Before I start with this review, I wanted to make a small announcement: today is my last day of holidays. What does this mean for this blog? Well, there will probably be no changes in the series I’m currently blogging, apart from a few delays here and there, perhaps. However, I sure as hell won’t be able to watch one movie every evening anymore. I’m not sure how frequently I’ll be able to post a movie-review; that’ll depend on how busy I’ll be with my studies, and I can’t really make any predictions about that yet. Don’t worry, though: I’m not inclined to quit watching different anime-movies. I haven’t even reached the good ones yet. :)

Anyway, about the review. I wanted to finish my holidays with something special, and then Urarochi Diamond, a production by Studio 4C, suddenly popped up on Tokyo Toshokan. It turns out that I got something entirely different from what I expected, when not only did this turn out to be a wrongly-labelled raw movie, but it’s also one of the most unorthodox ones out there.

Basically, Urarochi Diamond is a minimalist movie: the production-values can’t be smaller than what we see here. There is no animation, and the entire movie consists out of minute-long gray-scale pictures of random people, living their lives in modern ghetto Japan through voices in the background. Basically, if you bought a text-less picture-book and turned on a drama-cd, you’d achieve the same effect. Amateurs with the right tools could have made this just as well.

Regarding the different stories: they’re basically minutes of the life of random unrelated people. There is no plot, no recurring characters, nothing that connects these together. Still, I can’t say I was edging for Alt-F4 throughout the entire movie. There’s one thing these shorts all benefit from, and that is realism. The entire thing is simple, yet believable.

Still, I can’t really recommend this movie, unless you’re into artistic stuff. It’s an interesting production by Studio 4C, but it’s not exactly straightforward entertainment.

Now that the characters have received a healthy dose of attention, it’s now finally time to develop the plot and setting some more. Both Thenardier (who has escaped from prison) as les Amis (what are they trying to do, actually? Start a revolution for equal rights? I failed to pick up the exact details for this, unfortunately) have started getting active again, and meanwhile, Javert is still searching for his Jean.

Gavroche surprised me when he suddenly rescued his father. The scene could have been build up a bit better, as we see no real signs of him, planning to do anything about what he heard from Montparnasse, but it was definitely interesting to see him do something nice for Thenardier. He’s beginning to become something like a Jean II, with the two kids he’s taken care of. Are they really his own brothers? Were they born once Cosette left, or something?

Anyway, there was one theme that was heavily present in this episode: poverty. Cosette sees people getting sick, and living with absolutely no money, Gavroche had no money to begin with, and I assume that les Amis are also acting against poverty. And let’s not forget Eponine, who unfortunately appeared in only one short scene this episode.

The next big thing that’s coming is probably Thenardier, finding out about Jean’s and Cosette’s location. He came really close this episode, and out of all possible houses, he picked Jean’s house to go and rob.

The second season of Higurashi has really become way more consistent than the first one. The first season frequently switched between awesome and annoying every few episodes, but right now, the series has been given a lot more time to build up. This has both negative and positive effects. The bad ones are:
- This isn’t the roller-coaster-ride that was the first season. The plot went nearly twice as fast as it’s going now.
- The twists have less impact. Because they’re so far apart, the different plot-twists and turns aren’t as frequent any more, and the focus on mystery has declined significantly in the second season. Yet again, I don’t see any reason to write a summary for this episode, since there were only a few events that developed the plot.

Because of this, though, the focus on the characters has increased dramatically, and there are almost no bad moments left. There may be less surprises, but instead of that this series now has the chance to continuously build up for its characters, without any annoying interruptions. This episode showed this yet again. Seeing an army of more than sixty people, all stretch out their hands towards the abused Satoko was awesome.

Regarding the new information: we get to know a bit more about Satoko’s disease. Interestingly enough, the symptoms Rika describe come surprisingly close to the disease that the others who went berserk have: she’ll feel as if everything is assailing her. In a panicked state, she won’t be able to reason anymore. Once she gets something in her head, this won’t change. This explains her behaviour in Arc 3 a bit more. Even after her uncle died, she still was in a panicked state at the time, so the shower-incident happened. Afterwards, she freaked out for real when she found out that Irie killed himself.

The question remains: is Satoko’s disease THE disease? Why is Satoko the only one who’s getting treatment, even though Keiichi, Shion and Rena have been shown to also go berserk? Could it actually be that either Rika or Satoko is the original source of the disease, and that the two of them have been spreading it unconsciously? If this was the case, it would explain the Hinamizawa-disaster: the Yamainu take Rika’s guts and use them to give every villager an overdose of the disease. The syringe also doesn’t instantly cure the disease; it just calms down the symptoms. It does make sense. After using the syringe, it would have been easier to reason with the different people.

Steamboy is the most expensive anime-project that has ever been made, with a budget of roughly 20 million dollars; according to AniDB, at least. But then again, a high budget doesn’t always equal a good production; let’s not forget Afro Samurai and its budget of $1 million per episode. Still, Steamboy does pretty well. The graphics and action-scenes look excellent, and they’re accompanied by a great soundtrack, making this into a tense action-series. But what about the plot?

Well, this movie suffers from the so-called “bad main character”-syndrome. It’s a boy, who ends up as the centre of struggles between adults, and I don’t think I need to say more than this. He’s always right, the adults are all too busy trying to kill each other with big weapons, he’s a genius, and he never does anything wrong.

It’s the side-characters you need to look out for. They’ve all got their flaws, and it’s definitely fun to see them struggle with each other and develop throughout the movie (yes, the main character is the only flawless character, and also one of the less versatile ones, ironically). The side-characters have all got their own motives to act, and they were the ones who saved this movie from becoming a flop with eye-candy. I like how the female lead stayed away from all the clichés that plague most other shounen-adventures, and she actually became one of the most enjoyable members of the cast.

There’s one thing about the side-characters I didn’t like, though. The minor ones tend to disappear from the screen, without any trace. I would have loved to see them develop through the movie, but instead time had to be spent on the main character. Fortunately, he got better when the climax arrived, when he stopped being the centre of everything. This made the action-scenes quite tense to watch.

But yeah, like most other action-movies, Steamboy has trouble staying within the laws of physics. In most cases, this doesn’t really distract from viewing, but there’s one major exception: the main character’s (yes, him again) inventions. Especially his jetpack was just too ridiculous. I mean, how does he ever manage to both steer and cling on to it when it’s got that much thrust?

If you’re looking for action, though: look no further. This movie manages to deliver lots of it, with a fairly decent plot and interesting side-characters. Just be sure to ignore that main one.