Short Synopsis: Saki and ‘Akira’ arrive in Tokyo.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Okay, thanks for some of the comments. I think with this I established my blogging schedule for this season (do note that the days are in my timezone, not necessarily at the day they air):
Monday: Shangri-La, Konnichiwa Anne
Tuesday: 07-Ghost
Wednesday: Nada
Thursday: Ristorante Paradiso
Friday: Pandora Hearts, Basquash, Phantom, Eden of the East
Saturday: Nope
Sunday: Valkyria Chronicles, Cross Game, Guin Saga, Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood

Based on various comments I received, I realized that there are a lot of people who’d like to see me blog both Valkyria Chronicles and FMA, so I’m probably going to drop Natsu no Arashi instead. While that is one definite underrated series, I’m not that sure about the series right now, and whether it’ll be interesting enough to blog (at least, when compared to some other shows I’m blogging this season).

As for the rest of the shows I’m not going to blog:
- Tears to Tiara… I don’t want to go sit through another Utawarerumono.
- Souten Kouro has the bad luck that it’s about the Three Kingdoms Era. I like history, but I never really liked any of the anime that dealt with that period.
- Hatsukoi Limited, while I’m not 100% sure yet, is probably not going to live up to the standard that Sentimental Journey set for this formula it’s trying to use.

Eden of the East is also one really popular series it seems, but for me it’s just too awesome not to blog. I’m an absolute sucker for mystery, and even though it’s only been building up so far, it’s got me intrigued like no other. There seems this whole back-story behind it, and I’m dying to find out what it is.

The style of storytelling is also really addictive, with a lot of focus on the dialogue between the lead characters. What I really liked in this episode was the bit of time the creators set aside for Akira and Saki to get to know each other a bit. It’s great to have another series that’s about adults rather than the teenagers that usually overcrowd the season, and this Spring Season especially seems to have quite a few series that ignore the brats for what they are and just focus on people aged eighteen or above. And I especially like Saki in this series. She’s a young woman that has her own life and an interesting combination between a bit of an airhead and a headstrong woman who likes to take initiatives and try out different things. I also really like her voice actress.

No series is perfect of course, and the flaws with Eden so far are with the CG. It really stands out at times, especially considering how Production IG usually blends it in so well with the rest of the graphics. Here though, people randomly are cell shaded, CG cars and boats look out of place. It’s a bit of a shame considering the rest of the great animation. It’s very strange, because this series features just about the best staff of Production IG, who also worked on Seirei no Moribito.

So yeah, the budget for this series is clearly lower than it was for Seirei no Moribito, that’s the only explanation I can think of. However, the plot is just as intriguing, if not more. In this episode, we learn the meaning behind the “Noblesse Oblige” that was written on Akira’s phone. Noblesse Oblige basically means the obligation of rich people to take care of the poor. The organization Akira belonged to is called the Celecau, who I guess originally was formed by someone with a lot of money in order to help those in need. Somewhere along the way though, something went wrong and the members started up terrorism. I’m interested to find out why the heck the one who organized everything let everything go out of control this way.

In any case, my entries for this series are probably going to be later than usual, since I’m rather busy on Fridays (both with my studies and other shows that need to be blogged) and the raws usually air too late on Thursday for me. It’s interesting how the subs are already fast enough to be released in that kind of period, though, although I kind of get why speedsubbers are often criticized when watching this episode. Especially the translation notes of Ground Zero were pretty pointless.

Short Synopsis: Oz ends up at the abyss, otherwise known as a VERY WEIRD PLACE.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Right now, I find it really hard to establish a Top 3 of the season so far: there is no show that stands far above the others yet, but at the same time this season does have a selection of excellent shows, so I’ll just stick with a top 5 shows for now, in random order: Phantom, Eden, Cross Game, Guin Saga and of course Pandora Hearts. The first three episodes so far have been nothing short of excellence.

The whole mindfuck of this series continues even in this episode, in which Oz ends up in the abyss that is filled with disturbing living toys, half-broken houses, doors and things that you usually find inside a doll house, but this time surrounded into a strange black goo and surrounded by strange black clouds. I believe that this is one of the first times I’ve seen horror combined with fantasy in anime, and it works really well, considering all of the weird stuff that this episode threw to the viewer.

And at the same time it doesn’t forget to flesh out the characters. I personally really like the combination of Oz and Alice, and how it’s impossible to know at this point what exactly Alice’s goals are: all that we know is that she needs someone like Oz in order to be able to escape the Abyss (which to be honest is really not an enjoyable place to live), but why she ended up there in the first place, or what she was before she arrived there are still huge mysteries. And at the same time she also could simply have ended up there like Oz: an innocent victim. Although I doubt that she’s going to remain innocent, with the ability to transform into a huge black rabbit and all.

Short Synopsis: Zwei has been trained enough and is about to face his final test.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Why do all the good shows air on the same days?!

In any case, this was a very strong episode for Phantom, and it’s still one of my favourites for this season. While at first sight a standard bee-train series, with very obvious similarities to Noir, there are definitely parts in which it is different. The biggest one is how much attention it spends to the realism of gun combat, and that’s something I can really appreciate. In this show, it’s in no way a matter of just point-shoot-kill, but it’s much more a matter of using your brains, and it also becomes a matter of a battle of wits. In Noir, the action was much more stylized than what we’ve seen in Phantom so far.

Playing in North America, there are also of course references to El Cazador, but again Bee-Train improves on it compared to the previous work. For once, it indeed feels like we’re in a multicultural setting, rather than the Mexicans of El Cazador that may have felt a bit too Japanese. They’re small things, but still appreciated. Phantom of course misses the experimental nature of Bee-Train’s previous work, Blade of the Immortal, but this show doesn’t necessarily need anything over the top, and I really like what it so far has become.

The next question is of course going to be what the rest of the first half of this show is going to look like. With this, the introduction seems over and we’ll probably be switching to random missions and a sloooow pacing while the characters get the chance to be fleshed out (a formula that Bee-Train have really become infamous for, among others), and so I’m interested to see whether these random missions can retain the same atmosphere of these first three episodes until the real meat of the story begins. And when it does, something tells me we’ll be having an excellent cast of characters.

Short Synopsis: Apparently, one year has passed since the first episode and some mysterious guy is wreaking havoc in Rollingtown
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Let me first hijack this post for a bit to react on some comments that I received on this post. I personally thought that nobody would be interested in reading my thoughts on the new FMA that already was blogged by many other people, but I might have been wrong in this. Are there more people who are interested to see me blogging that series? At this point, I can still easily swap it with Valkyria Chronicles.

In any case, regarding this episode: it was what I’d like to call creative cutting of corners. While the background art looked as solid as ever, it was clearly obvious that the animation on the foreground was rushed. More often than not, the camera would pan away from a character when he or she was talking in order to save up on trying to synchronize their lips. Interesting effect, but it remains cheap. ^^; The question is now going to be whether the budget has run out completely or the creators are just saving some budget for later episodes. It’s annoying that you can never really predict this.

Still, this episode didn’t lose the fun-factor that this series has. I especially liked how Iceman Hotty (also the guy with the weirdest name of the season) turned out to be competely different from what I expected him to be, and he seems to be suffering from either hypocrisy or a bipolar disorder: on one hand he diligently plays official basketball, and on the other hand he wreaks havoc at night because he hates street basketball.

I also liked how people actually made a monument of Dan’s mecha crashing into the baseball post a year after it happened. That’s not a statue you see every day, is it? This episode also introduced some sort of princess or daughter of a very rich person, who is probably going to play a big role in the future. Sela Miranda meanwhile is also a very strange character: she’s a talented hard-working girl who gets turned on by being dominated. I’m still not convinced at how this series made both the princess and Sera look way more composed and talented than most adults, to be honest I didn’t expect any different. What I didn’t expect was that woman with the incredibly huge bust that showed up in this episode and offered to be Dan’s manager. What the?