It’s quite ironic: Itazura na Kiss is based on a manga that started its serialization in 1990, and was probably one of the pioneers in the shoujo romantic comedy-genre, and its premise still stands out as an original one: never have we travelled this much into the life of the lead couple. Where most stories just follow half a year or in the extreme cases go on until the wedding, Itazura na Kiss goes even further, and it ends when the main couple is happily married, and between the 25 and 28 years old. It’s such a shame that the creators of the anime just couldn’t handle such an awesome premise.

The series starts out hilarious, though. Both Kotoko and Irie (the series’ main couple) have a great sense of humour and love to tease each other when they can, making for a few priceless situations. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that the creators just want to do too much with this series, but have no idea how to fill up its time. As soon as the characters enter college, this series descends into a bit of a mess: the creators keep throwing random love rivals at the main couple, in order to supposedly test the strength of their relationship, but none of the love-rivals make ANY impact, and are just carbon copies of their previous version.

The big problem is that the creators are just terrible at creating dramatic climaxes. They try over and over, but with one or two exceptions, they all fall flat, are too rushed, forced, superficial and cheesy and make the majority of this series (from episode eight to around episode 20) a pain to sit through, especially since the humour also becomes really dull and repetitive around that same time. The characters also hardly develop, due to this shallow drama, and there’s very little that’s actually worth watching.

But thankfully, this series changes entirely once the characters finish university, and get a job. It’s here where this series finds its former magic back, and drops its superficial climaxes. The humour comes back, and the time that Kotoko and Irie spend at work is really entertaining and heart-warming. It’s here where the characters finally develop and grow up, and this series closes off with a really enjoyable finale.

Overall, I wouldn’t exactly recommend you to sit through the really dull middle part, but it does reward you in the end when everything comes together. It’s the perfect example of why extra drama isn’t necessarily good for a series, and for Itazura na Kiss, it’s mostly the light moments where the creators aren’t obsessively trying to strengthen Irie and Kotoko’s relationship. Subtlety is definitely not this series’ greatest point, and it should have focused its time at the slice of life moments, and making the viewer laugh instead of these shallow love triangles. I really liked this series when it first started, but unfortunately, the creators just couldn’t live up to this series’ potential.

When I first learned about the second season of Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto, I really didn’t know what to expect, having never seen the first season. Especially because the stories you heard about said first season ranged from “dull” to “awesome”. What I got was a wonderful short slice of life series that sparkles with originality.

I love it when the creators of an anime go “screw conventions, I want to do things my way!”. Natsu no Sora immediately sets itself apart from nearly all other anime with its visuals. The very simplistic character-designs form a stark contrast with the realistic backgrounds, even though most of them are simply photos with a small filter run over them. It’s a neat way to save budget, and when put into practice, it really works.

But what really stands out (or doesn’t, if you want to be literal) in this series is its specific style of storytelling. Think of Beck, but going even further. The creators have put a lot of subtlety in the storytelling. This series doesn’t care about overblown climaxes, and instead continues to keep a quiet mood, even when the characters themselves are going through some pretty difficult times. In some cases, you really need to be paying attention, because the big moments will be over before you know it. Because of this, the characters have no trouble connecting to the viewer at all. Every single one of them is just charming in his or her own way, and a lot of fun to watch.

My only point of criticism is the way this series starts. The first few episodes feature a few plot twists that make you wonder what the heck the creators were doing back then. The entire series is so subtle and realistic, so what are these Deus ex Machina doing there?

Thankfully, Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu Na Koto - Natsu no Sora is the perfect example of a series that gets better as it progresses. Especially the final bunch of episodes are wonderfully written and convey the characters’ feelings perfectly. Natsu no Sora is an excellent series for those who want something to relax to, and yet characters that they can care about, and those who want something different and are tired of anime’s nasty tendency to be a bit too overdramatic than what’s good for it at times.

Short Synopsis: Erm… without going into spoilers: Porfy meets a market saleswoman in a town with horse-races.
Highlights: Hard to say without going into spoilers, but let’s just say that stuff that’s typical of the World Masterpiece Theatre happens.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,75/10
Awesome episode! This really showed that the creators are nowhere near finished with the development of the different characters, and even now they still continue to evolve. And this episode both progressed the development A LOT, while also symbolizing some of the changes that occurred within Porfy and Mina.

The episode starts with Mina and Isabella again, as Carlos prepares to go into the city. He asks Mina whether she’ll come with him, but she declines, which obviously isn’t the best way to get on his side. Porfy meanwhile walks IN THE SAME CITY, looking around at a big market. He accidentally steps on the clothes that one saleswoman is trying to sell, so he tries to pay this off by fixing her car.

Carlos meanwhile, lost big. So what does the bugger do? He finds Aneke’s watch and SELLS THE THING. Porfy meanwhile managed to get the saleswoman’s engine working again, so she treats him to a few delicious sandwiches. She wonders whether Porfy is staying for long in the city, and wonders whether Porfy wants to work a bit for her, so that he can gain some money, so Porfy agrees, as it seems that his original money is beginning to run out.

Mina meanwhile discovered that her watch is missing, and is searching for it like crazy. Isabella and her father try to stop her, but Carlos shrugs it off. In the end, they can barely convince her to search for it in the next morning. She then spends th rest of her time, curled up in bed, without talking to anyone while Carlos continues being an ass to her.

The next morning, the saleswoman explains Porfy how to draw customers, and she leaves to enjoy the local horse races. While Porfy is enthusiastically trying to sell stuff, he suddenly notices a certain watch at the stand of one of the other salesmen. He continues to bug the salesman to tell him who sold him it, which very quickly gets on the salesman’s nerves, especially when Porfy starts distracting him from another customer. When Porfy starts to forcefully take his watch back, the guy ends up shredding Mina’s picture: the only thing that Porfy had that people could recognize her by.

Carlos, meanwhile, lost all of his money at the horse races. When he returns, Isabella waits for him, and questions him about the watch. He then says that he sold it, and says some pretty bad things about Mina, while Mina’s listening. Mina starts desperately attacking Carlos, after which Isabella calms her down and smacks Carlos instead. Porfy meanwhile lost all his energy and refuses to sell anymore. Fortunately he made enough money from when he still was enthusiastic, so the saleswoman is grateful to him. Because she did win big at the local horse races, she pays him generously, with enough money for Porfy to buy back the watch. Unfortunately… it’s already sold.

Next episode, it’s time to say goodbye to Italy, as the series moves into France. I’m interested whether the soundtrack will change, because even in Italy, the background tunes still yelled “Greece”. :P

But really, this was an excellent episode, and especially the reason why I fell in love with this series. It had two storytelling-techniques that are typical to the World Masterpiece Theatre, and which are part of the reason why I like this entire franchise so much. The first is the way that the creators keep teasing the viewer, by letting the characters miss meeting each other for just an instant, which was used a lot in Les Miserables. It worked even better there, because back then, you REALLY had no idea when the characters were supposed to meet, due to the huge storyline. Because Porfy’s story is a lot smaller, there are indeed going to be predictability issues, but because its main cast is so much smaller, it can spend much more time to flesh them out and develop them.

And the second is the way they manage to amplify setbacks so much: everything goes right most of the time, but when things go wrong, they really GO WRONG, which makes for a very big impact. Perrine was such a series that loved using this technique as well. With Porfy it’s the same: the creators love to tease the viewer. At the end of this episode as well: we don’t get to see how badly Mina was hurt by Carlos’ stupid actions, or how Carlos reacted to Isabella’s slap-fest. We’re going to have to wait till the next episode, or god knows when they’ll show up again. In fact, it seems that Porfy has managed to overtake them at this point, and will be entering France before the others do.

One thing I also love about this series is how the background scenery subtly changes, depending on the location. I’m especially looking forward to when Porfy manages to hit the alps and enters France, considering how beautiful the sceneries already were.

I’m what you’d call a “Slayers-noob”. Before the summer season started, I hadn’t seen anything of the franchise so far, so this series seemed like a good opportunity to check out what the hype was all about. As it turns out, Slayers Revolution definitely wasn’t the best place to start, and I’m still wondering where I found the patience to continue watching this series.

My big problem with Slayers Revolution is that there’s absolutely nothing that stands out: the characters are decent, but none of them is memorable or well developed, even the ones who are supposed to be new. The storyline also keeps the series going, but never did it really catch my interest. In terms of episodic stories, the best this series could come up with is rolling a bunch of giant balls up a hill. The comedy made me chuckle occasionally, but nothing more. The only battle that was even remotely interesting was the one at the final episode. Other than that, they’re just a bunch of people throwing spells at each other until one party dies.

Sure, Slayers may have been revolutionary when it first aired, but I’m judging this series, not the original one, and I’m doing it on today’s standards. In that case, there just isn’t anything remarkable about this series. The thing I like about fantasy is the interesting ideas that can be put in it, which only can be limited by the creator’s imagination. Not even once did this series try to be original. And okay, I can understand that the series couldn’t be original with its main characters, but even the storyline for this series, which could have been anything the creators would have liked, just feels uninspired and done before.

So overall, if you’re a slayers fan, you can just ignore this review and enjoy the series for what it is, because it seems to be much of the same and many of the characters that were fun to watch and fleshed out in the first seasons will return for more fun. However, if you aren’t a Slayers fan like me, then Slayers Revolution isn’t going to make you one. It’s a moderately entertaining fantasy-series in a genre that has much better to offer, and I can only hope that the next season is going to be a bit more exciting.