Short Synopsis: When Oz wakes up from the Abyss, he’s greeted by a certain threesome.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Okay, so this episode was mostly meant as a build-up, to close off the introduction for this series and introduce the rest of the main cast of characters that it’s going to work with: Break, Sharon and Reibun. Obviously not the most exciting episode of this excellent series, but still a really good one.

Here’s one thing that I don’t get though: why the heck does Reibun look like a grown up Gilbert? And if it indeed is Gilbert (hinted at everywhere by the promo art) and lots of years must have passed since Oz was cast into the Abyss, then why hasn’t Sharon grown up as well?

In any case, it’s interesting how Oz and Allies aren’t exactly allies of Break, Sharon and Reibun, but instead they’re just two parties with the same goals, and they were actually nearly enemies if things would have gone a little different. There’s going to be an interesting tension between them for the rest of the series this way.

We learn quite a few things in this episode, including what Alice has been hiding: the fact that she lost her memory. This is why she couldn’t remember strangling Oz when he found the locker, since that memory of her seems to have been erased. It’s interesting how she never wondered why she ended up right with Oz of all people: it’s because he met her before when she was in the abyss, through that watch of his. After that point, something must have happened to wipe out her memories that way.

At the same time, Oz also proves that he’s quite a bright kid in this episode: he’s observant and quickly draws conclusions based on the things around him. That could prove to be interesting in the next couple of episodes, and as an added bonus he seems to move more and more away from your average wimpy lead this way.

Oh, and on a side-note: why exactly is the animation of this show so hated? I mean, I know that it isn’t the best animation out there and all, but I see no reason to dislike this show based on the animation: there are no distorted faces due to inaccuracies, there aren’t many still frames, the character-designs are distinctive and not copy-pasted. What more could you want? What makes the artwork in this show so “atrocious”?

Short Synopsis: ‘boob-san’ organizes a rematch between Iceman, Dan and Sela.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Now I know for sure: this show is weird.

If the woman with the huge bosom at the end of the previous episode wasn’t enough: it now turns out that she’s a famous shoe designer with a feet fetish… yeah. She even goes as far as selecting one of Dan’s friends to accompany her because his face resembles a foot. Not only that, but she also designs shoes for Bigfoots…

The result was an episode full of ‘big’-jokes around her.

My question now is: why the heck am I enjoying this show so much? The premise gets more ridiculous with every single episode, and yet I’m really digging the chemistry between the characters so far. Dan’s ramblings don’t get on my nerves at all, and in fact are hilarious at times. I like how this episode emphasized how broken mechas remain broken until fixed (compare that to your average mecha-series, in which the machines magically fix themselves at the beginning of every episode), and it was especially fun to see a stressed out Miyuki as she tried to get everything fixed properly before the above-mentioned rematch.

I am curious though: where does this series think it’s going in the end? Up till now, there hasn’t been any major storyline popping up: all we’ve seen is a bunch of hints: what role is the moon going to play in the end? Is Coco simply there to give Dan some background or is there more to her? Will this turn into a basketball show with mechas, or is the basketball simply going to be a vehicle to the real meat of the story? What is going to be the role of the little princess that we’ve been seeing now and then?

Short Synopsis: Nicoletta tells Claudio about her mother.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Good)
I’m really not sure what’s up with this show’s tendency to spoil the biggest plot twists of every next episode but for some strange reason it works pretty well. Since this is a series that’s much more about the characters, rather than these fancy plot twists, which are only there in order to get the best out of the characters. In this episode for example, the most important thing wasn’t for Nicoletta to tell Claudio how the girlfriend of the owner is her own mother, but rather how the two of them start to gradually understand each other, and realize that they’re actually quite similar.

But really, this episode was good stuff, and I’m glad to say that the first three episodes of Ristorante have some of the most solid characters of the season. The advantage it has is that since it’s only 11 episodes, it can’t really waste any time building up like most of the other shows this season: while most of the other shows still have three months to go before they can get to the real meat of the story, RisPara is already there, and like Genji Monogatari in the previous season, it’s a very consistent romance show, although in comparison, the focus of RisPara lies more at the characters, when compared to the storytelling that was central in Genji Monogatari.

It’s obviously not a show for everyone, but you have to appreciate that finally we have a show in which the average age of the characters lies above thirty (perhaps even above forty). I can only think of two other anime who achieved the same: Real Drive (simply because two characters were in their eighties) and Millennium Actress.

It’s interesting how Nicoletta finally got a proper talk with her mother in this episode, and yet the two of them got along pretty easily, rather than Nicoletta trying to scratch her mother’s eyes out and it’s interesting how Olga even was worried about Nicoletta going after Claudio, and in the end she even encouraged her. Olga herself was immediately taken in by Lorenzo, and apparently that feeling came from both sides.

It’s also interesting how Claudio and Gabriella split up over a pretty trivial reason: her work became busier and in the end they got into a fight about a misunderstanding, and so they broke up, even though they seem to have settled their differences by now and are not in love anymore.

In any case, I’m glad to have stuck with this series. At one point I considered dropping this show from blogging instead of Natsu no Arashi, but looking back now, the latter is much more a show where you shut up and watch, and even though it’s probably the most underrated show of the season, I don’t think that there would have been much to say about it aside from that. The director of RisPara has a knack of getting the best out of short 13-episode series, and it’s a very interesting effect to see him dealing with a slow-paced romance show, instead of a suspenseful thriller or extremely sad wartime romance. He’s definitely able to show the best side of the original source material this way in only eleven episodes.

Short Synopsis: Teito tries to sneak out in order to save Mikage.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
I’m still surprised at actually how good this series turned out to be. From the outside it really looks like yet another overly angsty bishie-filled Vampire Knight, but at the same time this show has consistently delivered so far. The characters have impact, the setting looks intriguing and the story is very properly paced. Heck, this episode was mainly just meant for building up, and yet I loved it.

This episode also convinced me of something completely different: this show has a weird sense of humour. The scene with the fishy eyeballs was simply mental. I mean, who ever found the idea to make these things tasty? The antics of the three sisters also were simply hilarious. What the heck was up with that Christmas tree?!

On a more serious note, it’s good to see that Teito hasn’t forgotten about Mikage. Although I foresee a dull training arc in the future, it’s good to see him growing that way, and I was also surprised at the brutality of Ayanami’s torture: he’s now willing to involve Mikage’s sister in order to squeeze the information out of him, and it really contrasts with how much of an easy life Teito is leading, protected by all the ghosts and all.

This episode also showed that Ayanami isn’t exactly your average evil overlord, as he too has superiors he has to obey and also doesn’t seem to know why exactly Teito is special. My guess would be that he killed Teito’s father simply because he was ordered to. I’m also intrigued as to why he has so many henchmen, especially since all of them have distinctive character-designs.

Short Synopsis: Kuniko sneaks into Atlas.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
A solid episode for Shangri-La, and I must say that I’m still intrigued by this show. It may not be the best thing out of all the currently airing shows, but there is potential if the creators manage to push the right buttons. So far, they’ve already done a pretty good job in this, despite the predictability of some points. I mean, in this episode for example we learn that Kuniko’s mother is in Atlas as well…

Gee, I wonder where she could be… [/sarcasm]

What I liked about this episode was the extra bit of depth it gave to the setting. It was a nice touch for that woman of the last episode that yelled at Kuniko to make another appearance in this episode. Atlas was like expected nothing like ‘the promised land’, but looks more like something akin to an anthill.

Right now, Atlas really looks like your average totalitarian empire who oppresses all outsiders, but we’re only three episodes in. I’m interested to see whether the creators can give it a unique touch. Right now the creators seem to be moving in the direction of the huge contrasts between rich and poor, and while this is forming a good base there still seems to be something missing. It also poses an interesting array of questions, though: the Metal-Age are indeed a double-edged sword, but their actions do provide security for the sick and elder who have trouble taking care of themselves. That also begs the question: how are these people coming by in cities that don’t have the Metal-Age?

I also liked the development from Kuniko. This episode establishes her as flawed, rather than the perfect army-commander that the first two episode made her look like. Her big flaw is that she easily gets distracted, even though she probably doesn’t mean any harm. Because she’s lived in the comfort of the detention centre in which she was surrounded by certainty, returning to the uncertain world outside of Atlas has turned her a little insecure.

Short Synopsis: Guin, Linda and Remus try to escape from the count’s castle.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
In this episode, Guin Saga showed some of its weaknesses, but I’m still a big fan of the show. Sure, it was a bit strange that the count would allow the black-haired guy (I believe his name was Istvan) to keep his sword and whip while in jail, and it was quite convenient for the ape-men to attack the count as well in order to create the diversion that everyone needed to escape, but nothing really got in the way of the really important stuff in this episode. This episode still was as epic as it should be.

And this episode did a nice job of giving a few glimpses on how the rest of the world of Guin Saga looks like. It turns out that Guin isn’t the only were-beast around as this episode shows that the count is some sort of demon, and it introduces a bunch of ape-men who are after revenge because the count killed one of their comrades. Meanwhile, Linda meets another ape-girl from a different tribe and adds her to the main cast of the show. It looks like there are many different countries, counties and all sorts of political fractions, races and parties. As expected from a show with a source material of over 100 volumes. It’s shows like this in which just about everything is big. Well, apart from some of the characters, of course.

I’m also surprised at how I’m not annoyed at all by the antics of Remus. Around the net, the biggest criticism against this show seems to be the annoyingness of the two lead characters, but I find them strangely enjoyable as two small kids dumped into an incredibly big world, totally out of their comfort zone. Sure, it’s not exactly original, but in this show, it works.

Short Synopsis: Anne gets ‘distracted’ when she accompanies Bert as he sets out to find a job.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
This episode took away a lot of my doubts for this series. So yeah, it’s going to be less realistic than such epics as Anne of Green Gables, Perrine or Porfy, but the writers do have a great feel for the characters. This episode was SO typical of Anne.

The episode starts out as Anne is wondering what her parents would have looked like (there were no pictures back then, were there? And even if there were, Anne’s aunt doesn’t look like the type to save these pictures), as she starts talking to Rokimba (that’s how I’ll spell that cat’s name for now) about how her parents would live in a small house, and have a romantic moment together as Walter suggests Anne’s name to his wife, holding a small Anne in her arms. In the meantime, Rokimba walks away without Anne even noticing, and so she gets made fun of again by Horace and Edward.

At that point, Joanne starts getting impatient and calls Anne back. Without realizing that Anne’s already there, she starts talking about how Walter also used to be like Anne, and how he always had these wings on his back with which he’d fly away in his own world. Being the kid she is, when Anne hears this she takes this literally, and now she genuinely believes that her father had wings on his back. ^^;

Bertha (Anne’s mother) meanwhile was calm and quiet, and always read books after Anne was born. We also learn that Joanne decided not to tell Anne about her parents because it’ll just be unnecessary information. Anne is just there to help her out, and remembering her parents doesn’t fit in that picture and it looks like she also doesn’t like remembering the days of her childhood either. It’s too late though, because Anne is already thinking of lots of possible romantic scenarios in which her father might have played with his ‘wings’.

Joanne then proceeds to wake up and yell at Bert because he was supposed to look out for a job that day again, while all he does is sleep. When he readies his carriage, Joanne sends Anne along with him because it’s obvious that he’s going to end up just drinking away otherwise. The scene in which they rode in the carriage reminds me of the start of Anne of Green Gables, in which Anne was also rambling on and on towards Matthew.

Bert then tells her that he might not have met Walter, but he did know that he once was a teacher (and here we have another reason why Anne would end up liking studying so much), and how he taught at a cute little school in a forest (or that was what it sounded like, I might have missed the exact name for it), which of course gets Anne fired up even more.

When Bert arrives at the office that’s supposed to give him a chance for a job, he finds out that the one he was supposed to was away. He then runs into his friend and they run off to start drinking, and so he orders Anne to stay where she is until he gets back. Anne then sees that as a chance to explore the town a bit in order to find the school at which Walter used to teach. She asks random passers-by for directions, but quickly gets distracted by other pretty things and she gets lost.

She then runs into someone who was a good acquaintance of Bertha and who we’re probably going to see again in a few episodes. This time though, she simply gives Anne directions to where she needs to go to and she does find the house in the end. Johanna meanwhile is not exactly pleased with how both Bert and Anne haven’t turned up, she’s tired and has a headache, but she has to work hard since Bert refuses to get a job. She then notes how she doesn’t like to think back to the past out of jealousy: Bertha and Walter were a very happy couple together, and yet she ended up with an idiot as Bert. It pains her to think back at how happy she could have ended up.

When Anne finally gets back, it’s already dark, but Bert is still waiting for her at that point. He doesn’t scold her, but just tells her to get on the carriage (obviously she’s scolded plenty enough by Johanna).

It’s interesting how people like Bert and Johanna completely shatter the boundaries of good and evil, and this again is typical of nearly all WMT-series (apart from Ie Naki Ko Remi, of course). While it’s easy to simply call Bert pure evil, he’s simply someone who hates his own wife. He’s still an ass because he refuses to help her out, but at the same time he doesn’t antagonize Anne and actually seems to like her. But since neither Johanna nor Bert is willing to make up and get along, the gap between the two of them is only going to grow bigger, and this is probably going to end up with the two of them separating, causing Anne to move into a next family in which she’s going to get even more busy.

In the meantime, the bit about Anne taking Johanna’s proverb felt really nostalgic. When I was a kid I also used to take proverbs way too seriously. Anne really feels like a real little girl at times like these.

It’s also awesome to see that it’s been less than three weeks and we already have a fansub! I posted the link at the shoutbox, and it would be completely awesome if this Underwater group would persist until the end.

Short Synopsis: The Lior-Episode.
Episode Rating: 6,5/10 (Lacking, but that was to be expected)
So yeah, with this you can consider Natsu no Arashi dropped and FMA picked up. Just don’t think that I’m going to sing continuous praises for this one though; be sure to expect me to whine about this series a lot during the beginning episodes. It took me three attempts before I managed to get through those very dull first thirteen episodes of the original series. Because of that, this episode was the fourth time I had to sit through the Lior-story, so yeah: it did get on my nerves.

Thankfully, Brotherhood handled it better than the original series did: it condensed everything effectively to only one episode and it still managed to show the most important things of this arc. What I’m hoping for with this series is the Glass Mask effect: the original Glass Mask series of 1984 was utterly terrible, but the 2005-remake, which adapted the exact same manga chapters and took nearly the exact same amount of time somehow made the exact same story awesome. While this episode wasn’t exactly good, I do have to admit that the first few episodes are a major improvement on their counterparts in the original series.

My only fear is that the creators may be trying to rush through the first chapters a bit too quickly. Rose and the priest for example, were just as dull as I remembered them, but what I really liked in this episode is how the chemistry between the characters is much more enjoyable: especially Ed and Al are now much more interesting to watch, and I wonder whether the creators can keep this up. One of the major flaws of the original series was that the creators wanted to show off Ed’s l33t-powers a bit too badly. While the radio in this episode was cute, in the subsequent arcs, whenever Ed and Al arrived in a new town, there was always some sort of Timmy that fell in some sort of well that happened to be near Ed so that he could show everyone how awesome his powers are by saving him. I’m interested to see how Brotherhood is going to avoid this.

Also, there’s one part I didn’t get about this episode, so perhaps the manga readers can fill this in for me: how exactly did the priest know exactly that Ed and Al performed human transmutation? I mean, there are other ways in which people can lose limbs, aren’t there? If Ed didn’t happen to live near a very good artificial limb creator (or whatever they’re called), he’d still be limp at this point, and I’m not sure why a body-less armor immediately means a failed human transmutation either. I mean, in the original series, none of the other people who transmuted brought whatever soul they sacrificed back into an armor, did they?

So yeah; I like Full Metal Alchemist, but just not the beginning. I believe that the turning point for me was the arrival of Armstrong, so until that point you can pretty much expect me to be rather negative on this series. Brotherhood really improved the chemistry between the characters, but the plot right now still is preachy and uninteresting.

Short Synopsis: Kou gets invited to substitute in a local baseball team.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Oh this show is SO good. It may be one of the dark horses of the season, but in three episodes it has already done what most series can’t even do in twice that amount. Don’t get fooled off by the simplistic character-designs, because as a series focusing on middle- and high-school kids it does so many things right. This episode again had such a wonderful combination between subtle humour and drama, slice of life, character-development. There are already so many different characters, and yet all of them feel different with their own personalities.

And even though the character-designs are simplistic and leave out a lot of details, they still feel realistic: the school is filled with all different kinds and shapes of people of which a surprising amount is obese (really: finally after Real Drive we finally have another show that realizes that not everyone has the perfect body). What I also like is the people like the captain of Aoba’s baseball team: usually in anime these guys are the evil punks, who do evil stuff because they’re evil, or they’re especially that exaggerated to make fun of these stereotypes, but this guy feels nothing like that: he’s just a regular middle schooler with a tough physique.

As for the main character, it was of course obvious that he was going to be very talented at baseball, but the writers gave him quite an interesting back-story for it. Like Touch, he never went to join the baseball club in middle school, but unlike Touch this was because of a fight that broke out when he attempted to join it three years before. Instead, he just kept practicing by himself because his parents were involved with baseball anyway. It makes sense: the past three episodes have really shown that he’s a carefree guy who doesn’t like to get into trouble, and yet at the same time you can see how he’s still affected by something that happened three years ago. I don’t recall having seen anyone cry about Wakaba’s death, but you can see its influence very subtly in all of the characters that she hung out with when she was still alive.

Short Synopsis: Wellkin’s first mission as the commander of Squad 7.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Now this is more like it. Now that we’ve arrived at the real meat of the story, I’ve gotten a lot more interested in this series. The idiot siblings thankfully don’t play a major part in this show at all and Welkin’s strategies are actually quite interesting and creative. I’m also glad that Alicia got herself an interesting position as vice-chief of Squad 7: it’s going to allow her to grow as a character, and also prevent her from screwing up completely because Welkin will be there.

This episode also introduced some of the major side-characters of this series, most notably Largo Potter and Brigitte Stark. I liked how the two of them brought a bit of conflict into this episode, in which they weren’t that convinced by a commander who came fresh out of university. I also wonder where all of the hatred for the ‘darksen’ comes from. Is it mere nationalism (understandable in times of war, of course), or were the darksen people once notorious for something they did.

Still, this series is going to have to continue to bring in these interesting situations, because at this point it’s just oh so tempting to fill the rest of the show with random battles every episode until the final boss has to be faced in episode 25. Especially the character-development for the side-characters has the potential to just stop completely after this episode.