All posts by draggle

Steins; Gate 16 — Goodbye Casualty

Steins; Gate,

I was very disappointed to hear that Suzuha never got married. Although there are always extra-marital affairs to keep my hope alive. I was hoping that Suzuha would turn out to be Daru’s mother and we would get some infinite recursion. In the limit case, will their genes become identical?

This was a great episode all around. As predicted, Daru turns out to be Suzuha’s father (but the mother is still a secret – my guess is Moeka). But the part that was not expected was that the only person who figures this out is Mayuri. So far, Mayuri has come across as the slowest and dullest of the lot, but here, she’s the only one who can see what is obvious to the viewers. And I think this makes a lot of sense. Okarin and Christina think too much like scientists and look at facts and specific details. Daru and Suzuha are too personally involved to see anything clearly. Mayuri is the only one who can use something vague like the idea that “they look good together” to reach the conclusion that is right in front of everyone.

I complained in the earlier episodes that Mayuri was one of the weaker characters and seemed like a rather standard moeblob / damsel in distress, but this is simply not the case. She’s slow, childish, and less witty than Okabe and Christina, but she certainly isn’t an idiot. She’s probably the most level-headed lab member. The creators of Steins; Gate are doing an excellent job at the characterizations.

They also threw a great curve ball with Suzuha’s trip to the past becoming ineffective due to memory loss. Getting to see what happened to her and her relationship with Mr. Braun were great. (This brings to mind something else: Mr. Braun’s daughter. Who is her mother?! Could it be Suzuha?) But the part where this twist paid off the most was for Okabe’s decision to send the D-mail. You can see clearly his transformation from eccentric mad scientist to founding father of the resistance, willing to make everyone but himself forget Suzuha to save Mayuri and defeat CERN.

Gosick Review — B-

Reviews,

Kujo transfers from Japan to Europe to become a student, at a time when great changes are afoot in the world. At the top of the library tower, he meets a petite girl with blond hair who seems almost like a fairy, named Victorique. He plays Watson to her Holmes (complete with pipe) as she “assembles the fragments of Chaos” and solves mysteries, often involving fairy tales and the occult. Later on, she unravles the story of her own past.

Gosick is a tough series to review, because what I should really do is write two reviews: one for each half. The two halves come across as completely different. In the first, Victorique and Kujo attend class and solve random mysteries. The second half is a set of more closely connected mysteries revealing the secrets behind Victorique’s birth and the future of Europe.

The thing is, most of the mysteries in the first half are plain dumb. It’s painfully obvious who the criminal is for most of them. Sherlock Holmes is a genius, and this is illustrated by putting him on a completely different level from Watson. But Watson is also very intelligent. In Gosick, they try to make Victorique be a genius by comparing her with Kujo. But Kujo is an idiot (at least in the first half). To top it off, the side characters are annoying: the classmate in love with Kujo, the clumsy teacher with glasses, Victorique’s brother who needs her to solve all his cases for him and whose hair is shaped like a unicorn horn.

At this point I was toying with the idea of dropping the show. But then everything completely changed. They dropped the random obvious mysteries, and Gosick turned into a top-notch adventure series, exploring the story of Victorique’s past and her relationship with Kujo. Sometimes shows use the first half to better develop their characters and setting for the finale. But I can’t really convince myself that this was the case with Gosick. The initial episodes added very little. And oddly enough, the ending felt rushed. So they didn’t need to pad for time. I’m honestly not sure what the creators were thinking for the first half.

But the second half is great. The adventure is exciting, all the characters are fleshed out (even the guy with unicorn hair becomes a non-joke), and the mysteries are interesting. We even get some good politics and a bit of romance. Overall, I would probably rate the second half a 9, but the first half only a 7.

  • Plot / Script – 8 / 10 – Huge divide between the first and second half.
  • Characters – 8 / 10 – Most of the cast is well fleshed-out in the second half. Kujo’s classmates remain fairly weak, however. Kujo is too dumb in the first half.
  • Production – 8 / 10 – Consistent (this is Bones after all) but I can’t help but feel even the animation improved in the second half. This may be my imagination.
  • Overall – B-

Recommendations – Kamisama no Memochou, Dantalian no Shoka (for more moeblob detectives)

Hanasaku Iroha 16 — Filmmaking

Hanasaku Iroha,

In this episode we took a step back from the heavy drama of the previous episodes for a return to the more lighthearted slice of life as the inn prepares to film a movie. It’s probably good to have a balance of both seriousness and more lighthearted moments, and Hanasaku Iroha has done pretty well in this regard. The biggest disappointment for me this week was the lack of Yuina, but I’m sure she’ll be back.

And for a surprise, Ren gets the starring role for the film! Ohana, Tomoe and Nako begin fantasizing about what role they will have in the film. Nako’s fantasy of being a spy who is an ex-Olympic swimmer was hilarious. Minchi will have none of it, and wants to be a chef in the movie. But she knows that Tohru would look good in the starring role. We even get an intense boy’s love scene! Pretty clear who the seme and uke are here.

Aside from the fun slice of life antics, this episode did a good job at developing Ohana’s uncle and Takako further. Ohana’s mother really did have a big influence on him, and it must have been somewhat of a shock when she decided not to run the inn. It seems like Takako is filling part of the role for him that his sister used to. And I certainly never would have predicted that he once had ambitions to direct a movie.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that there may be more to this movie than meets the eye. Takako and her friend seemed rather evasive in letting anyone meet the director and writer. And why would they be so interested in having the inn members take part? Plus, why choose Kissuiso in the first place? My guess is that someone we know is involved, perhaps Ohana’s mother? The grandmother did seem to agree rather readily as well, so perhaps she is in on the plan too. I’m probably just reading too much into things though.

Anime of Summer 2011: First Impressions

Seasonal Impressions, ,

For this season, I’m publishing a single post with my impressions of every show for the new season, instead of the usual post per show since I was away last week. In spite of all the usual complaints in the blogosphere that this is the worst season ever (which crop up every season), I actually think things look pretty promising.

We do have a bunch of crappy shows (don’t we always?) but I also feel there are a greater number of shows than usual which have the potential to become truly excellent. And I judge a season by its best offerings, not its worst. For reference, I would label the first nine shows on the list below crap, the last nine shows with the potential to become excellent, and I would consider only the remaining six shows “average”. Of course, some of the excellent shows will likely drop down to the average category as time wears on, but usually I would only put two to three shows per season in the excellent category (last season was also an exception, with four: Steins; Gate, Iroha, Ano Hana, and Hyouge Mono). With eight shows that could become great, and three of the best shows from last season carrying over, I would say that things are really looking up.

I’ve loosely ranked all of this season’s new shows in order from worst to best, and briefly given my impressions below.

24. Manyuu Hikenchou
Pure, unadulterated porn. Half of the episode appears to be censored with bright stripes. Dropped before the OP started.

23. Double-J
Two girls join the traditional arts club, where they carve the back ends of toothpicks. This one is as dumb as the premise sounds. The animation is horrible. The jokes aren’t funny, just pathetic. The only saving grace and reason I was able to finish the first episode is that each episode is three minutes long. But it still isn’t worth spending the time on. Dropped.

22. Morita-san wa Makuchi
This is pretty much the same thing as the OVA, for those who have seen it. Morita doesn’t say anything, people talk to her, and there is a misunderstanding. I didn’t fit it funny in the OVA and I don’t find it funny now. At least here the episodes are only two minutes long. But again, it isn’t worth the time. Dropped.

21. Nyanpire
Yet another short of several minutes. A cat becomes a vampire, and must drink blood. He drinks the ketchup and juice, but is stopped before he can drink tabasco sauce. His owner gives him a fish. What was the point of this? Nothing happened, the cat isn’t that cute, and it wasn’t funny at all. These three minute shows are so terrible I can’t figure out why they even bother making them.

20. Twin Angel –  Twinkle Paradise
Our lead characters transform into magical girls and fight crime. I think this was supposed to be a parody? But it wasn’t funny. At all. Not to mention that the girl in orange hair sounds exactly like Asuha from Astarotte no Omocha (and her voice was annoying enough the first time). Dropped.

19. Nekogami Yaoyorozu
Chibi cat girls in frilly dresses are the goddesses who protect the town. It’s not all that funny, just hyperactive. Dropped.

18. Ro-Kyu-Bu!
This one’s for the lolicons.  A high school boy becomes the coach for an elementary school girl’s basketball team. The characters seem interesting enough, and the execution is surprisingly decent. But that’s assuming you can look past the premise and the gratuitous fanservice with elementary schoolers. I can’t. Dropped.

17. R-15
A budding erotic novelist with vast literary ambitions begins attending the Inspiration Academy for geniuses. On one hand, this show is a thinly veiled excuse for porn. On the other hand, it does have an interesting cast of characters. The main character especially is not your typical harem lead: he actually has ambitions and a personality, even if his ambition is writing erotic novels. But the main focus seems to be on his perversions.

16. Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi
A high schooler remembers that he made a dark magic pact with his childhood friend and lover, dies and comes back to life, meets his lover again and she is killed. I wasn’t  too impressed with this first episode. The male lead’s goal is to be a supporting character. He has a female childhood friend. The villain is a popular pretty boy who the entire school fawns over but who treats everyone like trash. The main female characters are lolis. All the fanservice is completely out of place, tactless and unoriginal. The only thing this show has going for it is that the original light novel is by the same author as Legend of Legendary Heroes, so I’m going to stick with it for a while just to see if it will pick up. But I think a lot of my problems are with the adaptation and not the source material.

15. Mayo Chiki
A high schooler walks into a butler in the toilet, and discovers that he is a girl. She tries to kill him to keep her identity secret. Her master turns out to be a sadist who proceeds to torture the pair of them and force them together. So this is another fanservice show where the main character is a spineless wuss who gets the crap beat out of him by lots of girls. Still, it did have a few funny moments and doesn’t lack for energy. Most of this energy is channeled towards violence and fanservice though.

14. Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu Ni!
This was a beach episode, so a lot of focus on the fanservice and proportionately less on the comedy. The episode had its funny moments, but not as many as I remember the first season having. I’m kind of worried that the humor in this show might be growing stale. All of the jokes have been repeated a million times by now. But the funniest parts have typically been when they were at school, so I’m holding out hope that this episode was simply the obligatory beach trip fanservice episode, and that the rest of BakaTest will be up to the usual standards.

13. Blood-C
The first episode had a truly amazing action sequence with a beautifully choreographed fight. It also had 15 minutes of a boring ditzy girl walking to school, complete with carbon copies of random characters from other CLAMP works. And the long CLAMP legs. The fight scene was great, but I don’t see all that much potential for the school life scenes. Why can’t CLAMP make new characters? I honestly just don’t get the whole CLAMP thing and why they’re so popular.

12. The iDOLM@STER
We follow a group of aspiring idols. So the characters in this show are walking stereotypes: we have the twins, the poor girl, the rich ojou-sama, the shy girl, the tomboy, the animal lover, the onee-san, the mysterious girl, the serious girl, the big breasted girl, and the clumsy girl. But, the production is really quite good. I like the idea of an interviewer following the girls in their day to day lives. The transitions flow smoothly, and everyone on the large cast gets a piece of the spotlight. Unfortunately, I don’t have much interest in the characters or in idols in general.


11. Sacred Seven
Sacred Seven is the corniest show imaginable. A guy has special powers and is feared at school because of them. He hates his powers and is afraid to use them. He meets a girl who he rescues with his powers. She joins his school. We have an army of maids. Still, it’s good dumb fun if you’re in the right mood for it. The fights were entertaining, and the characters are unique even if they’re one-sided.

10. Kamisama no Memochou
A boy transfers to a new school, and meets an underdeveloped girl who is a NEET detective. The characters so far seem a bit stereotypical, but I am optimistic that this show will turn out well. The mystery that they solved this week was interesting and not what I would have predicted. And second, this show has double the usual episode length. I think that this format has a lot of potential: another show that used it was Figure 17, and there they had a lot of time to fully flesh out each substory and all the characters due to the extended length. A single arc per episode can even work with this length. Still, I do hope that this show develops some kind of running storyline rather than an arc format.

9. YuruYuri
Another four girl tea-drinking comedy. But unlike K-On, the focus here is really just on the comedy. And the jokes work. The creators have an excellent sense of humor and comedic timing, and I would say that this looks set to be the best comedy of the new season. Kyouko especially is hilarious to watch.

8. Natsume Yuujinchou San
The third season of Natsume Yuujinchou follows the pattern of the first two: Natsume meets spirits, solves their problems and returns their names. If you liked the first two seasons, you’ll like this one as well. It’s a great character study with some excellent short stories. I haven’t watched the second season though (it’s on my list, just haven’t gotten around to it) so I’m going to pass this one up.

7. Ikoku Meiro no Croisée
Yune, a young sign girl, moves to Paris to work in a sign-making shop without speaking a word of French. This show is absolutely adorable. Yune is just too cute.  The animation is bright and colorful, and I love the historical setting. I’m hoping we get to see more of the cultural differences between France and Japan.

6. Nurarihyon no Mago Sennen Makyou
Man, this episode kicked things off again with a bang. The episode was a flashback to when Rikuou was a child, and how he decided to become the third heir. It served as a summary episode to reintroduce the cast, but also fleshed out Rikuou and his classmates.  It was interesting to see how much they have changed (or not changed, as the case may be). In the first season, Rikuo in his day form seemed to have little desire to be the Third, but now we know that he does have the motivation, and his day and night forms are more tightly connected than I’d thought. We also have a great explanation for why he (and he alone in his household) is so concerned with keeping the yokai a secret from his classmates. And kid Rikuou in his night form is bloody awesome. I would say that this episode was better than anything the first season had to offer. Let’s hope they continue this trend.

5. Usagi Drop
A 30 year old man returns home for his grandfather’s funeral, only to discover that his grandfather has a five year old illegitimate daughter, Rin. When his relatives decide to send his aunt to an orphanage, he decides to take her into his home instead. Usagi Drop looks like it has the potential to be very touching. It’s quite rare in anime that we get to see either middle aged men or young children, and the intergenerational gap should make this especially interesting. This show handles emotions right: many things are communicated without words, instead of the more typical (for anime) people yelling out their feelings. I really love the art style as well: it’s a bit reminiscent of Hourou Musuko. I think that Usagi Drop should be an excellent addition to the noitaminA timeslot.

4. Kamisama Dolls
A college student, while attending a party with his crush and neighbor from back home, finds a corpse in the elevator. He goes home to find his sister with a god, the village heirloom. They fight an escaped criminal, but their house is destroyed and they move in with the crush. I thought that this first episode seemed really promising. The show feels like the bastard child of Bounen no Xamdou and the Tsukihime dark side arcs. We have some promising characterizations (I’m loving the little sister already, so cute!), beautiful artwork, excellent music (one of the best OPs and EDs this season),  unique character designs, and a compelling,  mysterious and original plot. My only complaint is that the lead female’s chest is disturbingly large. Otherwise, I’m really looking forward to seeing where this goes.

3. Dantalian no Shoka
A young man’s grandfather dies and leaves the mystical Dantalian library as his inheritance. The library turns out to take the form of a young girl, and they work together to seal a phantom book which is running amok. This is yet another show this season with great animation (there sure seem to be a lot of these). The soundtrack is top-notch, and so are the action sequences. As for the plot, it’s hard to tell so far since it looks like it’ll be episodic, but the first episode was good at least. The characters seem promising, particularly the male lead. It reminds me of the characters in Gosick, except the male lead isn’t a moron. But the thing that really stood out the most for me in this episode was the scene where the male lead read the grimoire (his voice actor was superb here). If we can have that level of language, imagery and intonation every episode, I’m already sold.

2. No. 6
In a dystopian society, a teenage boy meets a wounded boy who is on the run from the Ministry of Peace. This seems to be quite promising, both for the setting and the relationships between the characters. Unlike Fractale, it appears that the creators know what they intend to do with the setting. The relationships between the main character, his friend and the runaway have already been fleshed out, and the plot is already thickening. A tantalizing preview of the setting has been given which gives us a peak at what’s really happening behind the scenes, but there is still much that remains a mystery. The main way I can see this going wrong is if it turns into yaoi (although I would still probably like it).

1. Mawaru Penguin Drum
Two brothers live with their sister, who will die soon due to an incurable disease. She passes away at the aquarium after they buy her an emperor penguin hat as a gift. While she is sitting in the morgue, the penguin hat possesses her and she returns to life fully healed. But her life comes at a cost, and three penguins move in with the family. This episode was seriously trippin’. It had some of the best animation I’ve seen in a TV series, with a staggering amount of detail. The plot is zany and the pace is fast. That scene where the sister was possessed for the second time was crazy. My main fears are that with that kiss at the end, this might turn into some siscon love triangle.

 

What do you think of this season’s crop of shows? Feel free to share your impressions in the comments below.

Mawaru Penguindrum 02 — Survival Strategy!

Mawaru Penguindrum,

Mawaru Penguindrum is going to be the third show I pick up this season. It has the best artwork of the season, with a great eye for detail, is ridiculously trippy (that penguin hat transformation sequence… wow, just wow), a great sense of humor, and also a plot that looks like it should have some depth. This means, unfortunately, that I’m blogging three shows on Thursday again, but they all look too promising to pass up. Don’t be surprised if (like today) some get pushed back to Friday.

In this episode, the emeperor penguin hat orders the two brothers to stalk a high school girl and recover the “penguin drum”. It turns out that the girl they’re stalking is also stalking their homeroom teacher. I was getting Onii-chan no Koto vibes of infinite chains of stalkers all over again, but here it remained entertaining. Those penguins are so cute! With the addition of taping walkie talkies and webcams to them, and getting squished between legs, stepped on and caught in bags… it’s just too adorable.

Once again, the animators have a great eye for detail, and the sense of humor is spot-on. They do an excellent job of interleaving the jokes with the story, so that the whole stalking routine doesn’t become monotonous, but also so that the plot and characters progress. Take as an example the part where Shouma is accused of groping, and Kanba covers for him by making the girl fall in love with him. This scene was hilarious, but we also get to see more facets of both brothers through their reactions, and we discover the target they are stalking through an offhand comment. Later, this is used for more of a comedic effect and development of their target as the one girl relates the story. Through this one scene, the creators managed to communicate so much.

I’m also hopeful that this show’s beauty isn’t just skin deep, and we’re in for a treat story-wise as well. The show has already dealt with some pretty heavy themes such as death, and now that the penguin drum appears to be a diary which predicts the future, I see a ton of interesting directions they could bring this in.