I guess that this was one of those episodes that had a bit of everyone. Heck, half of the huge cast got a bit of development. The blue monster from the sky, Genzo, Seikichi, Sora, Kagiya, Shunpei, Tenhou, Tenten, a few of the hunters, Akai, Anui, the townsfolk, O-Ise and Genzo’s mother all play some kind of important role in this episode.
To start with O-Ise, in this episode she keeps bugging the townsfolk about a luxurious vacation she’s selling. Judging by the reaction of the townsfolk, they have experienced her vacations before, and left there with some baaaad memories. ^^; Oh, and she gets robbed afterwars, by the blue monster from the sky.
And poor Genzo! He’s now also been degraded to mere pigeon in the OP. And only now I realize that he was responsible for most of the calculations that Seiichi needed. It also took me till this episode to realize that he’s got a mother! It’s so cute of her to worry about him, and yet she thinks he’s on some sort of journey.
And boy, does the blue monster from the sky show a different side of her during this episode! The past few episodes portrayed her as an evil bitch, but she actually showed pity in this episode. The events of the previous episode really made her think, because I’m sure that she wants to return to the moon as well. It’s ironic that she of all people starts needing Genzo, since all of the townsfolk just took his existence for granted. I also finally realized why I can’t remember her name: she doesn’t have one!
Akai meanwhile, tries to use Kagiya’s daughter to try and get Seikichi, but it fails. Basically, he arranges it so that she gets assigned with the task f repairing the space-ship, with which he hopes she’ll go to Seikichi for advice. He didn’t take her “I don’t want to lose from that guy”-attitude. ^^; In any case, with this she finally got an important role, instead of being a side-character who shows up once every five episodes.
This episode also was a great one for the different couples on the show. Shunpei gets a bit closer to Anui, due to his frustrations with his brother. Seikichi and Sora keep doing random things in order to tweak the rocket (I’m actually not sure what the poles they made were for, but I guess we’ll see that in the next episode), and Tenhou gets a bit closer with her stalker. ^^;
I’m also glad to see that after Bokura no, other shows are coming with their new EDs to. I still liked the first one better, though, but this one also is quite fun to watch.]]>
Claymore – 14
Haha, I’m glad to see that in the end, Ophelia did turn into a memorable character. During episode 12 and 13, she didn’t really impress me much, and her background story felt too incomplete for me to care about her, but luckily this episode changed this. The fact remains that she already had the personality of an awakened being, and now that she has realy become one of them, her insanity didn’t increase, it decreased, and she spends the final minutes of her life in a surprisingly human state, after she realizes this.
It seems that Priscilla hasn’t been standing still, ever since she killed Teresa. We have still no clue about what she’s been up to, but we now know that she did kill Ophelia’s brother. Because of that, Ophelia began to develop her obsession for killing awakened beings. And now I finally realize what’s going to make Claire so special: she’s basically a combination of lots of great Claymore. She first had Teresa inside of her, and in this episode, Irene’s arm and Ophelia’s goal get added. Something tells me that she’ll take something from every major opponent she runs into to add this to her arsenal. I quite like this, in fact.
Still, that is no reason for me to like the immense power-up that Claire got after merging with Irene’s arm. I mean, Ophelia already was immensely powerful, and now that she has awakened, this power has only increased. The power-boost that Claire got from it could really have been more subtle, especially since it’s the first time she uses it. After all, the arm may be one thing, but what really makes it work the way it does is the link to your brain. It takes a while to get used to the power, and Claire, who couldn’t even come close to one tenth of the speed of Irene, should have had more trouble dealing with it.
Oh, and Irene dies in this episode, by the hands of number five, Rafaela. We also learn that of the top-five, Ophelia was actually the weakest. Next up, Claire is probably going to have to fight the remaining four, after which Priscilla comes. That’s one of the things I dislike about shounen-series, no matter how good the rest, they always follow the pattern of a great power that needs to be defeated, only to move on to the next, even stronger power, until the big boss is reached. The great shounen-series are the ones that manage to add more than just that, like the comedy and tactical battles in the Law of Ueki. For Claymore, this is going to be its explanation and characters. If it wants to be better than the other shounen-anime, the future enemies had better have the same level development of Ophelia, or even more.]]>
Bokura no – 13
Oh. My. God.
That was more shocking than I ever imagined. This episode introduces the second half of Bokura no, and holy god…. that was awesome, disturbing, touching, exciting and I couldn’t help but love it. Bokura no already was my favourite show of the spring-season, and here it comes and turns even better!!
I knew that the other robots were piloted by other children as well, but actually seeing these people, who were about to be killed by our group of kids made a huge impact on me. Fighting against other robots and planets is easy, but once you know who’s inside them, things go a whole lot different.
Apparently, judging by the fact that this episode featured a new ED, Bokura no will be 24-episodes long, and that with only five pilots left (seven, if you count the adults). I really wonder about the surprises that the second half of this show will bring us, and the next episode is promising to be awesome as well, since it’ll be focusing on Yosuki, whose case I’m really looking forward to. Also, what was up with the guys that tried to kidnap the females? They looked a bit different from your usual drunk guys assaulters.
Oh, and Maki! Her ending was so sweet, even though her case was relatively simple. In the end, she died, right after seeing her new brother.]]>
Some quick first impressions: School Days, Kenk Zenrakei Suieibu Umisho and Zombie Loan
School Days
I must praise this anime for being the first harem-anime that actually “gets on with it” so fast. Just watch the episode, and you’ll understand. I’ve seen quite a few first episodes of harem-shows during the overcrowded fall-season, but none went as far as the first episode of School Days. Unfortunately, that’s the only good and actually average point about this anime. Everything else is either sub-par or horrible. The dialogue was boring, and the male main character looks even worse than your average harem-lead. The animation was again nothing special, and the music was almost non-existent. And why must every school-based bishoujo harem, with no exception, have an energetic best friend who is a pervert and will never have a girl of his own and merely exists to be annoying and “comic” relief? So, basically what will happen is that we’ll be following a standard dating-sim, until the end where everyone kills each other? There’d better be enough serious scenes to keep me interested.
Kenko Zenrakei Suieibu Umisho
Okay… I think we’ve found our fanservice-series of the season. For an anime about swimming, there was bound to be some nudity, but this series carries this to a very next level. Basically, the story is about a mermaid who attacks a young boy while he’s swimming in the ocean, giving a fear of water for the rest of his life and visits his town a bunch of years later to make his life even more “miserable”. Oh, did I mention that this girl likes to swim around naked? Still, it does have a few good point, most importantly: the male lead actually looks different from all other male leads of series of the same genre. In comparison to, say School Days, this anime actually has some nice production-values, and it just looks good. The characters also were interesting enough, when fanservice wasn’t involved. Still, I’m worried about the excessive amount of fanservice, and I hope it’s not a bad sign of things to come.
Zombie Loan
Whoa, this one turned out good! I was a bit scared due to the cheesy title, the concept of zombies and the mediocre promo-art, but these worries were not needed at all. Zombie Loan actually is a freaky shoujo-anime, and it’s one of the few cases where the promo-art looks worse than the art of the actual anime. The art, background sounds, music and dialogue manage to create a really captivating atmosphere, and the characters have already managed to set themselves apart from the stereotypes in only the first episode. Let’s hope now that the series won’t degenerate into fillers at some point, but this episode already showed that it can deliver some great drama. I’d definitely recommend this one.]]>
Some quick first impressions: Shigurui, Nanatsuiro Drops and Doujin Work
Shigurui
The first series I checked out for the summer-season, and I think I’ve already found my favourite OP of the season. I love artsy OPs like this one, that do something else than just “oh, let’s display the different characters in a cool or sad way and add some random music to it”, not to mention that the melody rocks. Anyway, about Shigurui: let me first start with a warning. If you’ve got a weak heart, are rather young or just can’t stand gore: DO NOT WATCH THIS. This is a horror-show, focused at a select audience, and it tries to captivate it by combining an eerie mood and some of the most disturbing gore I’ve seen in anime. If I had to guess, than the entire anime is about the fight between two samurai, one missing an arm and one without eyesight, where most of the airtime is spent on fleshing out their backgrounds. It’s only been one episode, and already we’ve seen bloody broken fingers, a guy pulling out his own guts and another guy stabbing his own toe, in all graphic details. Personally, I like the show so far, but the scene where the guy broke his fingers was too much for me, and I just couldn’t bear to watch the screen anymore.
Nanatsuiro Drops
Oohh.. someone… PLEASE make Sumomo stop whining! Seriously, how more annoying can she get? Her character-designs suck, her voice-acting is way too drawn out and her personality is, just like the rest of the cast by the way, a cookie-cutter at best. I can’t believe the character-designer is famous, because what he shows here was just horrible. Anyway, about the story, it’s not much interesting either. A guy gets turned into a fluffy animal and needs Sumomo to catch sparkly thingies in order to change back. These sparkly thingies can draw the energy of the flowers, and if they do, Sumomo will cry because it’s so sad for the flowers… god, she needs to grow a spine. Oh, have I already mentioned the obligatory dark mysterious character who watches from afar and will probably get drawn into the main character’s harem at episode three? This is one to avoid.
Doujin Work
And here we have the anime about a group of doujin-artists. In this episode, a girl attends a doujin-convention, realizes how much money people can make in it and decides to become a doujin-artist herself… and that’s about it. There’s not much to say about this series anyway. The art is sub-par; the animation is not very good. The jokes manage to make sure that it doesn’t get boring too soon, but they’re not exactly funny. The characters are rather flat and one-dimensional, and I honestly can’t think of something that stands out. Let’s hope that this is one of these anime that needs a bit of time to warm up, as this episode didn’t impress me much. I liked the yuri-joke, though.]]>
El Cazador de la Bruja – 14
Haha! El Cazador is really getting fired up now! The first half did a great job of building up, and now the plot really starts moving! This episode, we get treated with an episode fully dedicated to showing Ellis’s time with the professor, before she shot him down (in fact, the cliff-hanger ends with the bang that killed the guy). My enthusiasm for this show is really growing rapidly with each episode!
This episode was entirely meant to show what the professor meant for Ellis. They’re the only two people who get some airtime, along with a couple of shots of Rozenberg. Ellis got first transferred to the professor’s house so that he could study her. Eventually, they began to have feelings for each other (cue insert song! ^^;). Not terribly original, but I still loved it. It also seems that the professor got shot down on thanksgiving, when Ellis first confessed her love for him.
The question, though, remains: how did the guy die. We do see a suspicious pair of feet enter the grounds of the mansion right before the shot sounds, but the fact also remains that there was a shot in the middle of Ellis’s package, right on the place of her chest. Where did that one come from? If I had to guess, then Rozenberg killed off the guy because he didn’t do what he wanted him to do (hence the shattered glass), but that doesn’t explain why Ellis blames herself for the murder either.
If El Cazador can be able to keep up this pace for most of the rest of the second half, this series can very well become one of the highlights of the spring-season. It’s going to be the highlight of this week in any case. The big question now remains: will the next episodes focus more on the plot, or degrade back to the cryptic first half? Only time will tell!]]>
Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 26
Well, if this isn’t building up, then I don’t know anymore. Seriously, this episode gives a new meaning to the phrase “nothing happens”. Through the course of the episode, the characters keep getting chances to meet each other, and they keep missing these chances. The Thenardiers have buggered off for the episode, and even Eponine has only two seconds of airtime! Basically, the entire episode was about Cosette, nearly missing a reunion with Marius, and Gavroche actually seeing Jean and Cosette pass out bread to the hungry children, but not RECOGNIZING them.
Les Miserables is probably the only anime nowadays to come with such an episode. The events mentioned above may not have been the most exciting, but something tells me that they’re building up for something amazing. I actually expected the series to come with some kind of major climax in episode 26, but apparently the creators have different ideas.
Still, luckily there were more events going on than just that, which made this episode worthwhile. We get introduced to a huge wooden elephant, which has been discarded since Napoleon buggered off. Gavroche decides to make it his home-base, and the amis also seem to have plans with it. Gavroche really shows that he’s a son of the Tnenardiers, by the way. He may have been raised by Cosette, but the past few episodes have shown that he is very good in getting things without any money. But because he spent a lot of time with Cosette, he learned to care for his companions, or the other street-children.
Jean and Cosette also had each an important scene. Cosette, for the first time, starts to doubt Jean, because he refuses to go back to the park. This makes her think back of the time when he had to flee for Javert, and she also starts to wonder whether the reason for Fauche-les-Vent to change his name (Fauche-les-Vent apparently was fake) was because he was some kind of criminal. She forgets this immediately, but it’s quite an important event for the future, if I had to guess. Meanwhile, Jean, while outside with Cosette, sees a parade of policemen, transporting a carriage of some miserable-looking prisoners. They make him think back at the time he spent in prison, and he reckons that if he gets caught again, he’ll probably die in prison.
Like I said, if this isn’t building up, then I don’t know anymore.]]>
Toward the Terra – 13
Another major episode: the first contact between Jomie and Keith. Seriously, I love the fast pacing of this show, it’s only been a few episodes, and already the plot has taken leaps forward. Physis also played a bit role in this episode, the first time she actually does, and it seems that the Myu will be leaving Nazca quite soon, depending on how Keith will get out of the situation he was in at the end of the episode.
The highlight of the episode was definitely the showdown between Keith and Jomie. Keith decides to go down on Nazca’s atmosphere in order to find him, and Jomie immediately senses that this person may not land. After quite an exciting battle, Keith manages to get captured. Physis, however, who has been watching from the sidelines, feels some strange things coming from this guy. I couldn’t exactly understand what, but he seems to hold the key to the location of Terra. When his mind is being read, though, all that shows up are the images of earth that Mother Eliza has been implanting in him.
The next episode is promising to be really exciting, and I’m glad to see that Physis finally gets a bit of development for herself.]]>
Kaze no Shoujo Emily – 13
As a Christmas-episode, it was clear that this episode again would become a success, and I couldn’t help but love this episode. Kaze no Shoujo always manages to give me a warm feeling after every episode, and its characters remain some of the most touching of the entire season. In other words, this series is awesomeness.
I liked how, even though this was a Christmas-episode, the episode itself didn’t try to be something more than it was. It focused this time developing Elizabeth’s and Emily’s relationship even more, and made use of the Christmas-party that was held at the New Moon. It seems that Elizabeth has become stricter after the past few episodes, and even though she likes Emily, she stil tries to learn her a few lessons. I’m especially surprised at how much she seems to disapprove of Emily skating. Of course, it is dangerous and all for her, but for her to be this much against it, I wonder whether she speaks from experience…
In any case, Emily seems to screw up and breaks a bunch of promises, so as a result, Elizabeth doesn’t let her join the party and she spends the evening in her room, until Jimmy brings her a bit of food. She then even went as far as believing that Elizabeth believes that she doesn’t belong to the family. A woman then discovers her and the tears in her eyes (she had been crying for quite a while now). Usually in similar cases, the adult would cut the child some slack, but Elizabeth really intended to keep Emily away from the party as punishment. The woman really needs to bring Emily downstairs and confront Elizabeth with how she treated the poor girl, and even went as far as offering to take care of her. Elizabeth then really had to show some mercy to Emily, and the results were really touching.
Oh, and Emily and Ilse looked awesome in their formal dresses. I love it when anime spend attention to clothing like that, and don’t end up giving the same outfit to a character for every episode (which is another reason I tend to dislike school uniforms. Everyone now looks the same). This definitely is one of my favourite series to have aired in the spring-season!]]>
Saiunkoku Monogatari – 51
You know, I’ve been wondering… This show airs at Saturday, 9:00am, right? I wonder if it’s really the appropriate time to show a series with such disturbing footage, especially in this episode, when human bodies get cut up right on screen. In any case, the major focus of this episode falls on the doctors: curing the patients. If you liked the different doctors, this is the episode you want to look out to, as it’s finally time for them to put the things they learned to practice.
And like expected, most of them are incredibly scared. But who wouldn’t? I mean, they know the techniques to properly cut in the body, but the fact remains that with one wrong move, they could kill somebody. This mentality doesn’t leave their minds soon, and it probably wasn’t the best idea to bring all of them to the first demonstration of a real operation. After all, every doctor is scared, and when you’re among others that are scared too, the fear just increases.
When some of the doctors, however, left the castle, in order catch a breath of fresh air, things went well. Only then they realized that they could be the ones to save lives when people began to beg them to save their loved ones. After that, all things went well. Shuurei, meanwhile, hasn’t been standing still either, and she spends the episode, making sure that there are enough supplies to take care of the patients. I’m surprised that the people at such a time-period knew how important disinfecting is. The early European doctors could really have learned a lot of things from them.
Near the end of the episode, the biggest threat of the disease is gone. The logical next step would be: find the mysterious Senya. It seems that Shuuran and Riou (the young one) want to come with them on this journey. Shuuran is quite the adventurous kid, and I also think that she’s seeing Shuurei as some sort of idol, and I can imagine that she wants to be like the person that saved her mother, and to be with her as much as possible. Her character is going to be really interesting in the future episode, and what the heck is up with Riou? What are his plans.
Well, at least we know that young Riou and old Riou aren’t the same person, as the guy shows himself again. That was quite an amazing scene, by the way, as for some reason he decided to visit Ryuuki, and Ryuuki knew that the guy was coming. Also, his sword emitted a red light when the two of them met. What was up with that?
Kourin remains gone from the episode, though we learn a bit more about the position Eigetsu is in. It seems that his kidnapper is after Yougetsu, and he’s basically waiting for Eigetsu’s time to run out. Meanwhile, he enjoyed himself torturing Eigetsu’s body. Probably because these wounds will remain on Yougetsu once Eigetsu dies. Also, surprisingly enough the guy is also after Shuurei. I can understand that someone would be after Yougetsu, but why Shuurei? This probably has something to do with the reason the cult blamed Shuurei for the disease.
You could say that this episode marked the end of another arc, since the major problem that has been the focus of the past few episodes is as good as resolved. The next arc should focus on the cult, and I am SO looking forward to it, as it’s promising to be more character-centric than the arcs up till now. Bring on the awesomeness!]]>