Hatenkou Yuugi

Haha! I knew that the winter-season was going to be awesome. Hatenkou Yuugi had an excellent episode with an excellent combination of comedy and drama, and it would be great if it could continue this for the rest of the series. Both the storytelling and dialogue are excellent and I really like the main female lead: she basically sees a guy holding a gun, and instead of running away she decides to travel along with him. I like strong female leads that don’t need to hide behind their boyfriends. There are few things that weren’t explained in this episode (like, how did the lead girl get magical powers, and how did she get acquainted with the third main character?), but that shouldn’t be a problem for the future episodes to answer. I’m definitely going to keep watching this!

Persona -Trinity Soul-

Well, the first episode was decent enough. It basically played out like your average superpower-series: a bit of introduction, after which our main character comes into contact with the strange power at the end of the episode. The strange power for this series is very much alike Mushiuta and Ayakashi: you control some kind of monster that ordinary people can’t see. Based on the title for this series, I’d guess that these are called “souls”. For men, they look like random mecha, while for women they take on the shape of random goddesses. So far, the main character is nothing to write home about, though he’s not bad either. He actually has two brothers, instead of the clichéd sisters that you usually see around these kinds of persons. There have been a few hints of a female love interest for the guy, but she didn’t appear in this episode yet. Let’s hope that she won’t ruin this series.

True Tears

Oh, a romance-show with a male lead that I actually enjoyed? Finally. True Tears has a nice sense of building-up, and so far none of the scenes have felt forced, unlike so many other shows of its kind. There is also not as much fanservice as I expected, which seems to show that the creators are going for the drama, instead of the moe, which is always good to see, though unfortunately the bathing-scene did found its way into the series (seriously… don’t these people ever lock their doors?) The male lead also isn’t annoying as many of his counterparts, and for once the stereotypical best friend didn’t feel annoying to me. Overall, there are a few clichés here and there, but some nice storytelling makes up for it.

My favourite kind of cat-people is definitely those from Kenji Miyazawa’s stories. For as far as I can recall, they’re the only ones who don’t try to act cute and moe. I was looking forward to his adaptation of Spring and Chaos, because aside from the cat-people, the stories that I’ve seen from him all had something unique. And indeed, Spring and Chaos isn’t what you’d call your average anime-movie.

The movie basically follows a writer with the name of Kenji Miyazawa (autobiographical?), who is rather eccentric and has rather trouble to fit into society with is idealized views and ideas. This movie sees him trying out various things in order to relieve him from his frustration. The entire thing is quite thought-provoking at times, but I don’t know… it seems to be missing the spark that I saw in Night on the Galactic Railroad and Gauche the Cellist.

After I finished watching the movie I still didn’t quite know what this movie wanted to be, or what its point was, and it just didn’t hit me like some of Kenji Miyazawa’s other works. The creators hop from one thing to the other without much coherence or logic, and I think that that rather spoiled this movie. I think that this was another case of too much ambition on the creators’ side: they wanted to do Miyazawa justice, so they tried to stuff too much in just one hour. It’s a shame.

One thing that did turn out interesting for this movie is its graphics. They’re quite pretty to look at, both the “usual” scenes and the CG-scenes that basically all happen in the main character’s mind. Still, I think that Kenji Miyazawa’s stories are better off with a quiet, down-to-earth approach like with Night on the Galactic Railroad or Gauche the Cellist. They don’t need to be so spectacular and ambitious to work.

When I originally looked at the promo-art, I thought that Area 88 was another one of the works of Matsumoto Leiji. Turns out it wasn’t, though I can imagine how the creators did get their inspiration from him. Area 88 is a realistic war-story about war-mercenaries in a poor African country. Make no mistake; even though there are only three OVAs, the total amount of airtime for this anime is over three hours. Due to this relatively long size, this turned into one of the least rushed OVAs I’ve seen in a long while.

There are a lot of battles in the sky for this OVA, but the real purpose of the movie is to show the fighter-pilots themselves. What goes on in their mind when they fly? Why do they fight and kill? How does the war change them? All questions get sufficiently answered, and are nicely packaged around the story of one of these pilots, who basically gets blackmailed into joining the mercenaries. There are a few coincidences here and there, but overall Area 88 has turned into quite a memorable OVA for me. I can understand why fifteen years after the original production, a television-series-remake was made (seriously, more movies and OVAs should get that treatment. Battle Angel Alita, Akira, Please Save my Earth, etc)

While I haven’t seen anything of the original Gundam Universal Century-storyline, I can imagine how anyone who liked it will like Area 88. Both the main and side-characters have been sufficiently developed, considering the length of the OVA, and there are no overpowered teenagers who stand in the centre. I must say that after seeing more and more of the genre of realistic war-stories, I’m beginning to like it more and more. It’s OVAs like these that show that you can be manly, even if you don’t pilot a mecha that throws galaxies.

With episodes like this one, I’m glad that people like Impz can churn out reliable summaries. A lot of stuff happened in this episode, but it was also incredibly hard to understand with my limited level of Japanese.

Basically, from what I understood, this episode shows the death of one of the guys who’s after Juusanhime’s life. He’s killed by Shun, in front of Seiga and a whole number of guards. What Seiga was doing there, or what is exact role was in this whole matter, I have no idea of, though. We also get introduced to two new characters: Shun’s assistant (who is quite a good fighter), and a rather young head of the guard. He’ll probably have some kind of small role in the next couple of episode. We never know his name, but there has to be a reason for him to get a unique character-design.

Ensei also returns, when Shuurei runs into him in prison. It seems that he ended up there after he saved Juusanhime from her attackers back then. What’s also interesting is how Juusanhime’s assailants have the same mark on their forehead as Shun. Are they all members of some kind of clan or family, which rivals with the Ran-family, perhaps?