Ah, everyone’s been telling me, but I kept believing the opposite. When Priscilla went berserk, there was one Claymore who survived. I really liked how she chose to live her life afterwards. It’s quite interesting that nobody knew that she lived after she faked her own death, and how she became scared of dying. That’s why she’s nowhere to be found on the top-level Claymores, she isn’t with the organization anymore.

What I didn’t like, though, was the huge Deus ex Machina that introduced her. Just as Claire is about to die, she plays for saviour in order to keep the main character of this series alive. I thought the creators knew better than this. I mean, why now, of all times?

It’s also quite surprising that Claire lost her right arm. This means that her swordfighting will get worse, now that she has to learn to use her left arm all of a sudden. To make up for this, she now knows Irene’s flash sword. Oh, and Ophelia has awakened. You’d wonder how she acts in the presence of the numbers 1 to 3, when she lost her cool this easily. She seems to have quite a brother-complex here. The next episode should feature the awakened Ophelia against the two Claymores with only one arm.

This episode, unfortunately, wasn’t that exciting, but there was one interesting point: Ophelia’s special attack looks like a cheap version of the flash sword. She never spent the time to perfection it, and never thought about the possibilities. If you look at her using it, you’ll see that her entire body is trembling, instead of the calm Irene. I think that that’s how she’ll be defeated in the next episode, combined with her carelessness.

Wow!

I just finished my write-up for the last episode of Wellber no Monogatari, I’m about to write the review for it, and then I run into this!

I know I joked in my post how a Greedham no Monogatari ~ Sisters of Greedham anime would be quite a possibility,, but I never expected the timing of the announcement to be so perfect. Ah well, that’s one series I’ll be looking forward to. The first season knew how to tell a story and it knew how characters need background in order to become interesting, so I’ll be looking forward to when this series will focus on Tina’s backstory.

I just wish for this for this series to get subbed soon, because I can understand that not a lot of people would understand my enthusiasm with only three episodes released. The series really gets going with episode six, so let’s hope that when that episode gets subbed, it’ll get more attention than it is now.

And so it has ended. I’m not sure what to think of some of the elements. Overall, this was a good ending, but there’s one thing in the episode that… didn’t really make sense, to put it in such a way.

I’m referring to the Bergerac and Jin’s amazing ability to bring down an entire castle. I don’t know… it seemed a bit too much, although it was quite hilarious that they accidentally hit the gunpowder-room in their attacks. ^^; The only explanation for such a bad defence of the city would probably be that Guernia was in full charge. ^^;

Anyway, about the rest of the ending, it wasn’t emotional or shocking like the episodes in the middle part of the series, but nonetheless, it felt ‘good’. It doesn’t try to be overly dramatic for its final episode, and instead it finishes Guernia’s back-story, kills him and saves Rita. Nothing more, and I like how focused this ending was. In the end, the series didn’t suddenly change its style, like lots of anime do, now that I think about it. The ending doesn’t feel weird, and there isn’t any information that we should have known. That’s the thing with original anime, they can be exactly planned, instead of manga-adaptations that aren’t done yet.

Also, what really surprised me was that we never get to see who killed Rita’s parents. I actually feel that this was the right thing to do. Suppose, for example, that she did find the guy. Not only would that cost at least one episode, which would probably have been replacing one of the earlier episode, which means less fleshing out for Rita, Tina and Galahad. Also, this would be incredibly forced. I mean, what is the chance of that same guy still being in Greedam? Perhaps, in the future we can get a continuation: Greedam no Monogatari ~ Sisters of Greedam? That would be quite awesome, as there’s enough of the setting left unexplored to provide a second story, without feeling weird.

Also, after thinking back at it, I really liked Guernia this episode. His development was well worth it. I originally thought that seeing his mother make out with a different guy caused him to go crazy and kill her, but things are a bit more subtle than that. He did hate his mother afterwards, but that’s not why he became his former self. It seems that he just couldn’t forgive his mother, no matter how hard she tried. Her lover was executed, and because of all the strain, and the trust that she lost from her husband, she committed suicide. Galahad at that time was poking the eyes out of a doll that resembled his mother. After that, he’s been enjoying poking the eyes out of every woman that had eyes, similar to her. And Rita was one of them. The twist: he fell in love with her once she stabbed him. ^^;

His death, by the way, was quite nice, and an original one as well. Okay, we’ve seen anime before where we see the bad guy mortally wounded and alone, but Guernia was too cute when he never really reflected on himself, and instead drank a cup of tea in his chair before the ceiling above him collapsed. ^^;

Overall, I really recommend Wellber no Monogatari for a light adventure-series. It, along with Seirei no Moribito caused me to become a fan of Studio IG, and from now on, I’ll be looking forward to their next releases. Wellber no Monogatari really showed that they know what they’re doing, and that a good story needs some good backgrounds and fleshed out characters to work. It’s quite impressive that it found the time in 13 episodes to develop 6 major characters, while the other major support-characters only had the function of narration, contributing to the story without stepping in the spotlights themselves.

Sayonara, Rita, Tina, Galahad and Guernia. It’s been fun.

Death Note: Yagami Light finds himself a notebook, dropped by a Shinigami: the Death Note. If you write down the name of a person in this Death Note, he’ll die, no matter what. With this new Death Note, Light begins to create a perfect world, killing off all criminals. Then, a detective who goes by the name of “L” gets assigned to catch him.

Let me first state that Death Note is unique amongst shounen-anime. There are nearly no fights, and nearly the entire anime consists out of people planning and plotting to outsmart each other. Through the course of the anime, Light makes optimal use of the Death Note, and he comes up with a number of really smart and careful plans.

Because of this, the main good points of Death Note, especially in the beginning, are its surprises. Some plot twists are ingeniously incorporated in the storyline, and they make sure for maximum shock-value. This makes sure for a number of really intense episodes, even with the lack of fighting or other forms of physical action.

The graphics and music only contribute to this. The art that is used in Death Note is unique, and incredibly detailed. The animators made some really creative “action”-scenes, which you won’t be seeing in any other anime, and they really makes sure that these scenes are as creepy as they can get. The music consists out of a number of very addictive choir-songs, which fit the mood perfectly.

Still, despite the awesome climaxes, this series didn’t make it in the 90/100-range for a reason, as it’s got quite a few humps and bumps along the way. The most obvious one is the middle part of the series. Death Note has an excellent beginning, and an awesome ending, but the Yotsuba-arc in the middle was so bad that it made me almost lose my faith in the series. The climaxes stop being interesting, and the creators turn the series in some kind of joke of itself. Luckily, the anime picks up again with episode 24, and delivers an awesome climax, but the thorn remains. The beginning is also filled with a couple of nasty coincidences, for example Light’s father being the police-officer who is in charge of catching Light.

There are also a number of rather annoying characters in this anime. I’m referring to the ones that mainly exist for comic relief like Misa and Matsuda. They usually have no purpose at all, and they whine too much to really become interesting. The characters that are introduced later in the series also need a lot of episodes to get enough development to stop getting annoying. There are also quite an amount of people that lack a bit of background. To give one example, we learn just as much about Aizawa’s (a minor character) background as L’s (a major character) background, and believe me, that isn’t much. There’s also a time-leap somewhere in the middle of the series that just lacks proper development as well, with the result that it makes no sense in lots of areas.

Still, despite this, there are a lot of good characters with enough background to become interesting. Light himself is a fascinating person, and it’s interesting to see how he develops and eventually declines. Some temporary and side-characters also turned out really touching, and L, despite his lack of background is well developed and turns into a really enjoyable character.

Overall, it’s not the best anime out there, but it’s definitely worth a watch. It has awesome climaxes, but the fairly low rating comes from the fact that it just has too many areas that could have been improved.

And so we’ve come to the end of Death Note. I’m going to post a bit of random sentences in order to avoid some major spoilers from showing up in the blog-aggregators, in order to avoid me spoiling people. I can’t imagine that there’d be souls alive that weren’t spoiled somehow about how this anime would end by the manga-fans, but you’ll never know. Okay, this should be enough.

So, Light dies. I have to say, that even though I knew what was going to happen, I really enjoyed this episode. The ending was quite good, especially for a shounen-show. The only thing it lacked was an aftermath. I would have loved to see how the survivors went on with their lives. But ah well, you can’t have everything.

My favourite moment of the episode was Matsuda, I did NOT expect the guy to shoot Light, who tried to kill Near in a final desperate attempt. Seeing the once so confident Light finally cornered with no way out was also really nice to see, overall it made sure for a great episode. In the end, Near did notice Mikami’s strange behaviour, we just didn’t get to see it. It feels a bit cheap, though, but the reaction of the characters definitely made up for it. That’s why Mello was so down when he kidnapped Takada, he was doing it in order to get killed, and make Mikami do an unnecessary move.

I must praise Death Note for being the ONLY shounen-anime whose main character declines, instead of grows. Every other shounen-anime features a main character who keeps getting new powers in order to be able to handle stronger opponents, but Light is different. As the anime progresses, he gets more careless and more careless.

I just wish Ryuk had a bigger role in the second half of the anime. But then again, his role was more of an observer and to introduce the elements of Death Note. He’d indeed become a bit obsolete when everything is known and clear about it. Overall, it’s been a nice anime, with a number of bumps here and there, but also with a number of awesome moments.

A light case this time, and it’s also the first episode of Bokura no to incorporate humour in its storytelling, it worked well, but I don’t think Bokura no needs it. It’s good enough without the humour, unlike other anime, as it distracts a bit from the things that are really important. The creators make use of the current case to develop the storyline a bit more, and they make sure to do it thoroughly, since she gets two episodes for this.

The biggest revelation probably came near the end of the episode: there indeed is a war between planets going on, and similar machines like Zearth are fighting each other. Zearth is just a bit stronger than the others. This does ask a huge number of questions:
- Where did the technology come from?
- How many planets are fighting each other?
- Is Zearth actually destroying the planets of the robots it destroys?
- Is every planet against Zearth, or are they destroying each other as well?

Also, I must congratulate this anime for coming up with the most original alien civilization I’ve seen in a long while: one that’s actually on about the same technical levels as the earth, with a few subtle differences. There really is some kind of party that’s been handing out robots to different planets, and Kokopeli and Koemushi work for them. What purpose do they have?

In any case, I’m glad to see that the creators keep eliminating the least-interesting characters. Let’s take a look at the ones who still are alive:
Kanji
Yosuki
Jun
Takami
Aiko
Yoko
Kana
Takana
Seki
Where Kana and Yoko will remain alive. At least, I assume this. The amount of development that Jun is getting suggests that his character is special somehow. Is this because he, in fact, is the child that’ll live, or are the creators building up for his story that needs more development than the others?

In any case, I’m looking forward to the stories of these children, and I’m especially curious to when we’ll see Aiko (due to the fact that she often gets emotional), Yosuki (I’d love to see his case), Jun (after this episode, I’ve become really curious about him, see a bunch of paragraphs below), and Takana (what will she do when she finds out she can’t protect the children anymore, and what kind of effect will this have on the children?).

Maki’s case this time was cute, but it was rather overshadowed by the developments we saw about Jun and the story. Still, it’s by no means bad. Her problem is that she barely misses the birth of her new brother, and her story is about how she can support her mother, and accept her rather strange father who constantly watches anime and buys mecha-figurines. I wonder how much the next episode will focus on her story, since she’s not dead yet, and she’ll probably die until the end of the next episode. Obviously, a lot of development will be spent on the plot, but it’ll be interesting if the creators bring another twist to Maki’s mother.

There’s also this matter that somehow Zearth’s name has been leaked out. It’s interesting to see how far Zearth’s influence goes, and it’s obvious that companies would try to exploit it somehow. The fact remains, though, that Zearth was not publicly known. I assume some guy in the military accidentally let it slip, but what if the information that Zearth is piloted by children becomes known to the public?

And holy god, Jun. I really want to know more about him. He doesn’t go to school, he slacks off all day and he lets Kana do all the housework, and in this episode he even went as far as kicking her in everyone’s presence. Now I see how special it was for him to come out in episode three, since he never comes out anyway. Still, I love Kana’s bed. I do wonder how she put that together, since it obviously can’t be Jun’s work, and you don’t see such a thing in the stores.

It’s interesting to see such a shift of focus when compared to the first eight episodes, by the way. While these episodes were dark, the current ones are light. If there is a pattern, we should see another change of focus after episode sixteen, where I’ll assume that the story will be providing some more darker elements.

The thing I liked about Maki’s case was, by the way, that it shows that we’re dealing with normal children here. To compare, Narutaru only had one normal child, with the rest of the cast being composed of outcasts. Narutaru had an excuse to make these characters outcasts, and thus providing some dark story-elements. Bokurano’s kids are not all outcasts, they’re just random children on a summer-camp, which means that you can’t just go and give each of them a twisted background. That’s why I really like the subtle ones we’ve been seeing for the past few episodes. Was this the same in the manga?

PS. Another reason why I liked this episode so much: for some reason, it’s giving me a huge amount of inspiration to write about. This is the perfect example of an entry that I really enjoyed writing. :)
PSS. (See, I keep adding things ^^;) After thinking a bit more about this episode, I realize that my opinion of Bokura no is similar to that of The Third. It isn’t really as emotional as other series, but somehow I’m drawn to it way more than with other series. Now THAT is a sign of a good show! For The Third, it was Honoka who created this effect, but I can’t put my finger yet on what it so intriguing about Bokura no, though.