Short Synopsis: The pieces start moving for the second half of this series.
Highlights: Furuichi’s development.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, so this was probably the last time I make use of the 10-01 raw providers. Their quality is horrible-raws level, but the worst is that their resolution is way too stretched in terms of height. It’s like having a 4:3 resolution with a 16:9 video. Thankfully this episode made up for it. It’s a typical intermezzo, but at the same time it really pushes the plot forward for the second half of this series.

Big development #1: Nakiami and Akiyuki leave the Zanbani, for Tessik Village. Benikawa turns out to have had an affair with the guy who controls the strange Xam’d tower, and she seems to be hiding much more about her past. “Writer of the Crimson Revolution”? Nakiami’s goodbye was really touching, and at the same time this has left a lot of potential for that second half, because Benikawa is just too important for the story for the Zanbani-crew to just become secondary characters.

Big development #2: Furuichi seems to be infected by an imperfect Xam’d, or something similar. It probably was awakened due to the way he kept pushing himself over the limits, but whatever he was, it made him see what kind of an idiot he’s been. I should have known that the creators knew exactly that he was being an asshole. They’d of course never let him be just a simple rival to stand in Akiyuki’s path, and so he successfully removed one of the few problems I had with this show.

Short Synopsis: Porfy travels.
Highlights: Just when you thought that the background artists couldn’t get any better, they surpass themselves.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, the summary can be very short this time, seeing as this is one of these episodes where hardly anything happens. Porfy travels, and he once meets an angry farmer because he picked up olives that reminded him of home, and he runs into a woman later, who also lives alone just like Porfy. This episode really was all about its atmosphere, and the psychological aspects of travelling, and it did an excellent job at that.

Porfy finally enters France, but at the same time he also lost Mina’s picture, the only thing he had to remind of her. He also gets quite arrogant when he talks to the farmer, and I finally noticed that his development hasn’t just made him stronger. He may have matured, but he throws away all reasons when he’s reminded of his sister, and for the past number of episodes, this still hasn’t gotten better (foreshadowing, anyone?)

Also, was it just me, or was the woman Porfy ran into some sort of subtle revenge for Fantine in Les Miserables, how the creators weren’t able to show her becoming a prostitute due to the censors? It’s never explicitly said, but a lot of hints pointed towards that woman being some sort of prostitute, especially the way in which she wouldn’t let Porfy enter her car. It’s a very subtle addition from the creators: the children are never going to notice it, while it’s a bit of extra realism added for the adults.

And oh my god, I already suspected this, but the background art was absolutely gorgeous in this episode. Especially the time Porfy spent in the forest, and that final beautiful shot of the town at the foot of the Alps was just awesome. In any case, this definitely was the quietest episode of Porfy yet, but its storytelling was wonderfully subtle.

Also happily adding to the theme of “fooling the viewer”, which returned in quite a few series for the past season, is RD Sennou Chousashitsu, or Real Drive. The set-up promised to be awesome, uniting Masamune Shirou, the creator of Ghost in the Shell and Ghost Hound with the director of Chevalier and Rurouni Kenshin - Tsuiokuhen. It promised to be an epic science-fiction action thriller-something. So, what did we get? A series that combines science fiction with slice of life and a few politics here and there. That’s not something you see everyday.

And indeed, Real Drive is probably the most original series to have aired in the past half year. It’s not about action at all. Instead, it just wants to present its image of the future in about sixty years from now. It’s really science fiction in its truest sense: it explores the current technology, and predicts how it’s going to evolve through the course of time, and most importantly: how did people learn to live with these technologies, which is where the slice-of-life part of the series comes in. This series also sets itself apart from most other science-fiction series by presenting a future image that’s overall positive in its message, compared to most other of its kind, which feature some sort of post-apocalyptic setting. Real Drive instead focuses on the creative expressability that people have gained, and highlights the disadvantages that come with these capabilities, instead of the other way around.

You also really have to admire the guts of this series: never have its protagonists been so different from the norm: the two main characters are a slightly overweight girl and an eighty-year-old guy. Normally, characters like them couldn’t even dream of acquiring any important role in anime, due to some strange rule that dictates that every female needs to have the looks of a J-pop idol and ever male needs to look young and hot. It’s taken quite a while, but finally a series comes and shows that you can make characters that don’t have perfect bodies look great. In fact, the entire series looks great: the few fights that appear are well coordinated and realistic, the CG is beautiful at times, and a lot of imagination went into creating the visuals. The soundtrack is also rich and complements the scenes very well.

Alas, this could have easily been a masterpiece if it wasn’t for some problems this series stumbled upon along the way. What we have here is a series with mostly episodic stories, and a large story at the end. That’s fine and all, and the individual stories are really nice to watch, but they’re also very unbalanced. They focus way too much on one character: Minamo, and leave all the others a bit behind in development and background. The result is that Minamo turns into an excellent character, but when everything needs to come together at the finale, this rather fails, because some of the major characters weren’t fleshed out enough. In the end, two unimportant characters that have nothing to do with the story have gotten more screen-time than some of the major actors, and I really feel that the creators should have spent more time into balancing out the topics of the individual episodes.

So, no. A masterpiece this is not. However, it is worth enough watching this series for the huge amounts of imagination that went into creating its setting, because THAT’s where this series stands out. Real Drive has also been the most intelligent series of the past half year, even though it may not show this at times, and thankfully everything does come together at its endings, which I rank among the best of the past year.

Short Synopsis: Real Drive’s end, for which I can’t seem to think off a fitting synopsis…
Highlights: Answers! Closure!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,75/10
I must say, I’m really impressed by this episode. It most likely was the best ending I’ve seen the past month. Oh, I’m SO glad that this series managed to pull through in the end. It was more than just “find Kushima and bring him back while save the world from the evil nano-machines”. This ending was also one of the most intelligent and creative of the past spring- and summer-season. Himitsu hasn’t finished yet, so I can’t label this definitively as the best ending of the past half year, but its ending has to be really good if it wants to surpass this one (which, however, it has the potential for).

Really, I liked the plan to get rid of the rampaging sea by switching off the power in the entire Asian (“Asean”?) continent a lot. It makes sense, and at the same time it also lead to some great symbolism: because the lights were off everywhere, the stars suddenly became visible, which probably points to how Technology can mean a lot to humans, but at the same time it clouds other parts of our mind: the stars. It’s a really interesting message, that ties in with the setting perfectly.

And after the previous episode, I wondered whether the creators really would be able to close off the subplot between Haru and Kushima, Souta and Holon, Jennie and the Secretary General. I didn’t think that the creators would be able to do that, but as it turns out: I was wrong. The latter two were done very subtly: Jennie realizes that he made a mistake, and instead of pouting he helps trying to fix his own problem. The Secretary General is seen, as she still longs back to Souta, even though he won’t come back to her. Souta also finally gets the courage to give Holon the bracelet he bought her, even though she lost her memory. And he finally acknowledged her as a human being, even considering the things that happened to her. All of this happened on the background, but formed a really fitting closure for this series.

Then there was Haru, who finally managed to find Kushima. He first tried to visit Eliza, and after the power was switched off, he ended up at the red ocean. As it turns out, it’s the memory of the sea, and it’s there where Haru was stuck for fifty years before he awakened. The metal was based on this memory. Kushima also doesn’t return with Haru, and instead he still wants to stay where he is.

And the production-values really knew how to close off this series. There were hardly ANY action-scenes, and yet the graphics looked beautiful in this episode. Especially that shot of earth, with its lights on and off was absolutely gorgeous, just as the star-filled sky with the single comet inside of it. The soundtrack also saved some of its best tracks, without turning them into some sort of strange medley, which is what happened in the ending of Macross Frontier.

Now that I think of it, I think that this ending is a very good contender for the best ending of 2008. It’s really the product of an intelligent setting, because in that way, you really can play without resorting to uninspired stereotypes. Out of the top of my head, my list of favourite endings this year at this point is the following:
1) RD Sennou Chousashitsu
2) Crystal Blaze
3) Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~
4) Mokke
5) Clannad