Ah, Bamboo Blade. You had the potential to become interesting when you started, though something went wrong. The flaws for this series are a bit more subtle than usual, and I’m still not 100% sure what it was that really caused the downfall for this series. If I had to guess, then it’s a combination of things. Bamboo Blade in the end had its moments, but remains overall boring.

Let’s take a look at the characters first. At the beginning of this series, they really caught my intention, and I admit having laughed quite a bit at their antics. They get a small share of development during the second half, so what went wrong? Well the characters may have been impressive at first sight, but looking back, the creators just took a bunch of stereotypes and gave them one or two original personality-traits. This leads to a quiet and small but uberpowerful girl who is obsessed with cheesy mecha-shows, a beauty who actually is quite sadistic but has a geek as boyfriend, that geek who has managed to score such a beautiful girl as girlfriend.

This is nice and all, but the characters didn’t feel dynamic at all. The creators were so busy, trying to step away from the stereotypes that they forgot that the silent girl still remained silent, the geek remained a geek, and the sadistic beauty remains a sadistic beauty. In the end, nearly every character couldn’t shake away his or her stereotype. The side-characters are off even worse: there’s the obsessive stalker-girl, the old hag, the rival and several of the opposing kendo-teams who are cookie-cutters at best. Because of this, the characters are funny and enjoyable when first introduced, but they just can’t remain interesting for a full course of 26 episodes.

Then there’s the story. It may be me, but it really felt like the creators were struggling to keep it moving forward. Basically, the show’s about a Kendo-club who fights in a number of tournaments. Every single group of opponents gets progressively duller for some strange reason. Especially the two final opponents feel artificial at best. Seriously, this show takes a real nose-dive as it nears its ending.

I really feel that this is one series that would have been best suited for 13 episodes. At least that way, the characters wouldn’t have had any time to get boring. I’ve praised the past Autumn and Winter-Season for featuring a lot of good shows, centring around high-schools, but this is unfortunately not one of them.

Before I start with the usual review, I’d like to point out that this is the 250th review I’ve written for my blog. Yay!

In any case, if you’ve watched the original Gunslinger Girl and plan to watch Il Teatrino, there’s one thing that you need to take into account: a lot of changes have been made. The soundtrack has changed, but most importantly the character-designs have been redrawn completely in a totally different style and the animation-budget has suffered a great loss. The bad news: the fight scenes will look fake, and there will be speed-lines. The good news: this is about the only thing that’s wrong with this series.

The change in art style is something you’ll either love or hate with passion. Not considering this though, they do look gorgeous, and even though the animations in the fights looks fake, the animators have tried to make up for it with some awesome fight-choreography. With this, fights are much more than just brainless gunfights, and are much more based on tactics.

In addition, the storyline has developed into something amazing. The most notable thing is that there is NO main character whatsoever. Even though the girls are the centre of this series, do not make the mistake into thinking that they’re the one with the most screen-time. The creators have made sure not to give any character special attention, and because of this, this is one of the very few series where the “good guys” are just as developed and fleshed out as the “bad guys”. And yes, I put the quotations there on purpose, because sometimes it really feels that the girls are the bad guys. Especially Rico can be really scary at times.

Gunslinger Girl is also one of these series that delivers with every single episode. Introductions, climaxes and aftermaths follow each other in a rapid succession, and there’s so much going on in each episode. The cast of characters may be amazing, but it’s the storyline that pushes them forwards. This is one series that knows how to wrap up all of its storylines at the end, and provides a very satisfying climax.

It may be that I just don’t care about the changes that were made, but Gunslinger Girl has turned into one of the best series to air during the past winter-season, along with Porfy’s Long Journey and Hakaba Kitarou. At first sight, the characters may look “moe-ified”, but this series cleverly shows that the girls are much more than just a bunch of cute angels. Really, the adults end up stealing the show in this series much more than they do.

Haha! I couldn’t have expected a better finale than this one! Seriously, it’s so great to see that this has been a series where everything went right, apart from the smaller budget, perhaps. This is really why it was such a good thing that the original mangaka had been assigned to do the Screenplay and Series Composition. Sure, some changes may be forced, but in this way you can be sure that the vision of the original writer will be translated perfectly. Seriously, more series should do this.

And here I thought that this episode would primarily be about the fight between Pinocchio and Triela. Sure, it takes up a large part, but yet again Franca came and stole the show’s best moments. She and Franco originally came to rescue Pinocchio, and yet they only managed to rescue Christiano, while leaving Pinocchio behind. Very impressively, they manage to pass two of the girls, though Franca has been hurt too much, and drives off a cliff, taking Christiano and Franco with her.

Looking back, I must say that this series made best out of its limited budget. On one hand you can say that it does look cheap at times (this episode again featured some speed-lines), but if there’s no budged there’s not much you can do. From that viewpoint, I’d much rather see a series that at least tries to showcase some great fights with some great coordination, than a series that just chooses the easy way around with lots of still frames and no animation at all. Shion no Ou really has been the series to show this: the show clearly received a small budget, and yet the animation-department went all out.

That line of Pinocchio was also right on the spot: “who’s the monster now?” Especially since afterwards, we saw Rico mercilessly banging the head of a guy against the window of a car. She and Jan were most definitely the closest things resembling monsters in this series, and that’s the beauty of it, because at the same time Rico is also the most cheerful member of the cast.

Thankfully, there are still two DVD-only episodes left. I wonder what they’ll be about, though I’d guess that they’ll develop the girls some more. I’ll be blogging them when they show up, though for now I consider this series finished. Let’s hope for a third season to get announced soon, because this is one manga that deserves to be fully animated!

And with this, the season is nearly over. There are still a few series left to finish, but they should close off in a few days from now. Overall, I must say that it’s been an interesting half year, and nothing like the spring-season that preceded it. It feels like there were less ground-breaking series than usual, but at the same time it feels like there were much less mediocre series. Either that, or my taste has just gotten broader over the past year. The winter-season has also been the best since years, although there weren’t many popular series that emerged.

#30 (28) - Dragonaut the Resonance - (5,9/10) - Wait… Kazuki just turned good that easily? For Christ’s sake. The final episodes lost any spark of potential that was still left in this series, unfortunately.
#29 (???) - Kimi ga Nozomu Eien ~ Next Season - (7,2/10) - Well, this episode basically recapped the television-series, so it wasn’t that exciting, but at least I now know why Mitsuki left.
#28 (24) - Bamboo Blade - (7,3/10) - The one climax was great and all, but afterwards everything dulled out again. It’s a shame, Bamboo Blade had the potential to become an entertaining series, but it ended up being just mediocre.
#27 (26) - Mnemosyne - Musume-tachi - (7,4/10) - This series needs to start to deliver soon, or I’ll lose interest. This episode was nice and all, but it wasn’t anything special
#26 (27) - Hatenkou Yuugi - (7,4/10) - Episode nine was actually pretty good! Really, that one showed that the manga behind this series had really potential, which makes it such a shame that the anime creators screwed up this series so much. Seriously, I expected much better from the director of Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club.
#25 (new) - Bus Gamer - (7,6/10) - This could have been more interesting, though due to its short length it’s a nice series to watch if you need to burn an hour.
#24 (9) - Kekkaishi - (7,8/10) - Okay, so the final episodes aren’t exactly without their problems. There also were some strange animation-problems in the final one, where the creators suddenly changed style. It’s exactly for this reason that Shounen-series shouldn’t play with superpowers. Sure, it looks flashy, but it also eliminates any sense of tactics.
#23 (10) - Darker than Black - (7,9/10) - The DVD-only episode finally got released. Like expected, it did nothing to wrap up any of the plot-holes it left behind, but at least it was funny. I laughed quite a bit at the silliness.
#22 (36) - Hellsing OVA - (7,9/10) - Well, at least it was a bit better than the previous episode, but am I the only one who considers the TV-series to be better than the OVA?
#21 (18) - Gintama - (8,1/10) - Another standard month for Gintama. I laughed, but there were other comedies that were better.
#20 (13) - Kimikiss Pure Rouge - (8,2/10) - The school festival was nice and all, but I don’t feel that his month has been the best month for Kimikiss. It was just a bit of delaying the inevitable, and nothing that we didn’t knew already appeared.
#19 (17) - Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji - (8,3/10) - Episode 21 and 22 were incredibly intense, while 23 and 24 were nothing but building up. I really want to praise this series, but if so little happens during one episode, it’s getting really hard!
#18 (14) - Ahiru no Quack - (8,4/10) - The quality of the soundtrack still surprises me. Herman van Veen is one of the very few Dutch singers who can get away with it. Seriously, if you thought that some of the J-Pop was crap, just wait till you hear some of the artists we have. -_-
#17 (23) - Persona - Trinity Soul - (8,4/10) - Whoa, I never expected this series to be so focused at mystery. I like it, though the creators do need to think about their continuity. More than once, I found myself thinking “where the heck did that come from”?
#16 (7) - Wellber no Monogatari ~ Sisters of Wellber - (8,5/10) - Ugh, I’m not happy. This is why a satisfying ending is so important for a series, because that’ll be one of the major things you’ll remember when thinking back. Wellber no Monogatari may have had an amazing finale, but the aftermath was just one bad idea after the other.
#15 (12) - Suteki Tantei Labyrinth - (8,5/10) - If only for the epic revelation of episode 22, this series deserves points. Sure, it’s for the wrong reasons, but you can’t deny that the cheesiness hasn’t been entertaining.
#14 (10) - Shigofumi - (8,6/10) - Fumika’s story came together quite nicely. I can’t say for sure that this has been the best of Shigofumi, but this remains a great series nonetheless.
#13 (11) - True Tears - (8,7/10) - The final month wasn’t necessarily the best of this series, but nevertheless it closed off this anime pretty nicely.
#12 (20) - Saiunkoku Monogatari - (8,7/10) - And it’s finally over. Thankfully, the final episode left the series on a good note, though god knows when the third season will finally be animated.
#11 (15) - Clannad - (8,7/10) - That final episode turned out better than I could have imagined. Heck, I actually cried for Nagisa.

#10 (8) - Hakaba Kitarou - (8,7/10)

What I liked about this month is the consistency. This series has been consistently entertaining. I think that the scriptwriters are to thank for that. They really knew how to keep this series interesting.

#9 (14) - Gundam 00 - (8,7/10)

That final battle featured some really interesting twists for the second season to work with. I especially liked that final episode.

#8 (16) - Spice and Wolf - (8,8/10)

Boy, those final three episodes rocked! It’s great to see that this series has come together.

#7 (19) - Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei - (9/10)

The big flaw of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei is that it refuses to develop its characters. Sure, the show develops, but the characters never change. Thankfully, the rest of the series more than makes up for this flaw, and especially episode 7 was wonderful.

#6 (2) - Ghost Hound - (9/10)

The highlight of this month was of course Makoto’s story coming together. This series has been as solid as ever.

#5 (16) - Power Puff Girls Z - (9,1/10)

Episode 51 was sensational! It really deserves to be up there along with the manga-artist as the best episode of this series. This month has been an awesome month for this series.

#4 (5) - Mokke - (9,1/10)

The final episodes rocked! Especially episode 24 was without a doubt the best of the entire series, and it was a real tear-jerker. Mokke, you’ve been one of my top picks for the Autumn-season for a good reason.

#3 (4) - Gunslinger Girl - Il Teatrino - (9,1/10)

Another very consistent series. Every episode delivers, and is really well written. Please someone announce the third season!

#2 (3) - Porfy no Nagai Tabi - (9,3/10)

Well, I think episode 13 says it all. Everything that this series has built up for has come together. It’s so heart-wrenchingly sad, though Porfy is without a doubt the best series of the winter-season, and I say that considering the amazing line-up of some of the other series that aired.

#1 (1) - Shion no Ou - (9,5/10)

Talk about a sensational month for Shion no Ou! The final four episodes closed off the series perfectly, and the animation-department was on fire as well. It’s so sad to see this brilliant series gone now.