xxxHolic is a case-based mystery drama. Every episode, a different case gets investigated. All these cases have something to do with supernatural events in Japan, though this time, they’re for real. This is the concept, the anime throws in a couple of main characters who get involved in these cases and you’ve got your recipe for success.

First of all, these cases are fascinating to see. They range from computer addiction and superstition to ghost stories and rain sprites. Some times, our main character follows a human who has some kind of supernatural problem. He then acts as a bystander, who sometimes offers to help. At other times, he meets supernatural beings himself, and at other times, he becomes victim of these supernatural events himself. This series consists out of 24 episodes, and somehow the creators succeeded in making each of these episodes and cases unique and interesting.

Second of all, xxxHolic has been blessed with a cast of amazingly likable characters. They both work in comedy as in serious scenes. Our main character is very easily annoyed, (after which he starts acting hyperactive) and he’s surrounded by characters who annoy the hell out of him. At the same time, He’s also very curious about the things he runs into, and often does things that he knows are bad for him. He works at a very peculiar shop: a shop who grants wishes. The woman who runs the shop, Yuuko, has a huge affinity with supernatural events, and often has to explain the things that happened during the course of the episodes. That’s another good part of xxxHolic: the dialogue.

At first sight, the graphics look very low-budget. Though that’s just something that you need to get used to. It doesn’t really hurt the anime. In fact it does give it its own style, if you combine it with the character designs with extremely long limbs. Unfortunately, there are others who don’t share this opinion. The bad-looking graphics are one of the biggest reasons for people to drop this show.

Overall, xxxHolic was a very interesting watch. Some episodes were amazing, other were just good. It’s not among the best anime ever, but definitely worth the watch.

You know, for a final episode, this was a pretty non-standard one. You could say that the previous episode closed the anime, while the current episode was more of a side-story, dedicated to Watanuki’s past. Again, taht doesn’t change the fact that I loved this episode. It’s about Watanuki while still a middle-school student. Tehre, he meets up with a boy who’s been taken away by spirits. For some reason, he returned for a month, and he and Watanuki became good friends. Still, that changed at Watanuki’s birthday, or the day the boy was taken. Because then, he disappears again, and leaves Watanuki one of his bones. I’m not sure how, but that bone was really helpful to Watanuki.

We then switch to the present time, also at Watanuki’s birthday. I kept wondering when this one would show up. Watanuki has really understood now how nice it is to cook for others. It’s sad to see this series go. It was definitely fun watching this. According to some commenters, there’s still lots of manga material left, but I doubt that this will be getting a second season.

Sayonara, Watanuki. Things have been fun.

That was SO incredibly adorable! Okay, it was a filler. But I don’t care! Mokona was awesome in this episode! I can’t help not to fanboy over it.

Especially when Kero also made an appearance. The story’s like this: we’ve got this country, where a feather has appeared. A butterfly then used the feather’s power to turn every human in the coutry very small. Mokona and Kero are the only ones who can save the country, as they climb the extremely high mountain where the feather has fallen.

That was so incredibly cute to see. Especially when Mokona threatened to fall asleep, and Kero tried to make him sing a song. The song was horrible, but when the two of them screamed it at the top of their lungs, it was so incredibly adorable. This episode’s song also worked perfectly with this. It created a perfect mood for Mokona.

That wasn’t the only fun thing about this episode. The creators decided to emphasize on the fact that Sakura, Syaoran and Fay fall on top of Kurogane quite frequently, much to Kurogane’s dismay. At the end of the episode, Mokona also was flattened like a pancake by Sakura near the end of the episode. Also, Sakura was too cute when Mokona claimed that she moves around too much. Same with Fay and his snoring. ^_^

It seems that a lot of people are ignoring ths series right now. I can’t see why. It’s awesome! :D

The creators were SO incredibly mean at the end of the episode. If that doesn’t classify as playing with plot-twists, then I don’t know anymore. XD

Anyway, and so, the Lacourt-arc ends. It’s been a great arc, which gave us some god insights about Kurogane and Sakura’s past. Syaoran and Fay, on the other hand, only became more and more mysterious. This episode shows some more of Kurogane’s memory. It seems that he did something to the servants of a servant of Tomoyo, and this servant doesn’t like this and came after him. Tomoyo then stops the two, and gives Kurogane his long-awaited replica of Ginryuu, his father’s sword. In order to be able to use this sword, Kuropon had to make five vows:
1: Behave peacefully towards comrades.
2: Stop fighting on Tomoyo’s land.
3: Never forget mercy, even towards an enemy.
4: Value everybody’s life.
5: Use own strenght to protect dear ones.
I also now understand why Tomoyo sent Kurogane to Yuuko: he broke his vows. Wouldn’t that just mean that she’d take his sword as well? Ah well, that doesn’t really matter. After all, Yuuko did it for her. ^^;

It’s also so funny that Fay keeps using Kurogane, and taht Kurogane himself is SO bad at telling lies. ^^ Is it also me, or has every episode been featuring some kind of unique song?

I’m not sure whether I’m going to use this section often, but it’s perfect if I want to say something about certain series outside of the monthly summaries. Perhaps I’ll use this more often in the future f I want to say something about series I’m not blogging.

Himawari

I remember that I classified this anime as mediocre. It was probably an ordinary love-anime which was doomed to be nothing special forever. Well, I was wrong. ^^ I decided to check this out again after seeing the promo-art for the second season and became curious. I’ve seen 6 episodes as of right now, which have made me be able to give a more fitting description for this show: it’s about a female ninja, who’s horrible at every field, but has a huge amount of motivation and determination. I can’t believe how inspirational this worked. Not just for the rest of the cast of characters, but for me, as viewer as well. Himawari gets thrown into some situations, any normal person would have just quit after a few minutes. And she actually gives her full dedication to these situations, even though she goofs off horribly. This case is a simple matter of a bad first episode. I wouldn’t say that this anime is going to win many prizes, but it’s definitely a good watch.

Yoshinaga-chi no Gargoyle

It’s really a long time ago since I saw the first episode. I just finished the second one, and now I know: this anime is hilarious! If there ever was a series which doesn’t deserve being abandoned by the fansubbers, this is it. I can’t believe how funny the cast of characters is. Each one manages to contribute in some way, and the two main characters are just hilarious. They definitely have interesting and unique personalities. I’m really recommending people who love a good comedy to check this one out, and I’m really hoping that Doremi will continue subbing this hilarious anime. ^^

Gintama

Gintama is another one of those anime you need to get into before it becomes actually funny. I think that that’s why most people (including almost me) ignored it when it first came out. Now that I’ve seen up till episode 6, I’m glad to say that Gintama is a hilarious anime. Just like with Yoshinaga, the comedy works great. There are so many puns, references and just pure random moments. I also like that this is one of the few anime that critizises itself. The dialogue is pretty difficult to follow, even with english subs, but that makes things only better. The cases, introduced in the individual episodes also show that thought has been put in them. This definitely is one of th emore creative anime out there.

I’m trying to become a bit more objective with the quick first impressions. Doesn’t really work so far. ^^;

Gift: Eternal Rainbow

During the first couple of minutes of this episode, I began to fear. Childhood friend who left and is coming back. Wake-up call by cute girl who makes your breakfast for no apparent reason. Ctrl+c-ctrl+v male main character. Silent samurai girl. Clumsy mahou shoujo. Lots of pantyshots. Thic couldn’t be other than a disaster. Still, then it seemed that actual cases regarding other characters were introduced. That actually made up for quite a lot, as this means that this anime will be more than just a male and his day-to-day life with a bunch of bishoujo.

009-1

Ah, an anime about spies. Lots of information, planning and stealth. Or in this case, action, stealth and fanservice. This really isn’t the most realistic way to portray the world of spies. It’s more like a James Bond gone female. Lots of strange gadgets are used in order to win, including three cyborgs. One can change her face, one has a leg which can shoot all kinds of missiles and one is a walking mainframe. As this anime focuses mostly on action, there also isn’t a lot of planning involved. Things just involve infiltrating some base, getting shot at and our main character taking out two dozen trained guards like it’s nothing. Sure. Oh, have I already mentioned the huge fanservice?

Kujibiki Unbalance

An anime about a school council, if I understand things correctly. For some reason, there’s been a lottery to determine some of its new members, and our main characters get to be the lucky ones. Apart from that, we’ve got our crazy scientist and her crazy assistant, a girl who works at a ramen-bar and the other members of the tudent council. As all student councils in these kinds of anime, they look quite evil, though there seems to be more than just that. I have to say that the quirky characters were really worth the watch. I especially loved the scientist and her assistant. The only bad part about this anime is the two main characters. I don’t know why, but they seem kindof bland when you compare them to the others.

Okay. His name is Turude. Then who is Raikan?

In any case, like expected, especially the beginning of this episode was pretty intense, when Turude comes and changes everyone but Ringo in wooden dolls. Ringo manages to escape with Hameln’s help. Souta and the others, meanwhile find themselves in a labyrinth of doors and places they’ve visited. In the end, they escape this by choosing the right door. I have to wait for the subs for their strategy on this, as I didn’t fully understand it.

Still, that doesn’t solve the problem of Turude, targetting them. In the end, even Akazukin, Shirayuki and Ibara’s power combined can’t do anything. They escape in the end when Shirayuki teleports them to a random place. In this case: Ibara’s hometown. The next episode promises to be awesome, with lots of background of Ibara. I can’t wait. ^^

Meanwhile, if I understood things correctly, Hansel and Gretel didn’t return to Cendrion. If that’s the case, then where did they go? It’s obvious that Hansel was still sleeping during this episode, but what will they be doing in the next episodes? They’re not going to reach Akazukin and the others, as they’re currently at Ibara’s hometown.

.Hack//Roots is an incredibly difficult anime to review, as this anime is a combination of an interesting view with a trainwreck. It’s got so many good points but at the same time, it’s got just as many, if not even more, bad points. It uses the same setting we’ve known from series as .Hack//Sign and .Hack//Dusk: everything in the series happens in an MMORPG, or Massive Multiplayer Online RPG. It doesn’t belong to any specific genre. If I had to put it in a category, it would be around the mystery-dramas, though that isn’t the most accurate description. This anime is closely related to a game, .Hack//GU.

First of all, let me warn you. If you plan to watch the series, without playing the game, don’t. That’s what I did, and you can’t imagine how many unexplainable events happened. Characters aren’t fleshed out enough, things just happen without any reason for this being given, you miss out on a LOT of character background and the ending leaves SO many questions unanswered that it would make even Narutaru jealous.

Another big problem with this series is that at times, it doesn’t seem to realize that it’s in an MMORPG. .Hack//Sign solved this well, by occasionally showing a mysterious scene about the person behind the computer, but don’t expect to see any of these in .Hack//Roots. The characters move way too much like normal people, instead of computer-graphics. Some even go emo, and instead of relieving their stress on some unfortunate object in the real world, they do this in the virtual world.

The third point actually is a nasty side-effect of the first bad point: some of the character are just so incredibly unlikable. Because their background has been left out, some characters now are a bunch of paper bags. Others, who did have a bit of fleshing out also were incredibly annoying to watch at times. Our main character, Haseo, for example. He just roams around The World like a big gorilla for ten episodes until something changes. Another very cool guy also changes into an incredibly plain one.

Okay, enough bad points. Now the good ones. While some characters are horrible, other ones work out greatly. Haseo, for example, when he’s not in gorilla-mode. And there are a few more of these gems which are very interesting to watch. Around the halfway-mark of the anime, people actually start quitting the game, giving extra depth to the characters who remained. The final three episodes, also, manage to actually recover from the trainwreck that the previous episodes set, and actually deliver some very strong final episodes. If you ignore the frighteningly huge amount of open ends it left.

This show also excels in the visual and sound department. It probably contained, along with Good Witch of the West and The Third the best graphics of all the shows who aired in the spring-season, and the soundtrack is nothing short from memorable. The background music is also one of the things that managed to bring .Hack//Roots back on track when the final episodes started.

I refuse to believe that this is just the end of .Hack//Roots. I demand another season! So many things are left unsolved. So many things still need to happen. Nothing has been resolved at all! It’s only that Haseo now has regained his common sense and Phyllo died of cancer. Meanwhile, even new things start popping up and Ovan seems to become the final bad guy.

My opinion about this episode? It depends on how you look at it. If it’s the end of .Hack//Roots, it sucked. If, however, it’s the end of the first half of .Hack//Roots, it was great. My favourite moment was when the certain cameo from .Hack//Sign appeared. I can’t believe he actually stayed in the world for so many years. Touta also seems to have left. Good, good. I never liked the guy anyway. Tawaraya was awesome, but Touta was way too standard.

Surprise: Saburou actually is a guy! Never saw that one coming. She also remains in The World, watching Haseo. Yata, meanwhile, is ready to introduce himself to Haseo. It seems that the Raven actually is a group of members who have the element. This expains that Yata also has awakened, and it also reveals why they’ve been so interested in Haseo.

Overall, unfortunately there are no signs that this will be getting a second season. I hope I’m wrong with this guess.