Most of the times, I’m not that inclined to agree with manga-readers when company X changes the storyline of anime Y a bit. NHK ni Youkoso and Death Note, for example turned out perfectly fine, with a few flaws here and there, perhaps. xxxHolic and Bokura no also proved to be perfect adaptations, though about all these four shows, I’ve heard some (not all) manga-readers say bad things about them, but I just can’t see what was so bad about these adaptations.
With Claymore though, I’m more and more inclined to agree with them. It seems that the writers are very good at copying, but they suck when it comes with coming up with their own storylines, whereas the writers of the manga were brilliant in this. Even though I haven’t read the manga, I refuse to believe that it displayed the fight with Rigardo as dragged out and predictable as this anime did.
Because yes, I didn’t like this episode. The reason I liked this anime was because of the time and attention it spent on building up its world, and how the battles all somehow made sense and defied the usual shounen-clichés. And then this episode comes! I originally predicted that Raki would pull Claire back from awakening, but it seems that we haven’t even reached that point yet! Claire’s fight with Rigardo took an entire friggin’ EPISODE. This was precious time that could have been used so much better, for example in developing Easley some more.
The only thing I liked about this episode was the minute that was spent on every claymore apart from Claire. It seems that Jeane survived, and everyone seems to worry in a different way about Claire. These small details are the things that make Claymore shine; not the ridiculous superpowers we saw in this episode.
Please, please, please, PLEASE: do NOT end the anime with a three-episode fight between Claire and Easley! -_-]]>
Bokura no – 21
First, the good stuff:
The episode immediately begins with Kanji’s fight. There’s only one thing he did between his selection and his time to pilot: ask Tamotsu to kill his mother. Kanji’s case is similar to Kirie’s in a way: they both didn’t have any friends outside of the group of twelve, and they both had problems with their mothers. They were both struggling with a reason to fight. Kanji resolves this quite differently from Kirie, though, when the fight happens right besides the building his mother is currently in. Yet again, this episode was totally different from the previous episodes and fights somehow. Kanji is one of the few members of the cast who doesn’t like doubting (by lack of better description).
This time, the enemy also is an inexperienced one. They probably haven’t figured out yet that the other side is being piloted by real people as well. They go all out, but Kanji manages to easily beat them, protecting his mother in the process. He’s given quite an interesting reason for it: his mother may be an idiot, her research is top-notch. He’s actually fighting, so that he can give Seki and Jun a chance to survive! He probably knew that Tamotsu would never kill his mother, but he did want to make her aware that he’s fighting for her, and Tamotsu is of couse, the perfect person for this.
Then, when Kanji destroyed the enemy’s control-chamber, something strange happens. The enemy robot uses Kanji’s mother’s research to pull power from the entire city to get back to life. If this continues, it could suck up the energy of the entire planet, at least that’s what I understood.
What follows was a part I didn’t quite understand. From what I could get, along with an online-translator, it seems that even though the enemy’s children had been killed, Kanji still needed to immobalize the enemy robot to prevent the earth from being destroyed. The scene we see in the OP also reappears, and it turns out to be the links to the pilots of the enemy earth. Either that, or I just missed a huge plot-twist.
Kanji’s life-force is meanwhile depleting, but he manages to finish off the enemy robot, and places the power-source on top of the building where his mother works, in order to restore the power. I think that Zearth’s program really is linked with the earth itself, and when the enemy robot made contact with the research that Kanji’s mother had been conducting, it managed to pull out every bit of energy from the planet itself. All in all, it’s been quite an interesting explanation, and this really strengthens the theory behind the different Zearths and how they work. Seriously, other anime should really take an example from this series, and the way it so carefully explains its dynamics.
That was the good stuff. Now comes the GREAT stuff. 🙂
After the battle, Jun and Koemushi remain in the cockpit and have a little talk, and it’s indeed exactly like I feared: Koemushi plans to turn Jun into the next Kokopelli by making KANA the next pilot. If I understood things correctly, there will be two pilots left on the current earth: Kana and Seki. Jun will then go to yet another earth to get members, and he’ll stay alive. I’m not sure if this was in the Kokopelli-way, as in do it once and you’re fine, or in the Koemushi way, making him destined to become Koemushi’s successor.
Koemushi really believes that Jun is willing to throw his sister’s life away in order to live. What follows is the most amazing scene between Jun and Kana, where it becomes clear that Kana is indeed willing to die for her brother, if it was only because she didn’t want to live without him. Jun then makes a phone-call to his father, asking him to pick up Kana. In other words, he’s going to beg Koemushi to switch places with Kana, so that she can live, after she probably rounded up fourteen new pilots on a different earth.
And I think he’s actually going to pull this through, unlike Kokopelli, who at the last moment became afraid for his own life. I think the biggest difference between the two was that Kokopelli only seemed to care about his daughter. It’s just a guess, but I don’t think that the different pilots on Kokopelli’s world formed such a unity as in the current world. Every world has different pilots, some have the entire planet backing them (Takami’s opponents), others are afraid (Moji’s opponent), and others want to save the people from different earths instead (Kirie’s opponent).
Because the group here was more closely knit than with Kokopelli, who probably never cared about the other children, Jun, who started out like a jackass slowly came to understand why his different opponents fought. He probably understood this when Kirie started living with him, and he suddenly had to take care of him and became involved with his problems.
Still, the thing is: is Koemushi just going to let Kana and Jun swap places? He’s proved himself to be sneaky and a total idiot, and he loves to see others suffering. Is he really going to be content with such a happy ending?
Also, with this episode, I became convinced: Bokura no is THE most thought-provoking anime of 2007. At this point, this series goes much further than Seirei no Moribito, Jigoku Shoujo, Death Note and all the others combined. Also, in terms of realism it’s one of the best of this year. I really love this series because of this, and I just hope that the creators saved the best for last. :)]]>
El Cazador de la Bruja – 23
Today, it’s time for the final pieces of development before the finale starts. Blue-Eyes explains everything she knows, after which she leaves the stage as a major side-character, LA finds out that Rozenberg has been controlling him, destroys it and ends up as a nervous wreck, Ellis learns that Nadie would go through fire for her, and at the end of the episode, we see the encounter the entire series has been building-up to: Rozenberg and Ellis finally meet again.
I’m not sure if I understood everything Blue-eyes said. It seems that she was a witch herself, though she lacked any power. She went after Ellis, because she finally wanted to see the powers of a real witch. There seems to be some godly power that Rozenberg is after, and Ellis seems to be the key for this. I’m still not sure why Ellis and Nadie have to go forward anyway, though.
Anyway, Ellis, Nadie and LA were as awesome as ever. I loved how Ellis tried to leave Nadie, to keep her from getting hurt, and went to LA instead. She then got freaked out by his obsessive fears of Rozenberg and left. Poor LA; his confidence of the first half of the series is entirely gone now.
Anyway, next episode, we’ll probably find out why Rozenberg has acted the way he did throughout the series, and most importantly: the role of Ricardo and Lilio. There are still three episodes left, so Rozenberg is actually faster than his counterpart in Noir, and this also means that something still is about to happen. The question is: what? And will it be natural?]]>
Murder Princess Review – 76/100
For Spring 2007, Bee-Train came with two new productions: El Cazador and Murder Princess. It was clear that El Cazador would be their main anime, with Murder Princess staying mostly in the backgrounds in the format of a 6-episode-OVA. Still, how did it go?
Well, for starters, the plot isn’t that impressive. The creators went with a fantasy-kingdom, under the attack of supernatural monsters. In the end, some of the superpowers were explained, but the story remains incredibly basic. The bad guys with connections to the main characters have to be beaten, and that’s about it. There are a few plot-holes here and there, the bad guys have rather bad reasons for their actions, and overall it’s not really that good.
The reasons why you’d want to watch this: the good guys and the music. Where the plot falters, the main characters are the ones who manage to save it. They almost never feel annoying, they’ve all got interesting and varying personalities, and the relationship that develops throughout the six episodes between the two main characters is quite charming to watch. I’ve got no real criticism for them, and while they aren’t the best, they were really fun to watch and never even once bored me.
But the real highlight of Murder Princess is the soundtrack that came accompanied with it. Bee-Train always had a knack for soundtracks, and they et again prove this here when the entire soundtrack consists of fast-paced rock and punk-tunes. The music especially shines during the major action-scenes, which would have become horribly dull without the music and addictive characters mentioned above.
While it doesn’t hit any heights, it’s not particularly innovative, nor is it an OVA that will be remembered by many, it’s perfect as light entertainment. If you’re a rock/metal-fan and like fantasy, you should definitely check this one out, because this OVA manages to become both tense, fun to watch and charming.]]>
Urarochi Diamond
Before I start with this review, I wanted to make a small announcement: today is my last day of holidays. What does this mean for this blog? Well, there will probably be no changes in the series I’m currently blogging, apart from a few delays here and there, perhaps. However, I sure as hell won’t be able to watch one movie every evening anymore. I’m not sure how frequently I’ll be able to post a movie-review; that’ll depend on how busy I’ll be with my studies, and I can’t really make any predictions about that yet. Don’t worry, though: I’m not inclined to quit watching different anime-movies. I haven’t even reached the good ones yet. 🙂
Anyway, about the review. I wanted to finish my holidays with something special, and then Urarochi Diamond, a production by Studio 4C, suddenly popped up on Tokyo Toshokan. It turns out that I got something entirely different from what I expected, when not only did this turn out to be a wrongly-labelled raw movie, but it’s also one of the most unorthodox ones out there.
Basically, Urarochi Diamond is a minimalist movie: the production-values can’t be smaller than what we see here. There is no animation, and the entire movie consists out of minute-long gray-scale pictures of random people, living their lives in modern ghetto Japan through voices in the background. Basically, if you bought a text-less picture-book and turned on a drama-cd, you’d achieve the same effect. Amateurs with the right tools could have made this just as well.
Regarding the different stories: they’re basically minutes of the life of random unrelated people. There is no plot, no recurring characters, nothing that connects these together. Still, I can’t say I was edging for Alt-F4 throughout the entire movie. There’s one thing these shorts all benefit from, and that is realism. The entire thing is simple, yet believable.
Still, I can’t really recommend this movie, unless you’re into artistic stuff. It’s an interesting production by Studio 4C, but it’s not exactly straightforward entertainment.]]>
Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 35
Now that the characters have received a healthy dose of attention, it’s now finally time to develop the plot and setting some more. Both Thenardier (who has escaped from prison) as les Amis (what are they trying to do, actually? Start a revolution for equal rights? I failed to pick up the exact details for this, unfortunately) have started getting active again, and meanwhile, Javert is still searching for his Jean.
Gavroche surprised me when he suddenly rescued his father. The scene could have been build up a bit better, as we see no real signs of him, planning to do anything about what he heard from Montparnasse, but it was definitely interesting to see him do something nice for Thenardier. He’s beginning to become something like a Jean II, with the two kids he’s taken care of. Are they really his own brothers? Were they born once Cosette left, or something?
Anyway, there was one theme that was heavily present in this episode: poverty. Cosette sees people getting sick, and living with absolutely no money, Gavroche had no money to begin with, and I assume that les Amis are also acting against poverty. And let’s not forget Eponine, who unfortunately appeared in only one short scene this episode.
The next big thing that’s coming is probably Thenardier, finding out about Jean’s and Cosette’s location. He came really close this episode, and out of all possible houses, he picked Jean’s house to go and rob.]]>
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 35
The second season of Higurashi has really become way more consistent than the first one. The first season frequently switched between awesome and annoying every few episodes, but right now, the series has been given a lot more time to build up. This has both negative and positive effects. The bad ones are:
– This isn’t the roller-coaster-ride that was the first season. The plot went nearly twice as fast as it’s going now.
– The twists have less impact. Because they’re so far apart, the different plot-twists and turns aren’t as frequent any more, and the focus on mystery has declined significantly in the second season. Yet again, I don’t see any reason to write a summary for this episode, since there were only a few events that developed the plot.
Because of this, though, the focus on the characters has increased dramatically, and there are almost no bad moments left. There may be less surprises, but instead of that this series now has the chance to continuously build up for its characters, without any annoying interruptions. This episode showed this yet again. Seeing an army of more than sixty people, all stretch out their hands towards the abused Satoko was awesome.
Regarding the new information: we get to know a bit more about Satoko’s disease. Interestingly enough, the symptoms Rika describe come surprisingly close to the disease that the others who went berserk have: she’ll feel as if everything is assailing her. In a panicked state, she won’t be able to reason anymore. Once she gets something in her head, this won’t change. This explains her behaviour in Arc 3 a bit more. Even after her uncle died, she still was in a panicked state at the time, so the shower-incident happened. Afterwards, she freaked out for real when she found out that Irie killed himself.
The question remains: is Satoko’s disease THE disease? Why is Satoko the only one who’s getting treatment, even though Keiichi, Shion and Rena have been shown to also go berserk? Could it actually be that either Rika or Satoko is the original source of the disease, and that the two of them have been spreading it unconsciously? If this was the case, it would explain the Hinamizawa-disaster: the Yamainu take Rika’s guts and use them to give every villager an overdose of the disease. The syringe also doesn’t instantly cure the disease; it just calms down the symptoms. It does make sense. After using the syringe, it would have been easier to reason with the different people.]]>
Steamboy Review – 78/100
Steamboy is the most expensive anime-project that has ever been made, with a budget of roughly 20 million dollars; according to AniDB, at least. But then again, a high budget doesn’t always equal a good production; let’s not forget Afro Samurai and its budget of $1 million per episode. Still, Steamboy does pretty well. The graphics and action-scenes look excellent, and they’re accompanied by a great soundtrack, making this into a tense action-series. But what about the plot?
Well, this movie suffers from the so-called “bad main character”-syndrome. It’s a boy, who ends up as the centre of struggles between adults, and I don’t think I need to say more than this. He’s always right, the adults are all too busy trying to kill each other with big weapons, he’s a genius, and he never does anything wrong.
It’s the side-characters you need to look out for. They’ve all got their flaws, and it’s definitely fun to see them struggle with each other and develop throughout the movie (yes, the main character is the only flawless character, and also one of the less versatile ones, ironically). The side-characters have all got their own motives to act, and they were the ones who saved this movie from becoming a flop with eye-candy. I like how the female lead stayed away from all the clichés that plague most other shounen-adventures, and she actually became one of the most enjoyable members of the cast.
There’s one thing about the side-characters I didn’t like, though. The minor ones tend to disappear from the screen, without any trace. I would have loved to see them develop through the movie, but instead time had to be spent on the main character. Fortunately, he got better when the climax arrived, when he stopped being the centre of everything. This made the action-scenes quite tense to watch.
But yeah, like most other action-movies, Steamboy has trouble staying within the laws of physics. In most cases, this doesn’t really distract from viewing, but there’s one major exception: the main character’s (yes, him again) inventions. Especially his jetpack was just too ridiculous. I mean, how does he ever manage to both steer and cling on to it when it’s got that much thrust?
If you’re looking for action, though: look no further. This movie manages to deliver lots of it, with a fairly decent plot and interesting side-characters. Just be sure to ignore that main one.]]>
Toward the Terra – 21
Excuse my fanboyism and rude language, but this episode was FUCKING EPIC!!! I never expected the first episode of the finale of this series to nearly surpass the previous highlights of this anime. The week-long break was worth it, because this episode was awesome beyond belief, and had me crying manly tears near the climax. Obviously, spoilers are going to follow.
The first half of the episode is still a bit of building up, focusing at Swena, who is still reporting, Toni, who doesn’t notice that Artella loves him and wants attention, Jomie, preparing to warp to Jupiter along with five battleships he snatched from the humans, Keith, preparing to defend Jupiter with his fleet consisting of Myu-proof weapons and Leticia and Jomie’s parents, being moved to a special ship near Jupiter.
But then, the plot really gets fired off again. You really should see it for yourself, and it’s no use describing it, but it was so incredibly exciting, a new and awesome background-tune got introduced and NO LESS THAN THREE natural-born Myu die, Artella included!!
With only three episodes left, Keith has threatened to use the Myu he has captured as a hostage, to make Jomie cooperate. Now it’s up to Jomie to make the right decision. The finale is promising to become awesome!]]>
Dennou Coil – A Circle of Children – 14
“You know, I’m all for giving the animators enough chance to catch up and all, but I’m beginning to get really pissed off when there hasn’t been any Saiunkoku Monogatari or Dennou Coil for FOUR SUCCESSIVE WEEKS! Because yes, this week is yet another recap. This time, told in the perspective of Akira.
Seriously, I’m getting Wolf’s Rain flashbacks here. Thank god the beginning of this episode had at least a bit of new footage.”
At least, that was what I was going to write, until the end of the episode started showing some more new footage. First of all, Fumie discovers that Akira has been spying on her all along. While this was nice and fun, the next scene was what really surprised me: remember the reporter-like guy? He finally shows a bit more of himself when he talks to Haraken.
He really knows a lot about both Illegals and Haraken himself. He also tells him something very interesting: if Haraken continues his research, he’ll end up just like Kanna. The name “Dennou Coil” also has been chosen for a reason, it seems. This seems to be the event, item or phenomena that everything centres around.
We also see a new cyber-pet introduced in this episode: another cat with hands as ears. The question remains: who is her owner? Some heavy hints are pointed to the reporter-like guy, but it can be anyone at this point.
Let’s hope the next episode will be a real one.]]>