Short Synopsis: Natsume and his two classmates pay a visit to an old inn.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Yeah, now I’m sure: this series SO needs a third season. What this series needs now more than anything is some sort of continuing story, and according to the manga readers, that indeed is about to appear, though there’s no way that the creators are going to fit that in only five more episodes. Let’s hope that the higher-ups of Brains Base feel the same way. ^^;

In any case, this episode was a great way to flesh out Natsume’s classmates a bit more, as they invite Natsume to an inn in order to spend some quality time on their homework (read: goof off). The second half of the episode deals with the story an old woman who in her childhood used the blood of a mermaid to save a friend she looked up to a lot.

Most of the episode was about both the woman and the mermaid coming to terms as to what they had done, so that both of them could receive proper closure. A standard story for this series, but it’s still a really charming story.

A few months ago, I was asked if I could do a post once in a while about some of my other interests aside from anime. It took me a while to think of something interesting to write, but I figured that I might as well use this post to keep track of the different books and novels I read from time to time. Do note that this list is over the scope of a couple of years: I’m a very slow reader, and usually take three months to finish one book. These all have nothing whatsoever to do with anime or Japan: most are either American thrillers, fantasy or European history, or a combination between these. Do note that some of these entries contain spoilers.

The Dreamers 1: The Island Thurn - David Eddings & Leigh Eddings
A story that takes place in a fantasy world, where a huge focus is spent on building up, and setting everything up correctly. While it’s a bit too caught up in its need to do everything by the book, give every single character background and enough time to develop, up to the point that there’s not much excitement along the way (nothing really happens through the first three quarters of the book), it does deliver nicely in the end, although nothing spectacular.

The Magic Circle - Catherine Neville
The prime example of how you can also get too convoluted. This novel set out with grand ambitions, as it attempted to tell a plot that spreads across 2000 years, with a story containing a huge amount of symbolism, referencing Jesus, Hitler some Roman Emperors and other notable historical figures all caught up in it. In the end, though, it becomes clear that it never really knew what it wanted to go for, and the story didn’t really accomplish anything, other than establishing the ridiculously complex family history of the female lead character. Seriously, in the end the twists about her family became so formulaic that you can almost predict the exact page at which the next increasingly ludicrous plot twist would arrive. It’s got a lot of nice trivia, though. The author really did some intensive historical research on this one.

The Collectors - David Baldacci
A very nice in-depth look in how con artists do their jobs, as we follow a group of four of them as they try to get away with a multi-million dollar scam. Great attention to detail, and a huge focus on careful preparation, only ruined by a joke of an ending which forsakes everything that the story has been building up for and instead goes for a nonsensical action end. The other story that runs parallel through the book also isn’t the most interesting: a bunch of old people solving a murder may sound good on paper, but it’s not the most exciting thing out there.

The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
Excellent book, and I still need to get my hands on the continuation of this one. The whole idea of every person being accompanied by his own daemon (a sort-of animal that accompanies him everywhere; they even can change shapes for children) is fleshed out really well. The lead character may be just a little girl, but she’s a very likable lead. This is one story that gets increasingly better as it goes on.

Gone Baby Gone - Dennis Lehane
Absolutely fantastic. There’s no other way I can say it. The sheer imagination with which such a police thriller is told still amazes me. It’s an in-depth look at police cases involving missing children. It tells the story about two detectives, looking for a missing four year-old girl, and continues to keep the reader in the dark throughout the largest part of the book. But when a second child disappears, it finishes with an incredibly strong final quarter. I can safely say that this has been the best book I’ve ever read.

The Lost Labyrinth - Kate Mosse
This book tells about two stories as they intertwine: one about 12th century Carcasonne (France), and the other, happening about 8 centuries later. The former one is really good, with a likable female lead and a story that gets increasingly more interesting. The latter, however, just feels like second fodder in comparison. It’s full of plot holes, lacks detail and especially the romance that pops up near the end from out of nowhere feels a bit jarring. It’s got quite a few nice ideas, though.

Deverry: Daggerspell - Katherine Kerr
I’m only nearly halfway through this one at the moment, but I’m having a lot of trouble to get through it. Basically, this book is the first one of a large series of fantasy novels as it tells of a series of very annoying romances. Seriously, we have this guy who already was screwed in the head. His father dies and he continuously angsts and throws tantrums about it. He then proceeds to screw his sister and kill his best friend (no, really). When the bugger finally dies, you’d think that the annoyance finally stops, but no: he reincarnates, and the annoying romance starts all over again. Sure, in the end the story might have a very good conclusion, but I’m about to just drop it because people continue to behave like complete and unlikable imbeciles.

So yeah, one thing I noticed is that each medium has its own share of strengths and weaknesses. The things I noticed with these novels is that in nearly all cases, the thing that decides whether they succeed or not is their final quarter, the rest is all or mostly build-up. Nearly all of the above-mentioned ones either had very promising first halves, only to fall apart completely in the end, or fairly uneventful first halves, only to come together wonderfully in the end.

Another thing I can appreciate is the large diversity of lead characters. Okay, I may have just picked out the right books for this, but it feels like every lead character of the ones mentioned above comes from a different age group, as opposed to anime which tents to usually pick out teenagers. Still, the reason why I prefer anime to novels at this point is that novels lack the ability to suck me in and create an atmosphere. I’m a big fan of all sorts of things multimedia, and the thing I like about anime is how it combines all these things (audio, visuals, storytelling, etc) in order to create a coherent story. So yeah, in the end it’s just a matter of personal preference here, though with some of the above mentioned books, I’m glad to be able to have read them. Especially in the case of Gone Baby Gone. There are geniuses in every single kind of medium.

I may update this entry in the future as I read more. In the meantime, what are some of your favourite novels? I’m really a noob at this medium, so some help in deciding what to read next is always appreciated. ^^;

One of the things I like about Clamp is that not only do they have a lot of imagination and a great sense of style, but they always try to go for something in a new genre, as opposed just doing the same genre over and over in order to milking their same old cash cows that brought them success (after all, they use their infamous cameos for that ^^;). Angelic Layer is their shounen fighting series: it’s about a nationwide tournament where people battle against each other with children’s toys brought to life. So yeah, it’s a notorious genre if anything, but along the way this series made me drop my scepsis and doubts completely.

It’s hard to see this from a distance, though. Nearly every single battle follows the same formula: Misaki (the lead character) enters battle, Misaki has trouble defeating her opponent, Misaki wins battle. As this series deals with a tournament, the opponents and outcomes for each battle is very heavily influenced by the writers in order to keep the plot on the correct path (after all, you wouldn’t have much of a series if Misaki lost and got kicked out of the tournament halfway through). But it all just doesn’t matter in the end, because Misaki is SO DANM adorable.

In fact, aside from the above mentioned predictability issues, I don’t have any problems with this series at all. This is simply a series that’s fun to watch, and throughout the series it never forgets that it’s supposed to have a consistently fun and fast-paced atmosphere. Even though you know that Misaki is going to win, you just can’t help but root for her, and during the fights it’s always fun to see what’s happening behind the scenes. Most of the characters are fleshed out and developed really well, and this prevents all of the battles from getting boring, and they continue to deliver.

In terms of eye candy, this series also delivers. Bones may not be the perfect studio, but these guys do know their animation. The character-designs look simple, yet very appealing (as expected from Clamp), and they’re brought alive really well in animation. The fights also consist out of mostly hand-to-hand combat, and while the action doesn’t look flashy at all, it is full of life and emotion. When the characters are fighting, there are hardly any close-ups or other cheap animation tricks used. Instead, we get real nicely animated fights that remain fun to watch.

What also sets this series apart from all other shounen fighting series is the lack of a villain, or for that matter any character who even bears a resemblance to one. In this series there is no “I’m going to use the powers of a bunch of child’s toys in order to somehow destroy the world. Mua ha ha ha”. There is an overarching storyline, but for once this is aimed at the characters, instead of the plot. Because of this, this series may abuse the “parents gone”-trope a bit at times, but the results make up for it.

To close off, even though we have a manga adaptation here, it is one of those few manga adaptations which fits perfectly into the time frame of 26 episodes. It’s especially surprising since quite a few of Bones’ series have their pacing issues, but Angelic Layer never feels too slow or too fast. No episode feels wasted or useless and the creators did a really good job in planning this series correctly. Obviously you don’t want to watch this series for a complicated plot, or heart-wrenching drama, but for those who are looking for a fun fighting series with adorable characters that may sacrifice its plot at times, then this series isn’t going to disappoint.

Short Synopsis: The second half of Birdy’s past
Episode Rating: 9/10 (FUCKING EPIC!!!!!!)
Oh my god. This episode was utterly incredible, the best of an already superb and magnificent series. I still can’t believe how amazing and outstanding this show has turned out. I knew it had a splendid director already, but that’s not always the reason to get your hopes up since in 50% of the cases, they just don’t live up to his previous works. Well, I’m glad to say that THIS ONE CERTAINLY HAS! If it continues to get better and better like it is now and the ending doesn’t mess up the story, it could actually make my top 10. The second season is simply brilliant, rich, grandiose, glorious… and I’m going stop now before I run out of adjectives.

Those flashbacks that we kept seeing were incredibly sneaky. Birdy has had deal with a pretty cruel event in her past, and yet we were given no hint to that until this episode. All the scenes that we saw were either from right before or right after Violin got killed. And holy balls, I thought that the terrorists simply detonated a bunch of bombs in central tower, but they slaughtered the entire place completely. Now I also understand why Nataru is so hung up on his past, because what happened there was downright terrible: Ryunka was abducted and protected by the ones that we saw Nataru kill off in the past few episodes. That’s why he hates them so much, because they pretty much ruined the life he could have had with Birdy.

Violin’s death was especially sad since Birdy grew up seeing her not as an android, but simply as her mother. When she got destroyed, this image of her broke completely and Birdy wasn’t even allowed to say a proper goodbye to her, since in her mind, Violin turned into someone completely different from who she grew up with.

And oh my god, the animation! The godly animation! This episode looked downright awesome, especially when the incredibly messy visuals appeared. It looks like Kazuki Akane plans to go further with his specific style than he did in Noein, which is promising SO MUCH goodness for the final episodes of this series. While at first it indeed seemed to be going into the direction of Kemonozume, but the end of this episode truly looked unique, and even went where Kemonozume didn’t go.

The question now remains: who the heck was the person who carried Birdy away later? The only one who he reminds me of is the grown up Natoru, but this show doesn’t seem to be about time travelling, unlike Noein.

Short Synopsis: A scientist calls Jigoku Tsuushin
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
This was definitely the best episode of the third season yet in terms of solid storytelling. Now this is EXACTLY why I’ve become such a big fan of the franchise: it’s nearly always entertaining to see the different revenges, but the real goodness pops up once the story starts touching the main storyline, which is purposefully saved until near the end.

In the third season, where most of the revenges simply looked like each other, this episode stands out as a really unique one, in which it attempts to combine technology with the supernatural. Faking a grudge with the help of a machine. Most of the time, magic is something… magical that no technology can touch, and here we have a very practical example of how technology can manipulate the human body, and so affect the magic in this series. And of course, any episode in which Ai appears for more than three minutes is nothing short of awesome.

And yeah, it’s AWESOME to see Tsugumi back again. To think that it’s been twenty years since the first season. Now all that’s left is for Hajime to make his reappearance with more than that very short cameo in the second season, and I’ll be really happy. It’s also interesting how Tsugumi doesn’t address him with “father”, “dad” or any other Japanese equivalent, but instead addresses him with “Hajime-chan”. That just signifies how extraordinary the relationship between the two has become (well, okay I know nothing about how this goes in the Japanese society, but at least it’s pretty rare for anime; I can only recall one other series which did the same: Arusu in Mahou Shoujotai, which immediately makes it something awesome).

Short Synopsis: Yuki and Touya finally get to see each other again.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Whoa, so many things happened in this episode, and yet it felt like a really quiet and slow-paced one. At this point, it’s pretty certain that this is one of these series that’s continuously building up for one big finale, and it’s also pretty sure that Touya and Yuki are going to break up with each other. The question is just going to be: how? And how are the two of them going to end up afterwards?

So this whole time, Touya has been trying to live his own life, I think also trying to find something to be busy with in order to forget how often he’s apart from Yuki. Most people indeed wouldn’t put that much time into the wishes of someone else like he’s doing with Misaki, but I think that he unintentionally tries to seek distraction, and with that he’s also getting more and more distanced from Yuki. I’m starting to get the points that this series is trying to make like this.

I also loved the very subtle sense of humour in this episode. The jokes around Haruka were fun, but not meant to be laughed at. Still, it was pretty cute when Touya discovered how she broke into his apartment that evening. We do need to see a bit more about Haruka, though. Something’s clearly bugging her: she’s jealous of Yuki, and probably looked up to her, since she apparently spent a lot of time with Touya since her childhood and was never really able to let this go, but I just know that the creators are still hiding something from her. That breakdown of hers isn’t just explained through simple loneliness.

My only problem is that this series the umpth one that is overplaying the “dead parents” trope a bit too much. I know that it’s a good way to evoke sympathy and all, but when it’s becoming an exception for a character’s parents to be both not missing or dead, then you know something’s going in the wrong direction.

And what the heck was up with Yayoi at the end of this episode? This really is the first episode where Touya definitely cheated on Yuki, but why Yayoi of all people?

Short Synopsis: Lyle tries to talk some sense into Anew
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
I have a HUGE hate/love feeling about this episode. Some parts were really well done, excellent and points where things came together really nicely, while other parts were downright abysmal. Huge bad signs for the finale of this series. At this point, this series still has the potential for an excellent finale if it does everything right, but the potential for a trainwreck is just SO BIG. Agh!

But first the good part: Lyle vs. Anew. A bit cheesy perhaps, but Lyle’s attempts to get Anew back were surprisingly genuine. Anew’s death was very sympathetic, and I especially loved how Setsuna didn’t hesitate to kill his former friend. I’m surprised as well, but Setsuna has turned into a really nice main character: none of the problems I have with this show have to do with him.

But yeah, there was lots of bad stuff in this episode as well. the creators really did the seemingly impossible in this episode: they made the Saji vs Louise plot-line even MORE annoying: they introduced brainwashing! It’s like saying: we need drama! Let’s brainwash a bunch of people into doing bad stuff so that they won’t listen to people reasoning with them! The brainwashing effectively eliminates any form of free will, and turns the characters involved in brainless fighting machines. How the heck are they going to get good drama with that?!

And yeah, this episode pretty much hinted that the creators are going for an “everyone dies” ending. There are so many couples whose finale can resemble that of Anew so much that it’s going to surprise me a lot if half of the cast still alive in this episode doesn’t end up getting killed in some way. Anew’s death worked well, but if the creators are just going to repeat the same thing over and over again, the fun quickly dies. No pun intended, by the way.

What is there to say about Great Teacher Onizuka that hasn’t been said yet already? In terms of theoretical education, the guy sucks: as a former gang member, he hardly knows anything about the subjects he teaches. He’s a huge pervert and hothead and often acts before he thinks. Still, when it comes to understanding his students, he definitely is the greatest.

Basically, GTO is a social commentary aimed towards the hypocrisy of the modern education system: teachers that only care about their own position, students with excellent grades are overly protected, while the rest is ignored, putting the focus away from the well-being of the students. Onizuka is hired in one particular school and he tries to get rid of these problems in his own unique way: by putting himself on the same level as the students, and healing the different students one at a time. And I must say that the result is a wonderful series.

It’s a really well written series. The situations that Onizuka has to deal with are imaginative and varied, and the cast of characters is downright excellent. The different characters are endearing, and yet nearly all of them are flawed in some way. The fun in this series comes to seeing how each of them are dealing with these flaws.

The visuals in this series also look really good. This series aired when the distinctive anime art style of the second half of the nineties was about to be taken over by the modern CG art style, but it makes optimal use of its style to make the characters look normal and down to earth, yet very distinctive and unique. Especially Onizuka’s facial expressions are one of a kind.

The problems with this series are mostly small and insignificant. At times, it has some continuity issues: one episode a school building gets destroyed, in the next it magically healed itself, or at the end of one episode, a character tanned her skin way too much, while the next episode completely ignored it, and one particular character (the stalker one) gets written out of the show completely without any possible reason. Still, these are ere details over a show of 43 episodes.

In the end, my only real beef with this series is how its definite best parts are at the beginning of the series, rather than the end. The first twelve episodes are without a doubt the highlight of this series, when the classroom that Onizuka was in charge of was still unknown, and there was this whole air of mystery about what drove everyone to their actions. They’re incredibly addictive and I myself couldn’t stop watching because I just had to know what was going to happen next. Along the way, this effect is lost a bit when you get to know the cast a bit more, so that’s a bit of a pity.

Nevertheless, in the genre of high school-based series, this one still stands solid as one of the best ones of the genre. It really is the prime example of how such a series should be handled.

Nyoron Churuya-san

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a silly spin-off of a character from a certain Kyoani show.
Chance of me Blogging: -20% (Uh… yeah)
I seriously don’t know what to write here. What was the point of this thing? Why was it made? I obviously didn’t get it because I’m not a fan of Haruhi, but do even its fans consider this something worthwhile? This whole episode was just a string of very, very, very dry jokes, that will probably work when you’re watching them with a bunch of very drunk friends (being drunk yourself helps too), but apart from that… yeah.

Suzumiya Haruhi-chan no Yuutsu

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a silly spin-off of another character from a certain Kyoani show.
Chance of me Blogging: -40% (Uh… yeah)
Well, I’d like to thank this series from giving me a headache that’s probably going to last for a few more hours or so… At least Nyoro had some entertainment value because of the deadpan humour, but this thing was just terrible. The comedic timing was way off, the voice acting was terrible and the CG was horrible, aside from perhaps the giant electric monster. I can understand how you’d want to give a series a little extra, but DOESN’T THIS SERIES ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH OF THAT!?

Kodomo no Jikan Ni-Gakki

Short Synopsis: Our lead character continues to harass her teacher.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Nice show, but no)
Okay, so the pointless fanservice is really getting more extreme now that this series has taken up the OVA format. While some of the fanservice was there to make a point, some other scenes were just… pointlessly disturbing to say the least. Still, I’m glad to see that this series hasn’t forgotten yet what made the first season enjoyable, and it continues with the Teacher vs. Student themes and does a pretty good job at it. Rin as the class president has potential, and some of the jokes worked pretty well. Especially that very strange ED was kindof interesting. :P

Short Synopsis: Fan gets captured for real this time, and meets two punks with really weird haircuts.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Okay, so next week there’s going to be another hiatus, and after that it’s finally time for this series to get fired off: double episodes until the end of its run! This episode built things up pretty nicely: the bomb is about to go off, and it’s promising to be a really interesting finale.

This episode really showed how Miranda and Fan managed to get so far in the first place: the bad organization of Tytania, and in a way it does make a lot of sense: Tytania is a mighty empire which has had a huge power and influence for centuries, and that’s the thing: when Tytania grew to its power, it would surely have been impossible to defeat it, but through the years, the corruption has increased more and more, and right now we’re at the point where the leaders are too used to being the supreme power: they have an incredible lack of experience in actual battles where they face a threat.

The biggest symbol of this of course is Ajman: the guy is the head of Tytania, but the bugger hasn’t done absolutely anything for himself. He’s just watching from a distance and tells others what to do. He lacks the experience to properly run a country, probably because he’s never had to face any challenges. History has shown the same thing: the only reason why the French revolution succeeded, for example, was because the French royalty at the time consisted out of a bunch of incompetent narcissistic idiots. Alexander The Great in his time conquered more than half of the known world, and yet this empire fell apart completely once he died. All of this is simply due to the lack of quality leadership.

this episode shows this really well: Zalish wants to get his hands on Fan Hulic, but the Estar administration refuses to let the Tytania control them completely, even though they’re part of the Tytanian territory. So of course Zalish rushes in with a city’s worth of soldiers in order to teach Estar a lesson, but this chaos is of course going to be perfect for Fan and the others in order to escape. I must say that I’m impressed: during the first ten episodes or so, I really thought that this series lacked substance, but right now it’s proving to be quite a thought-provoking series.

In fact, It also makes me wonder why all of the evil empires in anime don’t suffer from the same problem: internal strife and crappy organizations. For some reason, 90% of every evil empire (and this usually also goes for the good empires) are functioning like perfectly oiled machines with perhaps only a bunch of incompetent idiots who are tasked with the low-level jobs.