Strait Jacket

Well, this OVA has been pretty dull so far. The biggest reason for this is a rather dull cast of characters. None of them really stands out, and they’re all rather stereotypical. On one hand, the creators want to be all serious and dramatic with gruesome deaths and killings, and on the other side the biggest priority of the cast of main characters is whether or not they look good. So far, the first episode did introduce the concept, but the overall storyline (which should be important for an OVA like this) is dangerously ignored. The premise is solid so far, but the creators do need to try harder in the next episodes if they want to make this work out.

Minami-ke Okawari

I dropped the original series after two episodes because it just wasn’t that funny, but I became interested in this series when I learned that this season of Minami-ke would be handled by an entirely different production-team. The three main characters still aren’t that interesting, though. They’re all a bunch of stereotypes. I do admit that the side-characters are quite funny, though, when they stand in the spotlights. The OP is quite interesting as well, though I don’t think that these factors will make up for the rather lacklustre lead-characters, so I doubt that I’m going to continue watching this series. If you were a fan of the original, though, you might want to check this one out.

Gunslinger Girl - Il Teatrino

One thing that should be noted first: yes, the character-designs changed. Is it me, or are animators getting lazier nowadays, with hardly any attempt to look different? In any case, the second season of Gunslinger Girl starts with an action-packed episode. While it was definitely exciting, it’s not what the original series great, and I hope that the new staff realizes this for the second season as well. But there’s no need to worry for now. The first season also started with the most action-packed fight of the entire series, and this episode gave enough hints to the deep characters and dialogue. Fans of the series will have to get used a bit to the new style, but apart from that this episode couldn’t have been a better introduction to the second season, and I’m glad to see more of the concept. The new soundtrack also is great. Along with Porfy’s Long Journey the best of the season.

Oh great, another Setsuna-episode. Still, the guy has been getting better, and he’s not as annoying as he was at the beginning of the series. Still, he remains pretty stupid and seriously needs to talk more to people. Here he is, in a middle-eastern country, undercover and all, and he apologizes like a Japanese. No wonder that the guys from the Union saw right through him.

Also, I know that language-issues have always been tricky for international series like this one, but please, at least try to be a bit believable. What the heck happened to the Arabic language? It’s a shame, you can see that the creators did research for this series, and I appreciate that, but still small details like this continue to slip by.

Ah well, at least the episode built up well enough. The civil war in Azadistan is progressing along nicely, and indeed it’s not that easy to just change an entire nation, even though the leaders have no intention to fight. I do wonder how the creators are planning to solve this, though, but I guess there’s only one way to find out.

Now that the first quarter of the series is over, we should be seeing a bit more of the direction where the creators plan to go for with the rest of the series. It was at this point that Code Geass really began to decline, with its pointless emo-scenes, and I really hope that the creators for Gundam 00 don’t try to do the same and instead just continue with what they’re good at: politics.

Before I start with the review, I have a small announcement to make. Anyone who’s looked at my blog for the past two weeks will probably have noticed the heap of movie and OVA-reviews. Well, with the review of Arete Hime, this special holiday-schedule has ended: every show should be getting out of their hiatus by now, the Winter-season has started as well, and tomorrow my studies will start again as well. I must say that it was a great way to spend the past two weeks, and this was probably the largest amount of activity you’ll see from me in like, ever (according to animeblogger, I managed to churn out more than fifty posts over the past two weeks ^^;). I also managed to greatly reduce my movie-watchlist, in fact, there are only nine titles left of movies and OVAs that I still want to see (three OVAs and six movies, to be exact), and I should be finished with that list in about two months, depending on how busy my studies will become.

Anyways, onto the review. For the past two weeks, I’ve seen a lot of good stuff, but the definite highlights for me were Tokyo Godfathers and this charming movie called Arete Hime, or Princess Arete. This movie really restored my faith in Studio 4C. Every thing has its bad points, and I guess that for Studio 4C this was Spriggan. Still, Arete Hime showed me that these guys remain a bunch of very talented storytellers.

Let me get one thing straight, though: boredom is a major theme of this movie, so yes: it’s slow. Don’t even dare to expect any action in this movie. Still, one flaw that I found in a lot of movies is that they tend to rush things along a lot, while forgetting to build up properly. Arete Hime delightfully avoids this flaw, and makes sure not to rush one minute of its storyline. Of course, the premise of a princess, locked up inside a tower has been done many times before, and yet the creators managed to create a setting with this that stands apart from the rest. The storyline and setting may be simple, but that makes sure that they’ve gotten sufficient development. It was definitely interesting to see the customs and habits of the people who live in a fantasy-influenced medieval setting, without any clichés or stereotypes.

The cast of characters is also well-developed, from the main characters to the side-ones: everything fits, and most of them are smarter than your average anime. You may not suspect it from first sight, but Arete is quite clever for her age, and the major villain too has one of the most interesting back-stories I’ve seen in a long while.

To be honest, if I were asked about the best movie-creating company, I’d answer Studio 4C instead of Ghibli. Sure, Hayao Miyazaki has made some great movies, but they all felt like they were missing something. That final spark to become truly interesting. The works from Studio 4C feel complete, varied and nearly all of them have a terrific sense of storytelling. Both studios try to be different and don’t care about popularity and mainstream. Princess Arete is yet another great example of this. Sure, I can imagine how it’ll put people to sleep, but the storytelling definitely makes up for all of the slow pacing.