December 6, 2008

Telepathy Shoujo Ran - 24

Filed under: Finished Series:/Telepathy Shoujo Ran



Short Synopsis: Animals start acting strangely in Ran’s hometown.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Well, it’s finally time for this series’ finale, and as it turns out I was wrong about the amount of novel volumes: there are just eight of them, not nine. The final arc, if I’m not mistaken, comes from the third or fourth volume, which proves that the creators really grabbed themselves the opportunity to select the most appropriate story for the series’ finale.

And I must say that up till now, they’ve made a pretty good choice. After all, they could just as well have gotten with the… Snake Island Arc… Yeah, that would have been exciting. Anyway, this episode definitely served its purpose as introduction. As usual with the introduction-episodes to these arcs, nothing much exciting happened, and yet this episode in particular had something ominous: you know something really bad is about to happen, and this episode did a great job of building up that feeling. Especially those crows crashing into the window were… strange to say the least. And yeah, so what if it’s nowhere explained why this evil spirit has chosen this time and space to re-awaken. This series was never famous for its brilliant introductions. ^^;

And the end of the series had another advantage: the series was planned well, and so there’s lots of nice budget left for some solid animation for that final arc. Especially the scene following the pillow thrown at Rui showed that the animators had lots of fun animating it. This episode also brought Ran’s class to life a bit by its small attention to the new teacher and one of the random classmates. So overall I’m happy.

Please, let this series end with a good climax, instead of a downer.

Jigoku Shoujo - 62

Filed under: Finished Series:/Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A boy whose mother is nearly committing adultery calls the Jigoku Tsuushin.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
(A small note: I’ve decided to pull the “highlights”-bit from my entry introductions. I just have too much trouble for each episode to come up with something to say in it)

A surprisingly quiet and focused episode for this series. The whole themes of sending someone to hell who doesn’t deserve it still remains, but for once the main character spends a lot of time trying to figure out whether it’s worth it to send a random guy to hell, just because he’s toying around with his mother.

What we have here is a typical mother’s boy. His parents are starting to live apart from each other: his mother is irresponsible and only thinks off buying pretty kimonos, while his father is out all the time and takes out his frustrations on his wife. Very down to earth flaws… when compared to all the emo teenagers of the past few episodes (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, of course ^^;).

For once, I also felt that the main character in this episode was smart. At least for a Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuaganae-main character anyways. Sure, he does send a random guy he dislikes to hell, but in the end he does come out as a bad character: he feels regret, and yet is willing to move on despite the screw-up he made. He realizes that it’s his mother’s nature to want to be surrounded by guys who tell her she’s great, and I understand how Hone Onna could sympathize with the mother.

I think that at this point, Yuzuki should become the next Tsugumi. In this episode, she got enough chances at trying to save the next victim of Enma Ai, but she took none of them. Where the main guy learned from his mistakes, you should suspect that the same is going to happen to Yuzuki. In any case, it would be great for her to become more than just a simple bystander. While I’m normally in favour of main characters who simply play as bystanders, it shouldn’t be that their roles become completely oblivious. I mean, has she actually done something useful in the series?