It’s episodes like this one where you can see the fruits of the huge amount of time that the previous episodes have spent on building up. For those who were hoping for the plot to get moving: this one’s it, and this is not an episode you’d want to miss. The central event in this episode had to be Shuga, who ran into Chaggumu, making him and Barsa aware that people are after them. The result was an excellent episode.
In the end, Barsa will not allow people to take Chaggumu away from her. When she made the vow, she didn’t only promise to protect Chaggumu, she’d also take care of him like a mother. Not only that, but this episode also placed a barrier between Barsa and Chaggumu, especially after he learned that Saggumu had died.
But the real star of this episode had to be Tooya, when he tried to outsmart the warriors without knowing anything, by setting Barsa’s house on fire. With this, he hoped to warn Barsa that something happened, and he succeeded in this. But I loved how he just surrendered after it, since there would be no way to escape from these guys. I don’t know why, but somehow I love this reasoning. It must’ve been extremely hard for him to be lectured by the guy who he thought to be his friend, but turned out to be a member of these warriors.
Thing is, I have absolutely no idea what will be happening after this. Barsa, Tanda and Chaggumu will probably go to Torogai-shi, but what happens after that? What will be the next step of the warriors? Will Yin find Chaggumu? How will the king react? What about Rarunga? I have absolutely no idea.]]>
Mononoke – 03
The name “Umibouzu” was rather confusing, especially with my lack of Japanese. After all, the “umi”-part could mean either sea or giving birth, and I could have sworn that “bouzu” meant little kid. Still, I was wrong. After looking up the kanji, it seems that we’re dealing with a seamonk here. Naturally, the episode again was pure awesomeness, and it has a very good chance of beating the first arc.
At sea, we find ourselves a boat, carrying a strange companionship: The girl from Bake Neko, the owner of the ship, a bard, a monk, a priest, a swordsman and a medicine-seller. It’s there where Umibouzu releases its wrath on the poor ship.
Here is what I believe what happened. It first makes the ship stray away from its course by placing a magnet near its compass. Then it calls its comrades, or a collection of fish ghosts to attack the ship. (I know they’re comrades, because otherwise the medicine seller would have figured out the Katachi by now).The medicine seller manages to repel them, but the fact remains that someone on the ship is hiding something. I’m putting my money on the monk.
I wonder, though, do the goldfish on board have anything to do with the story? And what are the roles of the other characters? I’m looking forward to next week to find out. :)]]>
3000 Comments – What Fall-Show do you want me to blog?
just post a comment, leaving the name of an anime that is slated for the fall-season, and I’ll blog the one with the most votes, no matter what. The last time I did this, Claymore came out, which turned into a really interesting experience. The rules are: – To validly post, just drop a comment leaving your selection. I selected this system above a poll on purpose, because I really want this to be a choice of my readers, instead of random people who will vote randomly on any poll they run into. – I accept any shows that are listed on moonphase under the fall-season or just 2007, without any specific date yet announced apart from the year. For an english version of this list, go here. – Each person can select up to 2 shows. Since ap was the one who made te 3000th comment, his votes count for three. – The voting stays open until August 31th, after which the show with the most votes will be blogged as soon as it airs. Be careful, though. If I don’t like it, I reserve the right to bash it. If you want to return on a later date, you’ll find this post under the category “Random Posts”. And finally, let me thank all the people who dropped a comment, and made sure that this benchmark could be reached. You’re all very appreciated. ^_^ EDIT – The current list of votes: Gundam 00 – 13 Clannad – 12 Ghost Hound – 11 Gunslinger Girl – 9 Kodomo no Jikan – 5 ef – 5 Mokke – 4 Haruhi II – 4 Wellber no Monogatari II – 4 Kimikiss – 2 Hero Tales – 2 Rental Magica – 2 Minami-ke – 2 Censoroll – 1 Prism Ark – 1 Shugo Chara – 1 Aria OVA – 1 Bamboo Blade – 1 Shakugan no Shana II – 1 (Small note: everyone who voted for Gunslinger Girl can recast his or her vote, since it’s been confirmed to air in spring, next year. ) EDIT: The Poll is Closed. Don’t bother voting or revoting, because I won’t count them. Everyone, thanks for participating!]]>
Baccano! – 01
And finally Baccano! airs. The promo-art looked really cool, and I was intrigued by the premise. So, after having seen the first episode, what is my first reaction?
HUGE cast of characters!
Seriously, this anime has an amazingly big cast of main characters, and an even bigger cast of side-characters. The episode felt twice as long as usual, since there was so much going on with so many different parties. I’m definitely going to blog this, as it’ll be fun to try and get some sense out of it. Before I start, though, I must give a small warning: this isn’t for the weak-hearted or the young children and this anime isn’t afraid to show blood.
So, let’s start with the main characters, in order of appearance on the OP (I am SO glad that it provides their names. It would have been an incredible hassle to try and figure them out for every single character, especially considering that this takes place in Europe, where the katakana would have made it even more difficult).
Isaac Dian. In this episode, he gets a piece of his ear blown off by a gun, which magically heals afterwards. He seems like a jolly ignorant fellow, who, according to the OP, works as some kind of thief.
Miria Harvent. She travels along with Isaac, and she seems just as energetic as he is. The two of them form a good team.
Firo Prochainezo. In this episode, we see his fingers get cut off, which also magically heal back again. If I had to guess, then all of the characters we see introduced in the OP have become immortal somehow.
Maiza Avaro. He meets with Firo at one point of the episode. I’m not sure about his role yet.
Keith Gandor. He seems to be an important mafia-leader.
Berga Gandor. I suspect he’s Keith’s brother, and they work together somehow.
Luck Gandor. Another of their brothers. He works under Keith. We also see him meet up with Firo at one point. I wouldn’t have guessed the connection. The two of them seem to know Isaac and Miria somehow.
Szilard Quates. An old guy, some kind of Mafia-boss? We didn’t see him yet, in any case.
Ennis without a last name. I’m not sure who she is, but I could have sworn to see her among the crowd where Isaac and Miria were, and I think it was her who was sitting with Maiza and Firo, at the end of the episode.
Lua Klein, she seems rather shy. We see her during a few scenes with her new husband.
Ladd Russo: Lua’s husband. The guy’s got a rather high temper, and we see the two of them right next to a train with guns aimed at them and with Ladd missing an arm. Which will probably heal back together anyway.
Chane Laforet. At one point in the episode, we see a bunch of crates float in a river. She is on one of them. At this point, we can only guess what happened to her.
Nice Holystone. She seems to be with Jacuzzi.
Jacuzzi Splot. A rather miserable guy, who seems quite crucial for the story. He seems to be hiding something, and he’s running away because of that.
Eve Genoard. We only saw her during one scene, in which she seems to be waiting for an important person: her brother.
Dallas Genoard. Eve’s brother. He seems to be on the run from Keith’s maffia-network, though. Both Eve and Dallas are the children of Geoffrey Genoard, who seems to be an important person, which is probably why he’s hunted.
Czeslaw Meyer. A small kid with big plans. We see his head get blown off in this episode, which heals back on later without any trace. Maiza seems to know him
So, believe it or not, but these are SEVENTEEN characters already. But does it end there?! No. The episode already starts with two whole new characters:
Caroll and her boss(?). I believe that they’re the ones through which the story is being told. They seemed to be travelling at one point, at which they met the characters of this story.
We also have numerous people, working under Keith and Luck, of all possible ranks, from hitmen to executives to people who use scissors to get information from their targets.
Sullivan. He seems to be a detective, after some recent homocides. I’m not sure which member of the gigantic cast is behind it.
Then there’s this woman who cut off Isaac’s ear, surrounded by a rather strange crowd. I’m not sure, but two of them looked suspiciously much like other characters in this show. Coincidence?
There also seem to be other Mafia after the Gandors. While it’s obvious that there are, I’d like to know why. Could this have to do something with Dallas?
There also is a rather shady figure who refuses to show his face. All we know is that he’s searching for someone.
Another shady figure seems to be on the same train that Jacuzzi was on. He or she wear a cap, and makes sure to leave it as soon as possible. She might have had to do something with Jacuzzi being in pain at the end of the episode.
Then there’s another guy accompanying Jacuzzi and Nice at that point.
And to make things even more complicated, the ED shows us even more characters THAN WE ALREADY HAVE. Seriously, if this story doesn’t get swallowed by its huge cast, we may be in for something very amazing. It’s now up to the following episodes to properly develop all of them, and I really hope that it does this well. :)]]>
Ooedo Rocket – 17
An excellent aftermath to the already excellent previous episode. Not only does Sora get captured and put in jail, Ginjiro’s identity also gets revealed. Nearly every scene in this episode was memorable somehow, and I’m looking forward to seeing this anime go towards its finish.
It seems like Seikichi and the Townsfolk do see Sora as a monster, even after they saw her transform. It’s only after she’s captured that their minds get back on earth again, because they direct all their energy at getting angry at Ginjiro for working for Torii. Ginjiro himself also wasn’t too happy with this, as his entire plan to keep secrets to everyone failed miserably.
Thanks to Akai, Seikichi has now officially become a fugitive. He managed to escape after all this in quite an amusing way, but Akai is now actively looking for the guy. I loved how later, Ginjiro managed to bring him back to earth. Another interesting thing is that he’s beginning to get friendly with Blue-monster-from-the-sky (she still hasn’t chosen herself a name?!). This episode also showed that the third blue monster from the sky does indeed have a mind of its own, and it’s actually searching for Seikichi’s rockets as well. Whether or not it also has a human form isn’t certain yet.
Oh, and Anui confirms that she is, in fact, a dog, when she manages to find Seikichi, based on his scent alone.]]>
Claymore – 17
I liked this episode. A lot. It was intriguing, the fight was really tense, it made sense, and there was A LOT of character-development in it. Claymore may be dull in its introductions; it’s brilliant in its conclusions. While this does mean that the next episode will be another dull one, I’m glad enough that this episode turned out good.
First of all, Jeane. Not only is her new hairstyle much better than her old one, she showed that you can go back from awakening, even though you haven’t put your mind to it, though that may be because of Claire and Galatea’s ability to manipulate Yoki so well. I can imagine that Claire will pick Galatea’s technique of manipulating Yoki up as well in the future somehow.
I think I also finally realize what makes Claire so special. Half-awakened beings already are rather rare among Claymore, but the Claymore it happens to usually don’t notice the difference. The only reason Miria noticed this was because they were with four Half-awakened ones in one group, so this just had to stand out. I think the reason that the Organization sends the problematic Half-awakened ones to get killed off as a precaution, as the awakening-process seems to have made them more curious, and easier to question the Organization (after all, fully awakened ones tend to go berserk, so I wouldn’t be surprised at some subtle effects on the characters of Half-awakened ones). Claire is probably one of the few who survived such an attempt to kill her off, along with Miria, Deneve and Helen, and because of her rather impulsive and ignorant nature, she probably is the first of them who left the organization willingly.
It will be interesting to see where she’ll go now. She now has another companion who’ll follow her around, no matter what (although I do think that Raki won’t be doing that anymore, as something major seems to have happened to him, according to the manga-readers). The fact remains, though, that it’ll take a long time for Claire to defeat Priscilla without Riful’s help.
I wonder how many comrades Riful managed to gather. The guy up in the north seemed to have at least three huge awakened beings, as seen at the end of the episode, if you add Priscilla, that makes four. (The organization is losing a lot of Claymore lately, isn’t it? If the party we saw there didn’t survive, they’re going to have to recruit ten new members, quite a significant amount and I suspect that more Claymores have died off-screen).]]>
100 Stories Review – 76/100
This probably is the anime with the biggest amount of different names. Every website I run into seems to classify it under a different one. 100 Stories, Kousetsu Hyaku Monogatari, Requiem from the Darkness and Natsuhiko Kyougoku’s Worldly Horror Stories all refer to the same anime. It basically tells horror-stories, as told through the eyes of the beginning writer Momosuke Yamaoka, as he follows a peculiar threesome go after demons.
100 Stories (as I’ll call it in this review) is basically a case-based horror show. Through the course of 13 episodes, we see 12 different horror-stories told. I love case-based series, as well as horror anime, so I was looking forward to this one. I guess that that’s why it disappointed a bit, since I’ve both seen much better case-based and horror shows. The problem lays with the fact that this anime tried to limit itself a bit too much. The stories are not just random stories, they’re all about some individual, gone insane, involving a monster in some way. After six or seven of these stories, they do begin to look like each other.
Another problem lies with the main character: Momosuke. He’s by no means a bad character, and the anime is a perfectly fine coming-of-age story of him, but he limits the side-characters from getting attention. It’s especially annoying because they are the really interesting ones. But they never get the chance to really develop because of Momosuke, resulting in incomplete backgrounds and a love-relationship that just feels forced.
Still, despite the flaws, 100 Stories remains a nice watch. The horror that is used is Japanese Classic Horror, which tries to captivate its audience not by gore of surprises, but with a creepy mood and storytelling. This especially works well in the early half of the anime. And even though the characters lack development, they’re all really interesting to watch. My favourites were Mataichi and especially Nagamimi, voiced by the god-like Norio Wakamoto.
The graphics fit the horror-mood perfectly, apart from the CG-perhaps. Sceneries are always dark, with few and dark colours used. The CG, however, showed that the creators weren’t really gifted in that part. One particular episode featured a really strange sea, in the middle of a storm, that just didn’t work well. The music contributes enough to the mood, but it isn’t anything special, although I do need to note that the OP and ED are not what you’d expect from a horror-show.]]>
Bokura no – 16
Recap. Strangely enough, though, I didn’t mind it at all. It was the perfect chance to get a bit nostalgic over all the characters that lost their lives throughout the show, and it sure as hell reminded me why this is one of my favourite shows of the season. Especially seeing the first episode back, when everyone was still alive with Kokopelli had impact. I also loved the use of insert songs throughout the episode. As far as recap-episodes go, you can’t get any better than this one.
Another thing is that we only really understood that people were really piloting the other robots since Maki’s fight. Seeing the other children beat up the enemy robots, and knowing that they were actually destroying planets also was really creepy. The only thing that I didn’t like about this episode was how it yet again didn’t focus on Kirie, for the third time since he got assigned as the next pilot, and I’m really interested to see some more attention focused on him.
Gonzo’s productions may be either a success (Red Garden, Master of Epic), or a failure (Getsumen to Heiki Mina, Kaze no Stigma), and Bokura no is one huge success. 🙂 (Oh, and in case you wondered, yes I’ve recycled screenshots from previous entries, since I got lazy and this is a recap anyway ^^;)]]>
El Cazador de la Bruja – 17
I’m not really happy, since this episode only seemed to have two roles: to show how Ellis is changing, and to save a bit of budget. I’m afraid to say it, but this has got to be one of the worst episodes of El Cazador. While Ellis was nice and all, she was the only thing that was nice about this episode. and perhaps the random destroyed objects that LA is leaving behind (notice the cactus at the beginning of the episode?)
Both the animation and the writing were rather bad. While the series usually sparkles through its character-designs, this episode showed mostly recycled frames, or it just showed the characters from a very far distance. The case this time is about Ellis and Nadie going after a bounty to make money (even though they acknowledged that it would consume too much work in the previous episode), but it lacks the magic of the first half of the series. Especialy because we get almost no information about the guy that needs to be caught. To top things, Ellis and Nadie run yet again into Ricardo and Lilio with some god-like timing, and Nadie miraculously survives a shot from a gun that hit her directly without any possible explanation. I don’t know who wrote this rubbish, but Bee-Train: please fire him. Even the music couldn’t save this episode.
There’s one interesting unrelated thing that came to my mind while watching this episode. We don’t see anymore random bounty-hunters after Ellis, do we? Does this indeed have to do with Rozenberg’s influence? I can imagine him passing out information about Ellis to the bounty-hunters, as an attempt to force Ellis to develop her powers.
Please, Bee-Train. You can do better than this.]]>
Kamichu Review – 85/100
After “this guy” predicted how I would review Kamichu, I just had to watch it. Lately, I’ve been getting more and more interested in slice-of-life series (I’m currently a huge fan of Kaze no Shoujo Emily), so I was willing to give this series a try.
However, when I started watching, I didn’t really understand what was so special about this series. Sure, it was a nice watch, and it definitely had heart-warming moments, but it didn’t really set itself apart from other series, and I’ve seen much better attempts at slice-of-life anime. I also didn’t understand Omo’s line of “But for those of us who can see beyond that, Kamichu is a masterful reprise of a childhood to remember and the fun people had growing up.”
But now that I finished the series, I understand. I totally understand. The final four episodes (so the last two TV-episodes, and the last special episodes that came with the DVDs) were bloody awesome, and they definitely make Kamichu something more than “just another slice-of-life” series.
So basically, if you start Kamichu, you just have the obligation to finish it, or otherwise you won’t feel the magic. The series does have its problems, though. The biggest one being episode four, which makes it really hard not to lose interest, when it comes with a really bad premise, changing the entire tone for the series, just when you began to get used to it. A ridiculous idea that you just can’t take serious is used, involving a creature that can be best described as “Pururin” from NHK ni Youkoso gone wrong. Plot elements that come from nowhere are introduced, and we never see these again, and afterwards the series goes back to its original focus, like nothing happened. There are more of these continuity errors, by the way. One episode, for example, ends with a giant pudding in the middle of the school square, and the next episode just happily acts like none of it ever happened.
Still, you’ll definitely get rewarded once you get past this point. The characters are really charming, and even though you wouldn’t say it at first sight, they’re very compelling. Kamichu is one of these series where the best comes in last, once you’ve come to know all the different characters. The graphics and the music also look decent enough; they’ve got some nice production-values, though they’re a tad too plain for my tastes. They’ll never beat the music of Figure 17, the art of Asatte no Houkou, or the OP and ED for Mahou Tsukai Tai.
Overall, if you’re a slice-of-life fan, I see no reason why you shouldn’t give Kamichu a chance. Just remember to stick with it, even after the horrible episode four. A personal complaint of me is that it could have used a few more episodes, though. Seeing as it ends, just when things are getting really good.]]>