January 23, 2009

Tytania - 15

Filed under: Finished Series:/Tytania



Short Synopsis: Space battles? What space battles?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
This series really is something different. Here we have Fan Hulic, he’s wanted by the entire country of Tytania, he’s just won a big battle against the empire, he’s seen as a hero now even more, so what does he do? He spends an entire episode staying at the house of a little girl and doing silly dances. Don’t get me wrong, this series is awesome, but SO NOT in the way I thought it’d be. XD

Because yeah, the fact remains that this would have been a pretty boring episode otherwise: Fan is depressed over the death of Lyra and sees the light at the end of this episode. It’s really one of these typical episodes that you see everywhere, just like the beach-episode or the “defeat the big bad guy”-finale-episode: they appear so often that they really get predictable and boring unless something special or extraordinary spices it up. In this episode this was Kallen and her strange yet energetic personality. And that mother of hers who doesn’t find it strange for her teenaged daughter to bring a strange man who’s about twice her age home of course. ^^;

And Bertrand! The poor bugger actually survived! The creators of this series really love to bring people back from the dead, only to let them struggle like a fish on dry land for an episode before fileting them for real. In this episode he’s given a final chance to find Fan Hulic, but instead of immediately arresting the guy, Idris commands him to wait things out for a bit longer. This allows Fan to escape before the forces to defeat him can even properly arrive. And that’s saying a lot, since Fan really wasn’t that focused on fleeing this episode.

Oh, and to close off. I don’t often praise this series for its gorgeous visuals, but I do have to say that this episode featured some pretty backgrounds. Could it actually be that the creators saved the biggest part of the budget for this series for the second half? Now that’s a new one.

Genji Monogatari Sennenki - 02

Filed under: Finished Series:/Genji Monogatari Sennenki



Short Synopsis: Geni tries to conquer his next target.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
I really have no idea why I always tend to blog the shows with the most difficult dialogues. Especially with this series, it’s going to be really hard for me to try and figure out what the heck is going on, since not only is the dialogue incredibly complex, the show also hardly uses any concrete visual storytelling, and instead it uses its visuals mostly as emotions and symbolism. It’s the same with White Album in a way: you really need to pay attention, otherwise the episodes get an entirely different meaning.

Noitamina is a very interesting timeslot indeed. While usually most major anime air either in the spring or autumn-season, for this timeslot the best series have nearly always premiered in the winter- and summer-seasons, and with the exception of Moyashimon and Hataraki Man the shows that premiered in the timeslot during the spring and autumn seasons so far have been disappointments (mostly due to the fact that they tried to stuff too much source material into only 11 episodes).

Which does bring us to a potential problem with this series: the original story consisted out of 54(!) novels. How the heck is Osamu Dezaki planning to stuff that into just eleven episodes? The first episode covered the first novel, which still leaves 53 left. However, I have heard that the guy is very good at summarizing with his adaptations of Air and Clannad into movies (I’ve yet to see them, though), so who knows what he can to with this story?

And don’t get me wrong, so long as I’m not seeing any signs of a rushed storyline, then this series is among my favourites of the shows, premiered at the past Winter-Season, along with Birdy the Mighty Decode 2. While not rushed, it also doesn’t waste any time to get to the development of Genji, and the first two episodes so far have been very powerful romance. Osamu Dezaki is also really in his element again with his visual effects. While the animation is again not that impressive, the amount of filters and camera-shots really work.