#1: Hunter X Hunter – 43: This is looking really good. Beyond the hardcore action with a lot of gore that showed just how much of a threat the Spider troupe is, the creators also made sure to show the other side of the coin: the mafia. The come into action immediately, they track down the spider troupe immediately and they put their best men on the job. Take that, generic evil organization! It’s great to see Kurapica&co as just a small part of that. Oh, and my inner fanboy is jumping up and down because they got a certain character right. I’m not going to say which character for spoilers’ sake though, but seriously: this is the point at which this series has set itself apart from all other shounen series. Except the first Hunter X Hunter, of course. – 5.5/8 (Excellent)
#2: Kokoro Connect – 06: This was the start of a new arc. The body swapping is gone, and they returned with something just as diabolical. And again, it really lead to some excellent chemistry between the characters. It was build-up, but the build-up was really good. – 5/8 (Great)
#3: Phi Brain – 43: Yes, finally Nonoha actually does something. Or at least, she doesn’t really do anything in the end but at least she gets some things out of Freecell, who got hit with the “I’m going to become more evil”-card. It’s good to finally see this happen though, although I’m still having trouble to sympathize with the villains due to those rings of them. – 4.5/8 (Good)
#4: Saint Seiya Omega – 19: This episode was surprisingly good. The action flowed well, the story around Ryuho delivered and the music also contributed a lot. It also helped that Kouga was really in the background so that he couldn’t just win the fight with his deus ex machina powers. Also that Shiryu guy must have been a nice treat for the fans of the original series. – 4.5/8 (Good)
#4: Tari Tari – 07: So this time it’s the time for Sawa to tell her story, and this time it’s about her future as a horse archer. It’s charming, although Konatsu in the background still is rather annoying even when the spotlight isn’t on her. – 4/8 (Nice)
#5: One-Off OVA: Well, this is what you get when you pair up Sato Junichi with the guy who adapted Kanokon: the former is trying to tell a charming slice of life story in the veins of Tamayura, and the latter is trying to paste boobs and annoying stereotypes all over it. You could really see the influence of both: it’s got a soothing soundtrack, the chemistry between the characters is good for a one-shot OVA (it’s 30 minutes long, by the way) and the addition of motorbikes makes this one stand out from the rest of the slice of life anime about a bunch of cute girls, but the annoying characters bring it down. In particular Cynthia was trying waaaaaaay too hard. – 3.5/8 (Nice)
#6: Polar Bear Cafe – 20: Polar Bear Cafe’s weakest episodes are when they focus too much on panda trolling and causing trouble. Unfortunately, that took up most of this episode. It had its charms when he kept promoting penguin as his servant, but this isn’t something you want to dedicate entire episodes to. – 3.5/8 (Nice)
#7: Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon – 18: “Oh no! We need to deliver a lot of exposition! The viewers will never be able to keep their attention this way! Quick, throw in a lot of ass jokes!” – Setting that aside, this episode afterwards delivered again on some nice battles with crazy powers… but I dunno. The gimmick of these powers is starting to wear off for me, and this show will need to start offering something else in return. – 3.5/8 (Nice)
#8: Corpse Party Musume OVA: This one was probably a pilot for Corpse Party Musume. What really stood out at first: it goes from a ton of gore to really, really bad fanservice. Seriously it’s the kind where brother and sister bathe together, followed by some psycho lesbians that we see everywhere. After that this episode turned to foreshadowing with a decent background track. I’m not that positive about it though. Setting aside the fanserice, the gore in this the prologue felt like it missed something: context. The thing with the kids who were slaughtered is: who are they? Why should I care about them? It’s easy to just show a lot of blood, or do crazy stuff like murder children, but the difficult part is actually making you care about them. This felt more like gore for the sake of gore. So yeah, these are the two parts that the anime for Corpse Party Musume once it arrives is really going to have to pay attention to: for god’s sake have better or no fanservice, and use its gore effectively. – 2/8 (Lacking)
#8: Code Geass – Nunnaly in Wonderland OVA: I didn’t finish watching this (I lasted about three minutes before concluding that this wasn’t worth my time), but I do want to warn people who are interested in checking this out: it’s a slide-show! – 2/8 (Lacking)
This episode gave me a new love and respect for the show, I had gotten annoyed with the lack of blood, and censorship of the beating heart; extremely annoying Japan is when it comes to censorship, but this episode was quite nice and things are definitely beginning to roll along.
I do have one question though, just about how long will this series be? I am unfamiliar with the past version, and as it is 83 degrees where I am at right now, I cannot bear any more effort into looking something up.
The manga has 340 chapters and it’s still running.
The anime has adapted until chapter 75.
So, there is still material to make a lot more episodes…
It is not “running” but in hiatus for god know how long.
I dont know what sort of contract he holds with Jump, but damn he negotiated well. He came out with chapter whenever he feels like and some times it look like crap
It sells incredibly well regardless. Which is probably why he gets away with so much.
I believe the mangaka has a disease, so the hiatuses are caused by him being too ill to draw (I think there’s something wrong with his hands).
I just hope the anime keeps going, and doesn’t stop right at the end of the auction arc like the old anime did. The Greed Island arc is my fave.
Woah. Are they going to go through it this time?
I hate uncompleted stories/adaptions
Well thanks for answering, good to hear
Well we’ll see. They’ll definitely go to where the manga is now but the Author takes a lot of breaks.
This is the only anime airing right now that doesn’t make me feel like its a practical joke.
unfortunate the source material is like a practical joke
And it’s on hiatus again. Dammit.
From what I know the author has health issues. That is the reason behind the simple art and long hiatus.
That’s his reason for his first hiatus. He’s fine because he’s since has two kids, participated in Mahjong Tournaments, and whenever he does return from hiatus, his little author’s note has tidbit like “I’ve started playing DragonQuest 4”
If anything, it’s because he made a ton of money, and he wants to enjoy family life.
I think that was just an excuse Jump came out with. He doesn’t have any health issues.
Oh, I’m not that cynical, mangaka’s do have health concerns because of their irregular lifestyle especially the weekly one(Tite Kabu just went down last week, so bleach will be on hiatus soon), and if I remember correctly, He either had no assistant or very few assistants at the time.
but fool me once…the 2nd and 3rd times
I remeber that Jump stopped using his health as an excuse after he appeared on Comiket selling doujinshi! Lol
It was kind of weird how they censoder the beheading, when eveything else in this episode was so gruesome and violent.
Not complaining about the episode (it was awesome), just kind of weird that: Pool of blood with a hundreds of dead bodies = OK, but beheading someone had to be censored.
Actually, this doesn’t really sound like censoring, but rather just an animation team that was assigned on something way over their heads. The episode was ful of cut corners when it came to the gore (like cameras panning away and stuff), which really strikes me that the animators had a lot of trouble trying to animate all of the gore there (which is really hard to do convincingly).
Hmmm… Maybe… They did censor stuff before though. Like in the tower exam, when killua rips a beating heart out. They drew it with a cloth around it (it was pretty cool actually, because it was made to look like it was a piece of the dudes shirt) and that surely wasn’t a case of corner-cutting, because even with the censoring it was still pretty well animated (or at least, it was on the same level as with the rest of the episode). Which means there is a line they won’t cross in regards to how much gore they can show.
So I’ not really convinced it was *just* corner cutting. A couple of frames of badly drawn blood splatter coming from the head and it they could be done with it. It would still look like crap, but so did the current one, with the, oh so conveniently placed, vacuum in front of the shot.
I guess it could be a bit of both. They didn’t cross some sort of arbitrary line of gore and it also made the scene super easy to animate, so it’s a win-win for them.
psgels is right, if you’ve noticed in certain cases where censorship is not the issue like having a terrible fall, or doing something that would require advanced camera work, a lot of times animators will skimp out, *Accident that would require a tumbling body and following camera?* Go to black and make a sickening sound* I suppose it depends.
Decapitation is kind of pointless imo. I mean they got away with the head shot too. Would also have been nice to see the mafia guys getting ragdolled instead of panning still images and just a crapload of blood. I wanna see some spatter – a lot more evocative than just a sea of blood.
Nice to see though that censorship has progressed since the original 1999 adaptation. Wonder what we’ll see next episode?
When Uvogin was spinning 3/4 guys over his head then just tossed them away my jaw dropped :O.
For next episode there’s one scene that I’m really looking forward to see how Madhouse handles. It’s related to Leech for the people who know what I’m talking about
too generous to call Nunnaly in Wonderland an ova, it’s more of a radio drama with pictures
Technically, there are bits of sparse animation ( the Spin-zaku part seems to stick out in my mind ).
I’m not exactly sure what most people expected out the OVA. It’s concept was pretty much laid out in the beginning. And then it runs with the idea in a really bizarre fashion. To say the least, I was entertained.
And we got boobs.
It was freaking obvious that was going to be a picture drama (ie: slide show). They’ve made those before, so nobody should be surprised at all, if they paid attention.
Then again,psgels wouldn’t have liked it even with full animation, so that’s more or less a pointless statement on his part.
I was simply indifferent to it.
I’m happy that you’re liking Phi Brain again, psgels, but you are still not paying close enough attention. Orpheus Rings are not a simple matter of turning people evil, and you look at the show as having a heroes vs villians setup. But that is a basic way of looking at things which is ultimately wrong. What is going on is much more complex than that.
Despite Shiryu’s cameo and the fact that the fight they referenced is one of the most famous from the original anime, what most old fans of the series are talking about is the new Libra Saint, Genbu… Libra is one of the most important cloths in the series (right up there with Sagittarius) so reacting to him have been mixed to say the least.
I feel like Libra made more appearance. Pretty much everyone used a Libra weapon at some point
Yeah, but the whole first arc of the original anime was Seiya and the others protecting the Sagittarius Cloth instead of saving Athena. Also, the Sagittarius Cloth was used to deliver the finishing blow in most of the movies.
You would not believe how long the exposition would be to kind of understand what’s going on for Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon. Rest assured the ass jokes were in the book, the author is a fan. Personally I think the boob jokes are funnier
Quick recap
The Far East basically got into a mess on their run from Tres Espania, England on the one hand is trying apprehend them for the testament union, but is also preparing for to trigger the history recreation event of the great Armada battle with Tres Espania. If they can take over Musashi, the ship that fought Tre Espania to a stand still, it would greatly increase their chance at recreating the outcome of English victory. Which is why every member ambushed during the festival all belong to the chancellor board, because defeating a member of a chancellor board grants the victor equal rights to challenge chancellor Tori for control of the ship, kind of like if you want the right to challenge the king, you must first defeat his knight. everyone ended up either winning or no losing. Only one that has not fought was Tenzo
The event that that will trigger the battle is the execution of Mary Stuart, which is a name that’s inherited with Mary Tudor’s name to the same person. Mary is supposedly hidden away in the London Tower by fairies, except she secretly was replaced by her twin before the execution, not to be freed by to basically make peace with her life before facing her execution, and her twin as you saw in the episode used fairy/elf magic, which was mentioned earlier that one well know person is a half fairy/elf
Nunnaly in Wonderland was known to be a picture drama well in advanced, so that shouldn’t be a surprise to people.
Anyway, you should really finish it. It’s entertaining and contains a lot of the jokes people have made about the show such as Spinzaku.
psgels doesn’t care about the subject, to say the last, so I don’t think he’ll watch the rest. I’m still surprised he even bothered to try it out.
It’s self referential, self effacing humor, anyway.
gore and fanservice, yep that’s Corpse Party in a nutshell
I’ve heard pretty bad things about the Corpse Party Musume manga from fans of the Corpse Party game, so yeah, the OVA being equally bad doesn’t surprise me. Corpse Party apparently hasn’t really received good adaptations.