The past autumn season had a lot of really good series. But at this point, I think that my favorite series of the bunch, is Zetsuen no Tempest. It nearly edges out Jojo and From the New World, but in the end it was this show’s twisted logic that hit me on an emotional level the most. This show is the best at what it does from all of those series for me.
it definitely was a season with so many series with a lot of thought put behind them: Psycho Pass, Robotics;Notes, Shin Sekai Yori. This reduces this to the essence with its complete mindscrews. The thing I noticed is that I just keep getting surprised by the twists that this show takes, combined with how well the characters have been fleshed out for the past season. This series has the right combination between characterization, character-development, and acting, and the plot makes brilliant use of them. It’s the series that succeeds best at bringing everything together and amking everything a whole. It all just fits! The other series this season all have a few areas in which they are really, really good. Tempest does it in all of them.
This episode again: I loved the aftermath of the revelation of Yoshino’s girlfriend. Everyone had their own reactions that were just awesome to follow, even though the pacing or intensity might not have been as high as with other series (compare that to other series which have to resort to killing people, this show managed to do it in an entirely different, yet equally exciting way).
Another thing that quite surprised me about the upcoming spring season: Bones is not in it. It’s a pity, really. They always come with very creative premises and ambitious series. Like this one.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)
It really is the best. It’s a shame it did so horribly in DVD/Bluray sales.
It’s doing horribly? Sometimes I can’t understand these things.
I am under the impression that the manga is fairly succesful and that this is a pretty good adaptation so far, so I don’t really understand why it’s not doing very well…
I wouldn’t say the success of the manga is in any relation to the DVD/Bluray sales. Maybe fans of the manga just don’t feel the urge to buy tha anime. I for one didn’t even continue watching the anime because I’m following the manga and already know what happens, even though there are some minor details and scenes that differ. I know, I might be missing out on great presentation and stuff, but I simply get bored easily when I already know the plot.
And btw, in terms of content I prefer Psycho-Pass over Zetsuen by any means. We’ve seen so many series where the characters decide the setting; Zetsuen is just the tip of the iceberg. I like the fact that Psycho has a precise setting and distinct topics and that the characters are developed in that context, not the other way around, because we haven’t seen that done well in quite some time IMO. I know it’s kinda oldschool, but to me it feels awesome.
Yep, best series to come out this past year actually
I wasnt even thrilled at the beginning, just kept watching it for the sake of it, but once things started escalating with those psychological episodes in the 2nd half of the first season, it went from average to godly
Every episode is so much fun, they merge drama and comedy perfectly, and heck even the fanservice is well done
And best of all, I have no idea where it is going whatsoever, nor do I care, because its just fun to watch the characters interact and develop, it would go on for 50 episodes if it were up to me
Autumn 2012 brought us many good animes. Too bad i´d to choose one anime to drop and turned to be Zetsuen which bored me the most after 3 episodes test and swapped with Girls und Panzer. Let me see if i can find a time to marathone it.
Oh yeah and psgels, the manga has been announced to end in the next issue. Who knows, we might actually get an actual ending, depending on how well they planned this.
I looked at the raws for the manga and it seems the anime is cutting out a lot of dialogue scenes in order to move the story along faster. So it looks like they really are going for the the proper manga ending after all. If it had went at the original pace it wouldn’t be able to cover the entire manga. For everyone who loves this series I recommend checking out the manga Vampire Juuji Kai, as it’s also by Shirodairo Kyou, the author of Zetsuen. He also wrote Spiral but I haven’t read that yet.
I do really like this show.
Also, has anyone considered this: Maybe Aika killed herself? I don’t think it’s likely or possible.
This time travel thing though, wouldn’t Hazake be able to save Aika?
I’m sure the next episode will be a hell of a lot of fun. Nothing to do but wait.
From the OP and first few or several episodes (don’t know anything about the manga), I was thinking that Aika killed herself, was the priestess of Exodus, or both.
There was just too much symmetry with Hakase and Aika in terms of the way some of the OP / promo material / etc. were set up.
I could be really off base though.
Anyway, if they’re cutting manga scenes to try to reach the manga ending, that’s fine by me! It doesn’t seem to have detracted anything from the quality in the past few episodes. That is, as long as things still fit together in the end…
I’ve been thinking about it for a while now actually. It was one of my first guesses, but there is no proof, basically, it’s a mystery and something vital is missing yet to be exposed to us.
As for pacing. I don’t care as long as they finish where they should. Proper endings are great.
There is still that suspicious exodus mage guy
You know that’s actually ingenious. It’s been hinted at that the Mage of Exodus killed Aika and it’s also been hinted at that Aika is the Mage of Exodus then the Mage of Exodus still killed Aika cause Aika was the Mage of Exodus. That’s actually brilliant.
Of course the question remains why did Aika kill herself?
To mindscrew Yoshino (also Mahiro), which affects Hakaze? To set something in motion or stop something with respect to the trees or fate or whatever?
Or something happened between her and Yoshino, or she took the extreme route to prevent Mahiro from finding out about them?
Or rather than she deliberately killing herself, some kind of external force, requirement, fate, etc.? Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem like it was just some random guy or even mage happened by and decided to end her life.
Well assuming she did, it could be several reasons, one of which-maybe has to do with the missing piece of information plot wise. Perhaps there was something behind her “troubled” personality. Then again it’s all speculation. Personally I think this entire mystery plot is damn good writing/foresight.
Hmm, well Aika definately tried to put something in motion by the looks of it. I can’t put my head around her death though.
There certainly is something fishy going on.
Maybe it’s just me but I liked the first half of the season better. I don’t like how they all became friends despite the fact that so many people died in the black iron syndrome.
On the flip side, I thought the whole black iron syndrome and huge thingamajigs flying through the sky with terrible 3D CG graphics from the first half were some of the worst parts about the show. The whole “oh yeah lots of people died” parts of the premise and overall storyline don’t really feel right and fit in that well with the character development and don’t (yet) feel like an integral part of the core story they’re trying to tell. Or at least, it’s a bit unmotivated for my tastes.
Maybe the integration is better there in the manga.
As it is now, they’re not really friends as much as begrudging accomplices whose goals happened to line up. They think they’re using each other.