For my 200th review, I was looking for something special (because yes, this is currently the 200th review I’ve written for my blog!), and lo and behold, the second Kino no Tabi-movie popped up on Tokyo Toshokan at exactly the right moment. With a length of half an hour, it’s again nice and short, and those who have been disappointed by the first movie will probably be delighted by the second one.

While Life goes on too place a few years before the series, Byouki no Kuni takes place a few years after the series. You can see how Kino has grown up a bit. She’s less scared to be emotionally involved with the people she meets, and she has much more trouble to hide her gender when compared to the series. ^^; The graphics also look better than they have ever had, and especially Kino looks beautiful.

Yet again, the movie features another random story that could very well be a glorified episode. Still, unlike the first movie, it feels complete, and it’s an excellent way to spend half an hour. Ryutarou Nakamura (Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost Hound, the director of the original series, but not the first movie) returns to the director’s seat, and the result is some excellent storytelling. I think that it can be best compared to the storytelling of the original series, combined with that of Ghost Hound.

Another great thing about this movie is that it’s completely standalone. You don’t need to have seen anything of Kino no Tabi before if you want to enjoy Byouki no Kuni, and it’s actually a very good introduction to the concept of the rest of this series. Overall, Byouki no Kuni is a relaxing movie that manages to recapture the essence of the series, while being more than just a glorified filler-episode; something that very rarely happens with movies that are based on series. This is also why I believe that a Mushishi-movie would be awesome. If you’ve seen the rest of the series, then I see no reason why not to check out the second movie of this great series.

Aachi wa Ssipak belongs in the categories of absurd movies, though this one has been made by Koreans. Right from the start, it’s clear what the purpose of this movie is going to be: breaking as many taboos as possible. Constipation, drug abuse and addiction, useless violence, crime, porn, you name it, and chances are big that Aachi wa Ssipak has got it. Especially if you’re into toilet-humour, then this should be a movie to consider to check out.

But yeah, the formula gets old very fast, and it doesn’t help that the characters are very, very hard to like. Every single one will probably get on your nerves due to their endless stupidity. The endless violence also gets old very soon, and after a blue mutant has been killed for the tenth time, then the fun quickly dies. (Seriously, how many of them are there anyway? It feels like thousands of them got slaughtered in the making of this movie).

Thankfully, later on the movie manages to redeem itself with a very entertaining mining-cart chase-scene. In fact, the action-scenes look overall very good, which prevented this movie from becoming a total waste of time. This isn’t the first time where a movie tries to be as gross as possible, and while it does add something new with the huge emphasis on defecation, it’s ot really my cup of tea.

Obviously, you should keep this one away from your little brother and sister. This is an interesting movie to watch with a bunch of friends while bored, though. The stupidity of the characters is enough to laugh at, and the action remains fresh. This is a Korean production after all, and these guys do have a knack for interesting action-scenes.

Great news from Moetron: the third season for Jigoku Shoujo has finally been announced. I originally thought that everything would be over after the second season, but on the other hand, there were more than enough hints given that there was some kind of continuation coming. Now that [spoiler] is [spoiler], we should be seeing some new characters as well, and the [spoiler] will also probably get more development. This should be one to watch out for.

Here’s one thing I don’t get: Kodomo no Jikan has had to endure a lot of bad publicity, just because of its premise: a grade-school student who falls in love with her teacher. People were dismissing it immediately, without giving it a chance, labelling it as useless bait for paedophiles. The backlash even caused the license of the manga this series is based on to be cancelled. And yet, Moetan, which aired in this summer, was 10 times worse and yet nobody doesn’t even squeak at it.

I’m not claiming that Kodomo no Jikan is perfect. Heck, there is indeed a lot of useless fanservice (thankfully censored in the tv-version, though). The haircuts for the three main female characters are ridiculous. Sometimes, the children behave a bit older than what you’d expect from their age. And yet, unlike Moetan, this isn’t a series just to extract money from the paedophiles.

Kodomo no Jikan is about how to deal with traumatized kids. The teacher in the story is just starting out, and in his homeroom-class, there are three problem-children, who have been raised unusually, or had some traumatic experiences in their past. In Rin’s case (the main character for this story), this causes her to fall in love with her teacher, in an attempt to help her forget her horrible past. The teacher, in his turn has to learn how to deal with her properly, and how to not focus all his attention on her, while neglecting the other children in his class. Rin has a lot of problems at home, but what can a mere teacher do to solve it?

Unfortunately, not the entire manga was animated, so the answer to this question is quite rushed and unnatural. It’s a pity, because the rest of the series works quite well. The comedy in this series is of the feel-good type, and this series knows exactly when to be funny and when to be serious. And unlike Lucky Star, the show doesn’t get the chance to be stale. One complaint would be that one or two episodes are a bit too dramatic, but the others provide an excellent drama between Rin and her teacher.

Overall, this series would have been better without the fanservice. There’s also a lot of fowl language in this series, but that one hit surprisingly close to home, and reminded me of my own days in grade-school, where we just learned the new perverted words and tried to use them at every possible occasion. ^^; Kodomo no Jikan doesn’t deserve the bad publicity it’s been getting, as it’s a very capable series.