ef - a tale of melodies

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are the side-characters from ef.
Highlights: Perhaps the foreshadowing was a bit too shallow, but gorgeous visuals and solid storytelling.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
I liked ef, but I agree with the big criticism against it: its “I love you-now let’s have sex”-mentality. It’s a bit unrealistic, considering how well-written the rest of the series was. This episode too had such a moment, where a girl drew herself in the nude, in the middle of an empty classroom. I mean, perhaps she could do that because ef’s world is totally empty apart from its important characters, but it does take away a bit of the believability. Nevertheless, this episode was very solid, and a good contender for the best teenaged romance this season, along with Clannad. It’s very good to see that the creators spent a lot of time on their dialogue and visuals, and it’s good to see another Shaft-series without Shinbo behind the director’s seat. No offence, but I’m beginning to get a bit tired of his style.

One Outs

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters lives on the bad side of humanity.
Highlights: Whoa, intense.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
I haven’t looked at the staff list for this show or anything, but something really tells me that the staff of Akagi and Kaiji is behind this one, or at least it’s a bunch of people who are trying to go for the same style: the character-designs are kept ugly for a reason, a lot of emphasis is put on gambling, (this is not, I repeat NOT a regular baseball-series), there are mind games a plenty, there are a few guys who stand miles above the others in terms of skills, and the pacing is sloooooooooooooooow. This series could go down the same path as Kaiji, so there’s no way I’m going to blog this, but nevertheless this episode was very intense. And: it’s a story about adults. Always good in this season of teenagers.
Edit: well, what do you know, I was right. The entire staff of Akagi and Kaiji seems to be behind this. Prepare for lots of adrenaline and dragged on dialogues!

Mouryou no Hako

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters gets befriended with a mysterious girl.
Highlights: Shoujo ai and Horror. What could possibly get better than that?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,75/10
Omg! Omg! What an awesome first episode! After Jigoku Shoujo, this ranks as the best of the past season, and I’m really glad to see some more good horror back this season. This episode was in itself a standalone story, and it really showed that the people behind this series know what it takes to come with a good short story: the characters are fleshed out first, there’s a bit of very tense drama here and there, and the end ends with hitting character-development. There also were a number of artistic moments here and there, for example when the girls danced around in the field of flowers, but I found that it contributed really well to the overall atmosphere. Obviously, this is not a series for everyone: if you need overly cute girls, fanservice or comedy in your anime, you’ll be disappointed here. But personally, I LOVE this series so far!

Short Synopsis: Rikuo suspects Sammi of lying to him and wants to get to the bottom of it.
Highlights: Rikuo is turning into a pretty interesting character.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Okay, since I’m pretty much of the beta-sciences, I still have a bit of trouble trying to grasp the notion of real intelligence, as defined in this series. I mean, I fully believe that in the future, as long as the science advances, computers can be built with human consciousness and emotions. I however don’t think that this can just “appear” out of the blue, or as an accident. Why would someone design a cleaning-robot with human consciousness? Ergo Proxy solved this in a pretty interesting way, where it combined science fiction with fantasy by introducing a virus from higher-up that introduces self-consciousness for robots.

Just as I hoped, this episode shed a bit more light about how this could have happened in the first place. The TV-commercials and programs emphasized the evilness of Dori-kei. It’s being made ridiculous everywhere, as if someone high-ranked is desperately trying to give the robotic consciousness a bad name. I think it’s those mysterious people that appear at the end of the episode. I think that these robots originally were designed to really be like humans, and to act as companions, and just when these models were fully designed and produced, and acted just like humans, it turned out that this consciousness had a very nasty side-effect. This is why people who get too attached to robots are made ridiculous, to stop whatever nasty side-effect there is from getting out. I also think that Eve no Jikan is pretty much linked to this, in an attempt to resist these actions.

In the meantime, this episode did a pretty good job at fleshing out its characters. Rikuo turns out to be a closet Dori-kei, while his best friend Masaki seems to be turning into one of this series’ antagonists. It’s also quite fun to see the random people that decide to visit Eve no Jikan. It’s different in every episode, an din this way, it would have been pretty easy to make this series a 13-episode TV-series, simply by showing random visiters to the cafe, and it would also have allowed the setting to get a bit more airtime. Really, something tells me that the ending of this series is about to get rushed.

“A small kitten moves in to a random family”. That doesn’t seem like the most original or exciting premise, now does it? Still, we’re looking here at the best comedy to have started airing in the past half year. You can count on MadHouse to make such a questionable premise work.

Basically, this series is spread over 104 episodes of 3 minutes, each of which explores the daily life of Chi and the family that adopts her. Especially Chi, but also the rest of the cast develop through the course of the series into downright adorable characters. The creators really succeeded into portraying the characters, just like regular people with their own problems, like making deadlines for work, properly raising kids and of course taking care of your cat, while it remains light-hearted through the entire process.

But the thing that really sells this series is Chi’s antics. I’m allergic to cats myself, but after watching this series, I can fully understand why people would take one in their home. It’s just so much fun to see the little Chi play around in the world, where everything is big and new and a whole new experience. Especially seeing her clashing with the family’s life-style results into a bunch of awesome episodes.

What’s the most peculiar about this series, though, is that it’s directed by the guy you’d least likely assume to be able to pull off such a cute series: Mitsuyuki Masuhara, the episode director of manly series as Death Note and Gungrave and the assistant director of Shigurui and Tokyo Tribe. I’m not sure what really made him decide to go for such a different series, but he really pulled it off here and he developed the characters into an excellent cast. The episodes are varied, some of them build up for each other, and you’ll never really know when one of them will just be entertaining or downright awesome. If you’re looking for a feel-good series that you can laugh with, then Chi’s Sweet Home is a very nice recommendation.