And now I realize how this series has one major problem: it doesn’t build up carefully. It does have the shock-value, though this episode showed that building-up is not its strongest point, and that’s really needed to make a love-relationship interesting. Right now, it feels like we’ve temporarily gone down a cheap romantic comedy.

I should have known to be careful with this series when the director only did Kamisama Kazoku before. That series to had some interesting twists, but the romance really felt horribly annoying at times. And the romance is one thing, but I also spotted numerous Deus ex Machinas and badly explained plot-holes during the climax. Writers: what happened?!

Please, Kitarou, go back to horror!

Ghost Hound – 13

by psgels, posted in Ghost Hound


With a title of “For the Snark was a Boojum, you see”, this episode had to be different from all the others. And indeed, this one gives a totally new twist to the story. You don’t want to miss this episode. The strangest part is that the first three quarters play entirely inside Tarou’s head. It’s here where he meets Snark, a strange Ghost-like creature who seems to live there. And Boojum… well, let’s say that that guy is still missing, but if we were to believe the title, then it seems that this Snark was a Boojum as well. Let’s hope that the future episodes explain what the heck this means…

In any case, Tarou travels from his last memories with his sister to an old hospital full of deceased people, to Snark’s room, where all kinds of memories of him are stored. You have to love the creativity that the creators have put into the different sections of the guy’s mind. He also visits a certain room that Kei (I think that’s her name) forbad him to go into, and it seems that this is some kind of special fermentation-place where spirits also like to visit. Tarou then faints a bit. I really liked this part, because it shows exactly what the previous episodes have been building up for: Tarou, getting more and more familiar with the spirit-world and his ghost-form.

The episode is more than just that, though. In his explorations, Tarou also saw that Miyako had caught a really bad cold, so he decides to visit her, along with Masayuki, Oogami and Michio. It’s here where Tarou tells Takahito about the things that Miyako said when she was possessed, and Takahito immediately orders them to leave, looking worried. It seems that he knew exactly what these sentences meant. To make things even better: when they descend the stairs of the shrine, none other than Noriko (Makoto’s grandmother’s household) stands there, waiting for him. Makoto of course gets angry and runs away, and everyone follows him, but Michio looks back, and suddenly sees a really evil grin from Noriko’s face. I never expected that even she had some kind of secret. This can turn out really interesting, and you just have to see that evil smile for yourself. 😛

January Summary

by psgels, posted in Monthly Summaries

We’ve now passed one third of the Winter-season. I must say that it’s been one of the best winter-seasons we’ve had in years. There are so many potentially awesome series, and there have been hardly any disappointments so far.

#31 (new) – H20 ~ Footprints in the Sand – (5/10) – I find it strange to think that this is one of the most blogged-series of the new winter-season. Are people expecting some kind of spectacular trainreck ending, just like with School Days, or was could there really come something good from the crappy first episode?
#30 (new) – Rosario to Vampire – (5,2/10) – A lot of people seem to believe that Gonzo ruined this series, but I’ve got enough reasons to think that the manga was bad in the first place. Gonzo just made it worse.
#29 (new) – They are my Noble Masters – (6,8/10) – Yes, it’s filled with harem-cliches, but it’s also one thing: it’s fun to watch. There’s nothing ground-breaking, but I’d choose to watch this series above Lucky Star at any time.
#28 (24) – Dragonaut The Resonance – (6,9/10) – Yes, the story for this series is as bad as ever. Still, I unfortunately have to admit that it did catch my interest, and I’m actually curious to find out what’s going to happen next.
#27 (new) – Minami-ke Okawari – (7/10) – Just like its predecessor, I just couldn’t get myself interested to watch beyond episode 1, so I dropped it.
#26 (new) – Hatenkou Yuugi – (7,2/10) – The only disappointment for this season. Alas, so many great things could have come from this series, but the storytelling feels dull and uninspired. The creators don’t even seem to care to try and let everything make sense, and the only thing that wasn’t screwed up by the creators seems to be the dialogue.
#25 (19) – Shugo Chara – (7,3/10) – 51 episodes is a terrific format, but you have to use it. There’s no use in putting up 26 filler-episodes to try and make it longer. Let’s hope for now that this series knows what it’s doing for its final quarter, but right now there’s a good chance that I’m going to drop this series and marathon it if it turns out to be good in the end.
#24 (20) – Bamboo Blade – (7,4/10) – Every time I have the urge to drop this series, it drags me back in. Bamboo Blade definitely didn’t catch my interest as much as I’d hoped to, and there are so many better series out there, but it’s moderately entertaining at least.
#23 (new) – Noramimi – (7,6/10) – So, here I am as probably the only one who still watches this. It’s quite cute, and a relaxing series. Still, even though it’s enjoyable, I do have to say that Tetsuko no Tabi was better.
#22 (12) – Kekkaishi – (7,8/10) – Unfortunately, only one episode got released this month. It was just a regular building-up episode, though I did notice how the humour of this series, especially when compared to the first half of the series, has gone down a lot.
#21 (16) – Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji – (8,1/10) – With the beam-arc, I felt like Kaiji lost sight of its original purpose a bit: gambling. I went into this series, expecting people, trying to outsmart each other. Not a bunch of people, being scared to death for episodes. Luckily, it feels like the next arc will breathe some new life into this series.
#20 (new) – Spice and Wolf – (8,2/10) – I admit: I’m impressed by the work that Imagin has done for this series. The mood is quiet, and yet enough things are going on to keep you interested, and the storytelling has been quite good so far.
#19 (new) – Persona Trinity Soul – (8,2/10) – I’m still not sure what to think of this series, but I mean that in a good way. So far, it’s carefully building up its storyline, and the climaxes so far have been quite interesting. Now let’s hope that this series can keep this up.
#18 (17) – Gundam 00 – (8,2/10) – So far, so good. Gundam 00 is really turning into an enjoyable series. I have a few problems with it here and there, but the characters and politics work, and thank god that it hasn’t turned into a cheap emo-fest.
#17 (23) – Suteki Tantei Labyrinth – (8,3/10) – So, basically this series turned from moderately entertaining to just plain weird. It’s very strange, it’s either incredibly good or incredibly bad. If you want to watch this, be aware of one thing: you don’t want to take this series seriously.
#16 (15) – Power Puff Girls Z – (8,4/10) – The fight against Him was awesome. The creators knew exactly what to do to keep the fight interesting, and much, much more than what you’d see in any random shounen-series *coughbleachcough*. The love-love-beam episode was also brilliant. Professor Utonium rocks! Unfortunately, the other episodes that got released this month were a bit disappointing, and too dramatic for their own good. Don’t get me wrong, this series actually gets away with its sappy drama, but it’s in no way as fun as the other aspects of the series.
#15 (21) – Clannad – (8,4/10) – Instead of really sad, I’ve found the past number of episodes from Clannad to be really relaxing. I must congratulate Kyoto Animation: they finally churned out a series that I liked.
#14 (new) – Hakaba Kitarou – (8,4/10) – The surprise of the season. This series has brought forth really entertaining horror-series that combines drama, horror and comedy perfectly. A definite recommendation; Noitamina rocks.
#13 (new) – True Tears – (8,4/10) – Like expected from the director of Simoun. True Tears has shown enough signs that it knows what it’s doing, despite the clichéd characters it has do work with. The pacing may be slow, but so far this series has done a very good job to develop its major characters.
#12 (22) – Kimikiss Pure Rouge – (8,5/10) – Kimikiss has gone into the right direction this month, and the love-triangles really work so far. I’m quite impressed with this series, and how carefully it manages to build up the different relationships between the characters.
#11 (10) – Saiunkoku Monogatari – (8,5/10) – Just when the pacing begins to pick up again, this series is plagued with random hiatuses that break it. Let’s hope that the final episodes will all air without any interruption.

#10 (5) – Gintama – (8,5/10)

Episode 46 was the first time where I caught Gintama, milking out its own jokes. Thankfully, episode 47 made more than up for it with what what’s definitely its best introduction to an episode so far. You just have to see that one for yourself to believe it, and I really admire the fantastic job that the voice-actor did on it.

#9 (new) – Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino – (8,5/10)

I don’t seem to mind the bad graphics as much as most others, but the fact remains that the animation has gone down a lot. Thankfully, the art itself is still nice to look at, and the story simply rocks so far.

#8 (new) – Porfy no Nagai Tabi – (8,6/10)

The first four episodes have been excellent in terms of building up. Sure, it’s slow, but Porfy and his sister have already developed into terrific three-dimensional characters.

#7 (new) – Shigofumi – (8,8/10)

The only problem with this series is that it likes to put in random plot-devices to increase dramatic tension. Apart from that, the stories so far have been excellent in terms of both storytelling and characters. On top of that, the art looks terrific and the soundtrack fits the series perfectly. Okay, apart from the OP, perhaps.

#6 (6) – Perrine Monogatari – (8,8/10)

Oh god… I’ve read the summaries for this series, so I know what’s about to happen. Seriously, Perrine’s mother is too awesome for such a thing.. 🙁

#5 (3) – Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei – (8,9/10)

The big fear would of course be that the second season would run out of jokes, but thankfully, the opposite turned out to be true. For the second season, it seems that the creators decided to let go of all the brakes and go all out.

#4 (8) – Mokke – (9/10)

Have I already mentioned that the background-music for this series is amazing? In any case, for January, Mokke increased the dramatic tension for its episodes a bit, and it really works. The stories are simple, but I’m warming up more and more to the different characters. MadHouse did another terrific job on this adaptation.

#3 (4) – Ghost Hound – (9,1/10)

I really like to see that Ghost Hound has turned into an excellent series, which stands apart from all the others. The characters feel really natural, the storytelling has progressed in a really nice way and the story itself has also become more interesting with every episode.

#2 (new) – Wellber no Monogatari – (9,2/10)

Seriously, with the second season, Wellber no Monogatari has become so much better. Every episode works, and the characters have been absolutely amazing. And to think that there still are enough episodes left for this series to work with.

#1 (2) – Shion no Ou – (9,2/10)

This series just keeps and delivers consistently awesome episodes. Tournament-arcs often fail, but this series has managed to do so many great things with it.

Wellber no Monogatari ~ Sisters of Wellber – 18

by psgels, posted in Wellber no Monogatari ~ Sisters of Wellber


So, this was clearly a building-up episode, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t an excellent one. I really can’t believe how well the second season has progressed thus far, and I’m loving every minute of it.

This episode was mainly meant to develop the love-triangle between Galahad, Rita and Tina, when Sherry gets sick and the group is forced to make a pause. It’s clear now that both Rita and Tina love Galahad, though Rita is the only one who finds out that Tina too has feelings for the guy. Because of that, when Galahad confesses to her, despite how he’s still lovesick from Jamill, Rita declines.

Meanwhile, in terms of politics this series has also progressed. The king of Greedom has finally created a peace-treaty between the kings of Wellber and Sangatras, but in the meantime, he has plans, along with the king of Sangatras to screw the king of Wellber over behind his back. Guernia may be dead, but his father is still alive. I’m wondering when we’ll see Rita’s brother again. After all, he’s number one on my list of “guys that could have killed Tina’s parents”, and at the same time, he probably won’t like it when he finds out the plans of Greedam and Sangatras.

Suteki Tantei Labyrinth – 17

by psgels, posted in Suteki Tantei Labyrinth


Okay, now I know for sure: this show’s crazy!

I’m not sure what it is that the creators have taken, but I wonder where I could get some. I now finally understand how the director (Hiroshi Watanabe) could have produced series that are so incredibly different in overall quality. The guy is just incredibly dependant on the source-material that he has to adapt, and somehow manages to increase the most defining feature of said source-material. Shining Tears X Wind was rumoured to be the “worst RPG ever”, so of course you’d get a very crappy anime. The Law of Ueki, on the other hand, came from a very creative manga, and that worked just perfect with the strange sense of humour of Hiroshi Watanabe. And now Suteki Tantei Labyrinth has been adopted from a manga that according to Usagijen already was quite bizarre, and the result is… well… this.

The fact remains that nearly every of Hiroshi watanabe’s works left some kind of lasting impression on me, whether good or bad. I still cringe at how horribly cheese the twelfth episode of Shining Tears X Wind was. I still consider The Law of Ueki to be the single best shounen-fighting series out there. The final parts of Star Ocean Ex bombarded me with its horrible deus ex machinas, and it was exactly that series that made me realize how bad these are for the overall storytelling, and Suteki Tantei Labyrinth is currently fighting along with Power Puff Z for the title of “weirdest storytelling”. In the same way, I’m getting rather curious to check out his works on Tactics and Matantei Loki Ragnarok. The guy should try to animate some ideas of his own, though. I mean, he definitely has enough creativity to pull it off; he was the one who proposed the concept for Jigoku Shoujo, after all.

Anyway, about the episode… it really was one of the weirdest yet. The show may be heading further and further away from the “detective”-part in the title, but in exchange for that it has turned into a(n unintentionally) hilarious anime that just screams “don’t take me seriously”. Basically, Seiran’s brother seems to have made it to the new school-headmaster, and for that, he organizes a running-event. Mayuki, being by far the slowest person in the class, obviously doesn’t like this.

Hold on, though, it gets much weirder. When Mayuki is all alone, Hatsumi comes from out of nowhere, carrying a huge backpack full of meat and vegetables, in an attempt to replenish Mayuki’s energy (…yeah). She then falls into some kind of trap-door (yes, in the middle of a street), and both she and Mayuki end up in some kind of underground building, probably from before most of the buildings got destroyed. After a small conversation with his good and bad angel (am I the only one who was disturbed by the fact that these angels were wearing dresses?), he decides to cheat and take a shortcut.

Unfortunately, the plans of cheating are short-lived when the two of them get lost. Incidentally, he suddenly seems to have become much better at running… In any case, now we get to the really strange part… they run into a strange man who is trying to get rid of some rocks in one of the corridors. After they try to help him a bit (to no avail, by the way), he points them to a door, that’s supposed to be the exit. Behind that door, is an alligator.

Yes, don’t ask me where the heck that alligator came from. I have no freaking idea myself. After a hilarious chase, Mayuki uses the meat that Hatsumi was carrying (gee, what an incredible coincidence :P), to lure the beast away, and clear the rocks in the process. It then seems that the strange man was after a time-capsule, in which a demo-tape of his early days as a rock-band guitarist was kept. Unfortunately, the band went nowhere, and they broke up, and this demo-tape was the only thing that remained of their works. It seems that he was just being nostalgic.

The story isn’t over with just that, though. The rocks were not only blocking that time-capsule, but also some kind of underground water. Oh, and Maru ran off on his own when he smelled food. Hako uses this chance to secretly attack Hatsumi for no apparent reason, and Seiran, who also came from nowhere, tries to stop her, but fails. In the end, everyone flees from the water. For some reason, in the aftermath we see water come from the top of a huge building, which would be physically rather impossible. But then again, this is at least better than the murder on top of the radio-tower…

The episode ends with a very strange twist: The owner of the previously mentioned alligator is Shien, and he seems to have called her “Catherine”. Incidentally, it hasn’t eaten the meat from Mayuki at all, and strangely enough, the two of them end up hugging each other… Really, looking back, this series has so many bad storytelling-errors, but I’m really beginning to think that this was intentional…

Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino – 04

by psgels, posted in Gunslinger Girl - Il Teatrino


Really, this episode rocked! I’d much rather see badly animated, but well-coordinated fights than godly animated, but abysmally coordinated ones. Flashy graphics is one thing, but if all the characters do is hurl flashy beams towards each other until one goes down, then I’d pass. I’m really impressed at how the plot has developed up till now.

You can say a lot about this series, but for me, it remains really well-written. The creators make sure that lots of stuff happens in one episode, and I actually feel that Artland did this better than the first season by Madhouse. The current episode is a Marco/Angelica-episode. One thing I also noticed of the second season is also that even though the character-designs have been supposedly “moefied”, it’s not like the girls are the only ones who get attention. One of the problems with the first seasons was that the guys didn’t really get that much attention, though here it feels that they get about just as much attention as the girls. If the creators really wanted to use the cute girls to sell this series, they’d have included random moe-moments, of which I haven’t seen any thus far.

In this episode, it seems that one of the major subordinates of Christopher gets arrested. The episode starts with a bit of his family, and I like how he’s portrayed in a way that doesn’t care about any clichés. Interestingly enough, there was no sign of Pinocchio, nor Franco or Franca. This clearly was an episode to build up, but still I’ve found this to be the best episode of the second season yet. I really like how this series has been getting better and better with every episode.

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 04

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi


I’m getting rather annoyed at the huge negligence of this series. Sure, this definitely isn’t the first time that I blogged a series that almost nobody watches, but it’s really getting extreme here: this afternoon, when I checked up on my google-keywords this afternoon, I found out that eighty-four people came to this site, searching for the “Porfy sucks”. I mean, what!?

Okay, rambling aside, this was another excellent episode, as it continues to develop the characters. The episode starts with Porfy, waking up, and heading downstairs without waking up Mina. It’s here where he starts working on Mina’s birthday-present. It’s going to be something, carved out of wood, but he still refuses to show it to anyone. We also see him, borrowing a piece of string from his mother.

Mina then wakes up, and climbs downstairs. There, her mother (whose name is Anek, by the way) and father (whose name is Christopher, by the way), congratulate her on her eleventh birthday. Mina then rushes over to Porfy, though he acts like nothing happened (obviously, because the present isn’t done yet ^^;). Let’s just say that Mina isn’t happy. In any case, since this day it seems to be weekend as well, so Porfy and Mina are off from school. Therefore, Christopher offers to give the whole family a ride.

For that, however, a car is needed. It then turns out that Christopher is a car mechanic, and he can use the car of one of his clients (Corrina’s father, to be exactly), as long as he fixes it. And suddenly a lot of things become clear; most importantly Porfy’s obsession for cars. Of course, if your father is a car mechanic, you get to see a lot of cars. Now that I mention it, Mina must have become interested in Ancient Greece because of her mother. She came from a wealthy family, so she obviously has been schooled in these subjects, and she must have told Mina a lot of wonderful stories of those days.

Christopher indeed teaches Porfy a few things about cars as he works, after which Corrina drops by, looking for Zaimis. Once she left and the job is done, he takes the car along with Porfy to Mina and Anek. What’s also interesting is that he didn’t ask for a fee at all, as long as he could use the car for one day to go out with his family.

On the way home, Christopher and Porfy pass Zaimis and his father, who are just painting their stone hedges. Porfy wants to use the paint a bit to decorate his present for Mina (which we still didn’t get to see, by the way). After this, Anek and Mina are picked up, and Christopher heads to the ruins of an ancient Greek city, along with its own ancient theatre; something which Mina loves; you can really see that as she tries to imagine how that might have been. She even starts singing in Greek at one point. I must say that her voice-actress does a decent job. It definitely beats Les Miserables’ attempts at speaking French. 😛

While the foursome has lunch together, Porfy finally gives his present to Mina: it’s the wood-carved Apollo that you can see in the OP. This will probably have a huge symbolic value, later on in the series. When Christopher and the others return, a guy named Nicholas arrives at his house as well, delivering various materials that are used to build a house with, along with a very young tree, which gets to be planted in the back-yard of the house. It seems to be a “minen”-tree, though I’m not sure what that translates to. I did find a tree called a “minesakura”, which means a Japanese alpine cherry, though I wonder whether those exist in Greece. In any case, because the name of the tree sounds like Mina, the tree is called “Mina’s tree”, and the episode ends. I’m not sure what kind of house Christopher intends to build, but I’d guess it’s some kind of inn.

On a side-note: I’m still surprised at how detailed, yet simple the dialogue for this series is. For every episode, there’s usually just two or three line that I just can’t understand. Apart from that, I’m having no trouble at all to figure out what the characters are saying. Ever since I started watching raws, there hasn’t been any series that I was able understand as well as this series. That’s also why it’s such a shame that no subs have come out: it’s the perfect series for beginning translators to practice their skills.

Gundam 00 – 16

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam 00


So, yes. This episode was for one half a recap, and for the other half it’s the proper introduction of the new Throne Gundams. Ah well, at least it was good for one thing: making me look forward to the next episode. Looking back at their intervention, while the presentation could have been better, it does make sense. I mean, Scheinberg had to have thought of the possibility that entire armies would end up against the Celestial Beings. Building in such a safety would be a great tactical move. It’s a real shame that none of the Gundams was captured, but I think that this is just going to be a simple matter of delaying the inevitable. It’s clear that the CBs have a lot of tricks up their sleeve, but these tricks have to run out at some point.

I don’t like the three new pilots of the Gundam Thrones, though. While I expect that they’ll work great when they’ll meat the normal Gundam Meisters (which is the reason why I’m looking forward to the next episode so much), on their own they seem really dull and uninspired. Especially the girl: she’s well-endowed, has a high-pitched voice, and doesn’t seem to be well-gifted in the intelligence-department.

One thing that could be interesting for the future episodes is how the three Throne Gundam Meisters lack one important thing: battle experience. Their Gundams may be fancy, but I can’t imagine how they’ve ever used them in a serious fight. Also, why was Sumeragi so worried during the battle? I mean, didn’t she know that the Throne Gundams would appear? Or could this be something that still needs to be revealed?