I’m getting more and more surprised at the lack of attention Baccano has been getting. I’ve only seen one blogger who also picked it up beyond the first episode. I mean, what’s not to like about this series? I really expected this to be one of the more popular series of the season, but yet again I was wrong. I guess that people really do like to watch Schooldays, Moetan and Zero no Tsukaima than this series. O_o
Anyway, while watching this episode, I realized another thing why I love this series: it features so many different types of criminals. We have the demented Ladd and his companions, who are after the people with money on the Flying Pussyfoot. Chane and her companions belong to a sort-of cult, and are completely devoted to their master who is in jail. Then there are Firo, Maiza and the Gandor-family, who may look nice but definitely also have a history of shady business. The Runorata-family is the typical mafia-family, in the middle of vetes with many different parties. In the midst of all this seriousness, there are Isaac and Miria: two simple yet surprisingly brilliant train thieves. Jacuzzi and Nice also steal for “good” purposes, though they steal nonetheless. Czeslaw has also meanwhile showed that he’s more than just an innocent boy and Dallas and Eve could be victims, who happened to be member of the wrong family. I can hardly believe it, but this anime knows exactly what it’s doing with its huge cast of characters.
Anyway, the character most featured in this episode was Ladd. He quickly ends the stick-up of the previous episode by killing some of the guys in black suits. It also seems that he’s a member of an important family. A family who worked under him became the victim of Isaac and Miria’s ‘little’ robbery.
I also mistook Szilard Quates from another guy in the previous episode. We see the real guy make his entrance in this episode, and the guy from the previous episode seems to be working under him. This also busts my theory that every person in the OP is immortal and every person who isn’t in the op is mortal, since we saw the scientist revive in the previous episode. If I’m not mistaken, his name is Barnes. I’m not sure how you spell that, though.
Anyway, it seems that Ennis works for Quates as well, and she’s been ordered to retrieve him. We saw Barnes flee afterwards, though, and I assume that he’s set his place on fire. It’s probably here where Firo helps Ennis to find Barnes, which explains how he turned immortal. But what about Luck, Czeslaw and Isaac?
Also, the mysterious green-clothed girl intrigues me. She’s definitely in te train for a reason, but her mission is still one complete mystery. She’s one of the few people to survive the mess that happens on the Flying Pussyfoot unharmed, and this episode shows that she likes to act as careful as possible when she escapes through a train window when Ladd throws is tantrum.
The episode also ends with quite an interesting cliff-hanger: a mysterious glowy-eyed figure appears out of the train. Is this the same shady figure we’ve seen in episode one? It’s also interesting how Chane has received even less development than her companions, even though she turns out to be their only survivor. It seems that she’ll be doing something interesting in the next episode, though.
Another thing that I’m curious about: Firo, Maiza and the Gandor family. What is their role in this story? I mean, they’ve got nothing to do with what happens on the Flying Pussyfoot. They should be just friends of Isaac and Miria. If that’s the case, then why is so much development spent on them? They can’t just be getting their immortality without having to play any major role in the future…]]>
Mononoke – 06
Taking screenshots was quite hard for this episode, considering the raw file I obtained. It seems that Japan was hit by quite a big tsunami, which covered the entire east-coast of the country, and most of the second half of the episode had some warnings and information pasted on top of it. Let’s hope the damages were minor.
Anyway, this episode introduces the third story: Nopperabou. A woman has killed a number of relatives, and now she’s sentenced to death. The Medicine seller doubts this story, and suspects that a Mononoke is behind the killings, though the woman keeps insisting that she was the murderer. The Mononoke then arrives, in the form of a man, wearing a fox mask. The mask prevents MS from finding out the katachi, and the Mononoke uses this to erase the guy’s face.
The Mononoke flees with the woman, after which he proposes to her. She agrees. Later, we see that MS got his face back with the help of a Japanese ritual. He then tries to see the real face behind the Mononoke’s mask, and the episode ends. Luckily, the episode was fairly understandable again, but I must wait till the next episode to be for sure. If it’s again incomprehensible, I’ll wait for the subs for the last two arcs, unfortunately.
Anyway, I think that this Mononoke was the one who committed the murder, without the woman knowing it. The question is: where does he come from? It’s in any case clear that he’d do anything for her.
I’m a bit afraid, though. In this episode, I noticed some flawed animation for the first time. There were a lot of shots of people in the background, and a few shots of the medicine seller were just off.]]>
Kai Doh Maru Review – 74/100
Kai Doh Maru is making me rather angry while writing this review. Not because it’s incredibly bad, but because it could have been incredibly good. It’s Production IG’s attempt at making a movie, and they went with another setting of Japan’s history. The interesting thing is that while most anime pick a period around the year 1800, with the samurai and shinsengumi and all, Kai Doh Maru goes further back: to the ninth century.
Those who appreciated Sisters of Wellber know what to expect: really stylized art that fits perfectly, an excellent soundtrack (this one has been composed by Yoshihiro Ike, the same guy who did Ergo Proxy), and a nice amount of the screen-time is spent on fleshing out the characters, creating a great mood for this movie to work with. Only the humour is missing in this one. So why did it disappoint?
Simply enough: it’s too short. If only it had gotten twenty, maybe ten more minutes, it could have been so much better, and it could have made a chance to be memorable. Unfortunately, Kai Doh Maru only has a length of 40 minutes, which may be enough to flesh out its characters, but not to flesh out their backgrounds. Right now, the movie was just way too confusing and failed to answer too many questions. What happened in Kai Doh Maru’s past? Why was he or she hunted, and why does she or he keep changing genders? These questions could have been perfectly answered if more time was given.
Then there’s the issue of the ending: there is none. It just ends, and the bad guys still live. What happens next? We’ll never know. One thing I do know is that I really like Production IG’s style of storytelling; it’s just too bad that this movie screwed up. Nevertheless, despite my ranting, it’s quite an enjoyable movie though; you can give it a try if you’re a fan of their style like me. Just be sure for the rather large plotholes it leaves.]]>
Ooedo Rocket – 20
Aha! After Toward the Terra and Claymore Ooedo Rocket will also start its final arc with the next episode. That’s when Seikichi really is going to have to prove himself to take Sora to the moon. His problems with the police will be over now, people don’t have any more secrets for each other, the characters have been fleshed out, and pretty much all roles are set. It’s there where this anime is going to have to prove itself. I’m afraid to say it, but this and the past episode felt a bit weird, and the introduction of an arc-based plot wasn’t as interesting as the individual episodes of the first half, and the time they spent on building up.
The next arc is going to have to prove whether this series succeeds or fails, as it can still go anywhere. It all depends on the character-development. The characters now have their bases built up nicely, now it’s time for the creators to use them. By far the most interesting scenes of the past few episodes were the ones that developed the characters, and not the plot. It’ll basically be Sora and Keiichi vs Akai, now that the blue monsters from the sky are dead. At least, I think they are. The first one definitely is gone, but the death of the third one doesn’t follow the golden rule of anime: unless you see a character die, he’ll live. Blue monster from the sky definitely is gone now; she had her arm ripped off and was in the middle of an explosion. Though the third one, the one who was more dangerous at that time, could have escaped. There’s got to be a meaning to that scene where he attacked the hunter who betrayed the others.
Ghost Hunt showed that it’s possible: its final arc was definitely one of the best. It’s all going to have to depend on one thing: are the creators intending to end this series the standard way, or will they try to be original. Ghost Hunt’s final arc was great because it eliminated a main character for most of its time. Night Head Genesis had a great ending because the biggest threat was basically gone, which looks a lot like Ooedo Rocket right now.
Ah well, there are either four or six episodes left. That’s got to be enough for this situation, but for now I’m sceptical. I’ll have to see this one succeed before getting too optimistic.]]>
Claymore – 20
So, basically because Eclipse took so long with their release for this week, I got impatient and checked out the raws. At times like these, I’m glad that I can understand them. 🙂
Anyway, this is one of the few Claymore-episodes without fighting, but it’s definitely one to look forward to, as there’s a really high emphasis on character-development, and this episode may have been one f the best ones of Claymore yet, especially not considering the fights.
There’s only one part I didn’t like, so I’ll start with that one: Raki. We still don’t know how the heck he ended up in the north in the first place. If I heard correctly, he’s supposed to have been victim of slave-trading in the manga, which is a perfectly good explanation, though I never heard any of the sorts in this episode. Either that or I must have missed it.
Okay, now the good stuff: Raki is getting closer to Priscilla and Isley than I thought. I’m eager to learn of the background of the two of them, as they’re definitely behaving unlike other awakened beings I’ve seen so far. Priscilla also is entirely different from the Priscilla we saw in episode eight. The creators will definitely be using this for when Claire runs into Priscilla. I wonder if Priscilla still recognizes Claire, by the way.
The biggest focus of the episode was on Deneve and Undine, though, and I both loved them. Undine proves yet again that she’s more than just a cocky muscle-machine. It seems that she has learned to always activate a small piece of her youma-powers in order to keep her muscles tense at all times. She’s just someone who likes to act tough, afraid that people will find out her true nature. That second sword of hers, it also seems to be from a good friend of hers.
Deneve was the one who found this out, and she acts really mature at this. I think I finally begin to understand why she chose to be a defensive type: unlike Claire, whose loved one was killed by an identifiable enemy (Priscilla), her loved ones (most likely her family) were killed by unknown Youma. Instead of swearing to kill off all youma, like Priscilla did, Deneve swore to protect as much as possible. That’s why she demands perfection from both herself and others.
Flora, meanwhile, shows that she’s been around since Claire’s youth, because she recognized Irene’s arm. That’s not something you do easily, since Miria, who’s a lot stronger than Flora (I assume, at least) couldn’t recognize it. Because of this, she and Jeane become some of the few to hear Claire’s raison d’Être of killing Priscilla. Flora should be getting character-development in the next few episodes.
To add to that, the fina minutes of the episode show Helen, trying to encourage a minor Claymore, who looks surprisingly unique, and it ends as the second wave of Isley’s henchmen are coming. Look forward to the next episode!]]>
Vampire Hunter D Review – 51/100
Another oldie: this one’s from 1985. It seemed to have enjoyed quite a bit of popularity back in those days, and it still seems to be one of the more well-known movies from the eighties. I got curious as to why this movie turned out much more popular than the others, so I decided to watch this one.
Unfortunately, the reason seems to be the fights and the bad-assness of the main character. The guy is your typical silent powerhouse, and he reminds me of an Alucard without personality. He’s been hardened through many battles, and he’s supposed to be dark and mysterious.
So basically, don’t bother to try and check this one out. The plot maybe has a few interesting elements, especially in the beginning, but in the end it goes nowhere fast. The opponent is your typical evil king (or count in this case) who is evil and has to be defeated. He keeps talking about how he has to rule the country as an aristocrat but we never see him actually ‘rule’. All he does is sit in his chair, trying to look evil.
And this of course wouldn’t be complete without the female love interest. She and her cute brother basically take turns of playing the damsel-in-distress. One particularly bad scene featured a Deus ex Machina, followed by another Deus ex Machina, followed by yet another one. All the characters are interesting when you first see them, but they get old very fast. The few lucky ones who have background often only have to do with one or two lines.
While it’s not the worst movie out there, I’d definitely classify this one as below-average. If you’re looking for a way to burn half an hour, there are so many better choices for movies than this one. This is another one of these movies that just didn’t age well.]]>
Bokura no – 18
MAJOR SPOILER UP AHEAD!!! This episode was amazing, though there’s one plot twist you don’t want to find out until you’ve actually seen the episode. I repeat, if you haven’t seen Bokura no 18, STAY AWAY FROM THIS ENTRY!!! The following line should fill up enough space for the blog aggregators.
I should be complaining that Takami only got one episode for herself, but holy god, Tanaka’s death totally made up for it! She goes down, along with Takami’s father by the hands of the terrorists we’ve seen for the past number of episodes. This not only removed one of the key support-characters from the show, it also means that Koemushi has to select a new final pilot. Something tells me that it’s going to be poor Kana, as Koemushi has been hinting towards her for the past few episodes. O_o
What also surprised me is the relatively short amount of time that is spent on mourning about Tanaka. The only one we really see crying is Tamotsu, and the others seem to have accepted her death, just like she was one of them. These kids have really matured throughout the series. I also wonder when Tamotsu is going to tell Kana and Jun about Tanaka.
So, now there are three pilots left: Kanji, Jun and someone Koemushi still has to decide on. For a chance, we don’t get to see who’s going to be the next pilot. My money is on Kanji, though the finale of this series is going to start in the next episode. This episode definitely proved why Bokura no is one of my favourite series. Will the ending do the same? I definitely do hope so!]]>
Wonderful Days Review – 76/100
After a Chinese Ghost Story, the logical next step is of course Wonderful Days; A Korean-made movie. This one comes with a dystopia, and quite an interesting one. The world has yet again been flooded, just like with Noah. One party managed to predict it, and retreated to a safe place. Now, years later, they’re still in control, and suppress everyone not of their kind, just like in a proper dystopia.
First of all, the CG in this movie is awesome. I can understand why the Japanese animation-companies outsource to Korea so much, because these guys definitely know what they’re doing. Especially the background-landscapes are just plain gorgeous and a definite highlight for this movie. At the moment, I honestly can’t think of any other movie with better-looking background-art than this one. The traditional animation looks fine too, and blends in with the other graphics pretty nicely during most of the times.
But yeah, the story and characters aren’t really that special. There is chemistry between the characters, but for most part this movie just follows a standard plot of beating the bad guys, and no attempts of originality are really made. It’s another one of those anime where the side-characters end up looking more interesting than the main ones, and especially as the story nears its climax you can start to recognize more and more elements that appear in 50% of the other movies.
Still, that doesn’t mean that the ending is a complete failure. There is one reason you should be watching till the end of this one: the music. While it’s fairly unimpressive overall, the best two tracks have been saved for last, and they’re perfectly timed. Even though the ending sucks in terms of storytelling, it’s a gorgeous feast for the senses, which in the end, managed to make it worthwhile.
The main characters are by no means bad. They’re just… too standard. This movie is a good recommendation if you need an hour and a half to burn. There are enough action-scenes to keep it from getting boring.]]>
El Cazador de la Bruja – 20
I don’t know about others, but personally I absolutely LOVED this episode. It’s all about the relationship between LA, Ellis and Nadie this time, with a huge focus on LA, and it works out perfectly. So what if the action-scenes in this series suck? Ellis, Nadie and LA totally make up for this, and they again show how much I love Bee-Train’s style of character-development.
So, basicaly, in this episode LA starts working with the police and gets Nadie arrested, but that’s just the least interesting part. Basically, the last episode, in which LA saw Ellis and Nadie so close together made a huge impact on LA, and when the night falls, he tries to kill her, along with the other policemen at the station where Nadie is locked up in.
Ellis, meanwhile, proves how closely she is attached to Nadie when she goes to save her. Even when LA reveals that Nadie worked for the ones who kidnapped Ellis, that still doesn’t matter for her, and she claims that she won’t forgive him when he tries to harm Nadie. In the end, LA leaves, though he’s in an even worse shape than he was before.
I also finally realized that Blue-Eyes’s necklace is somehow linked to Ellis. It’s probably made of the same stone that Ellis keeps holding. We again see her in this episode in a car, about to arrest Ellis, though somehow she refuses to act. Could it be because she knew of the dangers LA gave?
Rozenberg also finally starts getting active again, as we see him doing something else than playing chess with his loved one. It’s about time, though, as the finale is about to start. Seriously, the ending has to screw up really bad if they want me to dislike this series.
El]]>
Here is Greenwood Review – 77/100
To be honest, I’ve never before ran into an anime, set in an all-boys high-school that didn’t have yaoi-undertones. Do the anime-creators seem to think that in absence of females, the males will start to go after each other? Anyway, luckily this OVA from 1994 shows us another viewpoint on this setting, when it provides quite an interesting combination between comedy, drama, and in the later episodes, romance.
There’s one reason to watch this: the characters. Each of them, even with the side-characters, has at least one quirk that makes him or her special. Some of them have also got a really interesting and sadistic sense of humour, which works perfectly with the main character, who I way too uptight and serious about everything. The first couple of episodes, which deal with the characters having fun and trying to tease each other turned out really well because of this. They also spend a bit of time fleshing out their characters for the romance-subplot that gets introduced in the final two episodes, which because of this didn’t actually turn out as bad as I suspected. Romance is often tricky to do in anime, but Here is Greenwood showed a fine attempt at it, especially considering the time it has been given.
Still, the OVA has continuity errors. It’s another one of these mangas that got animated, with the manga being larger than the time that was given to the animators. Ultimately, this OVA became a collection of the best stories of the manga. Apart from episode five and six, the stories of the different episodes just don’t connect to each other. One particular case even has one of the characters claiming that a plot-hole was explained in volume X of the manga. While you could say that you just need to read the manga for this, I like my anime to be complete.
Also, you don’t have to count too much on the aesthetics. The soundtrack consists of typical tunes from the early nineties. The character-designs also look a tad too much like each other, and most feel like they’re all the same body with different eyes and hair-colors. This is especially noticeable when they start taking baths. One character also seems to switch randomly between long and short hair, without any explanation.
Overall, even though the graphics are mediocre, the sounds aren’t anything special, the story isn’t something to rave about and this OVA would have been better if it were longer, the characters are a delight to watch. While this OVA can’t match the great anime out there, I definitely don’t regret watching it.]]>