Touka Gettan is part of the “WTF am I watching!?”-series. From the creators of Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito comes an equally eccentric series that will have just about everyone confused as hell in the first five episodes. Its big selling point is of course that the episode aired backwards: it starts with the conclusion and ends with the introduction.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

In any case, it’s definitely an interesting and unique experience watching this series. The first five episodes are a complete mindscrew, with just about everything not making any sense because the lack of explanation that was supposed to have happened “earlier” on in the series. After that though, the series slows down and becomes episodic, and starts resembling your average school series with episodes like the Christmas episode, beach episode, et cetera, as we see the daily lives of the lead characters play out.

It might seem boring, but don’t worry, because the filler parts really manage to flesh out the characters, and the serious parts really give you the opportunity to try and connect everything that happened, watching the different characters develop backwards throughout time. The character-development is ranges from subtle to in-your-face, so you’re going to have to pay a lot of attention to get every single detail. Since you know how the characters are going to end up, it definitely has an interesting effect to see their past selves considering the sad and downright screwed up situations that they’re going to end up in.

If I had to praise this series for one thing though, then it’s its creativity. Let alone its idea to reverse the episodes, the cast of characters feels fresh and has a lot of original quirks (I especially loved the car jokes) and a lot of creative episodes (I especially liked what can be considered as the lost episode of Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito. It fits EXACLTY), but there also are episodes that take on the form of a theatre play and even an TV-show. From the outside, this series may consist out of a lot of boring fillers, but they hardly ever leave you bored or uninterested.

That’s not to say that Touka Gettan is without its flaws, unfortunately; it’s full of ‘em. It could have been much better paced and the continuity is pretty much a mess. The creators like to randomly let characters appear and disappear without any good reason, and some plot twists just seem to happen for the heck of it, rather than there being a good explanation for them. Considering how difficult it already is to keep track of the different characters in this show, an extra addition of plot-holes really DO NOT HELP.

Then there’s the excessive amount of fanservice in this series. I know that it’s there to add to the style of this series, but the creators really tend to take this overboard at times. The characters themselves also tend to lack background. While watching this series, you obviously won’t know which ones have proper background and which haven’t, but a lot of the characters could have been much better if we actually knew who they were in the end.

So yeah, Touka Gettan is too rough around the edges to really make an impact: it could have handled its unique format much better with a much tighter direction. Nevertheless, when it comes to entertainment and keeping its audience busy, it does exactly what it needs to do. It’s pretty much like Yamibou: it’s not exactly a great example of storytelling, but worth watching just for the character interaction and the ideas thrown into it.

Okay, so that play turned out to be utterly terrible, but then again that was most likely the intention of the creators. I don’t want to know how stupid I looked when I performed as a kid in the plays we had in elementary school.

Anyway, this episode starts with a little recap of what happened in the previous episode, with the play getting cancelled and Henderson temporarily suspended and all. Anne overhears this, and tells it to the others who are pretty shocked. Mildred starts feeling guilty, and when Micheal notes that it was indeed her whining that caused her mother to overreact, she really gets defensive.

Henderson then calls them to class, with the message that the play is getting called off, and she’s suspended. She then continues with some boring speech about morals and chasing your dreams that I don’t want to summarize.

The new teacher then arrives and takes over, though we never get to see him teach. After class, everyone is down because the play is cancelled. They’re thinking of throwing away the props they made, but that would be a waste as well. Anne then suggests that even though the play was cancelled for school, they could still perform it in order to show the adults that Henderson is right.

Meanwhile, Mildred tries to talk to Henderson but runs away a the last minute. Henderson tries to stop her, and since she knows that Mildred’s anger at the role decisions was what caused the play to be cancelled, she tries to make Mildred feel better, instead of scolding her. This doesn’t work however, because she never seemed to know that Mildred was jealous of how much attention Henderson gave to Anne instead of her. Mildred breaks down, and when Henderson tries to hug her, she runs away to her parents.

We then see Henderson as she drops by Eggman’s place, probably for moral support. What follows is yet another boring speech on morals that I again don’t want to summarize.

The next day, the kids are thinking of a place they can perform their play, since the school has become off-limits. Randolf then comes with the idea: at the church! Yeah. They quickly gather everyone and the necessary props and costumes. Anne runs off to Eggman to tell him about this plan, when it seems that Henderson has been bugging him again in her worries of what to do next. And so she learns of the plans to continue the play, even though it was supposed to be a secret for her to not get her in trouble.

At the church, everyone is in costume, but at the same time they’re too scared to go on stage. Nobody really has the courage when the moment comes there, but Mildred arrives and saves the day by announcing the play to everyone sitting in the church. Reluctantly everyone arrives, but everyone is way too scared to read their lines. Anne however is different and she starts reciting until Mildred’s parents arrive and see what’s going on.

What follows is YET ANOTHER boring speech on morals that eventually gets enough funds for the library, and I again don’t want to summarize it.

As much as I’m a fan of the World Masterpiece Theatre series, I do have to admit that they can be divided into two categories: First Tier and Second Tier. the first tier is everything the franchise is supposed to be: incredibly realistic characters and they stand on their own as unique and touching series. Examples of those (that I watched anyway) are Perrine Monogatari, Anne of Green Gables, Little Princess Sara, Les Miserables and Porfy no Nagai Tabi. These are the series that made me fall in love with this wonderful franchise.

Then there is the second tier, which can usually be recognized by one thing: cheese. Perhaps the characters aren’t fleshed out enough, they don’t mix well with the storyline, or the direction is simply flawed. Either way, the dramatic scenes are very hard to buy and are laughable, rather than charming and touching. The Trapp Monogatari for example is a bit too full of teenaged angst (especially Hedwig delivered them with buckets at the time), Ie Naki Ko had its very generic finale and Anne of Green Gables unfortunately also belongs to this category after the Marysville arc.

And believe me, these series are nowhere near bad: they achieve things that a lot of series couldn’t even hope of achieving: Trapp, despite the angst, has some of the most realistic angst out there. Ie Naki Ko was incredibly heart-warming at times and did have its moment of brilliance, and Konnichiwa Anne had its first ten episodes. However, the standard for the World Masterpiece Theatre is high. These series are enjoyable, but nowhere near the masterpieces of the First Tier.

In this episode, it was Mildred who surprised me the most. I’m happy to see that she finally managed to completely cast her shell away as a rip-off from the Emily of the New Moon universe, and established herself as a character of her own. I also liked that scene in which Anne tried to tell Eggman about the play, while she didn’t know that Henderson was listening.

It would have been nice and all, but what really bugged me in this episode was that the moral lessons just WOULDN’T SHUT THE HELL UP. The creators really tried to shove their cheesy morals down our throats over and over. I know that it’s supposed to be a children’s show and all, but I doubt that even kids are going to appreciate being told these life lessons. What made it even worse was the downright cheesy reaction of all the adults who were at the church. I mean, people were living in a strict Christian environment, as shown in the early episodes of Anne of Green Gables. I find it hard to believe that the library issue would be solved that easily. It was of course awesome to see the kids trying to gather their courage, but they would probably just have been sent away before they would have been able to come up with that cheesy speech of theirs.

And it’s not like this series can’t produce good filler episodes either. The episode in the beginning of this series, in which Anne was invited to play with that rich spoiled little kid was downright awesome. Very witty and it had a great characterization. The past few episodes have just been dull and boring due to Henderson’s moral ramblings that just went on and on and on. And on.
Rating: - (Disappointing)

Well, I didn’t see this one coming. Here I thought that this episode would show us the next ordeals that Guin and the others had to face with the new ship they sailed into, but instead none of them even appear in a single scene this episode. We aren’t even shown what they’re doing, the story simply puts its attention to something completely different. I like it; there aren’t many series that have the guts to ignore all of their main characters like this in favour of the side-characters.

So yeah, this episode is all about the wedding between Ardnaris and Amnelis, and the ones around them. Marius had originally the mission of killing off Amnelis’ younger brother (I’m assuming that he’s the oldest male heir to the throne, or something similar), but gets too attached to him and refuses to do his job, and so instead he creates some story in which he doesn’t need to kill the guy, because of how close they’ve gotten Marius has him under control.

Meanwhile, Amnelis has completely changed ever since she fell in love with Naris, and doesn’t even seem to notice how he’s trying to use her. Speaking of which… what was he doing with that Naris-lookalike at that strange city? Who was that man anyway? I guess that that will become clear once the two get married in the next episode. And yet there seem to be enough people aware of his plans, who seem to be people who want Remus to take the throne, instead of Ardnaris, and seem to be planning to use the guy as their pawn (probably still assuming that he’s the same weakling as ever). It should become very interesting if this guy would actually return to the throne, and try to take over the world. At least, if the anime actually gets to the point of animating those chapters…
Rating: ** (Excellent)

So yeah, for the past few weeks I’ve read a lot of comments about people who are disappointed with some of the cuts that this version of the anime made. They’re thankfully not annoying to read (unlike a certain other show), but they are rather one sided. From what I gathered from all of the comments I read by the manga readers, the manga seems to be the most perfect thing ever, and the Brotherhood adaptation is a flawed adaptation.

From my perspective (as I haven’t read anything from the manga), Brotherhood is doing a pretty terrific job so far. The thing I especially like about it is how it toys around with your emotions, and this episode was an especially good example of this: Ross escapes from prison after being framed for the murder on Hughes. Roy then comes and kills her off, of all things! The episode ended without any clear hint about what happened to her, whether it was a clever decoy from Roy or whether he really turned into such a bastard that he’d actually kill her for Hughes. That scene in which he sits in his office… I didn’t know whether I should laugh, mourn Ross, feel sorry for Roy’s co-workers or get angry at Roy for what he did, and there were a lot more scenes with similar effects, in which so many different emotions rush through at the same time. Did the manga have the same effect?

So yeah, I pretty much loved this episode. Barry indeed was awesome in the way he bust Ross out of prison. The whole escape scene in fact was awesome, in the way that Lin tagged along, and when they ran into Ed and Al, so many things happened at the same time. The scene later, with Ross’s death only made things better, when this series kept reminding Ed how helpless he is in protecting the lives of others. This was also the first time that I saw Armstrong seriously angry… and that made a lot of impact as well.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Well, so this was an episode for the romance on the show. The evil coach is gone, and most of his team transferred away again, with the exception of Azuma. The training pitch has become a lot less like a war-zone, and Kou and the others finally can practice in the open, which results the popularity of the main cast members growing quickly, as shown by the countless amount of fans for Azuma, Kou and Aoba.

This paragraph contains a MAJOR Touch SPOILER, so look away if you haven’t seen it yet. And so, it was inevitable for rumours to start wandering around, in true Adachi-fashion. This time, it’s spread by Akaishi who feels that the two of them would make a nice couple. but the big difference with Touch at that point was that Minami was already in love with Tatsuya while Kazuya was still around while Kou and Aoba only got closer after Wakaba’s death.

This episode also showed a potential girlfriend for that guy whose name I can’t remember. It’s very nice to see this series break through a flaw that a lot of romance series seem to suffer from: the “only main characters may fall in love”-syndrome, in which the side-characters almost never seem to get hooked up themselves, amidst the romantic adventures of the lead characters.

The rest of this episode was filled with the banter between Kou and Azuma, who seems to have moved into Kou’s house since losing his scholarship. The two of them work surprisingly well together in these light-hearted moments. I’m really glad to see that even after seventeen episodes, this series still hasn’t shown any sign of losing its wit. My personal favourite still remains Akaishi. I just loves how innocent he tries to look whenever things don’t go his way.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

There are some anime out there awesome… and then there are the series that go one step beyond. These are the series that just somehow go against all boundaries and expectations I could have had for it, and have something nearly impossible to describe. When I take a look at the series that I managed to rate at 95/100 and 94/100 through the nearly four years that I’ve been blogging, I keep getting surprised at how little of them look like the masterpieces that they are from the outside. I guess that such a list of personal favourites is incredibly personal, and different for everyone, but every time one of these appears, they truly remind me why I’m still blogging.

As for Strange Dawn, it too doesn’t look like anything special from the outside, however, I was completely proven wrong when I started watching it, about two years ago. Unfortunately, it was nearly unfindable for neither subs nor raws, but I finally managed to find a bunch of French subs for the entire series. It completely blew me away; Junichi Sato (who directed also Kaleido Star, Aria, Magic Users Club and Umi Monogatari) has done an absolutely fantastic job on this series.

Anyway, about Strange Dawn. Its basic premise has been done many times before: high-schoolers end up in some kind of parallel dimension and have some adventures. What sets itself apart from the others is a terrific execution. For starters, it breaks tons of stereotypes that these series have. Usually when a lead character crosses into a new world, he turns out to conveniently acquire some new superpower or something: either he becomes incredibly good at swordfighting, or has the magical Deus ex Machina beam, turns out to be royalty or gets saved by some sort of royalty. Yuko and Eri instead stay exactly the same. Instead, their importance to the story comes from the fact that they ended up in a country full of midgets, hence their natural strength when compared to all of these small people, and that becomes the major driving force of the story.

And there are more of these things: the creators take nothing for granted here, they explain the problems the two girls face when they have to deal with the strange world they ended up in; from eating and taking care of their clothes to sleeping and going to the bathroom (especially the latter is a running plot thread). In fact, the entire series has an incredible sense of detail: during the quiet parts in the series, whenever characters aren’t fighting or in the midst of dramatic climaxes, you can see them taking care of their own food, sharpening their weapons, caring for their horses (okay, flying snails), and doing all sorts of things that most anime nowadays take for granted or only show one or two scenes of.

The same amount of detail you can see in the animation: characters move realistically and relatively few corners are cut in comparison to your average anime. When characters move, they hardly ever look out of place and they’re always doing something meaningful that might not impact the story, but brings SO MUCH life to the setting and the world that the story plays in. For the past few years I’ve been a real advocate of series that manage to make the setting that they’re played in come alive, and this series really is the school example of how to do this right.

And as for the plot, we’ve got ourselves another case of wrong advertising here. The promo art might make you suspect that this is a fun and light-hearted fantasy adventure, mainly aimed at kids. It is not. In fact, don’t even dare to try and watch this series for the lighter parts, because Strange Dawn is dark. It’s not just dark in its atmosphere, but also in its themes. When people get cut up, blood appears without any hints of censorship; themes of war and death play a HUGE role in this series and heck, a certain episode even what can be qualified as an attempted rape in it. The amount of drama throughout the entire series is immense, but at the same time it consistently stays away from emo and melodrama, and stays genuine and never drags on.

Then there is the amazing voice acting cast. Especially the two lead characters are magnificently voiced, but the rest of the cast also shines throughout the series. They perfectly manage to capture the emotions of their characters, making the entire series an emotional roller-coaster along the way. And speaking of the audio, I also have to mention the amazing soundtrack that was compiled for this series. The tracks fit the atmosphere perfectly, and are a joy to listen to throughout the series.

Overall, there wasn’t one episode that didn’t have me clutched to the screen in near-tears, but the thing that blew me away the most was the ending. For the sake of spoilers I won’t say anything more, but the final episode was the single most emotional episode I have watched this year. Do not get fooled by the childish exterior, because inside Strange Dawn is a mature and intense roller-coaster ride. There are probably a lot of people who disagree with me on this, considering the abysmally low ratings on sites as Anidb, but I loved every minute of it.

I can somewhat understand the criticisms against Canaan. It’s in no way the best show of the season, the comedy isn’t the funniest around, and the characters themselves pale in comparison to some of the other shows this season. The plot isn’t the most interesting out there either. And yet as entertainment, it works for me. The reason I’m watching this series is not the characters or plot, but rather the direction, and that one has really been excellent so far. The creators really know how to create gripping action-scenes, and PA Works are definitely establishing themselves as a high-quality animation studio.

In this episode, we delve a bit into the past of Canaan, and are shown how she was rescued by her caretaker, and trained in the art of gunslinging, only for her caretaker to be killed off by Alphard. I assume that this show is going to be a thriller, aiming to kill said assassin. I really didn’t like how she suffers from the “I’m about to kill you but I won’t because that will spoil the fun”-syndrome, but I have to say that that gunfight between her and Canaan was the best this series has shown since the first episode.

At this point, I have no idea whether or not the creators are going to be able to top that first episode. At least the characters seem to be coming together, but I really don’t know whether this is the kind of series that attempts to have a very well animated first episode, only for the budget to continuously drop throughout the rest of the series, or the kind of series that has a bit of budget saved for an awesomely animated finale. Usually I just assume the former, but we are talking about PA Works here, not some sort of mediocre Zexcs or ACGT here. Especially the fight this episode showed that the animation budget has in no way run out yet, if only the pacing would increase to allow for a more creative gunfight.

The reason I’m a big fan of anime is the way it combines visuals, audio, storytelling and characters into one. I’m a big fan of multimedia that manage to combine all into one. And it’s also not like the story and characters are so bad that they make the rest of the series dull either: while they’re not the best, they’re definitely good enough for this series to work with. I’m enjoying this series a lot, because of this.
Rating: * (Good)

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)