Okay, so this series isn’t exactly the best of the season at the moment, but then again that’s only logical since it’s clearly only building up, and yet I’m already enjoying it a lot. when this series started, I admit that I was really doubtful whether or not Chiaki Kon would be able to pull off this series, considering the other shows she has worked on after Higurashi, but this again shows that even directors with flawed records can be able to produce good series if the source material and guidance is good enough.

Anywaay, while the first arc focused on the younger generation, this arc puts the focus at the servants, as they’re labelled as the prime suspects. This episode shows that someone killed Kanon and Jessica, dragged Kanon out of the room and locked the room afterwards. There are only six keys in existence that are able to open the lock, since Beatrice ruled out window-climbing and lock-picking with the red texts. There were two keys inside the room as it was locked: Jessica’s and Kanon’s. That means that there are four keys left, and all of them are in the possession of the four servants left alive.

In this way, the most suspicious one is Gouda. He could have faked his own death in the first arc and he had no alibi for the death of Jessica and Kanon. Furthermore, Battler’s argument of how such a guy with a nice face couldn’t possibly be the murderer is weak. Try saying that to Higurashi.

However, that doesn’t really mean that one of the servants is the culprit. Have we actually seen it confirmed that all four keys are present at their owner? I think that we’ve established by now that the killer is a good pick-pocket. He could have just taken one of the servants’ keys to make it seem like they did it, which also would make more sense because it would be stupid of a servant to put the blame on himself like this. In this way, Rosa fits as the main suspect: she too could have faked her own death in the first arc, and taking charge of the situation as a leader figure does kind-of take suspicions away.

That just leaves the question as to who committed the murders here. The illusions in this series become weirder and weirder, and harder to logically explain. Previously, you could just assume that the murders on Kanon were flashy set-ups by Beatrice, but Gouda actually felt the zombie-Kanon as some sort of solid matter. Do you suppose that the killer actually used some sort of magic mushrooms in order to accomplish that?

One thing that rather annoys me about this series is how they keep censoring the gory parts. I mean, come on. Take a look at Himitsu ~The Revelation~ for example: in that series the corpses were even more disturbing, and not even an iota was censored, which really contributed to its dark and creepy mood. This show airs like, how late? 2:00 in the morning? What kid is going to be awake at that hour?

And as usual: when discussing this episode, please refrain from mentioning events that happen after this point in the visual novel.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

A peculiar episode for this series, especially with only two episodes left after this. You’d think that this close to the end, the creators would pump up the drama, but instead we get what is likely the quietest episode of this series yet. There was a lot of simple slice of life.

So in this episode, Kyouko basically takes Akira, Fumi and some of her classmates to a holiday house owned by her fiance. A lot of the episode was just focused to the bunch of them having fun. There was a bit of drama, but this was much lighter than previous in this series. Basically, Kyouko’s fiance turns out to really like Kyouko, even when he knows that she has a crush on a girl. Yet again a subversion of the “childhood friends becoming lovers”-trope. This also is an important episode for Akira at the end, where she finally seems to realize that she’s the only one of her friends who still hasn’t fallen in love.

With two episodes left, I’m very curious to see how the creators are planning to end this series. Of course, I’d be happy with a second season, but there are other shows that are currently airing that deserve a sequel much more than this series. With the Noise time-slot apparently having bombed, I don’t think that the producers are very keen on keeping this series going, and I’m really not bothered if that turns out to be the case: we’ve got ourselves a nice, short and consistently excellent romance here that was really good while it lasted.

I personally hope that the creators are going for a Hitohira end here: don’t try to save the biggest climax for last, and instead try to wrap up the plot nicely, and let life just go on afterwards. That’s going to be perfect for this series, instead of inserting some shallow conclusion in which Akira suddenly comes to realize that she’s in love with Fumi. That’s going to be rather lame.
Rating: * (Good)

Okay, time for me to review another really obscure movie that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago. Chocchan’s story is an adaptation of an autobiographical story of a mother during the second World War. Unfortunately, the only version that I could find was a Finnish sub, of all things, so unless you happen to know Finnish or Japanese, don’t bother to ask where to get it. If however, you do get the chance to watch this movie and don’t mind a quiet and slow-paced story, then I really recommend it.

The thing with this movie is that it’s wonderfully down to earth. Even though it plays during the very dark World War II, it never forgets its main focus: the characters. A lot of horrible and depressing things happen throughout the movie, but it never attempts to do things over-theatrical. This is a movie full of subtle details in the characters’ developments.

It’s also one of the few movies I’ve seen to pull off some actual credible and believable character-development. It shows the life of the main characters, starting right from the moment she gets engaged until more than ten years later, when she bore her fourth child. there are numerous time-skips throughout the movie that also allow her children to be developed this way. Seriously, in anime it’s very rare to see a mother or parent with this much depth; let alone in a movie.

The downside to this movie is its music. Whereas the storytelling is full of subtlety, the music isn’t. The story is supposed to be subtle, but a lot of the most dramatic moments lose their touch when an incredibly loud set of violins thunder through the speakers, overpowering just about everything else. A soundtrack often does wonders in enriching a story, but this is one of those few anime that would have been better without any music at all.

Nevertheless, this series really succeeds in creating a cast of “real” and likable characters and does a really good job at showing the struggles of a mother during the second World War, not knowing whatever happened to her husband who was recruited by the army. It deals with heavy themes and struggles, and yet it’s well acted without crossing the borders into melodrama. Especially if you’re a fan of the World Masterpiece Theatre, you’re bound to like this little movie.

I already suspected this for a while, but now I’m sure: Yamaguchi is awesome. She’s such an adorable character in her innocence and love for art, and that dream sequence at the end of this episode was all kinds of awesome compiled together. I’m really getting more and more warmed up to the characters for this series.

The episode starts with a strange sketch in which Noda theorizes what kind of colours and items would match the different members of the cast. This becomes sort-of a running theme throughout this episode. It seems that it’s an idea she has for a manga, though I suspect that she never really started on it. When she asks what kind of item would match Yamaguchi, it seems that everyone quickly thinks of a pair of glasses.

Next up is another quick sketch in which the cast members start to imitate their classmates, of which Noda’s impression of Nozaki made Nozaki rather angry… The sketch after that is a strange one, which I guess imitates one of those nature wildlife programs and talks about students in their natural environment…

They then turn back to color associations, and how you look at the warmer colours like red and orange, and the colder ones like blue and purple. Noda figures that Tomokane and Yamaguchi both belong to the warmer colours (due to Tomokane’s energetic personality, and Yamaguchi’s warm nature), while Nozaki and Oomichi are the colder ones (Nozaki due to her calm and down to earth personality and Oomichi… yeah). As for the question who Noda is, Nozaki figures that yellow fits best.

Next up Nozaki, who comes up with a magazine that has one of those tests that analyzes people based on their favourite colour. Oomichi, with her favourite colour being black, obviously gets some rather negative results.

Next up is a short sketch about Origami, especially Yamaguchi and Oomichi are good at it (with Oomichi only folding pure black stuff). Yamaguchi is out of a certain colour, and so she goes to buy some new stuff, while Nozaki keeps reminding her not to talk to strangers, et cetera.

Next up is a long series of short sketches about the use of colours and materials, in which the series tries to explain certain terms in art in a playful way. They are:
- Vivid Tone, or lots of bright colours. This has Noda dressed up as a witch who turns Tomokane’s hair dark green and Nozaki’s tea bright green. Certainly vivid. Interestingly enough, when she drinks milk her colours become so diluted with white so that she nearly fades away.
- Pale Tone. Witch Noda is back, this time with pale colours.
- Dull Tone. We somehow turn to the other Art Club for this one as Awara tries to get Homura to draw an oil painting, who obviously has no idea how that works. Awara doesn’t seem to have a clue either. Don’t ask me what this has to do with a dull tone… perhaps it’s referring to the dull tone in which oil paintings were usually painted?
- Dark Tone. We see a very dark picture of Oomichi in a very dark background, and they use the interesting example of how a room with a dark ceiling seems to look much more ominous than if it had a dark floor instead (hmm, never noticed that one).
- Grayish Tone brings us to a setting in slightly grayer colours. Another nice example is having a birthday party in which everyone is in gray. It just doesn’t fit.
- Strong Tone, at the Art Club again. They talk a bit about pencils versus brushes, and how you never seem to need white pencils (so true ^^;).
- Mono Tone. Somehow this involves moldy bread. I’m still not exactly sure why…

The next half of the episode ranks among my favourite parts of this series so far. We see Yamaguchi in a very sleepy mood as she walks to her next classes, and she can hardly stay awake as they try to attend a class about surrealism. I’m not going to bother to try and understand what the teacher says about this, because half of the time people talk right through her.

Anyway, Yamaguchi eventually falls asleep, and even when it’s her turn to read parts from the book there’s no way to wake her up, so Tomokane and Noda try to do some ventriloquism act with her. In the end, Yamaguchi can’t even remember that that happened to her. It seems that she always gets very sleepy after breakfast or exercising. Noda suggests to go to her locker and gets something against sleep.

What follows is a crazy sequence of dream scenes inside Yamaguchi’s head that I can only describe as brilliant. No seriously, the enormous amount of creativity that runs around in her mind is just awesome, ranging from mermaid Nodas to flying staircases. It also builds further upon the Trompe l’Oeil of the previous episode, without even making it seem like the creators were simply reusing the same stuff.

We even get to see an image of a young Yamaguchi drawing. After that there is a bit of an aftermath and after that the episode ends.

Anyway, I may be a bit late in saying this, but this is a very good adaptation, isn’t it? I mean, I haven’t read the original 4koma manga, but I doubt that it was literally the same as what we see here right now. You can see the which sketches were directly taken from the manga, but there also is lots of stuff that really amazes me if it started out in a simple 4koma format. The director really did a great job of adding the energy to this adaptation and adding a few nice things here and there to keep this consistently entertaining.

But what amazes me the most is the following: out of all of the eight episodes so far, every single one of them has been different and unique from the other. They were all dedicated to a different topic, style or mood, and even when they revisit old material, they build further upon it, rather than simply milking out the same jokes like what too many comedies do nowadays. I remember how a previous work of Hiroaki Sakurai (the director) did have this problem: Cromartie High School was hilarious, but it really tended to repeat itself. I’m really glad to see that he realized this and made every single episode new and fresh. This really is everything a good comedy should be.

Also, this is one of the first school series I have seen in a long, long while that actually teaches me something. Am I the only one who sees the irony in this?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

One of the downsides of this site is that sometimes discussions erupt in the shoutbox that go way beyond its capacity. At the moment, I really don’t have a clear-cut solution for this. The cbox utility really is the best free type of shoutbox that I could find. I’m open for suggestions, though.

Anyway, the least thing I can do is create a proper post for it. I personally haven’t seen the Nana so I can’t exactly comment on it, but there have been plenty of readers with some interesting thoughts on the subject. Opio for example claims:

“Mhmm yea, I’d have to say NANA is the most realistic/engaging shoujo I’ve ever watched. I’ve watched the season like 3 times and following the manga currently. I just really felt the realtionships were so realistic and the way the characters acted were amazin”

On the contrary, Theowne wasn’t impressed:

“Didn’t get too far with NANA, just seemed like superficial characters having superficial relationships. I’ll pass.”

“Meh, it’s a matter of your attitude or personality. Me, I just didn’t care about any of the NANA characters. Complete opposite of Honey and Clover.”

Sappire adds:

“One of the Nanas is indeed superficial, but so are many people in real life. I think NANA does a realistic portrait of people’s feelings and fears, it’s definitely worth a watch.”

senerikfred also liked the realism in Nana:

“I’m with Opio-NNANA’s characters are engagingly realistic. Hachi ended up as one of my favorite characters all-time. She’s shallow for sure, but not an idiot or malicious.”

“Gack. I don’t usually watch stuff as predictable as NANA, but what I like about it is that there aren’t dramatic twists left and right, and it’s so meticuous in fleshing out the characters that more often than not, you know exactly what’s going to happen. It’s made clear exactly what everyone’s reasons are. And damn, DERP isn’t everything there is to like.”

But Theowne notes:

“I’m sure its realistic.=) It’s similar to why I don’t read “realistic” celebrity gossip. I just don’t care about these superficial soap-operas of such characters, and so it felt emotionally hollow. And remember, this is all just my own honest reaction, different people will interpret it their own way. I’m not saying I’m right and you’re wrong. =)”

I know I missed a number of posts, but this seems to be the gist of it. Now, go ahead with your discussion without those nasty limitations of that shoutbox. ;)

Three episodes left, and we finally move to something that resembles a climax. This episode was much like episode five, in which a lot of focus was spent on trying to hack Medusa out of trying to destroy the world, especially focusing on Karin vs Kuniko. In this episode, Karin finally has to learn to grow up a bit, and the highlight of this episode was Kuniko, trying to talk some sense into her.

In the next episode, we should finally get some light of what the hell Ryouko has been up to throughout the series, as she finally seems to be ready to execute whatever plan she was scheming. Finally we see her taking one of the digmas (Mikuni) back to her. It could be that she was simply waiting for one Digma to collect all of the daggers, and figured that it might have gone faster if she’d just Karin collect the daggers, rather than send her own men to do the job. Probably she also did this in order to avoid suspicions on her part. That still leaves the question why she’s willing to let Atlas succumb to earthquakes, though.

I’m surprised that this episode was relatively quiet, especially since this series still has a lot of work to do in its final hour to wrap everything up. I suspect that this was really the last calm before the storm and I really wonder what the creators are planning to end this series with. Endings are always really tricky to really pull of well. This series does have the ingredients to make it work, but I’ve seen many awesome series with unimpressive endings, so I’m just going to keep my expectations low for this one.
Rating: * (Good)

Haha! This series is getting closer and closer to the big climax. Or at least… the big climax that’s going to close off the first of hopefully many Guin Saga seasons. To be honest, out of all the shows I’m watching right now that are about to end, this is the series that I’m rooting for a sequel the most. With a show focused so heavily on politics, you really NEED lots and lots of episodes to get the best out of it. The same goes with Tytania. Looking back, it just isn’t worth watching if the producers had no intentions to animate the second half of the story.

In any case, this is one of those typical episodes in which the plot thickens, mostly around the Parro revolution. It becomes clear that a lot of the former citizens of Parro have grown rather tired by the Mongol occupation, and while on their own they don’t stand much of a chance (their strategy of rolling inside barrels may have worked for a few soldiers, but they were quickly outdone by the Mongol soldiers), however Naris managed to get them under his control in time, and so they’ll prove to be of a much better use rather than simply Mongol Target Practice.

Speaking of which… I’m surprised that Naris so easily gave up the cover that he was dead. I’m still not exactly sure why he bothered to try and marry Amnelis, though it might have been a move to confuse the enemy and humiliate them. In any case, it’s going to be interesting to see how Amnelis is going to react when she learns of this.

Cuthron (or however you spell that in English), unfortunately ended up dying in this episode, because he was being out-witted by the very same Mongol officer that he was trying to kill. It turns out that he was a traitor in the Mongol army; my memory isn’t exactly clear on this matter, but if I recall correctly he was converted by Rikia when she was taking care of Naris’ fake assassination.

Speaking of which, only when I went to the official site to look up Cuthron’s name I realized the incredible size of the cast of this series. Seriously, it’s a enormous washing-list that just keeps on and on. It’s amazing that so many characters have already passed the screen. Especially considering how we’re only at what? Novel fifteen out of 130? At this rate this show has a good chance of surpassing even Baccano and Saiunkoku Monogatari in terms of its amount of characters… Especially Mister Question Mark intrigues me. Why did the creators bother to put him (or her) up when there’s absolutely nothing known about him (or her).
Rating: ** (Excellent)

When I read some of windy’s comments, it amuses me that we both ended up liking and disliking the complete opposites in this series. It just shows that there are many ways to look at this series, even though it’s not among the better World Masterpiece Theatres.

I can somewhat understand how the Marysville arc was supposed to be what this series should be about: Anne and her every day life. However, I think that the biggest problem I had with the Marysville arc is that it was a complete rip-off of Emily of the New Moon. Its adaptation, Kaze no Shoujo Emily, was one of my favourite series of 2007, and I really hated seeing it butchered like this, with a lot copied over and just about every good part removed, with the most notable one being Henderson as Anne’s teacher. At least the Thomas arc had its own identity, of a poor family that was on the verge of being broken up due to a drunk husband. It’s a very down-to-earth problem, and I liked that part a lot.

But yeah, I do agree that these parts did take the focus away from what’s really important in this series: Anne. In exchange we got a very nicely developed Thomas family, but as a prequel of Anne of Green Gables, this series fails. I think that I stopped looking at this series as a prequel a long time ago. This simply is a show that just happens to have a lead character with the same name and looks as in Anne of Green Gables. Nothing more, nothing less.

In any case, I thought that this really was a great episode for Anne. I thought that they would again focus on Bert, but instead he simply gets fired and throws his family in disarray. The focus became much more on Anne, who now had to work extra hard because Johanna would end up working continuously in order to be able to support her family. We also see her get mad at her brothers for the first time, which definitely was the most memorable scene in this episode.

For a minute, I was worried that she was indeed going to join Henderson and Eggman as they moved away from town, but thankfully she eventually chooses not to. A very nice build-up to the point at which she in the end is really going to have to leave them. Especially imagining that the second house she eventually ends up in was much worse than the opportunities she has got to live happily as a family.

But yeah, there were parts at which this show was a bit too cheesy again, mostly again around Henderson. I just couldn’t buy that the entire class was crying because Henderson had to leave. I mean, come on. She wasn’t that good of a teacher and she wasn’t at her post for that long either.

Anyway though, I’m very glad that she’s gone now. The good thing about this show is that it seems to be divided into four arcs that are probably going to be entirely different from each other, so if you don’t like one arc you can just wait until the next one and just consider the dull arc as build-up for the good parts. I’m interested where this series is going to go after this, now that it stopped being an Emily of the New Moon rip-off and can start focusing on its own direction again.
Rating: * (Good)

The sixth Kara no Kyoukai movie is called “Oblivion Recorder”. Unlike the fifth movie, it only takes up an hour of airtime, and tells about another supernatural mystery case in which Shiki becomes involved. While it doesn’t match the standard that was set by the movies 3, 4 and 5, it nevertheless is a nice little movie.

In this movie, we learn that Mikiya has a younger sister. This movie shows her, as she tries to solve a murder mystery that took place in her school, helped by Shiki. The storyline this time is simple but effective, and there’s a nice layered mystery behind a seemingly straight-forward murder. The build-up is pretty well done, and overall this makes for an enjoyable movie.

Where this movie fails to live up to in comparison to its predecessors is that its scenario and execution lack polish. Mikiya’s sister turns out to be yet another girl with a brother complex. I dunno, I think that the creators tried to appeal to taboos, but that doesn’t really work when this trope is already used by tons of other anime. And overall, as much as I appreciate that we got to know more about Mikiya this way, as a main character for a KnK movie, she fails to stand out and is among the least interesting ones.

On top of that, the dialogue also feels rushed and uninspired for a movie. There are a number of conversations that clearly lack a bit of polish here and there, and there are quite a few plot-holes left open at the end of it, most of which I don’t think are going to be answered by the seventh movie. This movie simply doesn’t have the deep characters nor the addictive storytelling of the third, fourth and fifth movie.

What it does have, however, is the best CG during an action scene out of the six movies so far. Mikiya’s sister’s magic is very flashy and the creators make really good use of it during the action scenes. As a standalone movie Oblivion Recorder would have been fine, but the standards of the Kara no Kyoukai movies so far have become higher than average after all.

Okay, so I finally managed to check out this movie. My big fear before I started watching it that, now that he’s almost reached his retirement, Hayao Miyazaki would have lost his touch by now, especially considering how his previous movie (Howl’s Moving Castle) was arguably his least impressive work. Nevertheless, these fears were ungrounded: Ponyo shows that the old master still has plenty of tricks left up his sleeve. And then some.

Miyazaki’s movies that he made for Ghibli can basically be divided into two categories: epic and down-to-earth. With Ponyo, he tries to combine the two by creating a charming little story about a five year old boy who meets a goldfish with magical powers, and yet creates enough opportunities to show off some amazingly creative visuals and animation that you wouldn’t expect in such a down to earth movie. The result really works and it’s become a movie that’s suitable for any age to enjoy.

The animation really shows how much work went into this movie. Even though CG is the norm in today’s anime, Ponyo is entirely drawn by hand, and contains a record number of 170000 hand drawn pictures. This series really shows how much you can do with just animation: in an industry of anime in which the norm is to cut corners, this movie is full of life with an amazing attention to detail in even the slightest moves, and there’s hardly any frame in which something isn’t moving. The amount of eye candy in this movie is also amazing, and even though the art style is simpler than in some of his previous works, the visuals still rank amongst his most impressive.

This movie also excels in its portrayal of five-year-olds. I read somewhere that Hayao Miyazaki lives right next to a kindergarten school or something similar, and so he’s had plenty of opportunities to fully study how little kids behave. Kosuke is a bit timid, but a very likable young lead. This series doesn’t have much character-development and background (only a few side-characters have a serious change of character), but considering the story and situations they were thrown in, they didn’t really need to: it was fun enough to watch them as they were and extra focus to get some character-development or background in would only have gotten in the way of what’s really important.

My problems with this series lies within some of its messages it attempts to teach to kids. With the environmentalist that Hayao Miyazaki is, I expected that he would show the bad implications of major floods. Instead, a flood in this series just appears, puts an entire landscape under water for a few hours and then disappears without ever leaving a trace. Oh, I’d wish that reality were this simple and convenient. Or how about people who’ve lost their ability to walk, and suddenly are rid of their problems due to magic. Yes kids! If you have some sort of incurable ailment, just hope that a person with magic will arrive and wave these problems away!

Anyway, it’s been more than a year now since I watched all of Miyazaki’s major movies. Looking back, his movie that turned out the most memorable for me was Porco Rosso, which probably was his most mature movie. Ponyo, his least mature movie, probably isn’t going to take that place, but yet it is a very charming movie to behold and definitely worth the watch unless you absolutely can’t stand childish stuff.