Yay! It’s finally here! Let me first say that it was well worth the wait!
Lloyd somehow turned less stubborn than in the game. He’s also way closer with Collette as well, which is quite interesting. Genius turned a bit clumsier, though, and in the game he was quite a bit smarter and down-to-earth. I liked the changes with Rain, she really looks like an evil teacher now. I can’t wait to see her go in her infamous “Ruin-mode”. ^^; Kratos was a bit disappointing, though. The creators dropped a few way too obvious hints about his real identity, something which came as a shock when he finally revealed it.
Anyway, about the anime. I had to get used a bit to the new character-designs, as they’re a bit different from the ones used in the game. After a bit, this turned out all-right. Seeing actual locations from the game return really accurate was really nice, though. Locations like the school, Lloyd’s and Genuis’s house really brought back memories.
One thing that I wasn’t enthusiastic about, though, was that Marble was left out. Right now, it seems that Lloyd’s decision to start his journey really has been dumbed down a bit. Originally, the Desians never attacked Collette in the first place, but this was done by people who dress like Desians. The people from the village of Iselia have made a treaty with the Desians: if they stay away from the human ranch, owned by the Desians, the Desians would stay away from the village. When it seems that a friend of Genius (Marble), who lived in the Desian-human ranch was getting into trouble there, Lloyd decided that the treaty was already broken and he interfered with these Desians to protect her. Because of this, the Desians set fire on the village, since they never broke the treaty in the first place. To make things even worse, they turn Marble into a monster, causing Lloyd and Genius to kill her. Heck, that’s why Genius gets his own exphere. It could have easily been included if less time was spent on introduction, and it would have been so much better than Lloyd’s mother interfering.
Still, overall, I loved it, mostly for nostalgic purposes. It’s been a while since I played the game, but I loved seeing everyone back again. Still, I do have to say that its predecessor was better. Tales of Phantasia was so great because it just skipped the introductions, and still remained understandable. Cless saying: “you had to burn our village, just for this?!”, combined with the context in which she said it, was enough to make us understand the grievances and motivations of the characters. I was secretly hoping for Tales of Symphonia to do the same, but they really decided to start with the beginning.
The next episodes, though, should promise to become even better, since now that episode one covered such a relative small part of the game, they really have to fasten up the pacing in order to be able to finish in time. I think the most plausible way for the episodes would be the following:
Episode 2: the journey through Sylvarant
Episode 3: the journey through Tethe’Alla, until the giant tree gets saved.
Episode 4: the conclusion, up till the destruction of Yggdrasil.
That means that in two episodes, my favourite characters will arrive: Presea and Regal. I can’t wait! For the next episode, it’s probably impossible to include every major event, though I do hope that the issues of the city of Palmacosta are addressed. For the later episodes, I really do hope we get to see Rain’s mother. Even though she just was in a side-quest, it really made clear why she and her brother lived their lives the way they did.]]>
Seirei no Moribito – 10
Remember any anime in which a member of royalty suddenly becomes a commoner? Well, all of them have the obligatory episode in which this royal person ends up in a crowded place, and has to get accustomed to the customs of the normal people, and often ends up doing something completely reckless. This was exactly such an episode. I kept wondering where it went.
While it was a bit disappointing to see nothing of Shuga, the episode itself focuses on Tooya, who finally managed to find Barsa, Tanda and Chaggumu. Barsa then asks him to take Chaggumu and explore the shopping areas of the city a bit, while Barsa would keep an eye on them from afar.
The two of them eventually end up near a group of entertainers who are hosting a local gambling game. Basically, you spin three coins in a round bowl, and try to guess how many coins fall with their shiny side up. Chaggumu manages to see that the entire game is just being manipulated, though initially he doesn’t do anything about it. Only when Tooya takes the initiative, but fails he gets in action and unmasks the guys.
While the plot progression in this episode was ridiculously close to zero, I quite liked the last quarter of it, when Chaggumu unmasked the plan, and people started to cheer on him. We’re only three episodes removed from episode thirteen, a point at which most anime insert some kind of climax to mark their halfway point. I wonder if Seirei no Moribito will be doing the same, or will it really be waiting till a random point until it takes off? Looking at the pacing of the past ten episodes, there really is no way to be able to predict this.]]>
Death Note – 34
Strangely enough, I’m beginning to like Near more and more. He first was an annoying brat, but during this episode, he grew on me. Probably because he finally showed some signs of actual action, rather than just continuous research.
Anyway, Death Note seems to be heading to quite an interesting ending. I mentioned it before, but this series has gotten way more consistent, and the past episodes all have been really enjoyable to watch, without any obvious bad points. When you compare this to the horrible Yotsuba-arc, it’s definitely an improvement.
With this episode, it indeed is clear now: Light is out of it. For the past five years, it’s been so easy to keep himself concealed that he got lazy. In the first episodes, he thought up some incredibly clever tricks to avoid being detected, like the bag of chips, or the method to keep the death note safe. However, as he kept getting closer to L, he actually found that using L’s name was actually the perfect way to clear any suspicion of him. He became too much used to this. So, what tricks does he use in the current episodes? How does he make sure that he gets his messages to Takada? Well, meet her in a room, on regular basis, and get rid of any video-cameras in order to talk to her via notes.
Obviously, it has to raise suspicion when you keep enforcing this rule, even though it’s perfectly possible to install some hidden cameras without Takada even noticing it. Still, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Heck, “Good Light” was far more annoying than “Grown-up Light”. It’s interesting to see the downfall of a former genius. It goes quite against the usual shounen-formula which dictates that main characters must keep growing stronger.
Obviously, Light is going to have a few more tricks up his sleeve. It looks like Near is going to execute his plans next time and we’ve still got three episodes left. Mello probably also is coming in action now that the person he’s been observing has been captured (and he’s been given enough time to come up with a plan of some sort). I’ve already been spoiled about Light’s fate, but unlike with L’s death, I’m actually really curious about how this anime will turn out. Who will survive? Who’ll die?
In any case, the final three episodes are promising to turn into something very interesting. I can’t wait. :)]]>
Ooedo Rocket – 10
Seriously, the episodes for Ooedo Rocket keep getting weirder and weirder. Unfortunately, this also means harder to understand. The current episode focuses on Tenhou and Tenten (finally I know their names), when they search in Hezo’s house (that was his name, wasn’t it?) after Seikichi and Sora have been missing.
It seems that at one time, they were street-performers, and quite good ones. Then, however, the law started to forbid them to carry out their practices. When they wondered what to do next, they got picked up by an official named Toyama Kinshiro (not to be confused with Ginjiro). They then started to work for him, to defeat criminals. Then they met Seikichi, and got inspired by his innocence, so they decided to watch over him. That’s why we’ve been seeing the two of them talking whenever Seikichi was in trouble.
That was about the part that made the most sense. For a majority of the episode, we follow them spying on Hezo because of what he did in the previous episode, commanding cats and all to take back the flyers revealing the location where Seikichi always carries out his fireworks-tests. Furthermore, Seikichi and Sora have been missing, and they suspect the guy behind this as well.
So, what’s his secret? Well, he’s got a machine that changes people into cats. The cats from the previous episode probably all were his servants who went into these machines. Seikichi and Sora went to his house for some Ohagi, got lost and accidentally ended up in these machines as well (by the way, seeing Tenhou, Tenten, Seikichi and Sora in cat-form were SO cute. Tenten with nekomimi also was just awesome ^^;).
This episode also introduced yet another new character: Mizuno. So far, he’s unimportant, though he could play a considerable role in the next episodes. He seems to be Kinshiro and Torii’s superior. We see the three talk with each other for a bit, and that part was just impossible to understand, since they toss all kinds of big words at each other (most of which I couldn’t even find in the dictionary), not to mention that Mizuno explores new depths of the word “Giddy”.
In any case, judging by the reaction of Kinshiro and Torii afterwards, though, he probably meant to tell them not to go after Hezo. Torii sends Ginjiro to go after Akai, who’s searching the guy’s house as well, while Kinshiro tries to find Tenten and Tenhou, but gets into trouble with the locals. This does result, however, in Tenhou and Tenten finding out about what Ginjiro has been up to and vice versa when the two parties notice each other. One thing that still puzzles me was what happened when the townsfolk found out about Kinshiro’s identity. It was probably filled with bad puns and references. Still, now that I wrote things down a bit, the episode makes much more sense. It really was a fun one, despite its strangeness. Now all that’s left to hope is that Shinsen will continue to sub this series for more than just one episode.
Anyway, to close off this post, I got an interesting comment on the last entry I wrote for this series, by Bomber D Rufi, who claims that this series might actually take up 26 episodes. While the series looks like it’ll just finish in two or three episodes, things could get very interesting if this rumour turned out to be true. After all, the OP-single gets released on July 4th, which is after the anime finished.]]>
Claymore – 10
Interesting, the current episode answered many questions the previous episodes have been hinting at, with the most important one being: did Claire inherit any of Teresa’s specialities? The answer is: yes.
Episode eight indeed made a huge impact on Claire, and she indeed has inherited Teresa’s ability of sensing Yoki, but because of the fact that she only is 1/4 Youma, instead of the usual 1/2, her physical strength is weak. I think that because of this, she decided to use her skills, rather than her strength.
Especially because this is a perfect way to fight Awakened Beings, which probably was the biggest reason for her to concentrate on this skill. I do wonder, though. What caused Deneve to develop her skill as it is? I mean, extra-fast regeneration definitely is useful, but only once or twice against a strong opponent. She probably won’t ever need it when she faces regular Youma. What caused her to actually need this skill?
Another thing that’s remarkable is Claire’s ability to stand, even though she’s got a lot of wounds. I’m not sure what’s up with that, but I can imagine that being under the care of a Youma for her entire childhood did make her body quite tough.
Also, if I understood things correctly, the party was sent to get killed off. The organization was aware that there was a male Youma in the vicinity, yet they didn’t notify Miria of this. I can understand Claire, being 47th and all, but why did they want to kill off the three others?
This episode was quite nice, but I’m actually more interested in the next one, to see how everyone changed after the events in this episode. One thing that annoyed me in this episode, though, was the lack of battle-tactics. These four Claymores just rush in, without knowing anything about each other. No planned moves, nothing. Heck, Miria first keeps telling that she wants to know as much of her companions as possible, but she doesn’t even know about Helen’s extended arms for god’s sake.]]>
Wellber no Monogatari – 10
This definitely was a cute episode. Basically, Rita and Tina make up again, after Rita finds out about the misunderstanding. It seems that this arc was mostly meant to flesh out the pair of them a bit before the finale starts. A “calm before the storm”, in a way, though that doesn’t mean that everything was light-hearted.
Both Rita and Tina turned out really touching. I have to say that, while the ending was a bit too coincidental, it was nicely found, and unlike any other Deus ex Machina I’ve seen. I really wonder what the creators have in stall for us for the final episodes. It definitely realizes that it needs to build up first, and something really tells me that they’ve been planning something very interesting for the finale of this anime.
About the only thing I felt disappointed over in this episode was that we never get to see the reunion of Tina and her boyfriend. After she wrote such a lovely letter to him, he came all the way to Sangatras just because of this. Apart from that, though, it was a great episode.
Oh, one thing though. Someone please tell the animators a few things about the English language. As if Bokura no’s “Garally” wasn’t bad enough…]]>
Bokura no – 09
Oh my god… that was such an amazing episode! This time, it focuses on one of the more overlooked characters in this series: Daiichi. And the timing couldn’t have been better. After all the hate and paranoia of the past few arcs, it was SO refreshing to see someone with a personality, entirely opposite of Isao’s.
The results turned out amazing. Finally we have a pilot who doesn’t have any grudges at all. He lost his parents at early age, so he’s had to take care of his two sisters and brother for a few years now. He basically spends most of the episode, living his last days with his family, and he asks the others not to try and interfere with him. I can’t believe how mature he was, with the prospect of dying!
Seeing all the other children cry as Daiichi tried to take care of the enemy mecha also was too sad. It’s also interesting, with most series where random monsters have to be beaten, their strength keeps increasing. With Bokura no, though, the strength of these mechas remains the same. It’s just their destructive capabilities that increase. That definitely got clear with this episode, when Daiichi has to beat a strange kind of steam-roller. This episode definitely was one of the highlights of an already amazing series, and it should definitely not be missed!
Anyway, regarding the plot, the two people from the military sign themselves up, so that each enemy can now be taken care of. We also see Koemushi in another discussion with his mysterious conversation-partner. The dialogue was a bit hard to understand, but it seems he’s pissed off that the military people signed themselves up. Ushiro also gets mentioned, though I don’t really picked up why.
By the way, this anime is quite mean towards its male character. Four of them are left now: Moji, Kanji, Yosuki and Yuno.]]>
Gunslinger Girl Sequel?
Moonphase and the animesuki forums, a sequel of Gunslinger Girl is in the works, more than three years after the airdate of the original series. At this time, the format is still pretty much unknown, but I’m hoping for a fully fledged tv-series. I personally loved this series when I watched it, mostly because it was incredibly thought-provoking, and the ending was just too sweet. I’ll be interested to see more of this.]]>
El Cazador de la Bruja – 10
Awesome, it seems that my worries after the previous episode were completely unnecessary. This episode featured lots of plot progression, new information, character-development and a great case. And not to forget the awesome background tune that returned! I had just one problem with this episode: PLEASE MAKE THE TACO-SONG STOP!!! Seriously, I’m fearing that I can’t get it out of my head if it continues for much longer.
The case this time features a guy who works at a taco-shop, along with his wife/girlfriend (Margarita). The guy, however, spent a part of his life as a serial-killer. At that time, he became acquaintances with a guy named Markes, who was about to be sent to prison. Margarita was with him, back then. For some reason, when he got out a year later, he begged the guy to kill her. He couldn’t kill her, and fell in love with her instead. Or something like that. You wouldn’t suspect that El Cazador has such a difficult dialogue to understand.
Anyway, Ellis was awesome this time. She really takes lead of the episode at times, for example when she starts wearing the waitress-costume. A large part of the episode also focuses on her, learning to smile at the appropriate times (with some hilarious results). During the climax, when Markes comes to take his revenge she also makes sure that Margarita is out of danger, and knocks the guy out by smacking a bunch of maracas on his head.
That last part was actually quite interesting. You wouldn’t say it, but Ellis definitely knows how to fight. I mean, maracas can be hard and all, but to knock out a grown male with them, and breaking them in the process does require a lot of strength. Because of this, I really do wonder what the second half of this anime has in store for us. Seriously, this series keeps dropping hints that something special is going to happen in the future. Either that, or I’m turning paranoid.
I’m also glad to see that L.A. finally escapes from Rozenberg. We don’t see him for the rest of the episode, but the souvenirs he left suggest that his sanity took a turn for the worse. Something tells me that this was exactly what Rozenberg wanted, so that he’d awaken “Ellis’ true powers”.
I also loved Blue-Eyes. While she was a bit silly in the previous two episodes, it was a perfect build-up for what happened at the end of this episode. She finally got her hands on the document, explaining everything about project Leviathan. It seems to be a project that was started a long time ago. If it succeeds, it might even have consequences on te entire earth. What kind of consequences, we’ll never know, as she then reaches a page with “You look much better without your glasses” scribbled on it. Seriously, how did Rozenberg know, and why did he want her to actually read it? Heck, why did he want her to know that he knows that she read it?
Ricardo also once again proves how dangerous he can be. He seems to have a bad history with Markes, so he brutally kills the guy after the climax, when nobody’s looking. The strange thing is that he just let Lilio come with him. I’m not sure whether she saw him actually kill, but that is not something you should do near a little girl. We also see hints that Lilio isn’t his real daughter. Why did he decide to take care of her? Heck, what happened to her voice?
I’m glad to see that this episode restored my faith in this series. It also was great to hear the music back, seriously, it should have been played more frequently. But then again, the track has become so awesome because it has only been played so little.]]>
Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 22
Quite an important episode, as lots of things happen that will be important for the rest of the anime. To give a small summary, Gavroche moves to Paris, Marius couldn’t find the Thenardiers and moves in with a friend, Javert still is obsessed with catching Jean, Fauche-le-Vent dies and Jean and Cosette move out of the monastery, after having lived there for six years.
It was great to see Gavroche and Shushu back, by the way. Now that thugs are looking for the Thenardiers he needs to be careful, as they’re probably going to see him as the payments for accumulated dept. If you live in a city, it’ll become really hard to track someone down, and I suspect that he secretly wants to see Cosette again. I wonder what his role will be in the next couple of episodes, and where did the Thenardiers flee to, by the way?
It also seems that Marius won’t be forgiving his uncle anytime soon. He even wouldn’t accept any money that his aunt offered. It’ll be interesting once he meets Cosette: he’ll be looking for the people she fears most in this world. What’s also apparent in this episode is how he has to get used to having a limited amount of money. He probably lived his entire life in the luxury that his uncle provided to him, and he really looks awkward when all he has for dinner is a plate of cheap soup and a bit of bread.]]>