Tekkon Kinkreet is, apart from Eien no Hou, the last of the big movies of 2006 to get released on DVD. As it has been produced by the Studio 4C, I was obviously looking forward to it, and I must say that it turned, along with Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo into the best of the movies, released in 2006.

Don’t be scared by the strange look of the series. What we’ve got here is a heart-wrenching drama between two brothers, who have been abandoned to the streets in the neighbourhood of Tekkon Kinkreet, or Treasure Island. In here, a strange culture has developed. The oldest of the brothers (Kuro, black) lives through fighting others, and yet the two of them are on good terms with the police due to the younger one(Shiro, white), who seems to have some kind of mental illness: even though he’s eleven years old, he acts like he’s six years younger.

Tekkon Kinkreet is chockfull of symbolism. It just shows how living on the streets can be incredibly fragile for young children, and yet the two boys somehow manage to mentally survive by depending on each other. The younger brother often holds entire monologues, which can either be totally random or incredibly deep. Also expect these monologues and the dialogues to be written with a great deal of care and attention, to make it feel as natural as possible.

For the past month, I’ve been watching a lot of different movies, though none of them really found enough time to develop both its main and side-characters well, though Tekkon Kinkreet finally shows an exception t this rule. The side-characters, a bunch of policemen and yakuza go surprisingly deep, and some of the saddest scenes in the movie are between them. I think that the main problem is that none of them really has any background, but they way they’re fleshed out and developed totally makes up for it.

The only real bad point comes from some supernatural elements that get introduced near the end of the movie, most importantly the final bad guy. Their symbolic value is huge, but I would have liked to see a bit more development in this department, as it feels a bit strange and out-of-place.

Overall, I can imagine that not a lot of people are going to be picking this up by just looking at the promo-art, but beyond waits a gem of a movie. Studio 4C are really one of the best movie-producers out there, and their unique style and originality proves to be a true delight. These guys know what it takes to make a good movie.

Torii definitely redeemed himself in this episode! I often saw him as the most boring member of the cast, but the scene with him and Ginjiro, wrecking up the missile we saw in the previous episode was hilarious, especially when combined with the huge production-values of their fight!

And I must say, the past few episodes have built a very good base for the ending, showing that the creators knew exactly what they’re doing. Even though the storyline isn’t simple, they managed to make it feel as unforced and focused as possible, something only few other anime managed to do. That still leaves the question whether the ending will actually be enjoyable or not, but for now, I’m positive.

Basically, the worst thing you can do as a comedy-anime is completely abandon your comedy in favour of drama. That works rather disappointing, doesn’t it? For the final episode, there seem to be three threads in the storyline left: Akai’s revenge, Kagiya’s worries, and getting Sora in the air.

Especially the first one surprised me. I realy thought that Akai would hate Seikichi by now, but instead he went after the Blue Monster from the Sky, who has cleverly disguised her(him?)self as the member of the warriors whom she(he?) ate/absorbed. Kagiya also should prove to be interesting, and I wonder what role she’ll be playing in the next episode. But yeah, the real highlight is going to be launching that rocket. This series has build up for this rocket for twenty-five episodes now, it’d better end with a bang, one way or another.

Now that it looks like that the final episode is going to be a DVD-only episode, I decided that I didn’t want to wait for such a long time just to close off this series. After all, it’s not like a bloody ending is going to save this series and heck, we all know what’s going to happen anyway. Shows like Red Garden and Zombie-Loan who also have a few DVD-only episodes have shown me that by the time they’re finished, my memory will have become too fuzzy to write a good review of it. I may edit this post after watching the final episode, but for now I just want to get over with this series.

Okay, let’s get started with this train-wreck now, shall we? School Days is another one of those hentai-game adaptations, but it’s a special one: the original game became notorious for a few of its rather bloody endings. Because of this, it’s become a fan favourite: you can’t go to any on-line anime-community where you won’t find tons of fans rambling about various death treats towards the main character. In the end though, this series became an utter failure.

Let’s start with about the only good point of this series: the male main character, Makoto. I know it’s ironic, but this guy actually finally deviates from some of the clichés that plague all of his colleagues, and most important of all: he’s realistic. It’s a sad thing, but in real life there are tons of idiots who just date girls without caring about any of them. You’ll love to hate this guy, and the things he does to all the poor girls in the series.

I wish I could say the same about the female characters though. The story is just so incredibly fixated on that bloody ending that it turns every single female character into a plot-device to get toward that ending. Actions are forced, characters conveniently run into each other, and most of them are a tad too often in too much angst, preventing them to connect with the viewers.

Still, at the halfway point, I would have actually considered School Days decent enough. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but the love-triangle that develops was interesting enough to make me keep watching. And then, as the series draws to its end, everything falls apart with some of the most forced and blatantly obvious plot twists I’ve ever seen. I won’t mention them for the sake of spoilers, but you should be able to guess their nature, with School Days being a hentai-game adaptation and all.

And then the setting! Seriously, it nearly looks like Makoto is in a school with only TWO GUYS in it. There is another guy (the so-called “rival” that you see in nearly every hentai-game adaptation) but he’s just good for one minor plot-twist and he just disappears afterwards without leaving any trace.

Seriously, if you were planning to watch this one: don’t. The scriptwriting and plot twists are just too forced and artificial to really form a connection, not to mention that 75% of all the scenes are incredibly annoying to watch, due to the characters being teenagers and all. While I admit that it could have been good, the scriptwriters just ruined it completely.

Okay, that turned out better than expected. Claymore is still nowhere near its old level, but I liked how Claire only played a relatively small role in this episode. I didn’t like how Priscilla didn’t just kill everyone like she did with Teresa and the others, and that power-up of hers wasn’t really necessary at all (she already was the strongest, what’s the point in making her even stronger?), but Raki, Jeane, Miria, Helen and Deneve were great to watch. But yeah, you know you’ve got a problem when the side-characters turn out more interesting than the main ones.

Still, the big question remains: is the next episode really going to deliver? The episode ends with Raki screaming, which obviously is going to have some effect on both of Claire and Priscilla. Still, I do fear that the next episode is going to end with a dead Priscilla. It’s not like the current fight against Priscilla is bad or anything, but it just looks way too much like those other overblown fights in shounen-series where the two strongest X end up fighting, taking way too much episodes to do so, only for an even more powerful enemy to appear later.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been whining about Claymore, and every time I’ve been proven wrong by the climax of each respective fight. Now that the creators have deviated from the manga-storyline, will this trend continue, or do they just lack the skills to come up with a gripping storyline that the manga-writers had?

It’s just a shame that the anime is going to end in one episode. There’s so much potential in the characters who haven’t been developed yet. I actually don’t mind waiting a few years for the second season. Gunslinger Girl did it, and I’m really looking forward to its second season right now.