Well, since I have been careful not to look at any of the promotion material for this series, I had no idea who Drei was or what she looked like. Now that we finally got to meet her, I have to say that that I really didn’t expect her to be such a little girl. Still, I like her. She’s got lots of potential for this series, and I can’t wait until the creators go in-depth with her.

The rest of this episode was pretty much the introduction of the second major arc of this series, and had Reiji walking around with a pimpin’ background tune. Really, this demonstrates how influential background music can be for a series. The background music for the first arc was very melancholic, but the hiphop soundtrack that this episode used was completely different, and it gave a totally different feel and atmosphere to this series. And that’s really typical of Bee-Train: for them, a soundtrack isn’t simply a soundtrack, but it’s very essential in telling the story.

So this obviously wasn’t meant to be an episode to stand out. The animation was really basic and simple, and in the meantime there was lots of fanservice. That sex-scene in particular was rather weird, but at least I’m glad that this series has a mature outlook on sex, rather than the juvenile and teenaged way.

And on a side-note: you don’t see that often in anime: people using the box (or however that’s called in English) instead of shaking hands. While it’s definitely inaccurate at times, you can see that the creators did spend some effort in giving the setting some subtle American influences.

Rating: * (Good)
Carol’s introduction, plus a pimpin’ build-up for the upcoming arc.

Now this is Pandora Hearts! This definitely was my favourite episode of this series since episode two and three. We learned lots of new things about our characters, and the quiet moments were pure comedic gold. This episode really had the dark and gothic tone that originally made me fall in love with this series.

Break really showed a different side of himself when both he and Alice got captured by the Cheshire Cat (another Alice in Wonderland reference) and it showed that he isn’t perfect in his schemings. He too seemed to be bothered by some sort of dark alter ego that he didn’t know about, like Alice. I’m really curious now as to what was up with that. At the same time, why did the lair of the Cheshire Cat contain hints of Alice’s memories?

The lighter moments were also wonderful in this episode. I loved how Oscar completely appeared from out of nowhere, in front of the two boys he hasn’t seen in ten years. Or Break’s attempts at camouflage, or Gil’s obsession with his particular hat. There really is a huge value put to that hat: for some reason he’s really attached to it, and yet he leaves it with Oz when the two are apart. I’d love to see the full story behind it.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
Lots of things happened, new developments and overall a really enjoyable episode.

Ah, okay. Sorry for the little misunderstanding after the previous episode. According to this link here at MyAnimeList, it seems that the director changed after episode 9, while the chief animation director got replaced at the end of may, so probably around episode 17 or 18. Last episode simply seemed to have been the victim of a bad case of outsourcing.

Then at the same time, I did have my worries about the change of directors, especially since the previous two episodes really weren’t as good as the rest of this season. Thankfully, this episode showed that the new director most definitely understands the series he’s working with. This episode had everything that made this such a fun series to begin with: very fun action scenes, every single member of the main cast has his own story progressed a bit, and the themes of fandom finally return again in their brilliance. The only point at which you can really see that the directors have changed is the opponents that Basquash had to fight in this episode: they weren’t opponents, they were typical shounen enemies whose can only rely on one strategy.

But really, I don’t really care, since this episode and especially that fight was incredibly fun. The idea of running around with fake balls, changing your own hair color (in the most painfully bright colors), while letting the real ball slowly roll towards the target is so stupid, yet brilliant at the same time. I also loved how the creators treated this match as a kind of mini-episode inside an episode, complete with its own OP, ED, next-episode preview and even commercials! Add to that a crazy announcer with DJ-glasses (literally) and you have an awesome first half of this episode.

And in contrast, the second half of this episode was really the complete opposite of all the madness in the first half. In there, it was time for extra depth for most of the characters. Especially Iceman’s story is nowhere near finished it seems, and Sera also had her share of attention, since the tournament they’re currently playing in takes place in her hometown. My only complaint was Coco: while she did appear in this episode, she didn’t appear enough. ^^;

Rating: ** (Excellent)
Very weirdly paced, and yet it’s a really fun episode.

Okay, I decided to rewrite this entire thing since the review I originally wrote was crap. Kenji Kawayama really is one of the better directors out there. His sense of realism, attention to detail and originality has really made his series one of a kind. After Seirei no Moribito I therefore was very eager to watch his next work: Eden of the East. As promised, it’s a very solidly produced series, but I do have to admit that it is a tad disappointing.

After thinking a bit about the series, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two reasons that prevent this series from being among the top of this season for me. First of all, the cast of characters leaves a bit to be desired. The lead character Saki is a great one: she grows very subtly through the series, and while she may seem weak at times, she really stands out as a strong character. The rest of the cast lacks a bit of a spark, though. Akira as the male lead is a bit too much of an idealist; his character without any seeming flaws is a bit hard to get into. The majority of the rest of the cast simply feels not fleshed out well enough: some characters show too little of themselves to really make an impact, while others are just plain annoying (most of Saki’s friends). Two notable exceptions are Kondo (whose story gets nicely explored through his limited airtime) and Micchon, who serves her purpose as a quiet side-character well.

My second issue with this series is its mystery. As a mystery-fanboy, I was of course elated after the first episode. It was so delightfully weird and unusual. There were so many different theories possible for what went on, and it really intrigued me like no other. But yeah, the thing with mystery-series is that the challenge comes with correctly revealing the mystery, and in that I feel that this series did a lukewarm job. It can’t keep its air of mystery consistent through the series, and as the series goes on and the answers come, there aren’t really any new questions asked: the answers are simply presented on a silver platter when the time seems ripe for it, without really using them for anything other than for the sake of filling up plotholes.

But yeah, despite these flaws, there still is lots of good stuff in this series. The animation really is amazing. Animation in anime is often a job of cutting corners, but here the animation is really well done to the finest details: the creators have made sure to bring their pictures to life. The CG may be a bit obtrusive at times, but the realistic movements and awesome background art really make up for it.

The setting is also very thought-provoking. Through the 11 episodes of airtime, this series takes a critical look at idealism and its positives and negatives. The whole concept behind the show remains very original and thought-provoking. You can see that a lot of imagination went into creating the setting for this series.

So overall this series served its purpose as a solid build-up for the upcoming movies, which of course I’m going to review as well as soon as they come out. I know that the rating is lower than what one might expect, but I just can’t say that this was the best of the season because of the reasons mentioned above. Small series like this one really need be focused, and in my opinion this series goofed off a bit too much at times and it feels to me that this series was trying to stuff too much into just these eleven episodes. Let’s hope that the movies will use the build-up that the series has provided, but standalone this series for me wasn’t as enjoyable as other short series as Natsu no Arashi or Ristorante Paradiso, which both did know how to make optimal use of their tie (so far, at least).

Ah, there are two movies going to be released. That means three, possible four more hours for this show to tell its story (unless they pull a Death and Rebirth), which really should be enough time for this show. Overall though, this series didn’t turn out as good as I hoped it would be. My biggest issue with the show is that my favourite episode still is the first one.

Still, this episode was a pretty decent ending until the movies. There were some things I didn’t understand, though. Why did Akira feel the need to wipe his own mind again? How and why did he get all of the NEET to access the Higashi no Eden site and take pictures of Akira, protecting them from the missile attack? Why did the creators find it necessary to bring Pantsu back to life? After spending all of his money on becoming king, and getting rid of his cell phone, isn’t he supposed to die?

In any case, as it turns out the reason why Akira wiped his own memory was because he kept getting accused of being the one behind the missile attacks (because he knew that they were going to happen), and so he at one point couldn’t take the accusations anymore and decided to travel to America and mind-wipe himself. That’s totally different from the crazy Japanese terrorist that I originally believed him to be.

Overall, it’s been fun, and although I can’t say that this has been my favourite show this season I definitely enjoyed watching this. It’s a bit of a wait until the movies are released, but in the meantime I’m looking forward to see what Noitamina has in store for us next.
Rating: * (Good)
Lotsa Johnnies and a pretty nice cliff-hanger for the upcoming movies.

When judging first episodes, I always try to look at the potential for the rest of the series. Kurokami had a fairly generic beginning, but I saw potential for the rest of this series. I believed that the Dopple-liner system, in which every person has two clones living somewhere, with these clones destined to die when they get too close to their “Root”, definitely had the potential to become interesting later on. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

As a typical Sunrise-series, Kurokami is all about action: every single episode is really written for the battles, which use the aforementioned Dopple-liner system as a shounen-esque base to explain the various superpowers that appear through the series, but it’s all fairly generic: the side-characters all have interesting powers, but the lead characters and villains don’t have any fighting style other than “lots and lots of power”. Still, the battles are what made me keep watching this series: they’ve got this sense of despair when Kuro (the lead character gets beaten over and over again. It’s fairly formulaic, but especially in the beginning it’s strangely watchable.

But all goes down the drains in the second half. Up until the halfway point, despite the formulaic battles the series had actually done a fairly well job in letting us get to know the main characters. The story was finally coming together… until the writers completely jumped the shark with a string of the most blatantly obvious Deus ex Machina. The storyline that was up to that point at least fairly layered turns into a dumb “beat the bad guy”-storyline and turns completely ridiculous. My biggest gripe was with the episode that revealed why the major villain of this series became the bad guy. I won’t spoil it, but let me just say that those plot twists feel so incredibly contrived that they really destroyed any suspense of disbelief I still had for this series.

The characters are mostly just okay, but the male lead character is such an annoying character. He only has two personalities: an emo one (”leave me alone! I don’t want to fight!”) and a fearless one (”Let’s beat them, Kuro!”). I was hoping that he would change over the course of the series, but unfortunately he only got more and more generic as the show went on. So in the end, the only thing that this series did well is its pretty pictures. Sunrise is behind the animation, so at least the action looks solid and consistent, and the background art is very stylish.

Still, I really don’t recommend this series for anything. There really is much better stuff out there, and this series fails to stand out in any way aside from its Dopple-liner system, which it never really goes in-depth with anyway. The story is full of holes and power-level inconsistencies, battles are written so that Kuro wins them at the last possible moment and overall, it just smells of mediocrity.