Next up in the line of very long series that are very long: Touch, a baseball drama that clocks in at 101 episodes, and it was followed by three compilation movies and two more full-length TV-specials (not included for this review, though). The huge length is no reason to get scared off, though, because this movie is not only one of the finest examples of why anime of the eighties rocks, it also still stands rock-solid as one of the best high-school romances I’ve seen.

Because I must say, the creators made optimal use of the long length. The pacing for this show is very slow, but that did result into a cast of some of the most amazing characters. Especially Tatsuya and Minami receive nearly 100 episodes of pure development, that makes their characters SO believable. Each characters has his own strengths and weaknesses and grows in his or her own subtle way.

Which brings me to the second strength of Touch: absolutely nothing feels forced, and yet it’s full of unpredictable plot-twists. The creators have a knack for setting things up very naturally and yet get the best out of the characters while staying light-years away from melodrama. In fact, the big dramatic scenes are always handled with a wonderful sense of subtlety, rather than trying to squeeze as many tears out of the viewer.

But yeah, the downside of this is that this is one tough series to get through, considering the length. There are strings of tens of episodes without any sort of action and that are just focused on very slooowly fleshing out the characters. We get an outstanding view on their lives this way… but many people will find it boring, especially considering the huge length of this show. One of the challenges in storytelling is choosing a good combination between compactness and completeness, and this show might have gone on for a tad too long.

At times, I have been criticized at being a bit too harsh on anime from the seventies and eighties in my reviews, but my point is this: if those ages could produce shows that are as awesome as Touch, then why couldn’t the others have done the same? The only area at which old anime should be inferior to the newer ones is the animation quality (which by the way, for touch looks quite detailed, especially considering its length), but this series more than proves that the seventies and eighties knew more than enough about what it takes to creating an truly outstanding cast of characters.

Short Synopsis: Teito ends up at a strange church.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
I may be a bit late in noticing this, but this season features a lot of shows with excellent soundtracks, doesn’t it? We have Pandora Hearts, Phantom, Shin Mazinger, Full Metal Alchemist, Cross Game, Shangri-La, Guin Saga, 07-Ghost, Eden of the East, and I probably missed a few, all of them with some rocking background tracks.

In any case, I’ve decided to blog this show because it looks surprisingly solid despite the at first sight rather childish character-designs and voice actors (but then again, this is just typical of Studio Deen). I’m not that worried about the shounen-ai undertones getting in the way, simply becaues I HAVE SEEN SHINING TEARS X WIND. There is NO way that this show is going to be even as remotely disturbing as one particular scene from that show. Besides, so what if some of the characters are possibly gay? This episode showed that this series avoids the big pitfall of nearly every single shounen-ai series: the complete absence of straight people, and that’s enough for me. This show has shown so far that there are enough straight people.

In any case, this episode mostly was building up, and introduced the rest of the main cast apart from Teito and Ayanami, and we learn why this show is called “07-Ghost”: Teito gets saved by some priests from a nearby church who happen to run into him, and this church turns out to be a famous sacred place in which people come to get healed. It seems to have been founded by seven ghosts, hence the name 07-Ghost. Makes sense.

I’m interested to see what the creators can do with this series, and I like the mystery in it so far. There are some hints that Ayanami didn’t simply kill Teito’s father because he’s evil, and I’m curious to find out the reason behind it. At the same time, if the creators plan to go for 25 episodes, I wonder what they plan to fill the rest of the time with.

The staff behind this series isn’t the most solid, but it’ll suffice. Natsuko Takahashi is doing the series composition, and the great thing about her is that she’s got a huge amount of experience in this field. Since the source material is already looking excellent, she can use this experience in order to keep the series on track. The director meanwhile has worked on mostly uninteresting shoujo series like Hatenkou Yuugi, but he did direct Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, so there is potential in this guy, especially if he can stick to the manga like he’s supposed to.