Short Synopsis: Mostly an episode of build-up and foreshadowing, where Mina already starts playing in her new role.
Highlights: Mina’s finally starting to grow again.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Ah, there are five episodes left after this. At this point, the series needs indeed a bit more build-up for the finale, which is promising to be so completely different from the entire rest of the series. But first as usual a summary:

Rose arrives back home, takes a shower and in the meantime Porfy wakes up again. When she’s done, Porfy wonders where he should search for Mina next, and Rose suggests a place where lots of people from around the world come: the Louvre. Mina meanwhile wakes up, and gets invited to have breakfast with Tiffany. Tiffany asks her maid, Nathalie, to fetch some strawberries, as Mina asks when Isabella’s going to pick her up again.

Tiffany then comes with the revelation that Isabella’s gone now. She left Paris and Mina is now in the care of Tiffany. She left one of her precious jewels with Tiffany as a proof. Mina obviously resists, and wants to go back to Isabella, though Nathalie stops her. Mina thinks it’s cruel for Isabella to have left her, but Tiffany manages to convince her that Isabella abandoned Mina, because it’s best for Mina. She says that if Mina stars in a big movie, she’ll appear on big posters, and she’ll be able to reach a huge audience over the world, and with a bit of luck her brother will recognize her.

That evening, Porfy searched around the Louvre for too long, so he’s late at the job. The waiter with the difficult name obviously scolds him, but he’s much nicer than he was in the previous episode, although Porfy’s obviously getting paid less. The cook asks Porfy how the search went, though Porfy has no luck. Mina meanwhile gets really inspired when she sees Tiffany practice her lines. The movie seems to be about a poor girl called Maaya who is working hard and likes to sing songs. It’s a bit cheesy, but in any case Mina is going to play the girl in her younger years.

When Rose comes back from shopping, she has a bit of good news for Porfy, as she found someone who has seen Isabella. He obviously doesn’t remember where they went, but the two of them continue to search for a while, asking people who pass by whether they’ve seen her. Obviously, nobody really wants to cooperate. Rose is a bit disappointed, but Porfy is used to this disappointment by now, and he’s at least glad that Rose helped him this time.

Mina meanwhile has memorized both her lines and the lines of the other parts, and is getting very enthusiastic to play her part. The next day, she already is going to film her first scene. Her manager then, however, notices the scar that Mina has (from the earthquake), but this is easily covered with make-up. Everything goes well during the shooting, and Mina is done quite early because of that.

Ironically, Porfy has chosen the exact same place as the movie-shoot for his search that day, but he arrives there, just as Mina left. He does see the car they’re in, but instead of wondering who’s in it, he gawks over the brand of the car. That’s really typical of him, isn’t it. ^^; When he arrives at the set, one of the women does inform him about the movie, making him a step closer to finding her. She holds a basket of roses, and Porfy buys one of them, for Rose.

Rose meanwhile discovers that Porfy erased some of the lipstick on the photo, and scratches it out with some more. Porfy then comes in, and offers her the rose, as a means of saying thanks. Porfy’s attention then falls to the book of Romeo and Juliet, which brought the two of them together, and Rose cites one of the famous passages of the book. Porfy then notes that Rose should have become an actor (hah!), but Rose says that with talent and luck, you can’t expect to just make it as an actor, which scares Porfy off a bit. He then leaves for work as she thanks him for the flower and the episode ends.

The biggest revelation is of course that Isabella’s freaking gone! Suddenly so much pieces of the puzzle fall into place. The whole episode where the rich kid was about to take Mina away was just one big build-up for the finale. Now that she knows about Mina’s full story, she actually decided to make use of the opportunity that Tiffany gave her, in order to find Porfy as fast as possible and give her a safe home. She actually knew that keeping her with Carlos longer would never make Mina happy, and she actually prevented the bomb that I’ve been talking about for ages now from exploding completely!

I also understand the purpose of the long travel arcs now. They were there in order to make sure that the final arc wouldn’t completely come from out of nowhere: that this is a realistic series, but there often are a few coincidences that are needed in order to get the best out of the characters. Storytelling is often finding a compromise between realism and conflict, because a completely realistic series certainly isn’t a bad thing, but you can’t get a juicy story out of it, but the same way, if a series forsakes this realism the chance will be bigger that viewers will end up scratching their heads and fail to take the rest of the story seriously. It’s up to each individual story to decide where on the scale between realism and conflict it wants to be. Anne of Green Gables is a typical example of a series that goes for realism all the way, and Code Geass is the obvious example of a series that goes for conflict all the way. ^^;

In that same way, I found it a bit hard to believe that Mina would only days after being first recruited shoot her first scene, but I guess that the production was in dire need of a new actress (after all, otherwise Tiffany herself wouldn’t be looking for these people). And because of her imaginative personality and how she spent god knows how many months with a memory loss, I guess that that gives her an extra good ability to relate herself to the characters she plays. That’s of course a great merit for an actor, although I do wonder whether she perhaps lacks some technical acting skills. But ah well, this is such a minor detail, and it really is worth because Mina has finally started growing again as a character. Watching her in this episode was a delight because of that.

I originally planned to wait a bit longer with watching this series, but due to certain…*ahem* developments I just had to finish it before the end of the year. Anne of Green Gables, or Akage no Anne is part of the famous World Masterpiece Theatre. It’s written by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and adapted by Isao Takahata, just before he joined Hayao Miyazaki (who also worked on certain parts of the series by the way) to create Studio Ghibli. While I can’t say it’s the best WMT out there (it lacks conflict for that; this series is largely just slice of life), but it did succeed in what it set out to do: creating the wonderful character called Anne, along with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert who raised her.

The series confirmed a suspicion I kept having about Isao Takahata, since I’ve been rather disappointed by the movies that he made for Studio Ghibli. The guy is most likely the director with the biggest sense of realism out of all anime directors out there, but his movies were all just too short to make any real impact on me, and this series showed that his specific style really is at its best when applied to such a long series, where you can see the characters slowly developing and changing, while going through their daily lives.

So yes, the biggest strength of this series is the huge sense of realism. Anne of Green Gables is a tale of growing up, and especially the first half of the series is chockfull of nostalgia. There are so many things that a viewer can relate to. Every single character in the series just feels like a real person, whose problems are those of real people instead of the problems of soap opera characters. This also means that it’s very easy to find the series boring, though. The conflicts in this series are far apart, even when compared to other WMT-series. You need to like slice of life if you want to be able to enjoy this series.

And of course, Anne makes the long length really worth it. The series shows her growing up from a cute, energetic and very talkative 11 year old to an inspiring mature 16 year old. She’s a wonderful character to watch, especially in her younger years. She does suffer from being a bit too perfect when she’s fifteen years old, though. She achieves any goals she sets to herself, everyone likes her and becomes enamoured with her, and she simply doesn’t have any flaws.

It’s interesting though that Lucy Maud Montgomery was fully aware of these flaws, and after watching this series, it becomes apparent that she tried to make Emily of the New Moon a completely different character with actually lots of flaws.

Nevertheless, this doesn’t prevent the conclusion of the series to be utterly amazing, and the series actually ends with a short but very powerful climax that’s definitely worth watching the 46 episodes that preceded it. Everything that the series has been subtly building up for comes together like a charm, and really ends the series on the best note possible.

As for Hayao Miyazaki’s influences: it’s very easy to spot the episodes on which he worked. The animation of the first fifteen episodes is of a considerable bigger quality than the rest of the series (remember, this series was made in 1978, and probably has the most solid graphics of any TV-series produced in the 1970s), and you can really spot his trademark style of animation, especially comparable to movies as Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbour Totoro.

Anne of Green Gables really is one of the very few WMT-series to be fully subbed and widely available on the internet at this point, and so I wholeheartedly recommend it if you want to get a taste of the lighter side of the franchise. While most other WMT-series are much darker than this one is, it nevertheless is a very charming and adorable slice of life series in Canada of about a century ago.

Short Synopsis: A middle aged woman gets bothered by her neighbour who owns a Chihuahua
Highlights: That’s … a very smart dog.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Okay, at this point, I don’t care anymore. I don’t care how politically incorrect this series becomes, I’m not going to care about how unrealistic, repetitive or predictable the stories are. This third season is the typical sort of series that you don’t need to take too seriously, and instead need to look at the messages. This series is just awesome, although for completely different reasons than usual.

This episode really shows that it’s not just teenagers that the creators hate. It goes back to the first season, where at least the one who accesses Jigoku Tsuushin has a valid reason to send the other one to hell. The focus this time goes to a rather clueless woman in her twenties, keeping a Chihuahua (fully dressed and all), and her neighbour who is very easily ticked off by this. Aggressions build up over time, and after a while she tries to poison the poor little animal.

The woman in her twenties wasn’t totally good either (after all, she let her pet walk around in such an embarrassing little outfit), but this really was a typical episode of the first season, with a few of the impulsive influences from the third season (especially when the dog suddenly came running with the straw doll). For some strange reason, the thing I liked best about this episode was the large amount of crazy ideas that the woman got into her head. And of course the punishment scene this time was pure win.

Short Synopsis: No fighting this time, instead: plot development. And a cross-dressing Tieria…
Highlights: Nice developments!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Ah, finally it’s time for this series to reveal what the final stage of Aeolia Shenberg’s plan was. He wasn’t just an overambitious Mother Teresa who simply hoped to achieve a world without war, but also one where humanity could make great leaps of advancements into space. Now Wan Lui Ming’s role in the whole series also becomes clear: she wants to see humanity enter space, and doesn’t care how it happens. Now that the Innovators are closer to achieving that goal, it obviously doesn’t come as much of a surprise to see her on their side now.

Meanwhile, I’m glad that this episode also introduced some of the small scale politics back into the series, with the plans to reorganize the Middle East. I wonder what kind of effect that will have with Marina Ismael. I can really see her being the Relena of this series, where at one point she’s going to take back the control over the region in an attempt to set right the mistakes she made.

And I must say, that more and more references to past Gundam series keep popping up, especially in the second season: Enhanced Soldiers vs. Newtypes, Setsuna F. Seiei starts to resemble Heero Yui more and more, there’s Mr Bushido of course, the deserted island, and Marina vs. Relena. Still, despite the references, I’m glad that this series manages to retain its own goals and identity. The things I’ve read about Gundam Seed seem to indicate that nearly everything inside it was ripped off past Gundam-series.

Tieria in a dress was an interesting piece of fanservice by the way. But I guess that if he didn’t dress up as a woman, people would start to recognize him, but that still makes me wonder why he used a purple wig, instead of a more neutral colour. That’s one thing that’s kept bugging me about this series: the ridiculous hair colours. I know it’s anime and all, but they remain annoying. It works much better if people just walk around in colours that actually exist. Especially since the only people who seem to be affected by these colours are the ones important to the plot…

In this episode we also learn that Louise’s father is a great financer of the A-Laws. That explains her high position, and likeliness of being involved at important places. It makes sense, although she ended up living next to Setsuna in the first episode of the first season a bit too conveniently. Still, I’m glad to see that she’s maturing really fast. The only thing I ask of her is not to go emo like Saji’s doing. There’s a fine line between genuine drama and downright emo, and Saji’s been continuing to hop over that line through the process of the series (thankfully though, he’s the only one so far, and I’d like to keep it that way).

Short Synopsis: Ran&co go skiing during their holidays.
Highlights: Most natural storytelling of the entire series.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,0/10 (Excellent)
It’s episodes like this that really make me ask the following question:

Why the heck didn’t the creators just ditch the original novels and went with their own direction? Seriously.

And don’t get me wrong, the novels are by no means not enjoyable, and admittedly they remain flawed. There’s simply no continuity or character development whatsoever; the novels were animated in a random order, and you wouldn’t suspect the difference unless you knew. The creators of the anime have a vision, though. They somehow made the lacking novel stories fun to watch until the end, and they seized every chance at filler to include some development so that at least Midori comes out as a complex character. On top of that, the fact remains that the banter between the characters is consistently at its best during the filler episodes. These guys know how to make an anime dammit!

This is why I don’t mind it at all when an anime simply ditches the story of its original source material and goes into a different direction. It only becomes a bad thing when the anime creators clearly aren’t up to the task (I’m looking at you, Romeo and Juliet), but that would have been the same if they decided to follow the original source material (I’m looking at you, Hatenkou Yuugi). What matters is whether or not the creators have a vision. Himitsu ~ The Revelation’s original stories were very capable ones for example, and the anime creators had enough inspiration for the manga’s unique premise, so they just decided to go with their own look at the story, resulting in two different views at the same subject in anime- and manga-form.

In any case, with this episode, the filler episodes for this series have unfortunately come to an end, since there are two novels left to be animated. What I hope is that the anime creators chose the order of the stories so, that the best ones would be saved for last, so that the series at least isn’t going to end with a bad taste.

About this episode, I really liked that this has been the episode that felt the most natural of all of the cases so far. Ran and the others don’t conveniently happen to run into a case. There was just one coincidence that felt a bit weird, but apart from that everything made sense: Ran and Midori actually went to the resort, searching for a local legend about a snow woman. The legend turns out to be wrong, it was the ghost of a fox that took the form of a little girl. The fox was attached to one particular person when it was still alive, and when it called out to it, Ran picked up the same waves, involving her with the story. They then use their powers to reunite the two, and act as a sort of medium between the two. As a result, the climax was rather quiet, but very sweet.

Short Synopsis: Fan Hulic and Miranda stop by another group of rebels opposing Tytania.
Highlights: That battle was more like it
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
When this episode promised to shift the focus back to Fan Hulic&co, I feared for a bit, but to my surprise it ended up pretty good. There was no Lyra, and the whole episode continued to contribute to the much-needed depth of the pirates. All in al, an episode well spent. Just as I hoped, the setting is slowly taking shape in this series, promising some good stuff for the future of this series.

In this episode, the rebels manage to destroy one of the many fortresses of Tytania. They’re of course very happy about what they’ve achieved, but something tells e that Tytana isn’t just going to sit and let the rebels do their thing. The leader of the rebels especially seems to be a bit too confident, so I don’t think he really thought of some sort of back-up plan in case things get screwed.

I also liked that it’s immediately clear what repercussions Tyrandia’s demise had: prises have suddenly risen, poverty increased, people started stealing and looting. So yeah, the guys from Tytania really are a bunch of bastards, even though apart from Idris, they aren’t portrayed as such. Speaking of which, this episode finally shows him not having his way, which I appreciate. I think he’s trying to get in Ariabart’s way out of a strange kind of rivalry.

One thing I’m missing in this series is character background, though. It may be that this has been subtly mentioned here and there and I didn’t pick that up because I’m watching raw, but there’s hardly anything known about the different characters’ pasts, which is a shame since we’re dealing with a cast full of adults. I mean, everyone has to have his or her own story, but so far we don’t get to see anything of that.

Oh boy, time flies by fast. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been ding this for three years at this point. Last year I celebrated this by showing some statistics (props to Google Analytics), which is what I’m going to do this time as well.

General Statistics:
Up till now, I’ve made 2217 posts, regularly blogged 80 television series and 11 movies and OVAs.
The site has been received 1661636 unique visitors, which consist out of 1037409 first time visitors and 624227.
10025 comments have been posted (many thanks to everyone who posted one)

Top-10 Most Accessed Series:
(note that this list is from the past year only, otherwise it’d just look too much like the list I made a year ago)
10. Mobile Suit Gundam 00
9. Macross Frontier
8. Jigoku Shoujo
7. Baccano!
6. Dennou Coil
5. Shion no Ou
4. Ghost Hound
3. Les Miserables
2. Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
1. Saiunkoku Monogatari

Top-10 Most Accessed Posts: (Thankfully a lot less crazy than last year)
10. Darker than Black Review
9. School Days Review
8. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Review
7. Shigurui Review
6. Sword of the Stranger Review
5. Autumn Season 2007 Preview
4. Himitsu ~The Revelation~ - 02 (why this one of all posts that I made got so many hits… I don’t know…)
3. Summer Season 2008 Preview
2. Spring Season 2008 Preview
1. Top 10 Anime
(An interesting observation is that none of my series reviews made the list when I made it a year ago, and now it’s full of them)

Top-10 Google Keywords: (aside from the obvious ones as “psgels”, “star crossed” and variations of “top 10 anime”)
10. himitsu the revelation
9. dennou coil
8. darker than black review
7. soul eater 12
6. shion no ou
5. takane no jitensha (surprising amount of people that are interested in this cute but unremarkable ova)
4. saiunkoku monogatari
3. porfy sucks (No, really. The counter is on freaking 1636 hits for that one. Why in god’s name 1636 people feel like finding out how much Porfy sucks is beyond me. )
2. baccano
1. shigurui

Amusing searh-terms (or downright weird ones)
“school days” anime very annoying - I agree!

anime ep spanking high girl ass - Really nice to see that those who visit my site for mature reasons…

battle programer psgels - That sounds kindof nice…

claymore pee - For god’s sake… why?

incest with my mother - You don’t need to tell that to the world…

psgels eats cake - mmm… cake…

it is not hard to know that the sprng season is coming - indeed, it isn’t!

why is the season called autumn & not something else - um, good question…

psgels is gay for porfy - I can’t believe that people are actually searching for this…

true tires anime - The next Initial D!

which girl is shinichiro in true tears - Oh, the fan-fiction….

“she turns evil” - How did you end up here?

psgels fails at life - I’d like to meet the bastard who typed this and have a long and thoughtful discussion with him. >:(

“skunk rising” - what the…?

“which question is this” - it isn’t this one…

‘by the big slippers of big slipperdom’ - This one’s my favourite ^^;

10001001010100

[qq[]q]qq]q]q][][][][][][] - Do not ask me what these guys were hoping to find with this, let alone how they ended up at this site…

3d too - 4D three!

; that explains a lot - it does!

a bishie in toshokan sensou i won’t have it! - unite and destroy the bisies in Toshokan Sensou!

anime girl gives kid money in bag made from magic illegal angry cars float - this is actually a pretty nice idea.

what does it mean when im getting pushed by a ghots - prolly that your spelling goes wonky

Short Synopsis: Um… yeah. To put it without spoilers: Ouri and Minai become friends.
Highlights: Not going to put that here for spoilers’ sake.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
At times like this, I really feel out of touch with the rest of the anime blogging community. What really is so boring about this series? When I read posts like this one, I keep wondering why nearly everyone finds this series so boring. Annoying I can understand. Even though he’s got a bigger role and purpose than your average male lead, I can see Ouri getting on people’s nerves. But boring?

In any case, this episode was… unpredictable to say the least. Here I thought that the previous episode was busy introducing a new important couple for this series, and then this episode kills them off, for goodness’ sake. It also was a pretty pathetic and unorthodox death: the monk dies after he gets too carried away in a fight against a bunch of punks he upset a few episodes ago, which makes Minai turn into an ordinary Shikabane, needing to be killed.

Ouri was of course a bit annoying and gave me some Senkawa-flashbacks. But just like his counterpart, this all remains within acceptable boundaries. The two of them have enough other traits and purposes. The thing I hate about typical male leads is not their archetypes, but rather that most of them are simple, pointless and uninspired stereotypes. As long as they’re fleshed out sufficiently and the show around them provides enough interesting other material, they’re fine by me. Either that, or I’ve just gotten tired of complaining about them. ^^;

In any case, this episode was definitely meant to show that this is an Anyone Can Die-series. Combine that with the fact that this is Gainax, coupled with the foreshadowing of the previous episodes and yes, I think we should fear for Keisei’s life here. Could it be that Gainax choose such a show with a Kamina-like-character to adapt on purpose? It’d really be something I’d imagine them do.

Although do me one favour and introduce some more guys in this series. They’re really starting to run out this way, and this is the criticism I agree with: a lot of anime somehow feature way more girls then guys. But then again, as soon as more guys start getting introduced, people start screaming “YAOI! DO NOT WANT!”, et cetera, so that also isn’t the optimal solution.

Short Synopsis: Michiko tries to get Hatchin back.
Highlights: No, don’t ask me why two episodes aired on the same day.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
While the strange broadcast schedule of this series is beyond me, I’m definitely not the one to complain at this point. This episode ranked among the best of the series so far, along with episode 4. It’s ironic: just when I labelled this series as a mostly serious one, it comes with such a fun yet exciting climax. I must say though, that this series knows exactly when it needs to be serious and funny, although it’s a bit unorthodox in this aspect. Most series that have a bit of comedy feature a fun build-up and a dark climax, but instead this series has a dark build-up and a fun climax. That’s something you really don’t see very often, but it works like a charm.

In this episode, we get confirmed that Atsuko and Michiko grew up at the same orphanage as where Michiko tried to dump Hatchin at in the previous episode. What I especially like is the relationship between the caretaker and Michiko right now. Michiko used to fight all the time, but right now they’ve got a strange sort of hate/friends relationship that’s interesting to watch. The caretaker was surprisingly well developed in such a short time. I really like her.

But yeah, the highlight of this episode was really the climax. The previous episode seemed to suggest that the fat guy was someone to take into consideration, but instead he’s just one big loser who happens to have a bit of power and eats too much. It was fun to see Michiko dress up as a matador and chasing him. It was awesome to see Hatchin escape from him, and trying to fight the bull with a ladle. The reunion also was really cute.

This series has proven to not only be well written, but also very diverse. Next week had better not be a hiatus, but either way: I’m sold.

Short Synopsis: Michiko tells Hatchin a few things about her past.
Highlights: It becomes more and more apparent how misleading that OP is…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
That OP… it definitely belongs in the category of misleading. It’s a very colourful and cheerful piece of art, that makes you think that this series would have the same fun factor as Samurai Champloo…

Well… no. I feel that this is the episode where this series shows its true colours. As it turns out, Michiko was involved into a huge gang-fight and power-struggles before she got locked up. This episode seems to suggest that she ended up in prison because she once made a wrong move and provoked the wrong kinds of people. This episode really showed that there’s much, much more to her character than she originally showed.

I mean, she remains an irresponsible woman. In this episode however, we can see that she’s starting to regret what she did, as she suddenly realizes that the gang-fights are still out there. I’m still not exactly sure what she did to invoke the wrath of a gang for twelve years, but hopefully the future episodes will shed light on that. Anyway, because she finally starts realizing that Hatchin could get in trouble, she drops her off at a local orphanage for safety. Obviously, she didn’t take into account that it costs money to do that, so Hatchin ends up getting kidnapped at the end of the episode.

And the whole mystery around what happened with Hiroshi still isn’t much clearer. First I thought that he was the fat guy, but that turns out to be somebody else (who I guess was the one who made sure that Michiko ended up in jail). This episode still doesn’t explain why Hiroshi abandoned Hatchin, though, or who was Hatchin’s mother, but I do now understand why Michiko is so keen on Hatchin. She probably sees Hiroshi in her, and the good times they had together. And this episode also confirms: Hatchin has the tattoo on her belly.

Seriously, here I thought that this series would be a fun-filled travel adventure, in the same veins as El Cazador. Boy, was I wrong, but this series makes optimal use of its setting this way. That’s why I’m so annoyed that 90% of all anime takes place in Japan. The samurai-period is nice and all, and it has produced some awesome series, but there are many more interesting settings with potential all over the world, in lots of different time settings. You just have to have the guts to find them and base a story around them. Gunslinger Girl is also a good example of this: it took the political power struggles of the country, added a bit of science fiction, and voilá: an excellent set-up for a story.