My three personal favourite series are the following: 1) Mahou Shoujotai, 2) Noein, 3) Visions of Escaflowne. Because Mahou Shoujotai wasn’t directed by just one guy, but a whole bunch of directors and the latter two were directed by the guy called Kazuki Akane, it’s pretty safe to say that he’s my favourite director. So, when he comes with a new series that plans to revive an old OVA from the nineties, then I obviously had to watch it. Overall, it doesn’t live up to his other work, but it’s an impressive series nonetheless.

Although it doesn’t always show this, this series knows how to build up. The first half of the series might goof off at first sight, but once the second half kicks in, everything slowly starts coming together, and the tension is very smoothly built up until the actual climax, and it becomes apparent that the first few episodes were definitely necessary, to flesh out the different characters and settings, and make them believable.

What impressed me the most, though, is the way that this series uses its production-values. There’s time enough for the story and characters to develop, with the second season and all, but both the graphics and music are very well done. The budget of this series is obviously limited, but the creators managed to save most of it in order to treat the viewer to a very small amount of beautifully animated fight scenes, which I’d classify as the best 2D-fight scenes of the past half year. When a character sprains his ankle, or gets his or her arm twisted, you see exactly the bones and muscles that move out of place, which is something most other anime tend to neglect.

There’s just one minor point about this series: it doesn’t have the most exciting main character to work with. Senkawa really is your typical fourteen year old brat, which love issues and impulsive tendencies thankfully the creators do manage to develop his character sufficiently, but he does whine a lot in the process.

Apart from that, I can’t really say much more about this series. It’s a typical series that’s meant to really take off in its second season, and for that it built up really well. There are some clichéd characters here and there, but the director has an excellent sense of timing, and knows what to say when, where and how to make the best out of them.

Short Synopsis: The finale of the first season of Birdy the Mighty: Stop Ryunka and save Nakasugi.
Highlights: Predictable, but satisfying.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,25/10
Well, this episode turns out exactly like you’d expect: at the end of the episode, Ryunka is sealed, Nakasugi is saved and Senkawa is back in Birdy’s body. However, I still like this ending, because of the way it took the creators to get there. They succeeded to make the ending too straightforward, first by playing around with Mind-Games with Senkawa and Nakasugi, by keeping switching Nakasugi and Ryunka like someone with a bad personality disorder, followed by Senkawa finally getting the guts to kiss Nakasugi, taking over the Ryunka and thus sacrificing his own body, which he knows can be easily restored.

Seeing the relationship between Senkawa and Nakasugi coming together with that kiss really made up for the predictable finale, although I’m sceptic about the memory-reset the creators gave to Nakasugi. Memory loss can either work incredibly well or flop entirely. The creators really need to use the fact that she lost her memory, and not make it some convenient reset-button like on a gaming-console. For the second season, the creators also need to find a way to get rid of the fact that dead bodies can just be restored. It’s not going to make for good drama if characters can just be revived like it’s no problem. The creators need to find some sort of “Great will of the Universe”-solution (for those who watched Excel Saga) to keep this from happening.

Overall, when compared to Escaflowne and Noein’s halfway-climaxes, this one pretty much sucked, but with the standard of the past season, then it’s an above-average ending, based on the endings I’ve seen so far. It could have been better, but at the same time it also didn’t screw up at all, and I’ll be looking forward to that second season.

Short Synopsis: Fumi still gets bullied, which catches the attention of one of her classmates.
Highlights: Good to see more of this series.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Okay, so I’m not sure whether this is THE Shigofumi-OVA, or just a regular DVD-special, but more Shigofumi is always welcome, since the original series was just too damn short. This episode basically tries to involve all of the main characters, and focuses more on fleshing them out, rather than it just being another random case.

The main bullies were a bit stereotypical, but I liked the idea of trying to fake the Shigofumi. Especially that red envelope was a nice touch. This episode also shed some light on where the name Shigofumi came from: it’s another play with numbers: 4(shi)5(go)2(fu)3(mi). I also don’t think that the final two numbers are randomly chosen, as they also spell out Fumi’s name. The first number also makes sense, since “Shi” can also mean “death”. That only leaves the five, of which I’m not sure what that points at.

Overall, while it wasn’t the best episode and a bit unfocused, I’m glad to see a bit more about this series, and especially to listen to this series’ awesome soundtrack again. It’s ironic: this series has a very haunting soundtrack, and yet it has to settle with such a mediocre ALI-Project OP.

Now, where are those Gunslinger Girl - Il Teatrino DVD-specials?