Saiei is of course a great source for the raw watcher who’s interested in ancient gems that nobody’s heard of. They recently added three new movies, among which is Andersen Monogatari. Having never heard of the movie, I expected to see some WMT-esque kaleidoscope through Hans Christian Andersen’s most well known stories.

What I got… was something completely different.

For those who thought that anime in its infancy has no creativity whatsoever when compared to today’s standards…. this movie is here to prove you wrong. The movie was produced in 1968, and seriously: it’s one heck of a crack job. The movie somehow features Hans Christan Andersen as a ten year old boy, and we see his childhood through all sorts of references to the stories and characters that he later was going to write, helped by… a bratty cat, a bunch of mice and a very weird old guy who flies with an umbrella. I wouldn’t be surprised if the creators were under influence of god knows what sort of drug when they wrote this.

Ultimately though, despite all of the weirdness it’s a pretty good fantasy movie, and especially the kids will love the singing and all of the random ideas and fantasies thrown at the screen. As for the more older viewers, it’s obviously going to be a matter of taste: it’s not for everyone, but if you’re into the childish stuff (and don’t care how childish you can get) and happen to locate this movie, then it’s a pretty good recommendation. The animation is also its time very far ahead for an anime that was produced in the sixties. As for myself, there were some particular scenes where I really burst out with laughing (that dog was awesome), and the few serious parts are also really nicely integrated with the randomness of the rest of the movie. Just don’t expect any common sense in this one.

Bones’ latest series is one full of ambition. Aired on the PS3-network, Bonen no Xamdou tells the epic story of a war between two warring countries, centred around a bunch of different main characters and some of the most amazing production values. While not everything went well for this series, and it’s got quite some big flaws here and there, it gets so many points for trying.

What makes this series so awesome is how it prefers natural progression of story-lines above forced climaxes, especially in the first three quarters of the series. Instead of focusing on battle after battle, the creators let everything flow very smoothly, with especially care to flesh out the world that this series takes place in. Akiyuki, the lead character, while he’s a typical teenager at the beginning of the series soon grows into someone as far from your average lead character as you can get. While the story focuses on him, he hardly ever stands in the centre of attention, and instead various of the side characters get to play the hero-part.

This allows for a unique storyline with a fantastic attention to detail that’s the closest to the levels of Seirei no Moribito that I’ve seen so far. The characters also live in a very imaginative world that’s very interesting to explore, with lots of new concepts and ideas. Things like Hirukos, Humanforms and Xam’ds are nice takes on the usual superpowers and super-weapons that you usually see.

The problem, however, is that even though this series is an incredibly solid one, it’s also a series that bit off a bit more than it could chew. The 26 episodes are way too short in order to fully develop everything that’s in this show, and the results of this start showing up in the final quarter of this series. It features the one big climax after the other, but when you look at the big picture it just feels lacking and incomplete because the different settings and characters couldn’t be fully developed. As a result, characters pull random powers and plot twists out of nowhere and big deaths that would make lots of emotional impact with the right amount of development and foreshadowing simply feel like they could have been done better.

In terms of production values, however, this series is really as good as it can possibly get, especially for such a relatively long series. Because the series originally wasn’t aired on local TV, it didn’t have to spend a lot of money on the broadcasting rights, and all of this excess money was put into the series’ animation, with some absolutely gorgeous results. The animation is consistently through 26 episodes of top-notch HD quality, characters are very expressive and every single one of the many action scenes are simply godly animated.

So overall, there’s plenty of great stuff left in this series, but at the same time I’m also a bit bitter: if it had simply gotten more episodes, this really could have been a contender for the best series of the year, possibly the decade. It would have been truly outstanding in every aspect, while right now it’s simply a well written but incomplete series that has a rushed finale.

Short Synopsis: Bonen no Xamdou’s finale.
Episode Rating: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
Well, there we have it. This unique series is finished at last, even though the finish comes way too soon. Still, this episode did a good job of providing closure to the different characters, so while not a great ending, it wasn’t a bad or rushed either.

But let me first focus on the one big disappointment of this episode: Akiyuki. What the heck was up with him? His character had so much potential in this series, and yet his death felt so… insignificant. It’s the main character everyone should be caring about, and yet when he died, I was more interested in Yango. But that would have been excused if not for the incredibly blatant deus ex machina that the creators pulled at the episode. I really expected better from this series…

Okay, now the good stuff. The characters I really liked in this episode was the Zanbani crew minus Benikawa and Yango. Not haru, or any of the other main characters, only they were the ones who received good closure in this series. I think that that’s the result of the very strong first half of this series, and all of the attention it focused on fleshing out their characters, and with that I suddenly realize how little we came to know about the rest of the cast.

I’m not really sure what kind of rating I’m going to give this show at this point. At one side, this show had some really good points and parts, but on the other hand it would have been so much better if it were longer. I’m not sure who found it a good idea to only give this series a scope of 26 episodes, because that sole decision caused this series to simply become a great series, instead of the incredible, genre-breaking one that it could have been. I remember how Eureka 7 also had some pacing issues, but at least that one had enough time to fully flesh out its characters for its amazing finale, while in comparison I’m going to remember Bonen no Xamdou’s final quarter, despite its godly animation, as the weakest part of this series.

Short Synopsis: Ouri vs. Keisei & Keisei & Keisei & Keisei & etc.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
I’m really glad that my fears that the extra shounen roots would ruin the second season proved to be unnecessary, because the creators have found more than enough inspiration to keep this series interesting and exciting, so in the end the only big problem of the second season is simply the lack of subtlety in the fanservice.

This episode eliminates one of the seven stars, and what I especially liked was that the creators managed to squeeze in a bit of background about her before she died. Her death also had quite a bit of impact due to some particularly nice voice acting. Next episode should prove to be even more fun, because finally “boob”-sama is going to play a big role. It’s very nice: the past few episodes have so emphasized that shikabane aren’t humans, and because of that Ouri had no problems with killing all of the fake Keiseis. But here we have the case where a living being has been possessed by the balloon guy (who looked really scary this episode, by the way). Now that’s going even further. On top of that, it’s revealed that Akira and Mabuhiro are planning to kill the head priest, so there’s plenty of fun stuff left for this series.

The only thing that’s a shame about this second season apart from the fanservice is that the animation has also become much worse. It’s still good enough, but nowhere near as dynamic as the animation of the first season. That second episode got me hungry, but apart from the visual effects most of the eye candy isn’t as impressive anymore. Still, in order to make up for it, the creators decided to focus much more on the music. It’s strange, most of the tracks were also there in the first season, but somehow they sound even better right now.

Short Synopsis: Lyuze finds a bit of time to reflect on herself.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
It’s episodes like this that really set Casshern Sins apart from all other anime out there. It just takes one single character, and easily manages to fill the 20 minutes of an episode with it while other series even have trouble to fill up five minutes. While CxL may have found this episode disappointing (which I don’t get, by the way; the entire episode was about Lyuze, what more could you want?!), I really loved this episode. This really is one of the reasons I originally fell in love with this series.

Throughout the episode, you really have trouble to figure out what’s real and what’s not. In fact, I even dare to assume that this entire episode simply happened within Lyuze’s head: otherwise we would have seen Ringo somewhere. The enemy robots, her crumbling sister who appeared over and over again, the strange guy who came from out of nowhere to hit on her, I think that all of them symbolized the doubts that are inside of her. We hardly saw anything of her personal troubles for the past few episodes, but I think that throughout the series, she more and more hid her own personal worries inside of her, instead of unleashing them on Casshern, like she did when she first met Casshern.

And I do have to say that Lyuze was nearly as cute as Ringo when she was young. In this episode, this younger version of her really helped her complete her character-development and accept Casshern, which has been built up for the past ten episodes or so. Before, she believed that she only lived for her revenge on Casshern (hey, the ruin was going to kill her anyway, so she might as well use her last life to take revenge), but she finally sees that the death of her sister did have one positive side-effect: it made her meet Casshern.

Now then, to relate this back to the previous episode: if it indeed is true that love is the recipe for immortality, then I think that Lyuze just attained it. It’s interesting how love in this series is some sort of contagious disease: Luna started it, then Casshen got “infected”, and now it’s his turn to introduce love to Lyuze.