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?

Short Synopsis: The Zanbani is attacked by a number of humanforms.
Highlights: Only 11 episodes and the cast is already developing.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
I must say, I’m very impressed with this episode. The cast is already connecting to a level that takes most series at least five episodes longer. This episode was really meant to develop the cast of the Zanbani, to push them to their limits and use time that the previous episodes spent on fleshing them out, with some awesome results. I think that from now on, we can expect this series to really get fired off, and I’m really curious whether the creators are able to get the best out of this series’ potential.

This episode confirms what I’ve been suspecting: the Zanbani isn’t just a regular postal ship with a bunch of strange members on it. It makes perfect sense: why else would a postal ship carry guns and a Hiruko-priest? It’s the same as Eureka7, where the main characters pretend to be a bunch of trendy people on surfing mecha, while they’re in fact an underground rebellion. The question now remains: who is Benikawa, and why is she carrying out her mission with a bunch of children on board? It seems to suggest that she has a lot of personal issues in whatever she seems to be trying to do, if she really wants her friends and loved ones to accompany her.

I really loved the situations the creators put the characters in in this episode, every single character was awesome in this episode, and especially Benikawa got a lot of depth, as she started yelling at Yunbo because her motherly worries annoyed her. It’s also typical for her gun to suddenly stop working after two shots. She never striked me as the type to take good care of her guns, so it’s natural for them to get clogged up once in a while. Nakiami also completely lost it, after seeing so many killed Humanforms. We still don’t know exactly why she takes them so personal, but my guess is that she once lost a loved one, who became a humanform.

Kisel-jii also shined as he tried to perform maintenance on the ship (a role often neglected, but at the same time very important). Meanwhile Akiyuki and Raigyo played a surprisingly small role in this episode, and this episode mainly showed Akiyuki was he continues to grow and learn to control his powers. There’s also a strange chemistry between Ahm and Hinokimaru, as in a strange father-and-son relationship while they’re actually not related.

What I loved about this episode was the creator’s amazing ability to make every character count. Most of the time in anime, you see the focus falling on one or two characters, and the other characters could just as well merge into one big character, without much of a difference. In Bonen no Xamdou each character has his or her individuality. There were no two characters who did the same. It may be a pet peeves, but I love it when a series manages to accomplish this. I can really see Bonen no Xamdou turning into my favourite series, once all spring and summer-series finish airing. It all depends on what path Porfy no Nagai Tabi decides to choose, and whether or not some amazing short series pops up in the upcoming fall-season.

Having never seen anything of Macross, the arrival of the new Macross Frontier, airing more than twenty-five years after the original Dimensional Fortress Macross, seemed like a good place to check out what the hype about the franchise was all about. What I got was probably the biggest-budgeted series of the year, with grand visuals and soundtrack. However, I do hope that this isn’t the best that Macross has to offer.

Overall, Macross Frontier is a very accessible series, as long as you know that in the Macross Universe, songs can be used as weapons. It tells about the love triangle between one guy and two different idols, while evil aliens called the Vajra are trying to invade and need to be stopped. While the romance is rather questionably introduced, it does develop enough to keep the viewer busy. The characters are overall nicely fleshed out, sympathetic and nice to watch.

The problem with this series is that I don’t really think that the creators really knew what they wanted with this series. It jumps from one thing to the others, introduces things that turn out to not matter at all in the end, while rushing the development of the things that do, some moment sparkle with brilliance, while others bore with dullness. The result is a beginning that goofs off a bit too much, and a finale that feels superficial, and where nothing really comes together like it should be.

The series has a cast of very interesting characters, but they’re not always used well. The series has a nasty tendency sometimes to put them into predictable situations, that don’t really allow them to fully develop their characters, with the prime example being Ranka, one of the main characters. She has some excellent moments, but she too often just plays the part of a damsel in distress. There’s only one character that’s really uninteresting to watch, and ironically this guy ended up being the main character of this series: Alto. His character isn’t bad, but he pales in comparison to the other characters, and because of that it’s so frustrating that the creators keep focusing on him.

Thankfully, this didn’t stop this series from having an excellent middle part, which lasts from around episode 10 till 18. It’s here where both the characters and the characters manage to show their best sides, which makes for a bunch of awesome action-packed episodes. Unfortunately, the series quickly dulls in again as it approaches its climax and finishes with a decent but inconclusive ending.

In terms of production-values, this series is also awesome, but unfortunately not without its flaws. Even though this series has a huge budget, the character-designs often look inconsistent and rushed, and unfortunately this just looks out of place a bit, unlike what Satelight managed to do with Noein. Yoko Kanno’s soundtrack also has a few very good pieces amongst it, but it’s nowhere near her best work.

Overall, I just feel that the creators could have done much more with the potential of this series. They should have taken more risks, they should have made more effort to flesh out some of the neglected subplots and side-characters, instead of goofing off with Alto, Ranka and Sheryl. Macross Frontier had the potential to bake a delicious cake, and instead just came with a fried egg. And while the egg is nice and good and all, it could have been so much better.

Short Synopsis: The final episode: Save Ranka and destroy Grace.
Highlights: Pretty, but a bit too keen on creating a perfect ending.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10
Ugh, okay, so Alto didn’t die; I should have known. I’ve been too spoiled by series as Ultraviolet and especially Himitsu, where people actually DIE when they’re killed. This episode proved the fears I originally had for this series, by keeping the death-count embarrassingly low. If I recall correctly, the only one who dies is Grace, apart from that everyone survives. Yes, even Sheryl who was supposed to have a deadly illness.

Overall, it was a decent ending. It wasn’t the worst I’ve seen this season, but nowhere near the best. The graphics looked really nice as expected, but it didn’t help that some of Ranka’s songs were incredibly cheesy. Her voice worked great with those synthesizers, like in the previous episode, but in my opinion it sucks when she attempts to sing pop tunes on her own. Although her voice is a great one when she sings together with Sheryl.

In any case, Grace indeed turned into the final boss of this series, and the Vajra suddenly turned into the good guys because of this. I didn’t quite pick up why she suddenly turned herself against the Frontier-fleet if her goal was to eliminate all the Vajra. I also feel that Leon’s arrest could have been a bit more subtle. It’s over, just like that? It makes me wonder what his entire purpose in this series was. The purple-haired girl whose name I forgot at the moment also woke up a bit too conveniently.
My main problem with this episode was the way the creators decided to close off the love triangle between Alto, Ranka and Sheryl. After 25 episodes, we’re entirely back to square one: Ranka and Sheryl are friends again, they both still love Alto, and they both still have equal chances to get his love. I mean, PLEASE, bring some conclusion for these people! Let one of these girls get Alto and the other move on, for Christ’s sake. I guess that the creators would use the love-triangle for the movie, but something tells me that even THAT won’t have the guts to give this triangle a proper conclusion.

Overall, I pretty much blogged Macross Frontier on a whim, making use of the opportunity that I could blog a lot of different series for the past spring-season. The results were a great middle part, with a disappointing start and ending. This series lost a lot of its magic after it revealed all its mysteries about Sheryl, and never really made up for it. While it definitely had the biggest budget of the past half year, I just can’t label this series as the one with the best graphics. Birdy the Mighty had the best animated fights in terms of 2D, and Blassreiter had the best 3D fights, and the best insert song was from Kaiba. Macross Frontier really is a series that went for the quantity instead of the quality, and that’s why its individual moments lost a bit of impact.

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.

While the eighties were the golden decade for the mecha-shows, the nineties were so for the fantasy-genre. While it’s technically no Bee-Train series, you can pretty much label Bakuretsu Hunters as one, because it’s another one of Koichi Masahino’s works, before he founded his now infamous animation studio. In Bakuretsu Hunters, you can see the beginnings of what made him an excellent director, but ironically, he also made a lot of mistakes at areas he’d excel at only years later.

Basically, Bakuretsu Hunters follows the pattern of random episodic stories with a major storyline that pops up once in a while. In these stories, our lead characters need to take out evil sorcerers who abuse their powers upon the less fortunate. A solid premise, if it weren’t for the fact that the main character is a horrible womanizer, and he really takes that to the extreme. For every single episode, you can find him running after cute girls like an idiot, and while it’s fun for the first and second time, it does get old after twenty times.

In fact, a lot more members of the cast have their own problems. Hardly anyone develops beyond their original character. The two lead females and their crush on the lead character can and will get on your nerves. It was a nice idea, to try and create a sympathetic pervert, but after Golden Boy, I’ve seen enough of these guys. The biggest offender, however, is a character called Big Momma (no, really; that’s her name), who drove me to the point of actually hating her. Her character isn’t fleshed out at all, she acts incredibly stupid in the series’ second half and never seems to learn from her mistakes. Her wishy-washy personality gets absolutely nowhere, her character makes no sense and she lacks way too much in background (I kept wondering what she was doing while she wasn’t ordering the Bakuretsu Hunters around…).

The only really satisfying character is the main villain. He’s nothing too deep, but he has a presence. You know he’s the antagonist of this series from the first moment you see him, and his character is fascinating enough to last through the entire series. Apart from that, this series really lives on its individual stories, which often toy around with irony and are admittedly entertaining. I also liked how this series plays around with names, often giving very strange Engrish names to its characters, with the result being a guy called Mr. Wacky, among others.

The production-values are also pretty nice. The character-designs may be a bit too much, but the animation certainly isn’t bad, and knowing Koichi Masahiro, the soundtrack is bound to be excellent.

But here’s my real beef with this series: less than five years after creating Bakuretsu Hunters, Koichi Masahino would create a series that would surpass it in every single way: Wild Arms, which had more interesting characters, setting, story, character-designs, individual episodic stories, was even more fun to watch and had a womanizing main character who actually worked. I just don’t see any reason why you would want to watch Bakuretsu Hunters if you can just watch Wild Arms instead. Bakuretsu Hunters just has way too buggy characters and too many plot-holes to really make an impact, even though its episodic stories are entertaining enough. Not to mention that Deus ex Machina ending…