All posts by draggle

Puella Shoujo Madoka Magica 05

Puella Shoujo Madoka Magica,

In this episode Madoka worries about how Sayaka has become a magical girl. Sayaka, meanwhile, celebrates the recovery of her friend’s hand, and begins a hunt together with Madoka for witches. Yes, they are both idiots. Sayaka is attacked by another one of Kyubey’s magical girls, and Madoka almost becomes a magical girl to help her out but Homura arrives in the nick of time.

Overall, this episode was pretty enjoyable, but I did have to suspend my sense of disbelief a few times. First of all, why are Sayaka and Madoka so stupid? Madoka is no good in a fight so why would they decide she should come? And second, Homura’s goal is to stop Madoka from becoming a magical girl, so why does she tell her so bluntly that Sayaka is going to die? This doesn’t exactly encourage her not to become a magical girl… Also, when they were crossing the bridge, the way three cars in parallel passed by them at the same time on each side of the road was just ridiculous. Although I’m not sure why this bothered me so much.

The fight this week was simply spectacular. Magical girls need to fight each other more often and just forget about the witches. And Kyubey was a bastard as usual.  Perhaps the most interesting thing that was revealed this week is that Kyubey doesn’t know about Homura. The strange part is that he doesn’t say he didn’t make a contract with her, but that he doesn’t know whether or not he made a contract with her. My theory is that it has something to do with Homura’s wish. Maybe it is something to do with saving magical girls. Also, the question of why the girls need grief seeds still remains to be answered.

Fractale 04

Fractale,
"You're so fat! If you didn't have such a big belly, you could have run away faster! You fat idiot!"

I would never have expected this, but Nessa is really starting to grow on me. I expected her to be the umpteenth cheerful moe girl who always smiles cheerfully and likes to play games but is disturbingly polite. (most recent example – purple haired Ika girl from Yumekui Merry) These characters are too perfect and fall right in the middle of the uncanny. Kids should be selfish little brats. And Nessa is just that. Until this episode Nessa was also cheerful all the time, but this isn’t the part I object to in other characters – she’s still selfish in how she has fun, doing whatever she wants like screwing with people in the toilet and turning umbrellas into rockets. Clain’s relationship with her is great as well – he treats her how older people generally do treat kids, he plays along with her like she’s a kid.

But this episode really brought Nessa to the next level as a character with her strong, (seemingly) unreasonable dislike of Phrynne. It isn’t all rainbows and flowers anymore. I really like how it brings out the darker, less socially developed side of children that tends to be glossed over in anime. Because seriously, whoever thinks children are angels clearly has a pretty terrible memory.

What is this... I don't even...

With Phrynne’s return it certainly seems that things are moving along quickly. The temple people really do a terrible job at keeping an eye on her. And I’m not sure that the best way to capture her is by shooting at her? But whatever. I hope that the bogeyman that the temple sent doesn’t last very long. His voice and his face both piss me off for some reason.

My theory is still that Nessa is Phrynne’s sister’s original personality, which was replaced by the Fractale system. Still, I wasn’t expecting Phrynne to be upset that Clain had met Nessa. I’m with him on this one – if she leaves without saying anything and left some data behind, any reasonable person would assume it was left so that they could read it. Not the best of plans on her part.

Hi no Tori – Review A-

Reviews,

I finally finished Phoenix today after starting it approximately one year ago. This isn’t due to any fault of the show but due to my poor watching habits – I’ll start watching something and then either forget about it or not want to finish it because I like it and if I watch it it’ll be over. I still have about five episodes left of Utena which I started two years ago, and two episodes left of Lucky Star which I began three years ago. And in that interval I watched the first ten episodes of Lucky Star at least three times… But fortunately I remembered Hi no Tori yesterday and it hasn’t suffered the same fate. One of the advantages of having nothing new to watch on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Hi no Tori is a collection of short stories, each one to four episodes long, which involve the titular Phoenix to some degree.  It’s based on the manga which is widely considered to be Osamu Tezuka’s masterwork, which unfortunately I haven’t read. Initially all the stories seem completely disparate, but the way the creators bring the stories together in the end really stands out. I’m generally wary of shows which depend on separate plot arcs (especially episodic shows), but Hi no Tori did an excellent job at telling the shorter stories in the span of a few episodes without feeling rushed at all. In the last two arc, they managed to compress several billion years into two episodes and make it feel like a really long time, so the creators were definitely doing something right on this front. Making the best use of the time a show has is really a challenge which so many shows screw up on, but Hi no Tori manages to do just right. In just thirteen episodes it manages to have a larger, more developed cast than most two-season shows with at least double the plot content.

The other character that all the stories have in common besides the Phoenix is Saruta, who plays a different role every time. He’s never the main character of the arc but always a side character. I thought this was kind of strange, until at the end all the pieces came together and it became clear why this was so. Many of the characters are cursed with immortality and long lives. Saruta never is, but he lives as long as any of them in a sense. And the true driving force of the narrative in each arc is not the main character of that arc; it is the Phoenix throughout the entire story.

  • Plot / Script – 10 / 10 – Very compelling stories in all of the arcs.
  • Characters – 9 / 10 – Suffered a bit from their short shelf life.
  • Production – 9 / 10 – Pleasant visuals, although I’ve noticed that none of the hands are very lifelike…
  • Overall – A-

Recommendations – sola, Simoun (can’t say I’ve seen anything quite like Hi no Tori)

Kore wa Zombie Desu ka 04

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka,

This episode was definitely an improvement over last week’s. In the beginning we start out with a Doberman knocking on the door instead of the pizza delivery man, who proceeds to cut apart Ayumu’s arm. When he sees Yuu he realizes it is a misunderstanding, and Ayumu follows him to the scene of the latest serial murder, where the Doberman dies protecting a zombie from something that wouldn’t have killed him. Ayumu gets stabbed anyway when the blade goes through the Doberman’s chest. Ayumu learns that Yuu has to suffer the same pain as him to revive him. A heartbreaking discussion ensues.

Well, whatever, they were going to put drama in somehow. At least they decided to do it in a ridiculous over the top way instead of trying to take this show seriously. The dog was quite funny. And the Yuu segment was redeemed by being followed by a completely random battle against a giant whale after Ayumu told Yuu he would protect her. Way to make him stick to his promises immediately!

The battle against the whale was great, as Ayumu’s magical girl costume powered up. The Trans-Am giant whale missile dodging was excellent, as were Sera’s delayed insult and Haruka’s warnings not to power up any further. Hopefully the show can maintain the pace of this episode and the first episode rather than becoming bogged down with fanservice.

No, Ayumu, don't do it! You can't become any cuter!

In other news, Level E has really picked up since the first episode! I didn’t find the first episode that interesting but they really made good use of it in the second and especially third episode. It goes to show that you can’t really judge much by just one episode.

Star Driver 17

Star Driver,

Ok, so apparently everyone and their second cousin is doing beach episodes today. Well, Star Driver managed to make it less painful than Onii-chan, but it was still disappointing especially since I had higher expectations for this show. At least it was only a third of the episode instead of the entire thing. Wako’s sand burial, her friend’s delusions and the volleyball match were mildly amusing, so it might not have felt as horrible if I hadn’t watched that other beach episode right before.

Because now I'm above you.

We’re introduced to two new characters from the Adult Bank. I thought that the Adult Bank sounded like the name of a prostitution ring and it seems like I may have been right. But really, so far we know absolutely nothing about these characters except that they appear to be lesbians. This made for a rather lackluster battle since Takuto’s opponent this week was someone who had made no impact whatsoever. Hopefully the creators will do more to flesh these characters out in the coming weeks as they have done so far with the rest of the side characters.

Head pulled off a coup de etat in the Hiraboshi this week, but aside from that it didn’t really seem like much happened. I suppose the first half at the beach was intended as comic relief of sorts after the intensity of last weeks episode, but still, they could have at least taken the opportunity to better introduce the new characters.

But Sugata’s appearance in zero time in pajamas did help to redeem the episode in the end.