Haha! So people did recognize each other after the previous episode! The result was the extremely dark, fast-paced, serious and awesome episode that we got to see now! I really expected Thenardier to milk Jean out with the same technique that killed Fantine, but here he comes and he directly attacks him.
To make matters even better, Marius heard ALL of this, and went to the police. Because of this, none other than JAVERT is now waiting to arrest Thenardier, as soon as he mutilates JEAN! Seriously, I never expected things to go so incredibly fast, and we’re only at episode 29! I’m starting to understand now why people call the novel epic.
I can hardly even begin to predict the next episode, as there are so many possible scenarios. Jean and Thenardier will obviously escape, but how the heck will they do it? I suspect they will make use of the confusion of Javert when he finds out about Jean. I also keep thinking that this is a regular anime, and people will just retreat after things are done, but things will definitely change after this, and the Thenardiers will need to find new lodgings, while Jean will need to watch out where he goes. I’m now really beginning to see the power of the World Masterpiece Theatre.]]>
Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge Review – 86/100
Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge: Nabeshin’s latest work. Four bishounen get to live in a huge mansion, on the condition that they can make the owner’s niece (who is the worst gothic horror-freak possible) into a lady. It’s sense of humour is based on energy. Lots and lots of energy, and over-the-top dialogues. Obviously, the entire concept of bishounen is made ridiculous. Few series can claim to have as much energy as this one, and the result turned out hilarious, though it’s got a few problems.
One thing this anime did right was its characters. There’s basically one bad character, but apart from him all characters are fleshed out and made more than just 2-dimensional ones. Polar opposites have always worked well together, and the four most good-looking guys, combined with a gothic-horror freak can hardly move further apart. This combination makes sure that the laughs keep coming, especially with this series’ sense of humour. Just when the humour starts to become stale, the characters start to develop and get fleshed out, making this hilarious till the end, with perhaps only the middle section a little weak. Heck, even the final episode delivers; something only few comedies can claim.
The graphics and music are both something incredibly subjective, though. They’ll make you either love or hate this series. The fact remains that almost the entire soundtrack, especially around the climax, consists of fast-paced rock, to help this anime create its energy. If you’re more of a j-pop fan, or like silent music, this will be hard to swallow. The art is also something you’d easily find ugly, and even though the main characters are supposed to be extremely attractive, they don’t look that way and I suspect that Nabeshin went for the concept of ‘suspense of belief” with them. Personally, I didn’t mind the art, and I loved the soundtrack, but people can easily dislike them, so don’t expect any Lucky-Star-like art here. The only really bad thing about the art is that the main female lead, Sunako, is way too often portrayed as a chibi-figure, while her normal character-art looks (ironically) beautiful.
For me, Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge was a huge success as a comedy, despite five or six weak episodes around the middle part. Some of these episodes liked to use a reset-button as well when characters made huge amounts of money, which I didn’t like either. I definitely recommend this series, though, because I loved the over-the-top-ness of this series, along with all the methods to make the bishounen-stereotype ridiculous.]]>
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 29
I’m not too happy to see that the fansubbers released this episode on a Saturday. While it’s nice to see that Higurashi is still getting out fast, Saturday remains my busiest day of the week, with five series that have to be blogged, and I have no intention to increase that number to six. Especially considering the time it takes to create an average Higurashi-entry. So if future releases of Higurashi will be coming out on Saturday, expect my entry of it to appear on Sunday.
Anyway, about the episode: I think it’s clear now that this is the slowest arc so far. This episode focused yet again on random games, while some scenes featured Rika’s despair of getting killed again. I’m afraid to say it, but I fear that this is going to be one of the lesser arcs of the series, because it hasn’t been written by the original writers and it can’t give too much away, or else it’ll ruin the next arc as well.
While the previous episode looked a lot like the first episode of the fifth arc, this episode looked a lot like the first episode of the third arc. I do hope that the next episode will focus on the Watanagashi, instead of going to the toy-store we saw in the second arc.
There was only one piece of new information, so I won’t bother with a summary. But at least we now know that Rika’s partner is some kind of spirit. I’m not sure whether this girl was the same one that we see in the OP, but she seems to inhabit the same body as Rika.
I do hope that the rest of the arc will be more exciting than this episode. It would, for example, be the perfect chance to show Keiichi’s past, which was left out in the sixth arc according to the people from Animesuki. I’d love to see such a tragedy in animated form.]]>
Kaze no Shoujo Emily – 16
Ah so she didn’t visit her grandmother, but two of her father’s elder sisters. Emily basically went back to her father’s birthplace. In this episode, she met her father’s childhood friend, with whom he went to college. Obvkously, the two of them would make friends fast.
This was one of the lesser episodes of Kaze no Shoujo Emily, though. It may be because the awesome music from the previous episode was gone, but I suspect it was because nothing much happened. I’m glad that Emily went back to Elizabeth at the end of the episode, as I’m eager to see Perry, Ilse and Teddy again.]]>
Toward the Terra – 16
One thing I love about Toward the Terra is how it manages to keep every single episode high-paced for the plot. There are no silent episodes, there are no episodes which are solely meant for building up, like you see in so many other good. Instead, it builds up its characters more logically, instead of the forced episodes which leave out any major plot-elements for the climax-filled episodes, the characters here get developed between the different climaxes and revelations of the episodes. While there have been really good anime who attempted the former, the latter approach really remains the better one, and towards the Terra shows it. Its pacing really reminds me of a crossing between Red Garden and Visions of Escaflowne somehow.
In any case, I think we all know that the next episode is going to be a special one: Blue is going to die. There is no way he won’t, based on the cliff-hanger. He kept giving hints that his time was over, and that the Myu should be lead by Jomie, and the episode ended with a planet-destroying beam fired at the poor guy. I wonder what role Toni will have in this, as his awakening must mean something, otherwise the creators wouldn’t have shown it along with Blue getting hit.
And we finally know the link between Keith and Physis: they were both raised in the test-tubes for the first years of their lives. Physis probably got out of them when she was around five or six, when she was rescued by Blue. Keith probably left them when he entered the school we saw in episode six. I suspect that Keith and Physis at one point were linked to each other, which is why his Mother Eliza looks so much like her.
This episode also surprisingly gives a proper introduction of the different babies that have been born on Nazca, now that the Myu have been forced to leave Shangri-la: Twellen, Pestazio, Cobb, Tardyon, Artella, Takio and Tony (surprisingly, only one girl among six boys). Does this mean that the journey will now be continued in the space-shuttles we’ve been seeing throughout the episode? I’m anxious to find out. :)]]>
Dennou Coil – A Circle of Children – 11
Remember the very first piece of promo-art that got released for Dennou Coil? The one where we saw Yasako, underwater with strange beasts swimming around her? This episode tries to shed some light on that by showing a new kind of Illegal: a fish who feeds on scenery. This fish has its own surrounding of cyber-water, and the more it eats, the more both it and its environment grow. While the issue was resolved at the end of the episodes, I really hope that we get to see more of these cases, since it was this that originally made me a fan of this series.
The story didn’t develop much in this episode, though. Most of it was meant to show a lot of creativity and develop Daichi. Oh, and we learn something interesting about Mega-baa and Tamako (I finally know her name!): they knew each other, and Tamako is member number 2 of the Coil Investigation Agency. I originally thought that all members were children, but now it seems that Mega-baa has been doing business for a considerable amount of years. Something also happened between the two of them in the past, based on the way they talk to each other.
The cyber-water also raised an interesting question: to what extend can these glasses manipulate sound? This episode showed (quite humorously, by the way) that you can’t communicate to someone outside of the water when you’re inside the water yourself. The cyber-world keeps surprising me. I also suspect that the metabugs may be more important to the story than they look now. For some reason, Isako doesn’t need the illegals that feed on just scenery.
This episode also again showed what a perfect team Daichi and Fumie form. They just aren’t afraid to exploit any of each other’s weaknesses, and I’d love to see the two of them work together. Fumie was downright mean to the poor guy in this episode, but it’s safe to bet that Daichi pulled stunts like that with her in the past as well. I’m just wondering whether they might go too far with their pranks at one time, though.]]>
Saiunkoku Monogatari – 54
Words can’t describe the awesomeness of this episode. Basically, it concludes the Cult-arc, but it’s so much more than just that. We finally learn why the leader looks so much like Doushu: it’s because he’s small Riou’s brother, and used magic and Doushu’s head to change his appearance. It seems that everything was a plan of revenge by big Riou to do something nasty and magical with Shuurei, though why did he make small Riou intervere with this plan?
It also seemsthat his and Riou’s mother also needs to fit in the picture somehow, as she was the one who told him to get Yougetsu and Shuurei. Still, what do they hope to gain with them? Why does Riou want Shuurei’s spirit (at least, I assume that that spell-circle was meant to separate her spirit from her body). And why did Riou contact Shuuran, out of all possible people? And where the heck does Sakujun fit in with all this?
Still, these events with the cult and all, they were just minor, when compared to the other major event in this episode. Eigetsu finally dies, and it was so sad to see Yougetsu run off with his body. Still, I’m glad to see that he did get the chance to say goodbye to Doushu in the end.]]>
Seirei no Moribito – 16
I’ve wondered about this ever since Chaggumu “died”, but why did it take this long for people to pick up Chaggumu’s body from the canyon? Wouldn’t people need his body, because it’s holy, royal, important and inhabited by the egg of the water-spirit? Why on earth would people leave it there, when this episode showed that covering your mouth is enough to avoid getting suffocated by the fog?
Anyway, this episode finally shoed me what the previous eight episodes had been missing: the four warriors that Barsa battled in episode three. Without them, this anime just isn’t complete, and only they make the best out of the huge amount of detail that went into the scriptwriting. The slice-of-life elements were nice and all, but their only role was to flesh out the different characters and develop Chaggumu. The political elements were interesting, but they’ll never beat those of Saiunkoku Monogatari, and the fight of episode 13 was great, but it never had any relation to the main story, making it feel a bit empty. But these four warriors all change this when they show how carefully they carry out their work. I’m glad to see that Seirei no Moribito is finally moving forward again. 🙂
It’s a shame that WRex has stopped doing his summaries for this series, as I rather relied on him to fill in the blanks I didn’t understand. It’s going to be tricky now to find out the new intentions of the four warriors. They’re still after Chaggumu, but do they want to capture him and take him in alive, or does he need to get killed?]]>
Avenger Review – 80/100
Okay, so I’m biased; I like Bee-Train, and their unique style. I’m not exactly sure how they did it, but they somehow caused me to really like this obviously flawed anime. I’ve seen lots of people give it bad reviews; it even turned into the “worst anime ever” for some. I’d like to say something positive about it, though.
A lot of things ‘clicked’ for me in Avenger. Its got a really interesting setting: Post-colonizational Mars, where no child has been born for ten years. The children have now been replaced with child-like robots called “dolls” (and finally we see androids who don’t look exactly like human beings. The dolls really look like machines in this series, which is really refreshing compared to the countless robotic harem maids that seem to be rather popular).
The soundtrack also is awesome. I seriously demand for the ALI-Project to do more of them for different anime, because their work in both Avenger as .Hack//Roots is really good. The OPs and EDs that they sometimes do for random shows might be good, they’re nothing when compared to the magic that they can do for the background music. The character-designs are also really appealing, but that’s to be expected from Bee-Train. I’ve never really been an animation-expert, but the three or four major fight scenes featured some great animation and coordination. The animation for the rest of the series was nothing special, though.
Then the characters. Unlike other reviewers, I really liked them. Some of them may lack background or reasons, but they’re well fleshed out through the course of thirteen episodes. Their character-development is very small and subtle (apart from Layla, perhaps), but it is there, just enough for such a short series. These factors, the music, animation, setting and characters, combined with Bee-Train’s direction provide a great atmosphere, which is despite all flaws, fun to watch.
Still, the flaws remain flaws, and this anime could have been so much better if Avenger took the time to answer all of its questions. This is another one of those series that suffers from the fact that its story was meant for 26 episodes, not thirteen of them. Because of this, things had to be sacrificed. In this case: the background information. How did people get on Mars? How can people breathe there? Where did Nei come from? These are just a small portion of the questions that this anime leaves behind. Even the ending continues to ask more questions. While it’s not as bad as in .Hack//Roots, the fact remains that this is a major thorn for this series.
About the question whether you will like this, you should ask yourself the following: do you like the so-called “Bee-Train Pacing”? If the answer is no, then stay far away from this series, because if you don’t like the whole atmosphere, you’ll be sure to hate it, especially with the relatively slow turns of events. I’ve also seen many people complain how the entire series is too confusing, though I didn’t run into the same problem (probably because I’ve been watching raws I don’t completely understand for a relative long time ^^;). In any case, I had a lot of fun watching this.]]>
Mononoke – 02
Seriously, Mononoke is pure awesomeness. It’s such a huge shame that there are so few people who gave this series a chance. Heck, the only blog-entry I saw on Animeblogger and Animenano came from a guy who didn’t like the style. Still, that doesn’t mean that I don’t love this series, and it’s going to be fun to blog. I’ve considered following this series subbed, but thankfully the dialogue turned out to be quite easy, with my biggest obstacle being some words I don’t know, instead of the usual incredibly long sentences. It’ll also probably take ages for this thing to get fully subbed, and I’m too impatient to wait for them.
Well then, for those of you who haven’t seen Bake Neko: basically all you have to know is that the medicine seller needs three things before he’s able to slay a demon: the Katachi, Makoto and Kotowari, or the name of the demon, what really is going on and the events that made the demon act the way it did. He usually has no trouble finding the Katachi due to his knowledge (in this case it’s Zasshiki Warashi), but in order to get the Makoto and Kotowari, he needs the involved persons to open up.
The central person for this story is a pregnant woman, who hired a room in an inn, owned by an old woman and her servant. The previous episode showed us strange cradles, a strange kid-like creature, the sound of playing children and the death of a guy who was supposed to be after her.
So, the current episode basically explained the Makoto as follows: at one point, the inn used to be a brothel. And whenever a woman turned pregnant, the owner would kill her, since there wasn’t any chance for her anymore after that. I’m not sure whether the woman mentioned above worked at the same brothel, since the timelines don’t seem to match if she did, but the fact remains that she once was a prostitute as well, who fell in love with an important person. He offered to marry her, until he found out that she already was pregnant of him. She then managed to escape, but her former near-husband sent the guy after her that we saw getting killed at the previous episode. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this one. The Japanese may be easier than usual, it’s still vital to understand as much as possible.
According to this, the Kotowari should be the following: the real form of Zasshiki Warashi is these rather strange children. They are, in fact, the unborn children who were killed by the owner of the brothel, and I believe that they were just searching for another mother. They’ve waited a long time until another pregnant woman showed up, which turned out to be our blonde woman. It now makes sense why they killed the guy in the previous episode: he was threatening their “mother”.
Overall, this arc gave an awesome start to Bake Neko, but I still have to say that Bake Neko was better. But then again, Bake Neko had three episodes, compared to the two episodes of this episode. I’ve read somewhere that this series will feature 13 episodes, divided into five arcs. If this is true, and I had to guess, then the next arc will be another two-episoded one, after which the final three arcs will consist of three episodes. Ayakashi ~ Japanese Classic Horror already showed that the creators like to save the best for last, so I’m really excited to see the rest of this series.]]>