Oh my god… I knew what was going to happen. The writers kept dropping hints for it. And yet, this episode turned out absolutely incredible. Now this is what I call a death with a perfect build-up, something which many writers can learn a lot from. I again ended up crying at what happened, Les Miserables is a true masterpiece.
The first half of the episode was mostly building-up. Anjoras tries to shoot a police-officer as he’s preparing for the next fight, though Jean beats him by shooting his helmet off. The thing also is that the officer was dangerously close to his own age, and could have been one of his comrades if he didn’t choose to enlist to the military. He then gets replaced by an officer who’s much older, and the attack is launched. Jean again manages to save Les Amis by using his strength to close off the barricade, which currently has a hole in it, buying them some time to regroup.
Gavroche is still as motivated as others, and for the first time he seems to mention Cosette again, in an attempt to convince Marius to take him seriously. Javert meanwhile gets pissed because Jean is right in front of his nose and can’t do anything about it. Cosette meanwhile makes things even better when she goes out to find Jean and Marius on her own!
She first moves to the church, where basically every family member of the ones who are fighting is praying for their safety (I loved this detail, by the way. It just shows even more how the people who are fighting are just ordinary humans. Something that only very few other anime do as well). Jean obviously isn’t there, but Cosette does get information about the only two barricades left.
Back at the barricade, the police started their attack again, and Gavroche still can’t get himself a gun. Les Amis are on the frontlines, while everyone else provides them with fresh guns and bullets and Jean takes care of the injured. There is a problem, however: the bullets are running out. This gives Gavroche an idea to finally be helpful: in all the gun-smoke, nobody will be able to see him, so he goes to the bodies of the fallen policemen to collect the bullets they had left. It’s brave, but the guy just has way too much self-confidence.
Marius tries to call him back, but Gavroche is way too happy that he’s finally found himself something to do that can protect others. He again remembers Cosette, and starts singing the song Cosette taught him. The policemen then notice him, and start firing, though Gavroche manages to avoid the gunshots until he can throw the bag of bullets he collected to Marius. Then he lets his guard down, and gets shot in the heart! Shushu notices this, leaves the two brothers and tries to get Gavroche away from the battlefield. He succeeds, and then runs into Cosette, who finally sees Gavroche again in the final seconds of his life.
Seriously, that was absolutely amazing. I’m so hoping that the creators will continue with another World Masterpiece Series for next year, because the format works just so incredibly well.]]>
Shion no Ou – 03
Hey, this episode was really good! I’m beginning to understand what Kiseki gurl meant with Shion’s strong character, as she’s really one of the most likable characters to appear this season, along with Kaiji. The episode started off a little buggy, though. So much publicity for just Shougi seems a bit unrealistic. It could be that Shougi is the most popular “sports” of the city, and the city is relatively small, though, but the horde of reporters still may have been a bit too much.
Shion then ends up fainting, the day before her rematch with Ayumi, after thinking back to the murder-event again. While it was nice enough to watch, it wasn’t anything special yet, but I was actually surprised how afterwards, the police managed to track down the creepy stalker, and Shion kept pushing herself to make it to the match once she woke up. Basically, Shion’s a heavily traumatized girl with a huge mental will to keep going. If the scriptwriters continue to develop this through the next nine episodes, we might have ourselves a very special anime here.
The episode also ends with the match between Shion and Ayumi, and Shion was basically crying as she started playing. Still, something tells me that she’s not going to give up at all in the next episode. Also regarding the creepy stalker, in the end he just was a creepy stalker and doesn’t seem to be the guy who killed Shion’s parents. The question remains, though: why did the guy decide to stalk Shion, and if he didn’t kill her parents, who did?
I’m also wondering whether I should change the title to “Sion no Ou”. If you look carefully at the sign on S(h)ion’s bedroom, it reads “Sion”, instead of “Shion”. Still, for now I’m going to blame it on bad katakana and romanji, since there’s no difference between “si” and “shi” in Japanese, and there never has been a universal form of romanji anyway.
(On a side-note: there’ve been quite a few anime this season where children have been traumatized because of the murder of their loved ones, haven’t there? Shion with her parents, Mari from Blue Drop with all 800 inhabitants of the island and Tarou from Ghost Hound with his sister, and I probably missed a few. It’s interesting how all these series give their own meaning to the incidents, and the characters who suffer from the traumas).]]>
Dennou Coil – 22
That first half of the episode was just amazing. The dialogue between Yasako and Isako was just right, and I actually cried when Isako started to break down. Yasako really tried to comfort Isako in the way she would speak to Kyoko, whenever she’s scared. When Kyoko arrived, and asked Isako to save Densuke, she only made things even better.
The rest of the episode built up for the final few episodes of this series. We get a few confirmations of things that the observant ones among us probably already figured out: Nekome and Takeru are brothers, Takeru is the owner of the pink cat with ears, and he basically betrayed Isako out of jealousy towards his brother. I’ve also been reading a few posts from animesuki, and it seems that the reason why Nekome has access to the stronger versions of the Sacchis is because he works for the government, and can basically use them as he pleases.
Also, Densuke indeed is no ordinary dog. I couldn’t catch the details due to my lack of Japanese, but there actually is a chance for both Yasako’s grandfather as 4423’s brother to be alive. Yasako’s grandfather also seemed to know about 4423 before both of them disappeared. The final parts of the episode basically consist out of a chase for Densuke, after Nekome found out that he’s important somehow I must say that it was awesome to see Daiichi in action again. From what I understood is that Densuke is the key to access Coil’s domain, which is what I suspect to be the place where the humanoid illegals live. Hence why both Yasako and Kyoko encountered them.
What’s also interesting is how Nekome refers to Yasako as “sensei”, and how a password to some of the guy’s secret stuff is located inside Nekome’s database. Does this mean that Yasako’s grandfather used to work for the same company that Nekome is working for?]]>
Saiunkoku Monogatari – 63
This episode was mostly build-up. The animation-quality was lower than usual, and it mostly consisted of Shuurei, trying to bring some structure into the other low-ranked officials, after she gets annoyed that they don’t even try to save their own job. Oh, and Seiran finds out what Suou said about porn-magazines, which was quite hilarious, if you ask me. The silver-haired guy seems to be called Seiga, and it seems that he’s one of the few people who actually do something, and he ends up helping Shuurei. I wonder how he ended up in such a low spot in the government, though.
The Sakujun-lookalike called Ryo Anjyu also introduces himself to Shuurei in quite an eccentric way. He basically lets her peal a peach, and eats it in front of her, leaving afterwards. We also learn that Suou’s father still has some kind of role to play, and Suou has been giving him some onigiri he learned to make through Shuurei every single day. I originally thought that he couldn’t care less about his father, but this episode showed that there definitely is a bond between the two. It just seems that his father didn’t learn his lesson just yet, as he’s been inviting strange people to visit him as well.
What surprises me, though is that there hasn’t been any focus on Shouka as of late. As a matter of fact, I actually don’t recall having seen the guy AT ALL since the start of this arc, apart from just one small scene in this episode. Has he been away or something? This episode, there’s also a shot of the library, where we see none other than small Riou again, but then again, he’d probably pick a time to pick up some books when Shouka’s gone from the library.
There’s also surprisingly nothing about Shuuei in this episode, but I guess that he spent most of his time travelling to his three brothers.]]>
Shugo Chara – 04
Hmm, this episode wasn’t as fun as the previous ones. It also alerted me of one major flaw in this series: why the heck is Amu the only one who can transform?! In this episode, we saw another kid’s evil egg hatching, though Amu is the only one who tries to stop it, despite the fact that the student council has many chances to do so before she gets there. Why didn’t they transform to their powerful form, just like Amu does?
This episode also introduces the main villain for this series, who cleverly disguises himself as a clumsy teacher, in order to get as much access to down-hearted children as possible. Makes sense. The girl for this episode was someone who was about to be transferred to America, and got scared because of this. Because of this, her evil egg hatched and a strange black Shugo Chara started attacking everyone with very, very, very bad Engrish.
It’s not really the best of all stories, and it felt rather mundane to me, though I guess it serves as a nice build-up. One thing I did like was the scene between Amu and Neko-guy, when he tried to pay her back for the cake he smashed in the previous episode. There’s some funny chemistry between the two of them.]]>
Little Princess Sara – 01
After Ayatsuri Sakon finished, nearly two years after I originally started blogging it, I’ve been searching for another anime to blog once every month or so. In the end, I decided to support Live-eviL, C1-Anime and Minor ja Nai in their attempt to revive interest for the World Masterpiece Theatre-production Little Princess Sara. Les Miserables has been turning into a true masterpiece by now, and the few episodes I’ve seen of Perrine Monogatari have been really good as well.
Little Princess Sara is also special, in the way that it’s based on the same story that Soukou no Strain was based on, though obviously the writers of the latter took a lot of artistic liberties by placing a story that originally happened in England, about a century and a half ago into a science-fiction setting. It’s also notable that Sara’s original last name is now Crewe, instead of the Werec, which later changes into Crewe in Soukou no Strain. Ralph also isn’t her brother, but her father, surprisingly. I also don’t think that Ralph is going to kill Sara’s precious friends in this one. ^^;
The thing that did remain the same, though is Sara’s huge respect for Ralph, but that’s naturally obvious, since her mother died when she was four, and he’s been taking care of her ever since. He’s also incredibly rich, and he’s been giving her whatever she wanted, hence the title of this series: Little Princess. Because of that, the Sara of Little Princess is rather spoiled, but I wouldn’t call her arrogant. She doesn’t fit in the stereotype that has been set by anime that the rich kids have to be the cocky bastards who look down on everyone at all. Instead, she’s incredibly innocent. Her father probably has been protecting her from everything harmful, but yet she tries to please everyone, and she looks incredibly naive as well. I’m not sure whether we’re supposed to hate her or like her at this point, but that probably will become clearer in the next episode.
This first episode was actually quite similar to the first episode of Les Miserables as well, if you ignore the fact that Fantine was incredibly poor and Ralph is incredibly rich. Ralph has been coming from India, and he’s about to get back, leaving his daughter in a local prestigious school in the middle of London. The rest of the episode basically focused on Sara, spending her last few moments with her father. Another interesting detail is that in the next episode, Sara will be purchasing Emily, making another link to both Soukou no Strain and Les Miserables.]]>
Tales of Symphonia – 03
Okay, the creators are NEVER going to finish this one in just four episodes. They haven’t even reached the Tower of Salvation yet, for goodness’ sake. Still, this gives me hope for some kind of second OVA, to cover the things that happen in Tethe’alla, so that some quality-time can be devoted to the case of Regal and Presea. The next episode will probably end with the death of Remiel.
That said, the creators did a good job with this episode. There were a few things I didn’t like, though. The hot tea, for example, was done better in the game. But then again, Collette was a real airhead there, so it was easy for Lloyd to fool her. Sheena’s performance in Luin also was disappointing, especially how Lloyd and the others turned up at the last possible moment to save the day. Furthermore, why didn’t Sheena use her final summon at that time? It would have been the perfect opportunity. The game did this a lot better when Lloyd basically arrived when she was mourning over the village. What also bugs me is how the creators didn’t even mention why the Desians attacked the village in the first place. The little girl was a nice touch, though.
Still, the creators thankfully did well on the parts that really mattered: Collette, losing everything and Lloyd, finding out that he’s been fighting with the thing that killed his mother. I would have liked a bit more emphasis on the Expheres and the monsters in the building up for it, but it can’t be helped, with the length of this series and all. I must say, Collette felt really annoying in the game, and Ufotable did a good job of making her relationship with Lloyd quite touching. The two of them are much closer together, and it works perfectly.
I seriously hope for a second series of OVA’s, though. Basically, the only characters that got any depth in the first half of the game were Lloyd and Collette, while the others got this with the second half. I just want to see Raine’s mother, and how the two got abandoned. I want to see Presea, and the horrible things that were done to both her and her sister. So far, the creators have been giving a few hints that the fourth episode won’t be the end of this: they showed glimpses of both Zelos, and the last two Desian Cardinals, neither of them had any big role in the first half.]]>
Baccano! – 12
I already had some sort of vague feeling that the climax for this series would turn out worthwhile, and indeed: the second half of this episode was just awesome. One of the advantages of having so many characters in a series is that you can show many fights at the same time, and as it seems: the creators of Baccano are masters at this. Seriously, if you haven’t given Baccano a try, you really should consider. I can’t think of many other anime that have better writing than this series.
Only few anime realize that if you want to have a great fight, the inclusion of comedy can be a great addition, and Baccano finally made me understand why. The combination of excitement with Isaac and Miria’s quirks was just awesome. Some creativity in the choreography also helps, like how Isaac, Miria and Chezlaw just came flying by, while Jaccuzi was busy trying to fight off the leader of the guys in black suits. ^^;
Rachel also surprised me with some actions I honestly didn’t see coming, even though the reason for her leg to be in bandages hadn’t been explained yet. She basically freed both the Nathalie, Merry, Nick and Nice, and got hurt in the process. Then she tried to save Isaac and Miria, were nearly falling off the train in an attempt to save Czeslaw, who had just about given up hope of trusting someone (it seems that the companion he was with went crazy, making Czeslaw eat him).
Meanwhile, Rail Tracer kicks Ladd’s ass, while suddenly Lua shows up (finally!), and Rail Tracer threatens to kill her, a task that Ladd assigned to himself, though I really think that he feels something for the girl. It’s a strange kind of feeling, considering how he’s insane and all, but he basically tries to save her, but jumps off the train along with her in the process.
Back in 1930, it seems that Isaac and Miria have been sharing the two bottles of “sake” with Firo, Luck, Berga and Keith, as we see them get shot by Dallas around the middle of the episode. Meanwhile, Maiza manages to escape from Szilard by jumping through a window. Szilard follows him and bumps into his own car, driven by none other than Isaac and Miria, who just ran over Dallas and his two companions, who happened to stand there as well. Obviously, Szilard doesn’t like this, but he decides to go after Maiza first, and orders Ennis, who happened to be nearby as well to kill Isaac and Miria.
Surprisingly, there was nothing about Eve this episode. Jaccuzi rocked, though, as he showed himself to be something much more than just the coward of the first few episodes. I also laughed at the passion Nice seems to have for her bombs. The people inside the dining car also surprised me when they took up guns to defend themselves. ^^
There’s one episode left, and I’m pretty interested in how this series is planning to end.]]>
Ghost Hound – 02
Okay, if this episode didn’t remind you of Serial Experiments Lain, then I don’t know anymore. There is just no other director who relies so much on creepy sound-effects to create an atmosphere as Ryutaro Nakamura. It does work, though, and I liked this episode a lot. It’s still mostly a case of building up, but things are getting more intriguing as we learn new information about the characters.
It seems that the main character’s sister was his older sister. The two of them were in a fight when they were kidnapped. The face of the kidnapper was also revealed in this episode, and the freaky thing is that he looks like just an ordinary guy. He was killed by a truck afterwards, though. The guy in suit, who we saw in the previous episode, seems to be some kind of detective or psychologist, who hopes to find out more about what happens through hypnosis. It seems that the case still isn’t solved after all these years, but I wonder why… could it be that the body of the main character’s sister still hasn’t been found yet?
Overall, I was able to follow most of this episode, though I’m going to need to watch the subs later when they come out to fill in a few things I didn’t pick up, especially regarding the reasons why the brown-haired guy is so curious and likes to investigate. It could be in his nature, but I’d like to know that for sure.
This episode also sees the main character (I really need to find out his name), discovering the place he’s been seeing in his dreams. It seems to be beyond a shrine, where the girl who managed to see him in his dream-state in the previous episode lives. Apparently, he had no idea where he had been kidnapped before, and he the shock of the kidnapping probably made his sub-consciousness to lock out some of these experiences, like the kidnapper’s face. When he also tried to enter the area, he suddenly entered a dream-state, which seems to back this up.
Then the final main character seems to have had a similar experience when his father(?) ended up dead, right in front of his eyes. We don’t get much info about him, though. Either that, or I failed to pick it up. Regarding the animation, this is et another one of these shows that couldn’t keep up with the high quality of the first episode, and the animation quality has gone down. Despite this though, it still looks very good, but there may have been a bit too much recycled scenes.
What also intrigues me is the OP. It somehow reminded me of xxxHolic, and I feel that once the characters are established, the creators are going to treat us to the stories of these different beings. Or it could be that this series is just like El Cazador, where the OP and ED have nothing to do with the show itself. :P]]>
Deltora Quest – 12
Take any other anime, which involves fighting huge monsters. In nine out of ten cases, these monsters are just screaming and attacking with just no particular purpose, only waiting for the hero to defeat them. I love how Deltora Quest manages to avoid this often-made mistake by giving every single monster on the show the ability to talk and think on its own. Seriously, at the moment, the Shadow-Lord and Thaegan are the only ones who still feel like pure evil, but it isn’t like their stories are over, and I’m expecting their background along the way.
The king of Rat City, a huge three-headed dragon, may not have been the best boss this series had to offer (the fight with Thaegan was much better), it was refreshing to watch, when compared to the dozens of other series with villains who can’t think for themselves. Okay, Lief won in the end, but the storytelling was good enough for me not to mind. I also like how the end of the episode subverted the “Disney-ending”-trope, with the elixir of life that Jasmine got from the forest in the first arc.
Jasmine’s story for this episode may have been a bit too forced, and it could have gotten a bit more detail, but it does give a bit more depth to her character. Her reasons to join Lief were quite fragile to begin with, and with this episode, they were quite a bit strengthened. It seems that she just can’t leave Lief and Barda, who like to do first, think later (especially the former), alone. The three of them make a nice team: Lief’s courage, combined with Barda’s experience and Jasmine’s alertness.
One thing I didn’t like about this episode is the rats-part. I didn’t like how some parts of the castle were full of them, while in other parts they were nowhere to be found. There are a few clichés here and there in the storytelling, but the rest of it definitely makes up for them.
EDIT: I’ve decided to drop this series. Even if new episodes do get subbed, I’ll still watch them, but at this point I have no real intention to blog them.]]>