I’m a big fan of folklore, so I was looking forward to checking out Otogizoshi, and I must yet again praise Production IG to come with original and new premises. The thing that makes this series special is that while it starts in Japan’s Heian era, the second half of the series takes place in modern day Tokyo. Even though the story and atmosphere of both are completely different, they mix really well in the end.

The Heian arc is really folklore, as traditional as you can get in anime. It’s a tale of honor, samurai and bandits as we follow the female protagonist as she pretends to be her dead brother in order to save the kingdom. It’s got a very tight atmosphere, almost horror-like, and it’s full of sword-battles and the like as the story that offers a deep look into the practices Onmyou evolves.

The Heian arc however suffers from a stereotypical cast of characters. It just spends too little time into fleshing out the characters, and so they never really grow beyond their arch-types, as likable as they may be: Hikaru is your average protagonist, always trying to do the right thing, even though it’s not in her own best interest, then we have your typical loyal guard, the womanizer who turns out to have a heart of gold and the annoying brat. They definitely have their charms, but they just don’t feel like dynamic characters and the end result becomes a bit cheesy. Especially the villains suffer from this: only the mid-bosses are sufficiently fleshed out. The minor bad guys are just a bunch of screaming paper bags with swords, while the main bad guy is your stereotypical evil overlord who wants to destroy the world because he believes humanity to be rotten. Been there, done that.

Then the Tokyo arc, that takes place 1000 years after the Heian arc. The common opinion of this arc seems to be that it’s rather boring compared to the previous arc, but I disagree: it’s the Tokyo arc that really breathes life into this series. For once, it’s much quieter than the over the top Heian arc, and instead it develops into a modern-day mystery series.

The creators here really take their time to let the mysteries slowly build up, and slowly but surely you’ll get an idea of what’s going on as the links with the Heian arcs are made and developed. But what also made this arc better was the cast: the characters for this arc get plenty of time to get fleshed out, due to the slower pacing, and we really get to know them this time. The Tokyo arc takes a long time to get going, but it’s perfectly paced and knows exactly how to use its time to close off with a great conclusion that doesn’t try to be anything more than it is, unlike with the Heian arc.

The visuals in this series also rock. The character-designs are really well done, especially for the Tokyo arc. they’ve got a really realistic feeling, as opposed to all of the moe and overly cute series you see nowadays. Hikaru isn’t moe in anyway, and yet she looks great, and the same goes for the rest of the cast. They really make for a lot of great art throughout the series, my personal favourites were the flood scene and the earthquake scene. I’m not sure who animated those scenes, but they were full of creative visuals and made a lot of impact.

And yeah, despite the flaws the Heian arc most definitely isn’t bad. It’s a tensely told folklore, and the Tokyo arc that follows it makes it even better when it puts a modern touch to it, if you don’t mind a bit of slice of life here and there, of course.

Like expected, this was the episode where all hell breaks lose, and it indeed was one awesome episode full of awesome plot twists and awesome soundtracks. If this is going to be the standard for the rest of this series, then we’re in for something amazing. The build-up for the Cal arc was already interesting, but I feel like the climax is going to be even more awesome.

So in the end, it becomes clear that Claudia was the one who ordered the attack, half a year before. Scythe has been orchestrating his revenge against her, and that plan seems to be coming to fruition.

In this episode, Reiji finally gets the chance to talk to Ein again, and it seems that she hasn’t been mind-wiped or something: she still remembers Reiji, and instead is acting of her own will it seems. However, we’re still not given a look into her mind as to what caused her to go back to Scythe. I suspect that she never really cared about Reiji, and feared him more than she was willing to go with him, but let’s see whether or not that turns out to be true.

In the meantime, Reiji’s apartment has gotten blown up as well. Obviously Cal wasn’t inside when it happened because we’re only shown one side of the story, but I still really wonder what the heck happened inside there, and what caused her to escape. With this, she’s fully involved with the main storyline though, so that should prove to be awesome.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

To those who found the second episode a bit too mild and unspectacular: watch A Spirit of the Sun. It’s a two-episode OVA about an earthquake that is so powerful that it splits the entire Japanese mainland in half. That’s destruction for you. I however, prefer series as Tokyo Magnitude much, much better. After all, what makes more impact? An atom bomb dropped onto some sort of major city that wipes out millions of people, or a section of a highway that crushes some people who were worrying about their loved ones and tried to get home, dying right before the protagonist’s eyes?

Anyway, this episode showed what I have been suspecting: the real disaster hasn’t even started yet. Mirai and Yuki are miles away from their house, a distance that’s very hard to walk for a bunch of kids, and the two of them are going to have to try and reach it inside a city in which millions of people are trying to do the same.

And then there are the aftershocks, which may not have been able to cause destruction on a large scale, but definitely on a small scale. Take buildings that have been well designed, but caught fire in the big earthquake. Through an extra push of an earthquake of size 5.0, they can still collapse, which is what happened to the bridge in this episode.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is an amazing series. This episode did so well in bringing across Yuki’s fears of being abandoned and separated from Mari, even though she often bitches at her. The blisters on her feet due to her sandals was also a very nice touch. Because the weather is so hot, I doubt that a lot of people there are wearing shoes fit for long walks.

As for the typical Bones endings, I can actually see little that can go wrong there: if the series is just going to be about Mirai and Yuki trying to get home, this will make for a very charming conclusion to the series if the creators end it at their reunion. The only problem I can see is that they might force in a conclusion to Mari’s storyline about her kid.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Okay, so this episode was basically an aftermath and introduction. In the first part of the episode, Sharon’s kidnapping is wrapped up, while the rest of the episode shows us a familiar character returning: Ada, Oz’s sister. Both were excellent opportunities to see different sides of some characters. What I liked most about this episode was how we come to see Break and Sharon in a totally different light.

We learn that Break too was alive 100 years ago, and involved in the time-warp that got hold of Gilbert and Vincent. He was then found by Sharon and her mother, and while he started off as a closed off brat, it was Sharon’s mother who turned him into the playful sadist he is today. As what happened to Sharon’s mother, we still don’t know. She could be dead, but this show has a tendency of keeping it a mystery of who survived and who died.

As for Oz’s sister, she overacted a bit in my opinion. I’m not too fond of how she turned into some sort of blond bimbo, but she definitely has potential if she gets fleshed out more. Oscar in the meantime was priceless in his worries over her. The school also seems to hold some mysteries that have to do with Alice, so I’m wondering what these kids can add to the story. I mean, if they’re at school, they were five years old when Oz was cast into the Abyss, so they can’t have something to do with the whole story, can they?
Rating: * (Good)

Yeah, with this there is no question possible about the swap of directors: the directional style of this episode was really different from anything we’ve seen in this show so far. This is Kiss Dum. I was expecting this to be the moment for this show to completely jump the shark, but what the hell, it actually works!?

But yeah, this episode had a lot more emphasis on music. The new director likes to swap hot-blooded action scenes together with quiet exposition scenes, and so the atmosphere of this episode changed a lot of times from one to the other. It’s interesting how he didn’t mess up the continuity and developed it at the same time, though. You can see that the new animation director takes a lot less risks, and so the graphics don’t look as good as in the beginning of this show, but nevertheless I’m glad that the awesome background artists are still there, because at least they made sure for a lot of eye candy.

In a way, this change of direction was exactly what Basquash needed. I’m not sure what made the old director lose his touch, but ever since the desert episodes this series seems to have been missing the chaos of the first couple of episodes, and despite the character-development, this series became rather… generic, with not a lot of things that stood out. However, I can really see a hot blooded GAR finale work for this series. The past number of episodes were at least good at building up, and if the new director at least manages to use this build-up this can turn into a pretty exciting finale. What this series needs to pay attention to the most is to keep the level of cheese in check. While the drama thus far was mostly subtle, this episode definitely upped the cheese-level. That was one of the downsides to this episode.

Nevertheless, I like the new additions to the cast (especially the moon giant has lots of potential), this episode had lots of stuff going on and plenty of new revelations. Finally I’m getting a bit more excited with this series.
Rating: * (Good)