Short Synopsis: The scientist has a back-up plan, and tries to activate it in this episode.
Highlights: Interesting twist that fits with the series’ themes.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Aah, there are two episodes left and I still have no idea what the name of the major villain is! It gets annoying to keep calling him “the scientist”, but oh well. This episode was enjoyable, but I’m still waiting for that “Oomph” that was present at the doll-arc. This episode was mostly about the scientist’s secret, and I do admit that it was a pretty interesting one: he turned himself into an android. And not just any android, but one shaped like Nijuu Mensou.

It fits perfectly with the paranoia that the people had after the war. With the human-shaped robots, made out of solid steel, that could imitate others perfectly and resist bullets like a bunch of flies. Now, he in a strange sense of irony, took on the form of Nijuu Mensou. Probably after hearing about his popularity.

The question now really remains: are the creators able to close this series off properly? The doll-arc was much shorter than the scientist-arc, but it did have a much bigger impact. These final two episodes really need to be amazing in order to be able to make up for it. One thing that I really hope is that the creators are going to switch to that experimental animation-style again. It worked really well when that doll tried to drown Chiko, but ever since Chiko’s little show on her broom, it disappeared entirely.

For the past summer-season, Sekirei was one of the series I was least looking forward to. I mean, the premise was a guy who collects a bunch of big-breasted girls (or Sekirei as they’re called in this series) who like to show off their goods, and these girls fight each other. It just had a premise that sounded so much like those other shounen-fanservice series. Now that it has ended, I must admit that it turned out to be much better than I expected.

As it turns out, the series tries to explain the fact that every single female falls in love with the male lead through its concept: Sekirei naturally fall in love with the ones they form a contact with, and so if you can collect a lot of these Sekirei, you can create your own harem. I admit, it’s much better than your average harem that has females falling for the male lead for no possible reason, but at the same time, it does feel a bit lazy.

Thankfully, the series makes up for it through its characters. There’s a wide variety of them in the series, and the creators succeed in actually making the viewer care about them. This is also the biggest strength of this series: it knows how to tell its story (which turns out to be much more complex than I originally expected) and keep the viewer interested. Overall, it was a very pleasant surprise.

Some of the main characters do have the ability to get on your nerves pretty fast, though. Especially some of the main characters: Kuu and Tsukiumi, who are a bit too eager to express their love, and feel a bit too 2-dimensional. The series also plays around with coincidences a bit too much, and especially the beginning has too many people coincidentally meeting the right people, in order to set up the story.

The big flaw of this series, however, is its ending. Sekirei is part of a much larger manga, and at one point, it just stops, while the manga goes on. This of course isn’t such a big problem. There’s room enough for a second season, which will most likely get announced. The problem, however, is that the final episode is downright terrible. This series worked so well at building a nice story, and it threw everything down the drains with a bunch of horribly blatant Deus ex Nachinas (and not just one, there’s a whole BUNCH of them), that try way too much to end the series on a happy note. In terms of plot, I can understand how these twists had to happen, but please: make at least an effort to build up for these twists. Don’t introduce them at your own convenience because the plot needs them.

While it’s nowhere near a great series, my faith in bishoujo-series that got pretty much blown apart by Kanokon and To Love-Ru managed to get restored by the past summer-season. Sekirei is a nicely written series, which may focus a bit too much on its fanservice, but underneath it’s got a charming cast of characters to boast.

Short Synopsis: The calm before the storm-episode, where Chinami and Kotarou’s engagement gets celebrated
Highlights: Hilarious banter.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Ah, now I understand! I finally realize why Mission-E has disappointed so much, thanks to this episode, which probably was among the best of the entire series, along with the first one. The thing is that this episode probably had the most time spent away from the story out of all the episodes so far, and incidentally, those moments also were the most enjoyable of the entire series. The banter between some of the characters was hilarious, and Adol’s reaction to being in the enemy’s camp was awesome.

So yeah, the big problem with this series is that the story downright sucks. I originally hoped that the creators would shed some light on the practices of the foundation, but eleven episodes in and they’re still the evil corporation that plots the destruction of our heroes (and now, the country). The entire storyline had just been taking care of these goons, and the eloping-parts never really tried to solve this. The reason why Code-E didn’t suffer from this is because the story there was engaging: you could see Chinami, as she tried to make sense of her own powers, and her classmates that helped her in that. It was cute, and that’s why the climaxes worked so well.

The big problem is that the creators needed enemies that were more interesting than the current foundation. This could provide a story where the characters were able to shine more, and allow for more banter (BY FAR the best thing of this series). What we have here is a series with an identity crisis: it thinks its story is awesome, while in fact it’s the characters who rock, but the characters are hardly given any chance to shine because they’re TOO DAMN BUSY SAVING THE WORLD!

Time for another OVA from the nineties. There are a lot of rumours about Golden Boy. The two most notable ones are that it’s supposed to be hilarious and chockfull of fanservice. Well, at least I can agree with one of them. Whenever this OVA has the chance, it shows off its female “assets”, often taking fanservice to the extreme (we’re talking about women who hump motorcycles here).

And in terms of humour, it just disappoints. I did get a few good laughs out of some of the episodes, but it wasn’t really side-splittingly funny like some reviews I’ve read about it seemed to suggest. The jokes either work completely or miss the mark entirely. Fortunately, Golden Boy does manage to set itself apart from all other fanservice comedies with a solid and creative script.

Basically, it follows a guy who travels around and takes on random part-time jobs, while meeting and charming sexy women in the process. Every single episode ends with said woman falling in love with Kintarou, but what happens around that is the interesting part. Kintarou, the main character, is an incredible pervert, and yet at the same time he’s one of the most versatile and interesting perverts I’ve seen in anime (not that that bar is particularly difficult to pass, but okay). His obsession with toilets may be a little too played out, but his obsession with learning becomes downright adorable over time.

He also chooses some interesting places to work in, and the creators actually did some research on what working at such a job entails (I never thought that I’d see references to FORTRAN and COBOL somewhere in anime), ranging from a simple noodle house to an anime production company. Compare that to your average fanservice-series, which often can’t get more original than a beach episode.

In terms of production-values, Golden Boy is very much a mixed bag. The animation ranges from standard to incredibly fluid (especially the fanservice-scenes have a lot of the latter), and the music consists of a bunch of random cheesy J-pop tunes, which really felt like the sound producer found them somewhere in a bargain-bin at a local garage-sale.

Overall, I do have to say that Golden Boy is over-hyped. There are quite a few times in which it goes straight against logic or physics. Nevertheless, for a fanservice comedy, it’s among the better anime of the genre. You can see that the creators put a lot of effort into its creation, and the short format helps to keep things fresh, even through the lesser episodes. It’s nowhere near my favourites, but at least I got some good laughs out of it.