While Nagagutsu Sanjuushi was a bad example of a nonsensical anime, Prime Rose - A Time Slip of 10000 years is a good example of such a series. The result of combining Osamu Tezuka and Osamu Dezaki in a movie from the eighties is pretty weird. There are many times at which the movie simply didn’t make any sense at all, but it definitely was entertaining.

This movie too has some plot twists that simply lack build-up. We see the story about a time patrol unit who travels 10000 years into the future to save two entire cities. Why the time patrol only can send a young male and a ten-year-old brat is never answered, we’re just left to assume that things happen the way they do, and there are a few more plot twists like these.

But unlike Nagagutsu Sanjuushi, this movie has plenty of things to make up for it. The amount of imagination that went into this work is really Tezuka-worthy. The monster-designs in particular look really sweet, and you can see that a lot of creativity went into the making of this movie. That’s something I can really appreciate.

The characters are also interesting enough to keep the movie fresh, and especially Prime Rose surprised me: at the start of the movie we’re led to believe that she’s a simple damsel in distress, while she grows into a feisty warrior and the heroine of the movie. In fact, all of the major characters get enough screentime and development for the timespan of a one-hour movie. Oh, and I just have to mention the soundtrack, which is an excellent one: very varied with catchy tunes that never get in the way of the important scenes.

While nothing extremely special, this movie is a recommendation for any Tezuka-fan out there, it’s really typical of his works: not the most solid or realistic, but a whole lot of fun to watch with young-looking characters who somehow don’t end up annoying. There are a few cameos out there from his other works and Osamu Dezaki did a good job of making his manga come to life.

Nagagutsu Sanjuushi is the second movie that Saiei released recently. It too dates from the time when there was no Studio Ghibli yet, and anime still tried to be like Disney. So, what does that mean? Talking animals, of course! Nagagutsu Sanjuushi is a western with a cat as main character. Unfortunately, it’s a lot less fun than Andersen Monogatari.

While it originally has the potential to become a good family movie, but it’s bad writing that got in the way here. This movie hardly takes any time to explain what the heck is going on. Often, characters do completely random things that make no sense at all, just to keep the story going. There’s hardly any time spent on explaining the how and why of things. In fact, this goes on so badly that NONE of the characters received any important background whatsoever. We never get to know who these people are, or why they’re doing the things they do. Especially in the case of the main character this is jarring: he’s just… there, without any possible explanation what he’s doing here or why he involves himself with the plot.

So overall, we’ve got a movie that’s a lot of bark and no bite. It’s badly written and the creators don’t care at all about continuity, and the endless stupidity of the characters doesn’t help either. Sure, I know that it’s a children’s movie, but even then you shouldn’t have characters with the intelligence of a baboon’s backside running across the screen. The only merit this movie has is one fun, but completely non-sensical chase scenes.

Short Synopsis: A building-up episode before the next big clash between A-Laws and Celestial Beings.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
At first I wasn’t that positive about this episode, as hardly anything seemed to happen at all. What I’m especially bugged about is how the Coup d’Etat really didn’t accomplish anything: the rebels are gone, A-Laws is back to being A-Laws. What the heck was the point of it besides killing off Sergei? I think that’s the biggest problem with the second season of Gundam 00: it’s just too damn one-sided. In the first episodes, we see the Celestial Beings fighting against A-Laws. Eighteen episodes later, and we still have the Celestial Beings fighting against A-Laws. It really hasn’t evolved that much at all.

Nevertheless, near the end of the episode I suddenly realized how good this episode was. There was hardly any fighting, but instead it focused on developing all of the major couples in this episode: Setsuna and Saji, Soma and Allelujah, Marina and the kids, Lyle and Anew (!?), Louise and Andrei, Claus and Shirin, Saji and Louise, Wang and Ribbons, Regene and Ribbons, et cetera. I especially liked how when everyone sortied, they said the names for the ones most important to them. For Setsuna this was his Gundam, and Tieria had Veda. Now that’s the reason why these two are some of my favourite characters of this series. ^^;

So yeah, while the plot really hasn’t been moving anywhere, the characters thankfully are making lots of progress, and especially Saji and Louise feel a lot less annoying compared to their stupidity in the first three quarters of the series. They’re actually preparing themselves to kill each other in the battlefield, and I like how Louise finally has a new boyfriend. It’s just a shame that she chose the third most annoying character of the cast…

Short Synopsis: Touya helps Misaki with her story, while Yuki records her new song.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
I really have hardly anything to say about this episode. It was over before I knew it, and mostly spent its time building up for the future episodes. My brain feels kind-of empty after watching this episode, which quite possibly is a good thing.

This episode was all about Tooya, spending time with Misaki, while trying to keep this a secret from Yuki. The only real cheating that Touya has done so far is with Yuki’s manager, though at the same time, I think that Yuki isn’t going to be happy when she finds out about how Touya has been spending his time with all these girls. Oh, and the creators did give Hirano Aya a small chance to sing in this episode. She did it quite well, and remained within her subtle voice. I also liked how the producers made Yuki do the song over and over. Most of the times in these idol-anime, the lead characters get these songs immediately right after one or two takes, while in reality it probably takes much longer to get a satisfying result.

Short Synopsis: A girl who likes to send her stories to a well-known radio-host calls Jigoku Tsuushin.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
I really wonder what Ai is doing behind that computer of hers. “Ippen Shinde Miru… wait, let me check my e-mail first”.

In any case, we have another standard episode again, this time about teenaged girls and their idols, where we have a young teenaged girl whose hopes are crushed when she finds out that her idol simply reads a pre-written script. Well, that’s multimedia. Even “reality”-shows are written by professional scriptwriters nowadays, but it must have been quite a shock for the poor girl to find out about this.

Okay, and so I was wrong: Yuzuki most definitely isn’t going to be the next Tsugumi, this series is simply using her to build u for this series’ finale. She hasn’t done anything to stop the revenges at this point. All she’s done so far is failing. You’d think that at episode 18 she’d at least book some sort of progress, but now I’m sure that the creators are really saving the best of her for the show’s finale.

Overall, now that the finale is about to begin, it’s time to look back at the past season. Overall, the random stories in the third season have been the weakest of the three seasons of Jigoku Shoujo so far. The good thing about them is that they always picked out some extreme taboo and started playing with it. The bad thing is the lack of variety. Compared to the first season, the cases now all look like each other, while the first season had a number of very creative and surprising stories, despite the show’s formula. Nevertheless, this series never lost track of its atmosphere, and the stories never fail to entertain, so even though it’s not as good as the previous seasons, I’m not disappointed by this series at all and would love to see a fourth season. ^^;