Short Synopsis: Ran gets possessed by the snake spirits, and their role on the island gets revealed.
Highlights: Blood? In this series?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
Okay, so after this we’re about to reach the final quarter of this series, and I really wonder if it can pull off a good finale (and what kind of finale ti has in mind in the first place): the next episodes are either going to make or break this series, because it’s going to have to come up with original material, and it’s a bit stupid to close off the series with stories of the same calibre as episodes 8 to 10.

I’m going to be happy if the final episodes can manage the same consistency as the rest of the series; for this sort of anime, that’s good enough, though I’m not sure yet if it has the potential to pull it off. The fact remains that the main characters of this series haven’t been developed that well, so far. The creators have made up for it by fleshing them out really well, and interesting dialogue, and the question remains whether they can keep this up for the final part of the series. But still, this episode at least showed the very first blush on Rui when Ran touched him. Let’s hope that that’s a sign of things to come. I’d love to see the two of them get closer together in the end.

This episode wasn’t among the highlights of this series, but that’s understandable. It didn’t really have to do with the writing: this was meant to be a simple story, which was mostly about its conclusion (and indeed, it was a great conclusion), and it neither had the expressive animation or outstanding soundtrack of its preceding arcs. It was never meant to be an outstanding arc, and so the producers didn’t treat it as one. It’s nice, but I do expect the next arc to make up for it. In any case, the series shouldn’t go any lower in terms of quality than what it is right now. If it manages to do that, then I’ll call this one a success.

Short Synopsis: A guy who gets bullied joins a Kendo-club.
Highlights: These cases are getting more and more extreme…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent, although that may not be exactly the right word…)
Okay, new theory: either one of the following two must have happened somewhere between the production of the second and third season:
- The important creators were introduced and got addicted to some strange sort of crack.
- Hiroshi Watanabe (the one who originally proposed the concept for this series) sent the production-staff a long list of his own suggestions for stories.

I mean, it has to be ONE of these two; otherwise this episode just can’t be explained. It was just that weird. Basically, we have a bunch of bullies who are into bsdm, and they strip their victim butt-naked and throw stones at him. The victim then gets saved by a strong upperclassman. The latter then pushes the bullied guy into joining the kendo-club, the two of them develop a crush for each other and then the bullied one sends the upperclassman to hell because he couldn’t save a victim of a bus-jacking because he was too scared. I mean… what the heck?!

Still, I absolutely can’t deny that this episode wasn’t entertaining. Heck, it was awesome to watch, although in a strange way, especially after those two guys started to develop feelings for each other. What I especially loved about this episode (probably due to my inner-sadist, which is probably the most excited about this third series), is that the guy just quits the kendo-club and goes back to being bullied. No moral message, no lesson to be learned, just an angsty teen who can’t seem to forgive others.

I’m really baffled. I shouldn’t be liking this series, and yet at the same time it’s such an awesome third season. If this is only the fourth episode, then what the heck are the creators planning for those other 22 episodes? And here I thought that Shigofumi was the extreme one, but Mitsuganae proved me more than wrong within just four episodes.

One thing I love about watching anime is that you never know when you’ll run into a masterpiece. Taiyou no Ko Esteban, or The Mysterious Cities of Gold tells the story about three 12-year-old kids who travel from Spain to South America, as they face off against the Spanish soldiers in order to find the titular mysterious cities of gold. While it sounds cliché, I was hooked after only two episodes. This is EVERYTHING an adventure-series should be!

There are many good points of this series; I think it could be best described as a strange crossing between Mahou Shoujotai and Mobile Suit Gundam: the series is the antithesis of episodic: every single episode pushes the story forward, every single episode is fast-paced without any sign of a break and every single episode delivers. (Okay, apart from the one with the submarine I guess, but that still means 38 episodes of epic adventures). While at first this may seem a simple historical series about the Incas and the Mayas, as the series goes on a whole multi-layered science-fiction setting starts to surface. The show is more than 25 years old, and its setting can still be considered as truly original.

The “adventure”-part of this series is also rock-solid. Again, it’s an old series, and yet it can outclass so many modern adventure series. The key is that this series makes optimal use of its environment, whether this concerns large-scale battles between small armies, or just one-on-one fights, strategies take an important role. Think of destroying suspended bridges in order to stop the enemy from advancing, or going against a small army by destroying an artificial dam. One thing I also loved about this series is how it keeps track of its characters: when some of the important characters leave the screen for a while (because Esteban and the others are focusing on something else, for example), you can bet your hat that said characters aren’t going to sit still until the camera focuses on them again, and they’ll be carrying out their own agendas again

The characters are also a lot of fun to watch in this series, and especially Mendoza is an awesome character: he’s continuously scheming and using his head, instead of his muscles; he’s an excellent combination between a father-figure and a greedy and cunning Spaniard. The rest of the characters all have their own identities, roles and purposes. Esteban himself may not be the most memorable of them, but nonetheless he can carry the weight of this series as its main character, and he grows into a brave young boy, who is forced to make huge decisions, despite his very young age.

Regarding the production-values, the only really negative thing I can say about it is that the encoding-quality of the videos I watched was pretty bad. I also encourage people to view the English dubs, instead of the Japanese ones. The English sound-director was a very ambitious one, who didn’t just literally translate the lines from Japanese to English, but instead tried to add as much expressivity as possible. The result is that people speak very fast, but at the same time lots of subtle details are added to the dialogue, giving the characters a very genuine touch. The animation-quality adds to that, with a lot of expressivity in the drawings.

And of course, no review of The Mysterious Cities of Gold can be complete without a mention of the downright astounding soundtrack. Let me say here that I’m going to be very surprised if I were to run into a different soundtrack from the seventies, eighties and even the early nineties that’s able to outclass the different background tunes of this series. You need to listen to it to understand, but the synthesizers and futuristic sounds give this series a unique atmosphere.

In terms of flaws: you do need to suspend your disbelief once in a while. This mostly involves a few coincidences that sit a bit weird, like a building randomly getting destroyed, with the worst being the introduction of Tau. It’s nothing major, though, if you’re not the most critical viewer. While some scenes are a bit dodgy, others are surprisingly clever for a series that’s meant to be for children.

Overall, this series is an excellent watch for every age. Children will love the huge amounts of adventures and wonderful places that this series visits, it also teaches them a bit about making important decisions, and at the same time it’s never too childish for adults to feel ashamed of watching it. This series set the standard of what an adventure-series should be, and unfortunately there were only very few series (if any at all) that followed its example.

I really liked the original Area 88-OVA, so when I learned that there also was a 2004-remake of the anime, I just had to add that one to my to-watch-list. Unfortunately, I should have known: the OVA already was amazing, so what could an extra TV-series possibly add? Instead, it just went into its own direction. While it’s a capable series on its own, you don’t want to be watching this as a fan of the OVA.

With most of the background of Shin, Kanzaki and McCoy was gobbled up by a female pilot, a pilot who can’t seem to decide whether he’s male or female and a nosy photographer, you really can’t call this a realistic series about manly men who do the duty that’s being asked of them in a setting where only the strongest ones survive. Instead, what we have here is a compassionate war-drama in a setting where only the unimportant side-characters have a chance of dying.

The result is more of a heart-warming series. I can’t say that I’m exceptionally happy about the woman and the gender-confused pilot, but at least the two of them are well-fleshed out. The two of them are nice and like to socialize, and so the whole series gets a different tone from the very dark OVA. There’s also one thing I can be very positive of about the TV-series: the soundtrack. It was quite daring to come up with a selection of techno-songs for the fight scenes, and it really works along with the lighter tone of the rest of the series.

However, this series isn’t without its problems. As a fan of the original OVA, I was a bit disappointed that the series would turn out to be really different, but on the other hand, it would be quite boring to watch the same thing all over again. However, if you indeed diverge from your original source-material, do so consistently, and don’t chicken out at the last moment, like this series did. Through the entire series, Shin’s background was only a mere side-plot, which only popped up twice or trice, and instead the majority of the series focused on the bond between the major characters. In the final two episodes, however, Shin’s story suddenly became the main focus of the series. There’s just no way to get some proper development out of that, and it leaves the series with an overly cheesy ending that will leave a bad taste in your mouth. Because of that, the series completely ruined Ryoko’s character: she went from a headstrong woman to someone who’d just wait and do nothing. It’s good for a side-character, but you don’t want to turn her into a main character right at the last episode!

Along with that, I also have one big complaint against this series, as a fan of the original Area 88-OVA: Makoto, the photographer, was ruined even more by the series than Ryoko was. The guy was a really memorable character in the OVA, simply because he knew how to keep his distance, and yet wanted to get involved. The Makoto in the TV-series keeps sticking his nose into everything, annoys everyone with his overly cheesy morals, and his added background is downright ridiculous.

Overall, the TV-series just doesn’t have the potential to live up to the OVA, even when I remove my bias as a fan, there is just too little to impress. However, if you see it as a standard, unrelated series, then you’ve got yourself a decent war-drama that for once doesn’t have any mecha in it, but instead focuses on fighter-planes. Still, I’m going to keep recommending the OVA. So what if the drawings look old, it’s got an amazing and thought-provoking story.

Short Synopsis: Everyone and his dog is now trying to recruit Fan Hulic.
Highlights: This definitely is the series with the most focus on build-up of the entire season.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
In a way, I’m glad that I haven’t seen Legend of Galactic Heroes at this point. The thing is that when compared to Tytania, it has two major disadvantages: it’s likely not going to have the same huge episode length, and neither does it have the month-long gap between episodes that allowed the creators to put so much time and effort into the former, so that they could get every bit of development right. This way, right now I can enjoy Tytania to the fullest, only to be blown away by LoGH afterwards, which is probably going to be ten times better or so, instead of the other way around.

In any case, the past two episodes have made it very clear now what this series is going to be: this episode didn’t feature any space battles yet again, and the creators kept emphasizing that this is a political thriller, and the space-battles just come in at second place. I have no idea what this series is going to be like once it arrives at the real meat of the story, but for now I’m glad to see that it’s putting so much effort into setting everything up right.

This episode basically meant to show that Fan Hulic wasn’t just going to go with Tytania without a fight. Tytania is a force more fearsome than I originally believed, and the fact alone that he won a battle from them has labelled him as the hero of the many people who oppose the Tytania-family. Some of those people can be seen in this episode as they managed to recruit Fan for their own goals, rather than letting Tytania snatch him away.

I keep wondering what’s up with that girl… I think her name was Lydia (it’s amusing how even the characters in this series aren’t able to keep track of all the names of the different characters ^^;), but she feels entirely out of place in this series. Especially considering how she’s featured in just about every promo-material. I hope that the next few episodes will shed light on this, and make her more into just an ordinary girl who likes flowers.

Houlgrave recommended this series to me, which really intrigued me. A few years ago, I watched its first episode, and at that time it seemed like nothing more than standard “boy meets mecha”-fare. After watching the entire series, though, I’m glad to see that this series is much more than that, and definitely a product of Good Gonzo.

The series starts out as something that Mars Daybreak should have been: a fun adventure series, in this case following a delivery-boy who doesn’t mind dangerous jobs that involve a few mecha-fights here and there. The interesting part about the mechas in this series is that you can’t ride them, and instead you have to control them from outside. The cast of characters is varied and interesting: there basically are more children who found themselves such a mecha, and the series explores them as each of them is trying to act out his/her own sense of judgement.

A huge theme in this series is taking responsibility, and it goes further than you might expect at first sight. This series doesn’t merely preach “thou shalt take responsibility for thy actions”, it also critically asks when and why one should do that, and whether it wouldn’t be better to just go into your own way. This is where the diversity in characters comes in again, because of so many different viewpoints at this issue, it’s really able to explore these topics.

The big criticism against this series is of course that the plot doesn’t always flow as smoothly as you’d like. If during a big action-scene you suddenly see two characters pop up from out of nowhere, you’re going to have to assume that they were worried about some other character, and came to check it out, even though this is never directly said. This can also be a good thing, depending on the way you look at it. On one way, it’s indeed a bit lazy, but on the other hand it’s a series that doesn’t assume its viewers to be stupid, and the creators assume that their viewers are able to conclude that two plus two equals four, without having to spoon-feed it to them. Unfortunately, this mindset does not always work: there are a few very rather jarring convenient coincidences, which just serve to push the story into the direction the creators want it to. That’s indeed a bit lazy, but at least the results of these plot-twists make up for it.

Because what especially impressed me in this series was the completely different way that the plot evolves into during its second half. For a while, it really seems like it’s building up for a straightforward climax, but instead the mood of this series completely shifts and instead of focusing the climax of this series on lots of action and drama, the series finale instead aims to give a lot of depth to the series’ setting.

Overall, this is a series with a lot of diversity: not just in the characters, but especially the mood of the series can take on lots of different colours: from calm slice-of-life to a number of solid action- and comedy-episodes, to powerful drama, heart-warming character-development and mystery in the second half of the series. I think that that’s something typical of Good Gonzo, as you see that effect in a lot of their better series. The plot’s a bit jiggy, but because of that sacrifice Gonzo managed to put down a very nice series. Not to mention that this really is the first series I’ve run into that correctly understands the principles of Karate. Take that you generic shounen-series!

Short Synopsis: Casshern meets a girl who loves fighting.
Highlights: Subtle emotions rock.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
You know, back when that first episode ended I remember noting how Casshern Sins was too one-sided and how Casshern was too angsty, but I’m right at the point where I’m going to take that one back. Casshern Sins has been getting better and better with every episode, and at this point it’s my favourite of the new Fall-series after Mouryou no Hako (but then again, this one does have a few episodes of advantage against series as Tytania and Michiko to Hatchin, so who knows?).

The stories of the people that Casshern has been running into have all been excellent so far. This one explores a girl who through the chaos has come to love fighting. nd if she’s going to be destroyed, she might as well be destroyed being happy, and doing the thing she loved. That’s the basic set-up, but the really memorable part is the subtle character-development, with which she and Casshern come to understand each other through the course of the episoe. The pacing is very slow, but the subtlety makes excellent use of it.

I think that having a slow pacing like this series has, can either make or break your series, depending on how well you know to use it. The danger is of course boring your viewer to death without anything happening soon. The world Masterpiece Theatre solved this problem by adding lots of realism to keep the viewer busy, and with Casshern, it’s very subtle dialogue. A lot was said in this episode, and even though I didn’t understand everything, it felt that every line of dialogue contributed to the end result. On the opposite side of the spectrum, you have of course series like Naruto and Soul Eater, who try to lengthen their airtime by adding pointless exposition that everyone already could have guessed and doesn’t develop anything.

There’s just one thing that I want to see more in this series: an in-depth look at one of the robots who didn’t decide to look like a human. The ogre in this episode was a good start, but I’d like to see an even more in-depth look. As beautiful as the human designs in this series are, I think it’d really benefit the stories if we also get to see a bit more of their side, and why they’re letting themselves get killed off so easily.

Also… what happened to the dog?

Short Synopsis: An idol-turned-Shikabane kills people who don’t like her songs.
Highlights: Best fight so far; Makina’s background.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (enjoyable)
Okay, so I’ve gotten a lot of varied feedback on the new episode rating scale, some positive and some negative reactions. As a result, I’ve changed the scale a bit yet again, where anything above or equal to 7/10 means that I liked the series, as opposed to 6/10 (which was too low) or 8/10 (which meant me handing out only 8/10s for 95% of the cases).

In any case, this was a pretty strange episode for Shikabane Hime’s standards, where it spent the first few minutes on Keisei who decorated Ougi’s room full of figures and otaku-posters while he’s sleeping. While a bit funny, it did ruin this series’ mood a bit. On the other hand, however, it was a nice way to flesh out the different characters.

This really was an episode that was meant for both the cast to get closer together, and the viewer, to learn more about the characters. We finally learn a bit about Makina: it seems she was killed, along with her entire family in a fire. She already knew Keisei at that time, and something happened between the two that made Makina return as a Shikabane. The reason why Makina doesn’t berserk like all the other sis because of a contract she made with Keisei, where in exchange she gets to take his life-force (or something similar, at least) so that she can heal her wounds. Judging from the fact that the idol in this episode was surrounded by human allies, I’d say that it takes a skilled monk to make such a contract.

The enemy this time also got a bit more difficult than usual, and it’s good to see that the creators are adding an extra challenge to them, provided of course that they’re not going to drag on these fights over time. The idol’s story was a bit less interesting than the other episodes so far, but that may also be because that’s a subject I’m not interested in at all. Thankfully, the end-fight was an excellent one. I like how Makina doesn’t have any super-strength, but instead just a larger resistance than usual. And even then, when she leaps off a building, she still gets hurt, as opposed to other series where characters can jump off cliffs and are just fine after a few minutes of unconsciousness.

Wagaya no Oinari-sama: a fox-spirit and a shrine maiden move into the family of our lead character and hi-jinks begin. It’s a premise that shouldn’t be good. It’s been done so many times in so many variations. Still, somewhere along the line the producers must have done something right, because it’s been a very enjoyable series from start to finish.

Everything seems to fit somehow, both the main- and side-characters are well-fleshed out and developed and very enjoyable to watch, the story is divided into a number of arcs, ranging from one to four episodes, and the creators make sure to keep every one of them interesting, with a story that’s complex enough to keep the viewer’s attention, yet remains simple and far away from convolution. The background music is very subtle, but also very effective. The only bad part I can think of is the lead character’s character-designs, but even that annoyance disappears once you get used to it.

…and that’s pretty much it. This isn’t a series you need to analyze from top to bottom, it’s a series where you just need to shut up and watch. All you need to know is that if you’re looking for a series that combines slice of life with supernatural stories, then you’ll like Wagaya no Oinarisama. It’s an enjoyable series, in both the light-hearted as the serious aspects. What else is there to say, really?

Short Synopsis: In the city, Porfy works at a local car mechanic.
Highlights: Talk about striking when you least expect it!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Okay, so I’ve gotten a lot of varied feedback on the new episode rating scale, some positive and some negative reactions. As a result, I’ve changed the scale a bit yet again, where anything above or equal to 7/10 means that I liked the series, as opposed to 6/10 (which was too low) or 8/10 (which meant me handing out only 8/10s for 95% of the cases). I’ll probably repeat this message in my next post, because only three people seem to read my entries about Porfy.

In any case, this episode of Porfy managed to surprise me yet again. As for the reason, here’s the summary. There’s a lot of talking in this episode again, so I hope I got everything right.

We never get to see the woman from the previous episode again, but Porfy managed to find his job, and is working at a local car repair shop along with another guy, who seems to be slacking off quite often. He tells Porfy about a local legend of a female thief roaming around one of the town’s buildings. He doesn’t like his boss either, but it seems that that day he tells Porfy that rumour turns out to be his last day of work.

That night, when Porfy’s trying to sleep, he can’t, because said guy makes too much noise. He then goes to sleep in one of the cars that they’ve been repairing. Unfortunately for him, said female thief has set her eyes on that car, and drives off with it, unaware that Porfy’s also in it. When he wakes up, he obviously tries to stop her, and through the chaos they crash into a tree, with Porfy unconscious.

When Porfy wakes up, the woman put some band-aid on him, and run into her hiding-place along with him. It’s a place in the sewer that was used as a hideout for the resistance during the war. Now for the complicated part: the woman is named Marianne, and she has a daughter Kristel. Apparently, she had her from a German soldier. Because of the hate between the French and the Germans, Marianne wasn’t welcome in her town anymore, and went off to work abroad, leaving Kristel in the town to be cared for at the local church. The townspeople, however, betrayed Marianne’s requests and sold Kristel off to a rich family in Germany. At least, that’s what makes the most sense. I’m not sure how exactly the woman became an escaped prisoner, but I suspect that she was put into prison because she sided with that German officer, and escaped because she heard of her daughter. A strong mother who’s willing to do anything for her kid.

We then switch to two policemen who are apparently on the case of getting Marianne back to prison. Porfy meanwhile has agreed to help Marianne meet Kristel, and they go to the local church, where the German couple is coming to pick her up. Porfy acts as a decoy for these policemen, while Marianne finally gets to see Kristel, though this turns out to be a bit different from expected. It seems that the people from the church have told Kristel that her mother is currently in a foreign country, and that her mother is going to come back to her soon (referring to her release as a prisoner, probably). What’s more: Kristel’s new parents are very rich, and she’ll be able to live a much better life than living as the daughter of an escaped prisoner who’s constantly on the run. At that point, something snaps at her.

Porfy has meanwhile succeeded in shaking off the policemen a bit by using the local goats of the Church. Marianne then runs into him, and from out of nowhere she starts attacking the guy, and blames him for taking Kristel away from her, even though he isn’t the one to blame. I’m not exactly sure what she said because she talked nonsense, but it definitely made a huge impression on Porfy to see a once strong woman change so suddenly.

And just when you think the episode is over Porfy runs into the owner of the car repair shop who comes to collect a part of Porfy’s reward for catching Marianne (he did use the car in the repair-shop for that, after all) and to deliver the message that the other mechanic-guy robbed his place, INCLUDING Porfy’s rucksack. After a bit of searching, he finds the rucksack shredded and his father’s tools gone.

Holy crap, the creators really picked a nice time for that. Throughout the entire series, Porfy had continued to run into people who tried to go after his rucksack for various reasons, but every time he managed to pull through and got it back. I should have KNOWN that this of course was just another part of a build-up, just like the rest of the series. Of course the creators wouldn’t just let him keep it like that if they kept showing small hints over and over again that showed that Porfy shouldn’t take his rucksack for granted.

This series is really getting interesting, now that the building-up is finally over and it can start using all the things it built up for. There are ten episodes left with this, so there really isn’t much time left for this series to just goof off with random stories anymore, and something tells me that the real meat of the series is about to arrive. There are at least three major events that are about to happen: Alecia’s return, the explosion of Carlos, the walking time-bomb, and the reunion of Porfy and Mina. Then the creators are also probably going to use Apollo for something, and I’m going to eat my hat if the owl-carving isn’t going to come into play at some point.

The thing I also like about this series: Porfy was devastated at the loss of his tools, that’s what the end of this episode showed pretty clearly. And yet, I know that he isn’t going to keep on angsting about it. He’s a strong guy, and in the next episode, he’s just going to continue travelling, and has just become a bit stronger. That’s INDEED how good angst should be used.