The past autumn season may not have been the best, but did stand out in one thing: more than one actually good hentai game adaptations. 11Eyes at first looks like your average harem, with cheesy character-designs, stupid characters, and an incredibly lazy execution. And yet it already proves you wrong during the very first climax.

11Eyes is finally another one of those eroge adaptations that has a good story that’s fleshed out throughout the entire series, rather than the final two episodes, it has well fleshed out and developed characters, and a pretty solid direction during the climaxesEven the smaller side-characters aren’t cardboard cut-outs for once, but actual characters with their own issues, strengths and weaknesses.It’s a really great transition from its original source material and how notorious these have become over the past decade.

11Eyes is not without its problems, though. The voice acting is a bit unrealistic at times, especially the male lead suffers from this. And while the direction is impressive, the animation and visuals themselves don’t often stand out. Also, as the story goes on, a really weird love triangle pops up that is forced, doesn’t make any sense and is way too underdeveloped and forced for its role in the storyline. The big reason for that is the female lead, Yuka, who seems to believe that whenever a guy touches another girl he’s immediately in love with her.

So yeah, ultimately it’s the side-cast that brightens up this series, but they do so pretty well. 11Eyes is in no way the perfect series, but it’s solid entertainment and comes with a pretty good story and characters that will keep you interested. As for the ending… it has some pretty creative elements. I’d label it as a pretty good ending if it wasn’t for the blatant Deus ex Machina at the end.

(In case you’re wondering what happened to the rating categories I usually put here, I’m experimenting whether I should not show them alltogether. Or is there something else that I could put here?)

This episode was… tedious to sit through. It was basically just Kurumi trying to get a love triangle started, which is probably going to be worthless in the next episode when everyone realizes that it was just a misunderstanding. Agh, it’s like Itazura na Kiss all over, but without the funny parts.

Let me list a bunch of shoujo-series that actually did get the love triangle right (Minor spoilers included):
- Bokura ga Ita: mainly worked because the love rival got fed up with the indecisiveness of the lead male, which was a huge theme of the series.
- Kodomo no Omocha: worked because we actually see both the lead male and female go through other relationships with other people, while it’s actually the distance between them, created by the lead female’s job as an idol that prevents them from hooking up, rather than the ditzy love rivals being the sole reason.
- Ashita no Nadja: we actually see the lead female hanging out with other guys without it suddenly creating a huge drama.

On top of that, we also have shoujo-series as Glass Mask, DNAngel and Full Moon wo Sagashite in which the romances work because of their realism and the way they let their relationships progress naturally. Not in the forced way that Kimi ni Todoke has been doing for the past twelve episodes…

I’m interested to see the other sides of the story, though. I’ve heard quite a few arguments why this show is popular, but those all seemed to come from the ones who didn’t like it. When I look at various blogs, all I see is squealing over various characters, but for the past months I’ve hardly seen any people who liked this show and came with valid reasons.

Sure, that might just been me, looking at the wrong places, but still: fans of Kimi ni Todoke, enlighten me! What makes this show so great that it deserves such a high score on various anime sites? What was so good about this series that everyone vote for it here? Or is this really just another Twillight which has tons of squealing fangirls who like it just because of the hot guys and sparkles?

Whether I’m going to drop this show at the start of the Winter-Season, I don’t know yet. Because Aoi Bungaku, Darker than Black, Erin, Konnichiwa Anne, Kuchuu Buranko, Umineko and White Album are going to be ending all within a week, this means that I need to find seven new bloggable shows among the line-up of the upcoming Winter-season. Which is a lot during such a small season. However, if number eight does pop up, then expect to see this show in the dropped-list.

Right now, this show is just… too convenient. Sawako doesn’t really have to work hard for her newfound popularity. She gets protected everywhere, and her exaggeratedly weird personality makes sure that all the bad guys’ plans go wrong. At first I praised this series because it showed outcasts as they try to live back into society, but that’s not even what this series is about. We’ve just got another Mary Sue here where the entire plot revolves around. Sure, Sawako has flaws, but all those flaws seem to be more and more used in favour of her, rather than creating her as a character.
Rating: — (Lacking)

Now this is really why I love anime: it is really one of the very few animation styles that can get away with stuff that’s entirely meant for adults. I’ve seen quite a few comments that the Third Patlabor Movie (which was produced ten years after the second movie) didn’t live up to the standards that were set by the TV-series and the first two movies. Now let me say that I can understand why, but there’s enough that makes this movie worth watching.

Before I list the good points of this movie however, I do want to say a few things about something that probably turned off a lot of fans of the Patlabor franchise: the decision to swap main characters with two completely new characters. Let me say that I do like this idea a lot. It shows that Captain Goto and his team are mere cogs inside the Patlabor setting: they just do the job they’re supposed to do, while others do theirs. It’s a great way to flesh out the setting a bit more. However, when you make such a decision, you do need to take care to give these new characters a good personality and background, and that’s where this movie never really delivers. At the end of this movie, I still don’t have any clue who these people are. How did they become detectives, what drives them, what are their quirks? They’re huge mysteries. For a franchise that stood out with its rock-solid characters, it will be a bit difficult to get used to the two of them.

The good thing of course is that this is really the most accessible of the Patlabor movies: you can really watch this even if you haven’t watched anything of the Patlabor franchise before. The thing that I loved about it was how composed it was: it knew exactly what story it wanted to tell, and it does so with conviction. The pacing is really slow to really allow everything to fall in place, and the exposition is very well balanced so that it’s neither dull nor techno-babble.

The movie really excels in its smart and realistic build-up that really pays off in its climaxes, and while there are a few coincidences here and there, it doesn’t attempt to introduce cheap plot twists at the crucial plot points. While the two lead characters lack in strength, the two main villains do receive a lot of depth, which really culminates in a great ending.

Quiet movies like this one of course have their share of setbacks: if you’re not caught in by the build-up, you will be bored. But I really find that these movies have a unique charm in their maturity, where they show that you can also create a good and exciting stories without the over-the-topness that you usually see in anime aimed at teenagers. In fact, realized that the hit to miss ratio of adult movies for me is much higher than the stuff for teenagers. Out of the three Patlabor Movies, I still like the second one best, but WXIII comes in as a close second.