This really was an episode that focused on the different romances going on, to the point where the first couple has been formed. The end of the episode is pretty much the point where this series goes back to being a love triangle, but a very messy one at that, with character A thinking that character B likes character C while she is growing to like character A more unbeknownst to him, at a point when character C has realized that she had a crush on him.
These love triangles are very easy to screw up and devolve into a soap opera, but what I really like is how the creators made use of Rituko’s character development to further complicate things, rather than pulling some random twist for the sake of drama. The way she came to like Kaoru after spending a lot of time with him, knowing he has a crush on her, while trying to move away from Sentarou… it’s plausible for all of this to happen: over the course of the past episodes we were given enough reasons for her change.
The problem I have with series about teenagers is that there are too many of them: it gets harder and harder to stand out. However, when one comes along that is as well acted as Apollon, I’ll gladly shove these biases aside. That doesn’t change the fact that I want to see more variety in anime, especially considering that “seinen”-series that are supposed to focus on young adults feature teenaged lead characters more often than not. I can’t really fault the creators for picking an excellent manga about teenagers and animating it incredibly well.
But still, we’re currently in a very important half year for Noitamina: these are four series that really need to do well after the Guilty Crown disaster. Apollon and Tsuritama for being really well executed. Natsuyuki and Moyashimon meanwhile need to succeed in order to prove that there still is an audience for series about adults.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
That episode was so full of clichés and annoying moments that it kind of ruined the achievment of the previous episode.
Also, no jazz in this episode, yet again…
Woah…hold on a second…this show is about Jazz?!
I think I finally figured out why I don’t get annoyed with Apollon, despite having a strong dislike for teenage-romance anime in general.
Not really sure if I can put it in words, but I’ll try.
When I watch Apollon, I can actually think of the characters as kids. When I watch other romance anime, all I see are 2D anime characters.
This particular episode might not be the best example, but one thing this show does well in previous eps is the way it uses silence. Characters don’t have to say much to convey their emotions/thoughts to the viewer. This was commonplace in many of the old anime, but you don’t see much of it anymore. These days, creators seem to prefer dialogue heavy stuff, either via extremely convoluted monologue like what you get from KyoAni, or pseudo-intelligent (emphasis on pseudo) drivel like in the WhateverGatari franchise. The subtlety I see in Apollon is nostalgic, almost “minimalist” to some extent.
Wonder how psgels is going to feel about this anime in the end when he finds out that all the soap opera romance/angst ended up completely useless, and a waste of time, [SPOILER].
Unless of course they deviate and don’t follow the manga at the end.
Please don’t use spoilers from the manga! – psgels
Strange. I got volume 9 delivered to me just a few days ago, and thought the ending was perfect. There were some bits I in the middle and final chapter I didn’t quite understand, but my Japanese isn’t really the best. Overall, I loved it and hope Watanabe does follow the manga as much as he can. Not going to spoil anything for psgels, but the ending is millenia better than the simple “who ends up with who” scenario, no question.
Well thank you for spoiling the end of the series.
Some people are so inconsiderate of others!
Or maybe you shouldn’t read the comments if you don’t want to be spoiled. Spoilers don’t go out in the shoutbox because sometimes you can’t help,but see them. You chose with your own free will to click on this episode summary so cry me a river.
Excuse me this is the ANIME post for episode 8 not a discussion about the manga.
I should be safe to read the comments because I watched this latest episode, talking about what happens after this episode in the manga is a spoiler.
And saying who (or who doesn’t) get with who is still a spoiler even if you did not spoil the details. So yes you were inconsiderate to anime only watchers.
aww poor baby. Did i cry when i literally read 20+ spoilers about HxH in these same summaries? No. Did i whine when i read numerous spoilers in the Mirai Nikki episode threads? No.
Stop reading the episode summaries if you want to be spoiler free.
To be fair to armpit and in his defense you probably should have just ignored his post. I don’t feel all that annoyed by spoilers often they are an incentive for me to continue a series that maybe wasn’t really enaging me as much as it hoped, but finding it improves at a later point through a spoiler can get me back into it.
No why don’t you stop being a jerk and posting spoilers.
I don’t really care if you were spoiled by other people for other series. They were wrong too. That does not give you the right to spoil other people in this thread.
This is a post about the anime so only the anime (or manga chapters that cover this episode) should be discussed.
And why is that? Because you say so? It was never a rule before , so why is it now? Psgels has never reprimanded people for spoilers in these summary posts, so again, explain to me how i am a jerk, yet you aren’t an entitled little brat who thinks everything should be your way or no way?
@Armpit:
Actually you are wrong. Perhaps not for this series specifically but I know for a fact Psgels has complained countless times about spoilers in the comments since he does not read the manga for the series he is posting about.
Then he should make rules otherwise nothing can be done since he lets it go all the time. Just because it is his site means nothing. Without rules, and rules that are to be followed at all times, and not just when he feels like it, then the site would be run by nothing but a dictator.That is a quick way to lose a large portion of the people who visit his site.
So again until i see an official rule posted somewhere about this i’ll just ignore you, or continue to rile you up because you act like a baby and it amuses me.
Cried that river yet?
@Armpit
Even if there are no rules written down perhaps you don’t realize it is common courtesy to not spoil other people.
Actually, I have complained countless of times for people to leave spoilers of the original material out of these comments. Hunter X Hunter is just an exception where there is too much going on for me to really regulate it. But with most adaptations, I really don’t appreciate spoilers.
Also, if you’re bothered by the spoilers for Hunter X Hunter: let me know, because then I’ll try to keep those out oft hese comments as well. I admit that this is partially my fault, because I have been a bit lazy with removing them, but with this I’ll moderate them more carefully.
So yeah, thank you for first spoiling the ending, and then being an asshole about it.
Don’t worry Kim, he/she didn’t really spoil anything.
Nope i tried to stay away from the intricate details and just talked about it in a vague sense. Not to mention there is a good chance the anime won’t follow the manga 100% anyway. If the anime adds 5 mins of material after the manga ends, then a lot more fans of the series will be happy. An awesome manga that i would of gave a 92/100 or so, deserved more than the rush job that happened at the end.
Thankfully it is easily fixable with a couple mins of anime original material. Plus the mangaka could also have a more conclusive ending in the works with the bonus volume that will be released.
Thanks 🙂
But even that much was more than I wanted to know about the ending.
Dude stop being a dick. Can’t you at least warn for spoilers if you have the uncontrollable urge to?
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
And just because a couple of butthurt immature people can whine about it, doesn’t mean you should.
You are entitled to your opinion , even if it differs from mine. I don’t think the anime, or manga, are close to bad. However i will laugh hard if psgels gives this series even a 87.5/100 if they go with the manga ending. If he does then it is just him being a biased hypocrite like he has proven to be quite often recently
You can like the ending all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that it renders all of the angst and soap opera drama useless.The only [SPOILER] who ended up [SPOILER] were also the 2 least [SPOILER] from the series, and weren’t even really [SPOILER].
Of course there is supposed to be some bonus volume releasing that could give closure to it all, but i heard that the sen x kaoru story is done and that will focus on the other couple.
EDIT: No spoilers please.
Honestly I’ve gotten so used to this sort of thing I don’t even let it bother me much anymore. Though if the extra volume or anime does things better, fair enough all well and good.
Psgels may give this the score you mentioned if he’s in a stance of overlooking problems with the show and feels theres enough to make up for it.
Sen x Kaoru eh? heh I must say that does get my mind wandering a bit. lol
I argue with Psgels at times(Ok, a lot of times) but Armpit I have to say you are being too much of a dick here. It’s easy to criticise the blogger from comments. Because you are a anonymous voice in a crowd you can say whatever you want without worry about being wrong or not. However Psgels post is the one everyone is analysing. If Psgels is wrong then he gets hell for it. People even bug him about spelling mistakes and mixing up names.
We have to realise the fact that Psgels is human too.
Aidan, I don’t mean to be rude or offensive or anything but come on man, this issue was closed already, don’t draw it out any further, lets not gives arms anymore shite about this hey?
Calm down, breathe Kaiser. It is totally ok. For the record i didn’t just post spoilers intentionally to ruin shlt for people. I assumed that since i’ve seen spoilers in many of these threads before that they were allowed. I had just got done reading the last volume of the manga, and posted here a little bit after. I really wasn’t even thinking.
And i would never get mad at you Aidan bagel or whoever else i consider a friend for trying to keep me in check, or disagreeing with me.
And if we had the option to use spoiler tags i would of immediately put them up after the first person bitched.
I’ve thought about this for a bit…I did kinda overreact. I worry sometimes online though that if I don’t play it safe with how I phrase things someones going to see it coming off as rude.
Sorry Aidan, kim I overeacted.
I think i come off rude frequently when in reality i’m not really trying to. It is just the way i type, and the habit of not re reading before i post.
Happens to me all the time in real life, mostly cause I’ve got a boring voice and squint all the time people think I’m depressed or angry…lol I feel like that guy from toradora now XD
Haha i wasn’t saying Sen X Kaoru in a romantic sense, but that pairing is shipped quite often with the series :). I just meant the end of their arc since the main storyline is really about those 2.
And i love psgels, and have called him a hypocrite before. He is way more lenient with series aimed at females, or the feminine shows aimed at males. So i just like to screw around with him, but i think he knows i don’t mean it maliciously.
You just mentioned Gankutsuou in the shoutbox kaiser. The ending of this series is similar to that one in a certain way. I hated how there was no closure in Gankutsuou with the romance between the main male and you know who.Even worse they tease you with it at the very end only to give no definitive closure.The difference is in Gankutsuou romance wasn’t anything close to a main theme so i could overlook it somewhat. This series focused on nothing really other than music and romance so i expected a whole lot more out of the ending. It just came off as very lazy to me.
But it is easily fixable. It wasn’t like the entire ending was bad. I enjoyed almost all of the last volume up until it got close to the very end.
While yes I think seeing characters end up together is a good thing, often in real life its possible that things don’t go anywhere or nothing comes of them.
And I like that psgels is open mind enough to be a guy who like girly shows.
Its been a bit since I saw Gankusuou but I remember the ending just feeling like a big nothing to me.
Then show that things didn’t work out, it doesn’t have to be a happy ending. Leaving an open ending works at times,but it hardly works all the time.
Hmm, that is a good point but some people get annoyed when things get shown too much, maybe some people think its condescending or un-necessary to go that far with showing things, in this case I don’t really mind a whole lot. Ah well its all subjective I guess.
@Kaiser Eoghan
That’s fine that a spoiler doesn’t bother you but it bothers me. If I wanted to be spoiled for the end of the series I would read the manga.
And even if it is just a little spoiler, people should not be discussing the end of the manga in the episode 8 thread.
I’m sorry to butt in like this, but I really wish the beating on armpit would quit it here. I like the guy, I consider him an acquaintance on here a I like talking to and it kinda rubs me in a bad way to see him being hassled. Calling him a jerk and asshole isn’t the right way going about things.
Perhaps calling him a jerk was going a bit far but perhaps you should read some of the things he called me in comparison.
It’s nice that you want to defend your friend and I respect that but I hardly think me complaining that he is posting end of the series spoilers is hassling him.
Ehh they don’t bother me. If Psgels wants these things spoiler free that is completely in his right. It is his site. He can’t just pick and choose when he wants to apply a rule however.
Btw i’ve only watched episode 8 of this show so i read quite a few spoilers in this thread. No music in the previous episode?
I think thats a bit of a problem with this show, I do like the characters and how their being handled but I want more music focus too.
Kim I hope this isn’t a spoiler, I think the manga of apollon (I read the recent translated volume today) and I don’t think it has that same magic feel the series has had. Though I think volume 8 might change that!
@Armpit:Sorry if I’m whiteknighting or it seems this way, I just want to try to stop an argument before it goes too far.
Ritsuko X Sen look promising “i want to marry u went you grow up promise”
nope, it got destroy
the relationship between sen and Kaoru still better
less romance more music plz