Okay, I don’t care about the cheesy parts. This episode was absolutely magnificent! Just when I thought that this series had passed its best part, it comes and delivers such an incredibly awesome episode. Obviously, spoilers are going to follow.
If this was a regular anime, this would be about the time where the adults step back and let the youngsters take over. In this episode, it’s the ENTIRE OPPOSITE, as it features the final epic conflict between Jean and Javert, and the younger members of the cast take a step back and only get a few small minutes of airtime. At the end of the previous episode, Jean had a badly wounded Marius with him, and indeed, Jean finally stops running away and agrees to go with Javert if he brings Marius to a hospital.
We then switch to Javert’s carriage, where I absolutely loved the conversation Jean and Javert had, and to make things even better, Jean explains what exactly made him change so much. It turns out that the words of the bishop brought him in a huge confusion, and he lived a miserable life of a drifter at that point. Then he got accidentally mistaken for a thief, and scared a child away because of it, and that’s what made him see the light.
Javert finally has this moment when he realizes that Jean still has Fantine’s last wishes in his mind, after all these nine years. Marius is dropped off at the hospital, and Javert leaves Jean behind when the latter wants to say his final goodbye to Cosette! Later, when Javert realizes what exactly he had done, he really sees the light. Literally and figuratively, and I adored the amount of depth that he got with his little monologue.
Immediate changes in personality are often hard to do, and they often feel forced, but for me, this episode was awesome, both for Jean and Javert and more than half of the scenes had me crying at the screen. I’m not sure whether it was done this way in the book, but one way or the other, this episode was outstanding.
And right now, I’m wondering what the creators have been planning for the final six episodes. Will it be one long aftermath, or will Thenardier return one final time? The latter would be awesome.]]>
Shion no Ou – 06
Now that the first half of the series is nearly over, it’s time for an intermezzo. Shion no Ou spends it giving Shion and the ones around her a bit more background in the form of a friend who died eight years ago, develop Ayumi’s case even more and introduce the final half of the series. Next episode, we’ll see the match between Shion and Saori.
The friend who died was basically a good comrade of both Shion’s foster-parents, Shion herself (who seems to be quite close with them, even before she lost her parents) and Hani-meji as well. His name seems to be Kyotarou, and he was the one who taught Shion shougi when she got interested when she saw a shougi-board. I also love how this little piece of background brought Shion and her foster-family even closer together. Kyotarou seems to have caught a deadly sickness afterwards, and his condition went worse quite quickly, and if I understood things correctly, he wanted to play Hani-meji (who already was a terrific shougi-player back then) one final time, and died before he could finish the match.
Meanwhile, we know what happened to Ayumi’s father: he’s an incredible idiot who just leaves his ex-wife to die, while stealing money from his son and beating him viciously. While it is a bit stereotypical, I guess it does feel in place in this series. It would be awesome if said father would receive a small bit of development himself in one of the final episodes, but I have no idea what to expect from the second half of this series.
Well, apart from one thing, perhaps. This is just one big hunch, but the yellow-haired guy, who finally gets a proper introduction in this episode as Hani-meji’s brother, is on the top of my list of “people most likely to have killed Shion’s parents”. Remember, we know that the silhouette of the guy must be one with short hair. In this episode, Shion also claims that the killer had clean and pretty hands, and the guy seems to fit these requirements as well. But most importantly, there has to be a reason why both he and Shion have a necklace with the exact same gem on it.]]>
Dennou Coil – A Circle of Children – 24
Yup, this really is a calm-before-the-storm-episode. The pieces are set in the right spot for the finale, and the characters mourn about the things that happened in the previous episode. Finally, the parents of the different children decide to take away their glasses, because it’s now really clear that these things are dangerous. With Kanna and 4423, the details were vague, and most people just assumed that they just died, but it seems that Isako’s case went all over the news, and it’s finally become clear that the cyber-world isn’t something for children to play with.
A lot of time is also spent on Yasako, mourning about the loss of Densuke, and I loved the details put into it. Like everyone else, Yasako is really starting to doubt whether the cyber-world is real, and blames the fact that she can’t cry for Densuke on the fact that he’s just a bunch of codes, while in fact she still can’t accept that he’s gone. I think that that’s because she was surrounded by Isako and Haraken, who both lost someone important to them. For the past few episodes, we’ve seen how Yasako tried to help both of them recover from their troubles, though I think that she never really imagined how it must feel to lose a loved one. That’s what she finds out in this episode.
And ZOMG, I totally forgot about Mayumi! This series is very sneaky in that, mentioning things early in the series that only turn out important near the end of the series. Densuke being kidnapped, Yasako’s grandfather’s room and others are examples of this too, and it really took me a while to realize that Yasako actually DID have some problems in her previous school. According to Wao, she got into a fight with Mayumi. Yasako believes that Mayumi was the one who started bullying her, while it was in fact Yasako who started the bullying.
Another thing I loved about this episode, despite how quiet it was when compared to the other episodes of this series, was how I could relate to so many things. Okay, I may never have seen the death of a loved one, but I can understand Yasako in trying to relate to people who did experience it, because I’ve been doing that very often with different anime-series. It also felt really nostalgic when the parents started confiscating the glasses of their children. The story about Mayumi and the bullying also brought back memories. I think everyone has done some thing in their pasts that they aren’t quite proud of…]]>
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 45
And with this episode, some of the final left in this series are answered: why did some survive, and what is Takano after? This episode explains about operation #34, where basically the entire village is killed before they have the time to become paranoid. The reason why Keiichi wasn’t killed in the third arc was because nobody knew where he went, and he was only discovered afterwards by some non-Yamainu. If I had to guess, then he was killed immediately afterwards by the same woman who killed Satoko in the first arc of the second season, because their symptoms would develop in time anyway, making them claw their own throats. The reason Rena was the only one who managed to survive was because she was the only one who managed to get cured by Keiichi, so there was no need to kill her. It’s a shame Rika doesn’t remember this, as it would have been a key to keep surviving.
Then, the reason Takano does everything is finally revealed: to put the blame on the bastards who turned down the work of her grandfather. There’s probably more to this, since she kept yelling about being t=a god-like person, but I’d like her to have such a simple goal. It makes much more sense than becoming the next Oyashiro-sama.
I really wonder how this series plans to end… I mean, with this, there are just five episodes left. Higurashi has been building up for quite a while now, but it has to make up for this with some pretty amazing climaxes. How can they turn this into something more than just “Takano dies and everyone lives happily ever after”? Will the creators really be able to trump the highlights of the first season in the end? Overall, I’d say the two seasons are about the same quality right now. The first season had a better feel, was more intriguing and had better climaxes, but the second season has been much more consistent and it managed to avoid the flaws in the script of the first one, but on the other hand, it’s just too slow at times…
Really, writing a review for this series is going to be incredibly tricky…]]>
Little Princess Sara – 02
Whoa… seriously…. I expected this series to take the same path as Les Miserables and Perrine, where the first season would be used to quietly introduce the different characters and settings, especially since Perrine has been a rather quiet series while Perrine and her mother have been travelling through Easter Europe.
And then Sara comes, and already delivers such a powerful episode, so early in the series, where Sara has to say goodbye to her father. She really is something different from your usual spoiled child, and the bond between her and her father is huge. This probably is due to the loss of her mother, which made a major impact on the two of them.
The majority of the episode is filled with Sara, trying to find Emily. It becomes even clearer that she’s got a lot of imagination, and sortof lives in her own world. And because she’s so innocent, she probably also gets her way. It’d be interesting to see in the future episodes when she doesn’t. The head of the school she’s in already suspects that she’ll cause huge amounts of troubles when that happens, though she looks more like someone who hides her sadness, like this episode showed how both Ralph and Sara refused to cry in front of each other. One thing’s for sure, though: the people in the school are going to have to get used to Sara’s strange personality.]]>
Saiunkoku Monogatari – 66
Ow bugger. Saiunkoku Monogatari kept getting more interesting with every single episode progressing, and now the creators have to tease us with a recap-episode. Basically, the important moments for Suou and Shuei of the past six episodes are recapped, suggesting what some of the commenters have indeed been hinting at, that the two of them will play a major role in the upcoming arc. There is a bit of new material here and there, but that’s mostly quirky dialogues between Seiran, Ryuuki and Kouyuu. I did appreciate the few serious scenes amongst them, though.]]>
Shugo Chara – 07
2007 has really been a bad year for the Mahou-Shoujo genre. I’m not really going to expect Shugo Chara to become better than Sasami Mahou Shoujo-club of last year. This episode also showed that the creators are going to settle for the story of the manga with fillers now and then to fill the time of a 26-episode-series, despite how I hoped for them to just go with their own version of the story.
Still, this episode wasn’t that bad. It had no bad egg of the week, and finally put someone other than Amu in the spotlights. The result is a silly adventure where Ami and the Shugo Charas go on a treasure-hunt. Quite fun and random. The other characters also go through a bit of development, and we meet three new bad guys: the one who’s behind everything and tries to look evil behind his “Easter”-desk, a red-haired woman and the yellow-haired girl we’ve been seeing in the OP.
It’s indeed like expected: Amu has Embryo. Otherwise, there’d be no way to explain why she has three Shugo Charas and can transform, while the others can’t. It’d be great if the creators showed why Amu of all possible people has it. I’m still not sure whether she’s going to be a good main character for this series, though. On one side, her case is interesting, about the facade she puts up in front of others, and she’s got a nice sense of humour. On the other hand, her whining against the Batsu-Charas for the past few episodes grew more obnoxious with every episode.
I may have chosen the wrong shows to blog this season with Shugo Chara and Suteki Tantei Labyrinth. It’s ironic, at the start of the season, I tried my best to predict which series would turn out the most interesting, and I somehow ended up choosing these two above Mokke, which is getting better and better with every episode. It’s going to be a nice experiment, though. I wonder whether both series will be able to turn out excellent in their second halves. It’s not like these two series aren’t fun; actually, they’re quite enjoyable, but I just can’t see them become among the best series of the season.]]>
Ghost Hound – 05
I’m quite interested to find out the direction in which Ghost Hound is heading. The episodes have been progressing quite naturally, and while I thought that the previous episode concluded the introduction for this series, this episode made me think that this series is still quite busy introducing its concepts. Reminds me of Ergo Proxy, that one also took ten episodes before it got to its “proxy-of-the-week”-plot.
This episode again was mostly building-up, but despite this it was an excellent one. I like anime that don’t just shine in their climaxes, but remain interesting throughout their entire airtime. The episode starts with the day after the last episode, and it’s interesting how Tarou, Masayuki and Makoto reacted differently to their hairs being cut off at the previous episode. Tarou didn’t care, Masayuki bought a really big hat, and Makoto found it a good time to go to a barber to just cut all of his hair short.
The three of them all get a bit more development as well. Makoto seems to hate his family, which consists out of his mother (or was that some kind of maid?) and grandmother, of which the latter is some kind of spiritual figure in the village. I don’t think that the three of them have really recovered from the murder of Makoto’s father, and they grew apart after it. This is quite similar to Tarou, especially his mother still can’t forget about her dead daughter, and that is causing quite some problems in his household. It’s not like how they keep fighting, like with Makoto, but Tarou and his parents keep hiding their worries. In this episode, we also see Tarou claim that he’s the most scared of upsetting his mother, because she already is so incredibly fragile.
Masayuki’s background is still one big mystery, but now we know too that his parents are about to divorce, and they had a fight this episode. He’s chosen to not worry about that too much, and it seems like he doesn’t want to have to do anything with it. It’s also still a mystery what Miyako’s powers are. Does she allow our threesome to experience out-of-body experiences? Did she have some kind of traumatic experience in the past too (notice how she lacks a mother).]]>
Laputa: Castle in the Sky Review – 83/100
For as far as I know, I’ve seen all of the major Ghibli-movies now, apart from the ones directed by Hayao Miyazaki. First up is Laputa: Castle in the Sky, and finally I understand why Studio Ghibli because such a big name in anime. This is the anime that inspired movies such as Steamboy and Giniro no Kami no Agito, but most importantly, even Vision of Escaflowne (one of my favourite series) shows hints that the creators were avid fans of this movie.
The amount of creativity that Hayao put into the fantasy-setting is astonishingly original. From the mining town where the story starts to the castle of Laputa itself, it’s the setting of this movie that really draws you in. The cast of side-characters also never feels out of place, and they’re the ones who make this movie really come alive. Being produced in 1986 (before I was actually born), I can imagine that this movie must have been revolutionary.
Alas, I wish I could call this movie a masterpiece all the way, though unfortunately things aren’t that simple. For one thing, some parts of this movie didn’t quite age well. Twenty years ago, the idea of a young boy, meeting a mysterious girl who happens to be the queen of an ancient race may have sounded exciting, but I’ve seen this concept being abused a few too many times. Especially the main male character proves to be just unable to carry the weight of the movie as it goes on, and all he does is go from one nearly impossible heroic deed to the other. Much like Steamboy, actually.
I’m also surprised to say this about a Ghibli-movie, but there’s a bit too many action in this one. There’s especially an abundance of grand explosions and random destruction. What surprised me even more is how Hayao hardly used this. When a wooden bridge for mine-carts gets destroyed, it just disappears from the screen. You don’t see angry miners who complain about how they have to fix the damage that was done to their constructions, the movie just acts like nothing happened. When someone falls through a roof, nobody even bothers to fix it. I just can’t help but feel disappointed when this comes from a studio that’s so good at realism.
Overall, I wouldn’t call this the best movie of Studio Ghibli. Spirited Away and The Cat Returns were both just better than what I saw here, but that doesn’t mean that Laputa isn’t one big success, especially considering the time when it came out, and there’s no denying to the influence it had on modern-day anime. With visually stunning animation and a terrific soundtrack, but most importantly a huge amount of imagination, this really is a movie that needs to be seen, despite all of the flaws that it has.]]>
The Cat Returns Review – 86/100
To be honest, for the past few weeks, I’ve been watching the various Ghibli-movies and while I admit that I haven’t touched the rumoured best of the bunch yet, I’ve yet to understand why people consider them as legends. At the moment, I see them more as a bunch of movie-makers who excel at realism, just like how Shaft excels in strange art-styles. The Ghibli-movies I’ve seen thus far are great, but I’ve seen many other studios with equally good or even better productions, and I’ve also yet to see a bit of really addictive storytelling mixed with their movies. Luckily, The Cat Returns changed this opinion, and showed me that Ghibli is good at more than just realism.
I went in this movie, expecting something like Sprited Away. A girl gets taken to the cat world, and needs to get out. Well, up till here, the stories match, though that’s also exactly where the similarities end. Instead, this turned into a light-hearted shoujo-adventure, with several playful jabs at despotisms. The setting is smaller than you’d expect, and it’s refreshing to see a movie that doesn’t try to be as epic as possible.
Yet, despite this, The Cat Returns actually has the above-mentioned addictive storytelling for me. This is probably the shortest major Ghibli-movie out there, with the length of just over an hour, and because of that, the pacing is a tad faster than the others. Haru, the main character, is interesting and fun to watch, the major side-characters are delightful and creative and the chemistry between the characters is genuine and excellent.
The short length is also a bad point, though. Especially the antagonists could have been more fleshed out and they seem just a bit too silly. While I believe that the creators were well aware of this problem, and I suspect that it was their intention in the beginning, I think that the scenes would have turned out even better if the evil king and his minions would have gotten a bit more development. I do appreciate how this movie managed to give an identity to the different guards that accompany the king. You rarely see that in anime.
The director for this movie is Morita Hiroyuki, the director of Bokura no and who successfully rewrote the final half of the manga into a true masterpiece, and The Cat Returns really shows the same creativity in its story. While you won’t get any of the grand plot twists of the former, you will get an addictive pacing that never turns dull and is varied enough to keep you interested. The guy is really talented at this, and for this movie, he was actually supervised by Hayao Miyazaki. If this movie took itself a bit more seriously, it would have been an epic one, but for now I’ll call this a fun and innocent way to spend an hour.]]>