Short Synopsis: Ran, Rui and Midori look for a way to spend the Golden Week. They end up in a suspicious looking village.
Highlights: No signs of subtlety yet, but the quiet moments is as solid as ever.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
Well, it doesn’t look like this series is going to be a subtle one: Ran, Rui, Midori and Ran’s father arrive at the village, and they’re immediately attacked by an army of zombified villagers. Thankfully, it does know how to build up a good mystery-plot that keeps you interested. Since the characters have gotten such huge powers, this series also needs to come with some big and complicated enemies.

Also, I’d love to see the face of someone who watched episode 1 and 2, and then skipped episode 3 to move on to the fourth one. You wouldn’t be able to recognize Midori back. I knew that she’d turned good quite soon, but this episode shows her fangirling over how cute Ran’s brother is. It’s interesting how she does know how to speak in regular Japanese, but just switches to Kansai-ben when she’s in a trusted environment. Makes it harder for me to understand, though. One thing I also like about this series is how the word jokes are easy enough for my limited Japanese to understand. I agree how it’s funnier if you manage to pick them out yourself.

In any case, what I’m most surprised about in this series is the huge role that Ran’s family plays in this series, where most families in show about middle or high-schoolers are virtually non-existent. This episode features Ran’s father, as he seems to know one of the people in this village (incidentally, this also turns to be the one who’s linked to the village’s mysteries. A bit sloppy, in my opinion).

The second half of Glass Mask is easy to review: a plot-hole here and there, but nonetheless evolving characters keep your attention till the end that comes way too abrupt. Nonetheless, standalone it remains an enjoyable though somewhat dramatic look at the career of a young theatre actress. So… why the abysmally low score? Well, you can blame that on the first half…

Because Glass Mask starts out downright terrible. It’s not the case of a series like NHK ni Youkoso, where the first half goofs off, after which a much stronger second half takes over. Glass Mask’s first half was much, much worse, an insult to theatre plays. At episode 13, I was ready to label this one amongst the worst series that I’ve managed to finish. Here’s why:

The first thing that will immediately catch your attention is the ridiculously overblown melodrama that would make Kannadzuki no Miko and Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora cheerful. Of course, a bit of angst is always healthy, but even during the smallest snide remark, everyone suddenly behaves like a Christian who just discovered that the pope is pregnant. Especially when the Mc Guffin play “The Crimson Goddess” gets mentioned, the melodrama gets blown to ridiculous proportions.

Then there’s the horrible botched-up storytelling of the first few episodes. There’s a reason why all stories have their light moments. They’re not only meant to give the audience a breather, but also to flesh out the characters, and show what they’re like when they’re not risking their lives/ trying their best/whatever. Glass Mask doesn’t think that these things are worthy of itself, and so it starts behaving like a soap-opera, diving from one disaster into the other. Honestly, the first half features obviously a number of plays that our lead character (Maya) has to act out, and only the last one had everything going smoothly. At the others, there was always someone or something with ill-intentions who tried to ruin the play somehow. Along with the melodrama… the result was a predictable mess.

And there’s more. I’ve always rather criticized those anime where the lead character finds his/her love a bit too easily, but all of that falls into nothing when compared to the sloppy excuse of romance that the creators try to showcase here. Maya’s boyfriend comes from absolutely nowhere. He’s just… there, without any explanation of how the bugger fell in love with her, or why he even got to know her for that matter!

But the thing that got under my nails the most was the following: this is supposed to be an anime about the rise of a talented actress, but the way she is presented shows all the signs that the staff behind this series didn’t know anything about good acting. Every time that Maya was on the stage, she caught the awes of her audience, where everyone comments and admires how good her acting is. All I saw, however, was a hopelessly overacting teenager without any sense of subtlety. One particularly bad scene showed Maya as an unimportant extra in a small movie. The result was a hospital-patient who had the time of her life while trying to climb a pair of stairs. How would you feel if you were watching a movie, and suddenly a close-up followed of some random dude who stands out way too much? What I watched wasn’t a immensely talented actress, it was a blatant Mary Sue with way too little experience to make any impact. This can also partly be blamed to Maya’s voice-actress. Who the heck in his right mind would cast someone who can’t act as the voice of a talented actress?

To my relief, the second half gives a notable attempt to fix these flaws, when the creators suddenly realize that a good story needs build-up and characters with weaknesses. The romance smartly turns into a romance with no future and the characters learn from their mistakes. The melodrama’s still there, but at least it’s better than before. Still, the question remains whether or not you want to sit through the pain for the better second half, and it’s not even that good anyway.

I’ve been wondering what makes a series really bad. I mean, I may have disliked series as To Love-Ru, but I can see how other can enjoy the light entertainment. Still, a series that fails to understand its own themes like Glass Mask… I don’t think that you can get much worse than that. I agree how the eighties brought a lot of good stuff to the world of anime, but this one was definitely not a part of it. The second half is just not worth it, because of that God-awful first half.

Short Synopsis: Obligatory introduction episode.
Highlights: Nice fight-scene, though.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
As for the series I’m not going to blog:
- Antique Bakery is hilarious, and knows exactly when to take itself seriously, but I feel that I won’t have much to write about it.
- Okay, I’m willing to give Sekirei a chance and watch it till the end, but in no way am I going to blog it.
- I’m not a slayers-fanboy yet, and even though it’s cute, it hasn’t sold me yet.

About Birdy the Mighty, this episode obviously had to pull back the pacing a bit, and explain things for those who haven’t read the premise of this series yet. Still, I’m going to blog this series. The series that aired in the summer-season aren’t as deep as in the previous season, but a common theme is that they’re nearly all fun to watch.

The director of this series is the genius behind Noein and Escaflowne: two of my three favourite series. How could I let this chance go by? A short series like this one has no chance of creating the same success as the two above, who had both 24 and 26 episodes, but overall I’m expecting a fun short series with great fight scenes.

This episode was of course a step back when compared to the first episode, but that’s to be expected. It did a good job of introducing a lot of new characters, and I appreciate how it did manage to be more than just countless expositions and Senkawa’s first days at school, while trying to hide his secret. What caught my interest was how Senkawa managed to stop Birdy from going after a bad guy due to a possible victim that might have ended up dead. It shows the beginning of how they try to understand each other.