The most popular premise for a movie by far is the one where a guy (or in Spirited Away’s case: girl) winds up in a fantasy world, and meets a beautiful girl (or in Spirited Away’s case: guy) who is special in some kind of way, and the two of them predictably fall in love. A Chinese Ghost Story shows the Chinese attempt at this trope, as it’s one of the few anime that has been fully produced in China.

Interestingly enough, the creators did a pretty good at this one. Okay, they didn’t create a blockbuster, but it’s definitely better than Gonzo’s attempt at the trope: Brave Story. There are two reasons for this: the deep roots into Chinese Mythology, and the fact that it doesn’t take itself too seriously at times. It’s not a pure comedy, and the fantasy does take priority throughout the movie, but the inclusion of quirky characters and dialogue makes sure for a light-hearted feeling to the entire movie. You can especially see this in the fights. Due to their semi-serious nature, in combination with a movie-budget, they turned out to be really fun to watch, and a highlight for this movie. Something that doesn’t happen often.

The roots into Chinese Mythology also made sure that the fantasy-world didn’t turn out to be to be the same like the others. The main character for this story works as a debt collector who just got dumped by his girlfriend. During one of his assignments, he runs into a ghost town. As I’ve seen mostly Japanese mythology in my anime lately, it was refreshing to see the differences in both. For starters, the ghosts can just be seen by normal people and even a bunch of stairs turns out to be a ghost. It’s also been a while since I saw people talk this lightly about reincarnation.

The movie does have flaws, though. The most obvious one is concerning the graphics. This movie uses traditional drawings, combined with a huge amount of CG-backgrounds and animations, and the two just don’t blend well together, and end up looking fake. Another thing is that the animators just didn’t figure out how to synchronize the mouth movements with the voice-acting. It makes for a nice style, but sometimes it’s a bit too obvious. The rest of the animation for the traditional drawings looks excellent though, just like what you’d suspect from a movie.

Another flaw comes with the writing. Through most of its part, it makes the movie fun to watch, but sometimes it’s just a bit too far-fetched. Especially the ending comes with a few twists that just don’t feel right. Be sure to expect a Deus ex Machina here and there as well.

Overall, if you’re looking for something different, you might give this one a try. The Chinese definitely have a different style of dialogues than the Japanese have. It won’t win any awards, but it’s a fun movie.

Kacpy reports that Moonphase announced the second season of xxxHolic! I really hope this is true, and I’ll definitely be blogging it. It’s great to see that after Wellber no Monogatari, xxxHolic will also recieve a continuation. I’m looking forward to see Watanuki’s antics again. :)

And the current small arc is already over. Still, despite the short length, it is a major arc. Especially this episode gives us lots of new information. In the next episode, the finale of the series is going to start, with only five episodes left. It’s promising to become an epic ride.

The very first scene already comes with a major plot twist: Physis isn’t a Myu. When Blue found her and rescued her, he found her inside a test tube. This doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s a Myu herself. Toni tells this to her, and he lets her know how much he disgusts humans, and so Physis. He also partially blames her for killing his parents, due to her similarities with Keith. He then gets chased out of the room by Physis’s assistant.

In the meantime, Shangri-La has been hovering in the sky for quite a while now. We next see Toni, training with his comrades, and he’s way too harsh on them. He’s clearly struggling about what to do. Jomie is meanwhile in his room, along with Swena. She tells him about the things he did with E1077. Swena now also needs to find something else to do, since her original mission of finding the Moby Dick has been fulfilled.

The other Myu have meanwhile gotten access of the Universal Computer, and they’ve located the data that tells about Terra’s location. It’s being protected by a rather nasty password, though, so it’s going to take a while to crack it. We meanwhile see Keith, inside E1077, and Jomie, boarding a space-ship, while getting bugged by Swena about her daughter.

Keith then turn back on the power source of E1077, and heads to the room with Mother Eliza. And now, we finally get to know the link between him and Physis: They’ve got the same DNA! They were both the products of the first successful attempts to create “superhumans”, if I had to guess. For the same experiment, about a dozen clones were made. Physis was the female part of the DNA, Keith the male. Physis got saved by Blue, while Keith was let out of his capsule as an experiment, and it worked perfectly. I wonder why the others weren’t released as well…

Back to Jomie, he finally gets to see Swena’s daughter. She’s now in the care of new parents. He then says goodbye to Swena, which probably was the last time he’ll see her. When they’re gone, Toni (who has gone along with them, along with Rio) protests how he can be so friendly towards the humans, who are supposed to be the enemies, though Jomie reassures him that he too is a human. Toni just can’t believe this.

Jomie then heads to the place where he was born, much like Keith, who is now cursing his clones and Mother Eliza. Shockingly enough, they both end up destroying their birthplaces. Jomie destroys the cave which carries the tubes with newborn children, and even though it would have been awesome to see Keith’s clones in action, Keith kills them all, along with Mother Eliza and E1077. He leaves Peter Pan behind at Shiroe’s former dormitory.

After destroying the tubes, along with the computer that protected it, he leaves the keepsake he got from Sam there. With this, he finally closed off his childhood. We close the episode with the news that the location of Terra has finally been discovered, and Keith, getting a new mission from Grand Mother, which probably involves stopping Jomie from getting to Terra.

This episode was more about its revelations, than the addictive pacing and tension of the previous arc, but it still was awesome watching it. With five episodes left, there’s plenty of time left to finish off this series, and I’m curious to see how it’ll end. At the end of the previous episode, Keith looked surprisingly human, when he was heading to his birthplace. At the end of the episode, though, he’s back to his old self, and we’re supposed to hate him again. We know he isn’t going to make it easy for the Myu, and something’s telling me that he’s going to slaughter the children of the Myu. The question is: how?

This episode focused again on Emily, but it seriously was an awesome one. It’s definitely one of her most thought-provoking ones, even though none of the other side-characters were involved. As much as I’m hoping for the Teddy-episode, I can’t deny that this episode was pure awesomeness.

It starts when Emily’s poem finally gets printed in a local magazine. The previous episode definitely had an effect, as Emily is starting to get known in the town now, and people are actually recognizing her. With that comes her first job, and the first time that Emily needs to learn about responsibilities, and a hard lesson it is.

The job is writing a poem about a recently deceased guy. The problem is, though, that from the outside, he lived a really boring life. He just worked and worked, and when he didn’t work, he drank alcohol. Emily needs to get lectured by both Elizabeth and her teacher, before she really understands the job that she’s been given. She’s obviously very inclined to just give up. Heck, it doesn’t hurt her at all. But I can imagine how much it must hurt the family if Emily broke her promise.

Still, it’s great to see both Emily and Perry growing considerably. Notice how Perry continues to study really hard, in order to catch up with the others? This episode also shows that Emily is continuing to develop her skills, and I can imagine that Teddy has been sketching as well. I’m just a bit disappointed that we never got to see Ilse’s talents. According to Wikipedia, she’s a talented Elocutionist, but I’ve yet to see that from her.

This may very well be the best episode of Seirei no Moribito since episode 3. I nearly cried at one point. It’s just too bad that the issue between Barsa and Chaggumu is resolved now, but it will be interesting to see whether the final episodes pull a similar twist. Just like El Cazador de la Bruja, Seirei no Moribito is a series that spent most of its time building up. Right now, it’s time to see whether all the building-up can come together. Both series are showing some good signs. Ellis and Nadie are becoming so cute together, and the current episode showed that Barsa and Chaggumu have a great relationship together, but I have to see first before I’ll believe it.

Basically, the current episode centres on Chaggumu, running away. He’s been angry with Barsa, ever since she knocked down Shuga, and when now he finds out that he’s destined to die. When the girl comes, and offers to run away with him, he takes the chance. Barsa tracks them down easily, though Chaggumu refuses to go with her. He claims that Barsa isn’t his mother, and that she can’t know about his suffering.

In response, Barsa throws him her spear, and claims that if he wants to leave, he’d have to stab her. In his blind rage, he rushes towards her, though she stops him easily. She then smacks him down, claiming that he’s incredibly irresponsible. Everyone in the village is worrying about him, and he can’t just run away from them. What can he do when he’s alone like that?

That scene made a lot of impact, and I love how Barsa decided to solve it. It really shows the fruit of the constant building up of ths series. I’d love to see this continued, but I remain sceptical for now. There’s one thing I didn’t understand, though. At one point, Chaggumu fell down and felt dizzy, and thought that something was watching him. What was up wit that?

Oh, and the hunters make their move too. Luckily, Barsa and Chaggumu happen to be out of the village at that time, so they’re going to have to deal with Tanda and Torogai in the next episode. I’m interested to see how it’ll go, seeing the nature of this series. I can’t help but compare Seirei no Moribito to a Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto with less fights, but where the latter turned straightforward in its second half, Seirei no Moribito continues to be unpredictable. Now let’s hope that this remains until the finale!