Yeah, yeah. I’ve been blogging for nearly three years, I’ve written more than 300 reviews so far, and I still haven’t checked out the “big three” of anime: Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell SAC and Full Metal Alchemist. Well, at least I’ve got one of them down now. I finally managed to complete what could possibly be the most popular anime of the past decade.

Of course, I did try to watch this series at one time; twice, actually. But I kept getting stuck on that surprisingly boring first part. It didn’t make any sense. People were praising this series to heavens, and at the same time it was a pain to get through that first quarter of the series. It basically consists out of either flashbacks or a number of random stories, with the biggest problem being that the flashbacks were just boring, and the random stories never really worked. The creators just weren’t good at writing them.

The thing is, that this series played way too much with coincidences. Wherever Ed and Al came, there was some kind of Timmy who fell in some kind of Well, at exactly the right time for Ed to demonstrate his awesome child-prodigy powers. In whichever town they came, the creators would make sure that they’d coincidentally meet people who were related to some sort of gruesome secret behind this town. This especially returns ad nauseam in the first quarter, but the entire series is also plagued by this.

Thankfully, after that very dodgy start, the series picks back up when the big storyline starts for this series. Thankfully the creators prove that they’re good at writing a continuous storyline, and they slowly develop the story into a multi-layered mystery intrigue. You can see that a lot of thought was put behind it, and the series’ final quarter especially shines in the story-department. Much like Full Moon wo Sagashite, actually.

The characters are a very mixed bag, actually. Characters like Rose and Archer are incredibly shallow, and feel a bit too much like underdeveloped plot-devices. Other side-characters, however, absolutely shine when they’re standing in the spotlight. People like Scar, Sensei, Armstrong and the Humonculi really made this series for me, and showed that behind their simple look, they’ve got a complex and interesting story lying. Unfortunately, Hughes was overrated. Based on the things I’ve heard about his… spoiler, I expected something much grander, which he never really delivered.

That’s not the biggest problem here, though. Unfortunately, I never really could care about the main characters in this series: Ed and Al. Every time this series was exploring an interesting side-character, they’d take over again. In a way, this series suffers from the “bad main character”-syndrome. The two of them are developed, they’ve got more back-story than any other character in this series, but they’re just nowhere near as interesting as some of the other characters in this series, and their teenaged whining can become annoying at times.

Overall, Full Metal Alchemist shines through some of its side-characters and the messages it tries to convey. While the series is without a doubt very much a Christian series, it asks some interesting questions from its viewers, and shows various different beliefs on these questions. That’s why I handed this series a 10 in the setting-department: despite the flaws of the series, it’s an excellent and complex world for this series to play in that also makes you think. And I agree, it’s a very good series because of these things. However, it just isn’t the best thing since sliced bread. I just can’t call this series as superior to for example Gilgamesh, Rescue Wings or Ooedo Rocket. I liked it overall, but at the same time I do consider this one to be overrated, and it had some major problem that held back its potential.

Short Synopsis: A boy who has a crush on a female store owner calls Jigoku Shoujo.
Highlights: Nice ending.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Am I glad to see this series back or what? In any case, as for the series I’m not going to blog this season:
- Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka… err… no.
- Every single new character of Kuroshitsuji’s second episode was dull and uninspired, the servants I liked so much in the first episode are turning into one character and the two main characters are also getting pretty dull. That shouldn’t be happening after just two episodes!
- I like Clannad, but I’m a fan of the climaxes. I don’t feel like writing about the lesser comedy-bits.
- I already had trouble following Noramimi during a light season, let alone a heavy season as this one.
- The drama in Yozakura Quartet’s second episode felt shallow and uninspired.
- Tentai Senshi Sunred already turned from hilarious to dull within two episodes. I knew that this was going to happen, but not THIS fast.

In any case, I’m getting really excited about this third season. I would already have been happy if this season would be more of the same, but the creators are really showing that they’re evolving this show. It now makes perfect sense that the second season was less extreme than the first season: it was basically one big season, meant to flesh out Ai’s three dolls, and flesh out the show’s premise by showing how people are getting more and more easily able to send someone to hell.

Now in this season, people are suddenly beginning to see themselves that sending someone to hell might not have been the best thing after all. The previous episode showed a high-school girl who banished her teacher (really, that’s something I can imagine that would happen a LOT if Jigoku Shoujo would exist for real), and this episode features an abused woman who doesn’t want to be rescued. It’s about a boy who tries to help her from her incredibly abusive boyfriend. It’s interesting how the first two seasons started with straightforward cases, but here in the third season, the creators have already started with a thought-provoking case, which goes beyond the usual good and bad.

The strange thing about this third season is… there doesn’t seem to be a director for the thing. According to ANN at least. Apart from that, there’s absolutely no change in staff, which really makes me wonder: was the missing director just a simple mistake, or did he really leave the project, so that the ones who are left opted to do the series with a more chaotic style of “direction”? I really expected when I first saw this episode that huge staff changes were made, but instead it’s the same animation directors who went with the new visual style, and both punishments in this and the previous episode were much more extreme than what we’ve seen in the previous seasons.

I also wonder what the exact role of the girl is going to be, but it’s still going to take 20 more episodes before we get to find that out. It makes sense to start her off with such an extreme case, so that we now get to see her initial stance on revenge (as in, she hates it). I think that she’s going to become the new Tsugumi: because Ai uses her to get back to her original job (the question of course is: why?), she can see exactly what’s going on. I think that she’s going to go against Ai, to try and stop the revenges.

Short Synopsis: While Rui continues to fake amnesia, Ran and Midori try to get him back.
Highlights: This is EXACTLY why Yoshihiro Ike is amongst my favourite composers!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
I must say, that Telepathy Shoujo Ran has been a delightfully consistent series so far. Really, my experience with most arc-based series is that some of their stories can differ significantly in quality when compared to the others, but the opposite is the case in Telepathy Shoujo Ran: no story has stood out for me as the best, and neither was there a story that clearly less in terms of quality. Every single story so far has had interesting mystery, engaging scriptwriting, nice production-values and awesome banter. No exceptions.

The bad part about this is that I’m not going to expect to be blown away by this series. It’s not of the kind to take huge risks. The good part is that with this set-up, I just know what I’m going to get with every single episode. While this is not as well-written as in a series as Kaze no Shoujo Emily, it’s definitely something to look forward to every week.

In this episode, it was the soundtrack that was exceptionally good. Ike Yoshihiro showed some of his new tracks, and they were excellent. The guy may not be exceptionally good at writing good standalone songs, but he’s a master when it comes to creating an atmosphere with his works. The animators were also on fire again for this episode. It wasn’t as noticeable as in the arc with the dead girl, but nonetheless the episode was full of nice poses and creative animation. It was just “fun” to watch everything that went on on the screen.

In a way, it’s very good that the creators decided to go for cheap Photoshop-effects for this series. In a way, it fits, and at the same time they didn’t end up blowing half their budget on flashy beams of the sort that you find in many other series. In this way, they could really add to the characters’ expressivity. I really never understood why creators have to make those CG-beams as flashy as possible. I mean, they don’t really add anything to the series.

I’m really hoping that in the autumn-season, another series will pop up that manages to choose where to focus its animation on so well. Obviously, after episode 1 it’s still too early to judge: you never know which series blow up their entire budget within one episode, and which ones instead decided to save most of their budget for later.

I’m not really sure what the creators really intended by airing both an OVA and a TV-series for Yume de Aetara at the same time. Furthermore, while Hiroshi Watanabe merely supervised the TV-series, he took it upon himself to direct the OVA. The series already was a string of ridiculously overblown deus ex machina, so with the king of cheese now behind the director’s seat, my expectations definitely weren’t high.

But what a surprise: the OVA turns out to be much better than the TV-series; it’s a really sweet romance story, and it’s actually really well written. It’s basically an alternative retelling of the series: the basic set-up is still there, but the storyline’s entirely different. It both fills in the holes of the series’ background, and it also advances its own storyline.

Nearly all of the deus ex machina of the series don’t return in the OVA. You can still spot a few here and there, but it all falls within the limits. In exchange, it really feels like the creators know their characters. They’re able to create subtle nuances in their behaviour, and also succeed in creating an effective atmosphere for the story to work with.

But the best part: Hamaoka plays a much smaller role here. She’s still there as a potential love-rival, but her number of appearances has been greatly reduced. In the OVA, she really feels like a side-character, in comparison to the TV-series where she actually got more screentime than the girl who was SUPPOSED TO BE the lead female for the story. For the OVA, you can really feel that it’s a story about Fuguno and Nagisa, as it explores both of their doubts about going into a relationship.

So overall, I’ve been pleasantly surprised here. Nearly the entire OVA basically had the same feel as the final episode of the TV-series (as, the only part of that series that was really good). The romance worked really well, and it’s one of the few times where a series has a loser protagonist, and the creators can admit that he’s a loser, and use that in their storytelling, rather than using a loser to appeal to the otaku-crowd. It’s one of these stories where you’ll really want the main couple to come together (or that was the case with me, anyway). It’s a very subtle series. Yes, subtle; a word I thought I’d never mention when talking about a Hiroshi Watanabe-anime.

Short Synopsis: Akiyuki and Nakiami return to Sentan Island.
Highlights: Akiyuki’s parents.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Ah, so it seems that the creators are planning to enter the second half of the series with some development between Haru, Furuichi and Akiyuki, instead of going for an action-packed midway-climax. Makes sense. The next episode should either have the military intervene right before the three of them can make up, or they have enough time to say a proper goodbye to each other.

I must admit that I’m a bit disappointed that Furuichi returned back to the rival he was, but then again, there still is half a series left. There are a lot of things that can still happen, and it pretty much depends on the next episode of what the creators have in mind.

Still, the best moments in this episode were definitely from Akiyuki’s parents, who finally got to see their son again. They’re really so un-typical for such a series: most of the time, the father is gone and some sort of famous guy (acting as a rather cheap plot-device to explain why the lead character has better powers than other people) and the mother acts as a brave housewife. It doesn’t happen often when both the father and mother are left behind, and both parties will live their own life. Especially that scene between Akiyuki and his father was awesome: it never tried to be overdramatic, and instead it decided to go with subtle drama. Nice effect.