Druaga no Tou ~The Aegis of Uruk

Well, this episode turned out to be something entirely different than expected. You can say a lot about Gonzo, but I don’t think that anyone can say that they don’t know how to create a bad game-adaptation, and they use this perfectly to their advantage for this episode to create a hilarious RPG-parody that also takes the Mick out of popular series as Haruhi and Gurren Lagann. I was throwing all kinds of curses at Gonzo before I found out. :P On the other hand, however, this series still has a 16-year old male protagonist, so there’s still enough room for screwing this up. Still, it’s a good thing that Gonzo knows how not to do this series; now let’s hope that they do know how to do it properly. One hint that points in a positive direction is that none of the characters we saw in this episode, apart from the main guy and his rival, seems to be a major character. Are they going to get killed off or something? Now that would be a great opportunity for character-development.

Amatsuki

Seriously, why do so many series suddenly have first episodes of this quality!? I’ve been used to the fact that nearly every series starts out mediocre, and here series after series suddenly sparkles with potential. Really, apart from To Love-Ru and Kyou Kara Maou, I have yet to see a series this season that didn’t deliver for its first episode! In any case, Amatsuki turned out like I hoped it would: a wolf in sheep’s clothing. On one side, it’s reminiscent of a Kyou Kara Maou-clone without any sexual innuendo, and then suddenly the main character sees a huge beast slaughtered in front of him. Don’t make the mistake that this will be an ultra cheerful series, because this series isn’t afraid to deal with the darker topics.

Itazura na Kiss

The past Autumn- and Winter-season featured an unexpected wave of good shounen-romance series, though this really seems to be the turn for the shoujo-romances to shine again. It’s felt like ages since a good one popped up, after the disappointing Shugo Chara and all. For Itazura na Kiss, the character-designs look very simple, but that’s the beauty of it: neither the males nor the females feel exceptionally beautiful, like you see in so many other series. Heck, our main female lead is befriended with a couple of punks. The story for this series isn’t anything special, and it’s just meant to get another boy and girl in one house, but what really shines in this series is its lovable cast of characters. It’s just been one episode, and already the characters feel diverse and have shown the viewer multiple sides. Now all that’s left is to hope that this series won’t delve into useless fillers, but I’m pretty confident with the director and the music composer of Toward the Terra and the animation-company of Kaze no Shoujo Emily.

If you’re looking for a standard anime with a standard storyline, then you should stay well away from Ghost Hound. This is one series that tries to be different, and it’s at the same time after Shion no Ou my favourite series to have aired during the past Autumn Season. It does feature a bunch of fourteen/fifteen year old boys, but this series manages to use them to their full extend.

One of the major themes of Ghost Hound is psychology. You can see that the creators are very knowledgeable about the subject, because this series really delves into the details of this subject. All main characters have run into their own kinds of traumas due to various things that happened in their childhood, and everyone has reacted to this differently. Ghost Hound shows how these people can be cured, and how just a small push in the wrong direction can lead to disaster.

There’s another thing that really sets this series apart from most others: it’s been directed by the director of Serial Experiments Lain, and it shows. Apart from that series, there is no other anime I can think of that puts more focus on its sound effects than Ghost Hound. The result is an continuously tight atmosphere as the events slowly develop.

And yes, this is a slow series, but don’t make the mistake that nothing happens. In fact, every episode builds up for the next one, and it keeps you on your toes, because you’ll never know when a sudden plot-twist might arrive. In this series, it’s not the destination that matters, but the road at which you get there. Because of this, the ending ended up being a tad rushed, but thankfully entertaining enough to keep interesting.

I didn’t have much series to look forward to at the previous Autumn Season, but this one really stood out, and it’s along with Shion no Ou my top-recommendation amongst the shows that aired back then. Don’t worry that it’ll start off slow, it’ll pick up its pace quickly enough and deliver a great storyline, an interesting cast of characters that develops very natural-like and a feast for the senses.

It’s strange. This episode was far from perfect. Like expected after the previous episode, a lot of things indeed had to be crammed in one episode. We still don’t know where Masayuki’s mother went (either that, or it was mentioned somewhere in a previous episode and I didn’t pick it up), and just happily reappeared again at the end of this episode. Makoto’s mother also didn’t show up at all, and this episode yet introduced all kinds of new concepts. Compared to the extremely solid series, this episode wasn’t careful in its building up at all. So why did I like this episode so much?

I think that there are a couple of different endings a series can choose. Endings often used in comedies and light-hearted series are the “life goes on”-ending, the “there is no ending”. There’s also the “aftermath ending”, where nothing exciting happens and instead the series closes off with a quiet episode. Then there are the series who want to end with a bang, and they can usually be divided into three categories.

In the least exciting of the three, the final episode just takes the end of the semi-final episode and wraps up all the threads that were still left hanging from it. Most of the series from the past fall and winter-season belong in this category, and while it’s nice and all, I don’t really see such an ending as anything special. Shion no Ou is one of the few series who actually made such an ending really work, but that series was awesome to begin with.

In the second category, the creators basically solve all of the problems in the semi-final episode, apart from one major thing. Think of it as, the evil emperor’s plans have all been destroyed, and now all that’s left is to defeat the evil emperor himself. These endings are usually very solid ones, take Clannad’s ending, or one of my favourites: Bokura no. These endings, however, also have a tendency to get quite boring if you’re not into the series.

And then the third, which is my personal favourite but also an incredibly double-edged sword: introduce new things in the final episode. And this is exactly where Ghost Hound’s ending belongs. There were only four series for the past season who did this, I think: Mokke, Ghost Hound, Hakaba Kitarou and Wellber no Monogatari. While Wellber’s ending was a string of bad ideas, the other three contained some of my favourite endings of the past season, simply because you really won’t know what to expect. A lot of my favourite endings are also of this type (Ooedo Rocket, The Third, Night Head Genesis, Noein), and now I finally see the resemblances.

But yeah, endings like these can also go horribly wrong, simply because there’s so much that happens in just one episode. Ghost Hound barely avoided this, and thankfully it more than made up for this by resolving more than I thought it would. Hirata gets a very nice closure, and in the end, it didn’t leave a bad taste behind.

Strangely enough, my favourite character in this episode ended up Michio. He was really fun to watch as he tried to use the ghosts of the deceased bioids to get rid of the strange typhoon. The old guy in the woods got a very interesting role as observer, along with a bunch of psychics who were alarmed by Noriko’s actions. And of course Tarou looked awesome in his priestess-outfit.

And really, what was up with that sudden landslide that destroyed the Oogami house? I guess that the spirits must have been pretty angry at Noriko. ^_^;;

The thing about this episode was also that it lets the viewer figure out what happened, and gets away with it pretty well. Either that or I didn’t pay attention during the previous episode in which everything about that typhoon got explained. Makoto suddenly summoned his ghost hound in front of a bunch of goons, at first sight this may have come from nowhere, but I guess that with the typhoon, certain spirits that would have been invisible otherwise appeared for everyone to see.

The same goes for that green-haired guy. I’m still surprised that he featured such little screen time. He was just there, never said anything, stole the completed bioid and threw it in the lake. After that, he’s gone! With no traces left behind. Did that guy work for Noriko as well, or did he have his own plans in the end?

And in the end, Tarou has managed to figure out what happened to his sister’s spirit. Miyako wasn’t the reincarnation of her at all, it indeed seems that the two just looked alike. Instead, she has been inside Tarou all this time. This episode also ended on an interesting note, with a picture being taken, just like what happened with Makoto’s parents.

Allison to Lillia

Ah, the first good series of the season. This episode was pretty solid; it started out as not anything special, but as it went on, it became more interesting by the minute, and this is just the first episode. You can really see the influences of both Mokke and Kino no Tabi, and yet this series goes into its own direction. It turns out that this series will be about two couples: Allison and Will, and Lillia and Treize, who have yet to be introduced. My only point of critique would be that Will’s voice-actor sounds a bit too young for his age, but that should be easy enough to get used to. Another interesting thing is that the female lead likes to ignore rules if necessary. It never really came to me, but you don’t often see people that break rules as easy as she does in anime. One thing I’m hoping for the future episodes is to explain a bit more about the politics of the country that the two main characters live in, but with 26 episodes there should be plenty of time for that.

Kurenai

Whoa! Here’s a contender for the best first episode of the season. You can really see that Brains Base (who did the animation for Baccano!) worked on this series, and the result looks absolutely gorgeous. There are hardly any still frames, characters make subtle gestures, the 7-year old girl really sounds like a young girl instead of a squeaky 30-year old voice actress and the OP has been done entirely in flash. The art style is a strange combination between that of Red Garden and Baccano, which only makes things better. The scriptwriting also is quick and witty. Here’s a potential classic, if the creators can keep up this level of quality, at least.

xxxHolic Kei

What an awesome episode to start off the second season! This episode was exactly the reason why I fell in love with the first season. Watanuki is downright hilarious, and stands miles away from your “typical high school boy”. On top of that, this series has always featured thought-provoking cases, and this episode was no exception. I won’t spoil anything, but if you liked the first season, you just have to watch this episode. Really, this series makes coming up with an entertaining storyline look so incredibly easy.

Chi’s Sweet Home

Ever since I first saw the promo, this series intrigued me. It was a show about a lost kitty, and yet it was labelled as a seinen-show and animated by Madhouse and the episode director of Death Note and the assistant director of Shigurui. Well, it turns out that the guy was just looking for something completely different to work on, and rather took this to the extreme. Chi’s Sweet Home is a really cute series, though with just ninety seconds for each episode, it’s way too short. Heck, even Hanoka was longer. How many episodes will there be anyway?

Kyou Kara Maou, Third Season

A few years ago, I watched the first few episodes of this series, though I dropped it when the sexual innuendo became a bit too much to take seriously. I became intrigued again, however, when I found out that the director of Simoun and True Tears was behind it, so I decided to give this series one more shot, just in case this turned out to be more than fangirl bait. It didn’t start off too well, when the very first scene features a bunch of unicorns, though thankfully there were one or two scenes that at least hinted at potential. Overall, though, I feel that this series really needs to take itself more seriously. The main character is a king, yet he seems to know nothing about how to properly run a country. What bugs me the most, however, is that it’s been seventy freaking episodes and the characters hardly feel different. A 13-episode series is excused to have minimal character-development, but 70 episodes are plenty of time for the characters to go through changes. Really, what the heck have these characters been doing in the first two seasons?

To Love-Ru

Well, so this one turned out exactly like expected, and that’s a bad thing because I was expecting this to suck. There’s nothing much to say, actually. The only reason why you’d want to check this out is because of the fanservice, nothing else has any value. Things are badly explained, the main character is just another “typical high-school boy”, who turns out to have the mysterious power of attracting cute girls. It’s just the same we’ve seen over and over again. In any case, after watching this series, I was edging for another episode of Kyou Kara Maou, and that’s not a good sign.