Hero Tales
Oh god… so much wasted potential. I actually liked some parts of the episode: the setting is developed well enough, there’s a fair amount of interesting characters, the tone of the series is quite dark and the storytelling was quite decent. And then it had to ruin everything at the end when the main character powered up in order to protect his love one. All the testostherone-filled pubescent males will love this, it could even be the next Bleach if it goes on for long enough, though I really don’t like how the main character is the “legendary strong guy who is destined to wield the supersword of awesomeness”. It’s a shame, though: the potential’s there, but the main character looks like he’s going to ruin everything in this series.
Maple Story
Okay, so this turned into a show, aimed at children. Still, it’s not that bad. The character-designs are simple and even the different monsters are drawn rather cute, instead of scary. I like the style of things so far, and it’s fun enough to keep watching. The male main character is also enjoyable to watch, even though his ideals are a bit cheesy. Still, it’s obvious that not many people are going to give this series a chance. I’ve already seen people label this one as the worst show of the series, though I’ve really seen much worse shows this season. I think it’s the lack of any sexy females in skimpy clothing, if this series had female fanservice people would probably check it out… ironically enough.
Moyashimon
I mean, was there any way for this series not to turn out worthwhile? ^^; There’s a very good chance we’ve got ourselves the funniest series of the season here. For Moyashimon, I actually have some faith that it’ll have enough material to remain funny for a full series, not to mention that the premise of a university-student who can see bacteria has so much potential. I also love how we sometimes get to see the reactions of random bystanders to the things that happen. There are a few flaws here and there (the outfit of the only female member of the cast is one of the biggest examples of this), but I have no idea why nobody in the blogging-community has said anything about this series so far. Is the concept of talking bacteria that outrageous?]]>
Suteki Tantei Labyrinth – 02
To give a quick rundown on why I’m not blogging the other series so far (emphasis on quick):
– Bamboo Blade is fun but the black-haired girl is annoying.
– Sketchbook had a boring second episode, so I dropped it.
– Nougami Neuro’s mystery is so shallow that it can’t even fully submerge a coin if it wanted to.
– Mokke is all kinds of awesome and heart-warmingness, though it’s a series you’d best watch while relaxing, and it’s not really fit to be blogged.
– I have no idea whether to blog Blue Drop yet, I’ll leave that decision to episode three.
– Night Wizard is nice enough, but it’s got too many clichés.
So, why Labyrinth? Simply enough: it intrigues me. Out of all mentioned series above, Labyrinth is the only one that made me want to know more about its characters and their mysteries. It’s a big experiment, though, as I have no idea whether it’ll turn out good or not. The previous spring season had so many series where I knew that they were going to turn out good and worth to be blogged about (Seirei no Moribito, El Cazador, Toward the Terra, Kaze no Shoujo Emily, Bokura no, etc etc), but the current season only has two of these series: Kaiji and Ghost Hound. For the other series, I’m going to have to guess which ones will turn out worthwhile, and Suteki Tantei Labyrinth is the first guess.
It’s not perfect: it’s produced by Studio Deen and directed by Hiroshi Watanabe: both are behind series that are either incredibly good, or incredibly bad. Studio Deen was behind gems as Higurashi, Simoun, Jigoku Shoujo and Full Moon wo Sagashite, but also behind crap as Amaenaideyo and Mouse. Hiroshi Watanabe is the genius behind the Law of Ueki, he directed Orphen and yet he also produced the crap of Shining Tears X Wind, and the awful second half of Star Ocean Ex. This series really can go anywhere, and it’s going to be fun to find out whether we’ll have another gem here, or another waste of time.
There’s a diverse cast of characters here: a bunch of high-school students, detectives, maids and strange females in skimpy clothes who are up to something. The great thing is that none of them really feels like an overdone cliché, and things can turn out great if they actually get developed. The graphics look nice enough, and especially this episode featured some nice music.
Anyway, about the episode: it made me really curious about Mayuki’s character. For some reason, that woman is after him, and she lures him out with explosions. We also see him have the first proper birthday in his entire life, and I really wonder how things will end up. Who was his mother, and why did she separate from him? What happened to his father? I’m going to hope that this series is going to turn out worthwhile.]]>
Oh god…
Mononoke – 11
Whoa… so everyone was hiding something! This story is probably the most horror-focused arc of the series with the arrival of yet another Bake Neko. I have no idea what the heck the Kotowari is supposed to be, and why the train-driver turned out to be the key-figure for this mystery, nor do I want to try and guess it. All I know is that I’m going to anticipate the final episode of this exciting arc. This is what I’ve been expecting from this series, and it’s going to be interesting whether this arc will be able to be as exciting as the original Bake Neko.]]>
Mononoke – 10
Whoa! Time-skip!
The final arc of this series, consisting out of three episodes has finally started, and I’m pleasantly surprised by the setting: we see another Bake Neko, and the setting of the series has suddenly skipped about hundred years, to the industrial age. The medicine seller however remains in the same shape as ever. Is he a Mononoke himself as well? Something tells me that this series is never going to answer that question, and leave it up to the viewer’s imagination.
Anyway, this arc has the potential to be the best one yet because of this. It all revolved around one suicide of a young woman. Somehow, her anger created the Bake Neko, who transported all important people to this mystery in the cabin of a train, who just departed from a newly built station, with lots of festivities.
– We first have a waitress who works at a restaurant where the woman often used to visit.
– Then there’s the conductor who ran over the woman, after she fell off the bridge above the train tracks.
– We also have the detective who investigated her case.
– There was also a young boy who witnessed the woman jump, along with her cat.
– And there’s her employer: a journalist.
– There’s also the mayor of the town, who gets eaten by the Bake Neko before he can tell the others what his role is.
– And to close off, there’s a mysterious widow, whose part in this isn’t quite clear yet, apart from the fact that it’s absolutely vital. Apparently, the woman couldn’t forgive the widow.
And the journalist is hiding something: he’s contradicted himself in this episode. At one time, he says that he often writes on the train, which explains how he doesn’t get sick while doing it (apparently trains back then were quite shaky), but later he claims to often work behind a desk, though he was at the station because the company he works for was short on staff. Why would he lie about something like that? I think that he, the mayor and the widow are the vital ones that need to be watched, the others sound more like unlucky bystanders who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.]]>
Some quick first impressions: Rental Magica, Minami-ke and Prism Ark
Rental Magica
Okay, so this one turned into the shounen-version of Ghost Hunt, with slightly less-impressive production-values. Unfortunately, this one screwed up in a lot of areas, and the characters are nowhere as interesting as with Ghost Hunt. For starters, the director likes action way too much, and the action-scenes themselves aren’t impressive at all: it’s just the characters who launch their powers at the enemy until it goes down. Second of all, this series takes up too little time to build up. It’s like, five minutes of backstory until the action starts again, and the case for this episode was resolved a tad too easy for my tastes. To continue, this may not be a harem, but it’s got way too many harem-elements, and the main character does get surrounded by a bunch of cute and strong girls, among which are a few stereotypes like the energetic sister and the blonde American (seriously, since when are all Americans blond?). He himself takes up all the glory during the fights, and ends up fainting afterwards like the hero he is. I mean, I like the premise, but the execution feels rather meh to me. I doubt whether I’ll continue watching this one.
Minami-ke
After Mokke, this is the second slice-of-life series that focuses on sisters living together this season. So far, I’m more impressed at the former, but that doesn’t mean that Minami-ke is bad. This episode started out with a nice enough first episode, with some interesting banter between the different characters, even though you can probably guess their personalities by just looking at them on the promo-art. The animation is quite good for this series, and there are some interesting camera-angles used in this episode. I think that the success of this series will depend on whether it can remain fresh for thirteen episodes (I assume that that’s going to be the length, don’t take my word on it), and the characters will grow a bit instead of repeating their quirks infinitely.
Prism Arc
I’m a fan of fantasy-series, and Seirei no Moribito showed me that the more one of these series makes its setting believable, the better of a chance it has to become really good. While this is rather subjective for everyone, I do have to say that magic SHOULD NOT BE used to give a bunch of teenagers a cheap excuse to become stronger than any other adult with years more of experience. Seriously, this flaw can’t become more apparent in Prism Ark: the entire cast of strongest fighters in the country consists out of sexy females with a few males here and there, all around the ages of twelve to fifteen. Also, when the map of the world this show is set in is show: pay attention: it’s basically a very screwed up map of Europe, with the names of a few countries altered. This leads to hilarious names as the “Untied Kingdom”, “Russiasn”, “Speen” and “Poleland”. I have no idea whether this was intentional or not, but the fact remains that it’s not looking good for this series. ^^;]]>
Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 40
What an incredible episode! It’s been a while since someone died in this series, but boy, at times like this I really get surprised how dark a supposedly children’s show can get. The revolution in Paris has been progressing in awesome way, and it immediately places itself above all other public revolutions in anime I’ve seen, like Romeo x Juliet for example, due to the immense amount of detail that has been put into it. It almost looks like everyone has his own reason for fighting, and even the woman are giving all the support they can give.
That’s the power behind this revolution: it doesn’t feel like an army of generics is about to charge for the police: it really feels that an army of individuals is. For the past few episodes, this series has been showing random people who don’t have anything to do with the story otherwise, and basically show how they feel about the war. This episode, one guy even gives up his precious metal candleholder to melt it into bullets. This feels so much better than in other anime, where these generics couldn’t even outwit a sheep.
And seriously… something is going to happen to Gavroche! All the foreshadowing of this and the previous episode just has to mean that something major is about to happen to him. In this episode, it becomes clear that he hates being seen as a weakling, and something tells me that this comes from his time with Cosette, where they ended up taking care of each other against Thenardiére’s wrath. After that, he probably didn’t want to depend on anyone else, because he knew very well that Cosette was suffering. Hence why he offers help to the little children and doesn’t even bother to get the food that Cosette passes out for a quick meal.
This can also work against him, though: everyone still sees him as a child, hence nobody’s going to give him weapons. Now that Gavroche has been so used to the fact that he could do everything himself, he doesn’t like how nobody gives him a gun to fight. At one point, we even see him desperately reach out for the gun of a fallen police officer, despite his comrade standing right next to him.
And really, Mabeuf died like a hero. We didn’t really see much of him, but after losing his precious wife and books, I really think that he wanted to die for himself, and he found a great moment to do so, putting back a red flag, symbolizing the revolution, which had been shot over. Marius also was awesome in the way he gave the courage back to his comrades by scaring away the police.]]>
Nanatsuiro Drops Review – 71/100
The past Spring- and Summer-season came with many unique and original series. Okay, so this wasn’t one of them, but at least it’s worth watching, as it’s one of the very few dating-series that I’ve actually found watchable. It’s nothing special, but it’s a great choice if you need something to relax to. The entire series consists out of bright colours with lots of sparkles and it’s combined with quiet tunes, to create an almost modern fairy-tale like mood.
Seriously, I didn’t really expect anything when I started this, but I had some extra time so I stuck with it. To my surprise, the thing that really made this anime watchable was the love-relationship between the two main characters. It’s cheesy, it’s not exactly original, though it is very sweet and cute. The side-characters also avoid introducing useless love-triangles, and actually end up supporting the couple, which turns out very nicely after a few episodes.
But yeah, any attempt on a serious storyline backfires horribly for this series. I know it’s a nice attempt and all, but the plot twists are just so incredibly shallow, convenient and predictable that it becomes annoying. One example is how the main female character can cast spells nobody in ten years managed to conjure, just because her mother was talented, and there are more of these kinds of jarring plot-twists. You also need to watch out for the female lead for another reason: she’s either incredibly cute, or incredibly whiny and obnoxious, which is exceptionally jarring in the first half of this series.
So, yeah, this is nowhere near an excellent series that’ll blow you away. Dating-sim and hentai-game-adaptations have never really been known for their depth. It is, however, not the failure I originally thought this would be, and a nice enough relaxing series.]]>
Dennou Coil – 19
Sorry for the delay, I was a bit too busy yesterday for the huge amount of shows that came out. But this episode was SO worth it. I know I had my doubts about this series at one point, but right now everything is starting to come together perfectly, and I can’t believe how exciting this episode turned out to be when it almost entirely focuses on Fumie and Yasako, trying to get Kyoko’s body back.
One of the comments from previous week also made me see something interesting: Kyoko is about the same age as when Yasako encountered the humanoid illegal. And I really think that Yasako would have been taken away if it wasn’t for 4423’s efforts. There also seems to be more than one humanoid illegal, though there is a good chance that wao is right, and Yasako’s grandfather is among them. In fact, there could be a chance that all these humanoid illegals were once humans who were taken to the others side. They kept utteing “kyoudai” (sibling) when thy approached Kyoko. That still doesn’t explain why they were looking for 4423 back then, though.
I think Imago plays a key here. If I recall correctly, we’ve seen that Haraken, Yasako and Isako posses it: all of them have lost someone close to them because of the humanoid illegals (assuming that it was really Kanna whom we saw in the previous episode). I wouldn’t be surprised if Mega-baa also turned out to have Imago, because she just knew a tad too much for just an ordinary granny who happens to be good with the cyber-world.
Oh, and Haraken is really going into the wrong direction. Apparently, he’s had an extra pair of glasses hidden somewhere, which he used to back access to the cyber-world, and he’s now really determined to go to the other side. That really can’t be good….
Oh, and one final thing… I’m not sure (my memory could be wrong on this), but didn’t Yasako receive Densuke from either her grandfather or Mega-baa? If she did, then that can’t be a coincidence, especially considering the way Densuke went out and saved Kyoko on his own.]]>
Some quick first impressions: ef – a tale of memories, Mobile Suit Gundam 00 and Kimikiss Pure Rouge
ef – a tale of memories
The characters are a major flaw in this series: they all belong in random harems and every one of them has a personality that’s been done to death by now: Wimpy male, cold male, optimistic male, fragile female, clumsy and impulsive female, annoying sister female and of course the tsundere-female. Thankfully, the story and especially storytelling make up for this. The director clearly borrows influences from Shinbo (Soultaker, Pani Poni Dash, Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei), there are actually multiple couples, and this series has got an excellent narrative structure, probably because Makoto Shinkai had some influence in this series. The different people may have fallen in love a bit too easily, though if you ignore this, the dialogue was pretty nice and works pretty nicely with the Shinbo-influences. While the characters are most definitely clichéd, the storyline isn’t. I’m just a bit disappointed that the excellent music you can hear on the main website didn’t come back in this episode.
Mobile Suit Gundam 00
This series probably got the most hate-reactions prior to its release, due to it being part of Sunrise’s plot of milking out franchises. While I admit that milking out the Mai Hime-franchise was a really bad idea, I don’t have the same opinion of Gundam yet, but that may be because the only Gundam-series I’ve seen so far is Gundam Wing. In any case, the first episode was pretty decent. I like the background music, and the story is full of potential. Still, this series made one classic mistake: placing teenagers in the centre of adult struggles. While it’s not as extreme as in other series, it can form a potential hazard for this series. It’s generally lacking in realism in more areas than this: the weightlessness was a nice idea, but if humans stay in weightless space for too long, their bones and bodies will suffer from the lack of pressure. I wish some explanation went to that area. Also, I expected the animation-department to have gotten a rather big budget, but yet all the important characters in their series can be recognized because their hairstyles stand apart when compared to the random generics. Ah well, what this series needs to focus on is not to fall down the same path of Code Geass, which was way too much aimed at fanboys and fangirls in my opinion.
Kimikiss Pure Rouge
I expected nothing of this series with such a title and premise. And fair enough, the very first scene starts with the umpth transfer-student of the season. Imagine my surprise when I actually ended up chuckling as the episode went on, even though it was for the wrong reasons. The plot-twists are so obvious that they become laughable: subtlety is so not this series’s strongest point, but at least it’s not the bore-fest I expected it to be. I wonder how long it will remain funny though, and I’ll probably end up dropping this when I need to lose a few series, simply because the amount of high-school series this season is huge enough already, and I’ve seen so many better series in this season. The character-designs also have a few issues here and there: they look well enough for a hentai-game adaptation, though the eyes of the characters are a bit too far apart. It makes the characters of this series look rather dumb (just take a look at the screenshot).]]>