Summer 2011 Kaleidoscope – Week 39

Dantalian no Shoka – 12 Well, that was a bit of an anti-climax… this show ends with the three main libraries… sortof meeting. Again, it’s the “let’s hope for the second season that’s most likely never going to come”-episode. The atmosphere was nice, but Huey’s near-death felt shallow to me, and in fact this episode didn’t really amount to anything, as I never really got what Dalian’s alter ego was supposed to be. At the beginning of this series I praised this series for Dalian and Huey having a solid chemistry where they both were equal to each other, compared to Gosick and Kamimemo. But here’s the thing: they never changed, making them end up the worst couple of the three. Is it also the worst series of the three? That’s something that I won’t say. Its individual stories were great enough to make up for that. In any case, this marks the end of my Summer 2011 Kaleidoscope. It was an interesting experiment, though I won’t be doing a kaleidoscope for the upcoming Autumn season. At this point I’ve got 7 shows that I’m pretty sure of that I’m going to blog, while I’m still heavily debating about the final three, Rating: * (Good) Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji This was a very bizarre ending in which especially Kaiji himself went completely out of character. I mean it had it coming that he’d get screwed over, but he started acting like a complete saint here, only to blow all of the money he had left on pachinko. This episode showed that over the course of 50 episode… he hasn’t really learned anything. Also, here’s the thing about manly tears: they work well when well timed. These past few episodes have been nothing but grown men crying over and over. I mean, show some restraint, people! At least the first season had a great ending, but this just felt weird. Rating: – (Disappointing) Kamisama Dolls – 13 This ending was better than I expected. Instead of going with some cheesy fight, this was almost immediately resolved and instead the entire episode focused on Kyouhei. Much more interesting to close this show off, even though the story is nowhere near finished. I know that the end of this episode hinted at a second season, but I’m not going to buy it until I see an actual confirmation of that. There have been too many series that pulled the same, and yet never came with a sequel. Overall when you look at the series that Seiji Kishi directed, this probably is my second favourite, after Angel Beats. Kamisama Dolls however has shown that he is growing as a director, because even though Angel Beats had a much better plot (hey, I liked it!), Kamisama Dolls felt more balanced than his previous series: it had the right formula of comedy, action, drama and romance smashed together in 13 episodes, which made it very entertaining. Still. For god’s sake stop making people run into a romantic confession. That poor horse is already dead enough! Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>