This was going to be an important episode for this series. Heck, it’s Studio Pierrot. I should have known that they were going to include fillers. This episode really was the chance of the creators to show that they can tell a story. And really, they did it.

I was actually very afraid when i first heard that both the previous and this episode are fillers. However, if all of the fillers are as enjoyable as this episode, then I don’t have anything to complain about. It’s strange how the random stories for this show don’t seem to work alongside the main storyline, but when they’re simply used to flesh out the characters and the setting, then I admit that they’re quite charming. Nothing special of course, but what the heck, I enjoyed it.

I’m really going to have to change my mindset while watching this series, though. At the start, I was really expecting a continuous story where the random stories would only end up getting in the way. Still, I guess that this episode had its charms. The series turned out quite a bit more childish than I first thought it would be, and there are times at which the details just don’t make sense, but this episode did its job in keeping me entertained. It was quirky and charming, and especially Steak in the background was hilarious to watch.

Fillers an sich aren’t bad. Himitsu The Revelation had lots of them, and yet all of them were inspired. The fillers in Tsubasa Chronicle 2 also were very enjoyable (YES I LIKED IT!!). They only get bad when they’re uninspired. Which, unfortunately, happens a lot. The thing that Letter Bee is going to have to take care about is to properly balance them inside the series, and to not overdo them.

PLEASE, don’t overdo them!
Rating: (Enjoyable)

I’ve said this plenty of times now, but my biggest problem with anime at the moment is its “we’ll animate the second season only when the sales are good”-tendency. That’s why it’s good to see that there are still series that take risks and plan a full 50-episode course and plan in the full story that they want to tell. Kemono no Souja Erin is a slow-paced series, but because of its length it can show things that would not have been possible within 26 episodes.

What makes this series unique is its huge focus on taking care of wild animals. Erin starts as a little girl, but as she grows up you can see how her fascination with these wild beasts grows and develops, until she actually ends up taking care of them for real. This is done with a real attention to detail, and it’s really focused on Erin thinking outside of the box to find out the best ways to take care of these animals (in her case, Beast Kings, a huge kind of fictional dog-bird). Erin, and the trouble she has raising these animals are really one of a kind, and really the reason why you want to watch this series.

Aside this, the series also spends quite a bit of time on politics, but these just aren’t as good by comparison. The country’s background is a bit one-sided and just not as interesting as Erin and the challenges she faces trying to raise Lilan, the main beast of this series. On top of that, as the politics take over the show near the end, they end the series with a really cheesy, cliched and sloppy ending.

The animation is also a bit of a mixed bag. The art itself is beautiful: the backgrounds are very original, and whenever a beast is about to attack someone, it gets all surreal, as to symbolize the chaos that’s going on in the mind of both the attacker and attacked. This would have been a great series to look at if it wasn’t for the constant use of flashbacks, recycled frames, and even entire recycled scenes. Normally I’m don’t often notice this, but this series really takes it a bit too far.

Nevertheless, this is one of those shows that puts nearly 50 episodes into the development of its lead character. Erin really stands out as a memorable character, and her growth from just a small child into adulthood is very detailed, making her into one of the best developed characters of the year. The side-cast also all have their own moments to shine. It’s a shame that there are a number of weaker episodes, but the good ones really make up for it.

So far, the endings this season have been pretty generous for me. 11Eyes was pretty exciting, Darker than Black’s finale also had its good points, and White Album’s ending was really good. This however, was just bad. I wish that I could at least praise it some, but it did just about everything that you shouldn’t do in a final episode. Let’s make a checklist of what all went wrong here:

- A Disney-ending: the lead character is hit. He/she falls to the ground, seemingly dead. But wait! She turns out to be alive anyway. This is completely pointless in terms of storytelling: it accomplishes nothing, and is just used to generate some cheap sentiments for the lead character. Let it be the characters who create the drama!
- The lead character is cornered, about to be killed. But wait! Something unannounced suddenly pops up to save her. Again, pointless and cheap! If you want to do something, then at least show Lilan take off or something.
- It forgets to take its surroundings into account. What happened to the Touda riders? They completely vanish after Lilan screams. Where the heck are they?
- The villain, battered and defeated, finds a weapon and takes a final shot at killing important person X. Only to be obviously stopped. Cliched! Cheesy!
- “Save him! Save my precious loved one because he is about to be killed! The others on the battlefield? Who cares. I just want to be with the person I love.”
- And they lived happily ever after. seriously, all of the conflicts magically resolve themselves. Very sloppy.

I mean, this was exactly what I feared when I first found out about the staff of this series. The director has shown that he can adapt a story well, as long as he’s given enough time. But he’s utterly terrible when he needs to write stories for himself. There are so many things wrong with this episode. It’s not just a case where it’s simply rushed, and just could have used some extra episodes. Even with ten extra episodes, what happened here would not have made any sense.

I mean, I seriously wonder what happened to everyone on the battlefield. For some reason, everyone aside from Shunan completely disappears. As if those lives are completely unimportant. That completely shatters the previously built-up themes about the hardships of war: who cares if people get hurt? They’ll just disappear anyway. Let’s send those kinds of armies toward each other!

This really is a bad timing for this series. You know, if the series had simply ended at episode 49, it would have left a better impression than right now. Here I was, really happy with the slow build-up of the past few episodes and that the creators were actually trying to let everything play out naturally… and then they pull this. Oh come on. And added to that they even have the guts to pull a “nearly dead”-twist TWICE. I mean, what were they thinking? This is just me, but I personally hate it when a show has to resort to these kinds of plot twists. Especially near the end.

Overall, I like the series, but I think the parts I blogged weren’t the best. For me, this show was at its best from episode 30 to the episode in which Erin lost half her hand. After that, it was just build-up for this particular episode, and that was just all dumped down the drain in less than 20 minutes.

Ah crap. I was going to give this show a very positive review, and then it pulls this. I’ve noticed this plenty of times: great series with bad endings, as much as I hate it, do end up leaving a very bad aftertaste. There you go, show. Thanks for pissing me off.
Rating: —- (Bad)

If you’re planning to watch the first season of White Album: good luck. Have fun sitting through one of the most frustrating series of the past years. However, for those who do manage to get through it there is a reward, because the second season is much, much better. In fact, it’s a breath of fresh air for both the harem and hentai game adaptation genre.

The first season really had no idea how to write good drama. It really tried, but revelations were poorly built up, the romance was shallow, and it used really cheap plot devices in an attempt to create drama (answering machine?!). Thankfully, Seven Arcs noticed this, and actually changed the directors, in favour of someone who did know what he was doing. The result really allowed this series to show the best of its daring premise.

The result managed to add depth to nearly all the characters. I really loved the execution of this series: a lot of bad stuff happens in this series, Touya for a large part is an incredible bastard who fools around with tons of women, however everything still progresses naturally: it never goes over the top or forces climaxes. Characters don’t suddenly turn emo because of one simple revelation, but what goes on inside their heads is much more complex than that. Every character has his or her own issues that get explored really well and the way that the creators manage to interweave all these stories is really skillfully done. There’s hardly any moment of boredom.

And then Touya. He really is one of the least likable lead characters after Makoto Ito, but in comparison to the latter he’s actually really well written and receives some memorable development. In fact, he’s so incredibly refreshing amongst most other harem leads with their wimpy and one-sided personalities. This guy’s issues are deep and yet they come together wonderfully at the end.

I really was prepared to hate this series when it first started, but it really proved me wrong when it improves on the first season in a lot of ways. It’s at times very emotional, but at the same time also very subtle and realistic. This really is everything I want romance to be, and it’s truly a leap forward for the harems and hentai game adaptations. If you’re tired of seeing the same thing over and over again in these genres, then this is a series that you should check out. However, be warned: it makes no attempts to make its characters easily likable. It’s realistic, but hard to get into as well.

You know what? I’m impressed. I’m fucking impressed by this ending. The way it wraps up so many plot threads, there’s a very good chance that it’s going to end up being the best ending of all the shows that end around these times. At the start of this series, I was expecting nothing other than a school days trainwreck ending. And yet here this show comes and does the exact opposite. Holy crap.

I love how the creators again did not try to end this show with a bang. There’s only one emotional climax in this entire episode: the point where Rina forces Touya to remember that what he forgot as a trauma, ten years ago. After that, Everything else follows naturally as he puts back the pieces of the puzzle that he once forgot. It’s basically a lot of exposition, but for Touya it makes perfect sense, now that he finally realized why he heck he turned into such a big player in the middle of this series. It’s a case where bullying went too far. Yuki actually tried to console him with a ribbon, but he threw it away. Haruka then picked up the ribbon, after Touya was scolded by his father and went back to search for it.

So as it turns out, the majority of White Album was just there, to get Touya to remember his past, and put aside his trauma. All of his actions don’t just stem from his loneliness created by how he was far away from Yuki, but instead out of escapism, created by that trauma. Influenced by both Yuki, Haruka and Menou at that time, he kept searching for his goddess, and never really found it. The way Touya healed in the final quarter of this series was also well built up. I think it started around the time that Mana left: it forced him to actually do something: get after Mana and instead stop running away. That time with Mana and after that Haruka really changed him.

Haruka breaking down in front of Touya’s door was of course a bit overdone, but with this revelation you can see that she’s not just another childhood friend who randomly falls in love with a harem lead (in the end, only Misaki took on that role), but rather, she too suffered from Touya’s trauma, and I can bet that she vividly remembered it: she had the ribbon to remind her of what happened. And with that, I can see why she fell for him in a moment of weakness. Menou in the end just turned out to be a girl who likes to fool around with guys. Touya was extra interesting for her because she met him when she was little. The reason she stayed with him was really because she liked him as a friend, rather than that she seriously had feelings for him. This rebellious way really comes from how she was raised: she resisted her strict mother, and because of that her mother became even stricter to Mana, who ended up listening to her mother and ended up studying really hard, to turn out about the opposite.

The iffy part of this episode was the performance, though. While the aftermath made sense and was interesting (Yuki and Rina finally got to work together as a duo, which takes care of the tensions between them of being competitions. And it’s not like everyone got a happy ending either: Rina’s brother still ended up in jail), but for a supposedly “perfect” idol, Rina’s English is pretty abysmal. And her showing up is also a bit hard to buy. Also, what happened with the animation in this episode? It’s back to the quality of the first season?

But really, it’s been a lot of fun to blog this series, even during the annoying times, there was tons to write about it. This ending also really showed that you don’t need to go over the top in order to create a great ending. White Album overall was a true breath of fresh air in both the harem and the hentai game adaptation genre. It for once took its time to give its male lead deep and memorable development, rather than just letting him be the same over and over again. Touya was a huge idiot throughout the majority of the series, but he could be one of the best developed harem leads out there. I would never have said this after finishing the first season, but I really hope that more series like this get made in the future.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

The next arc: Mirepoc. On top of that, Cigal returns, plus we get background on the mysterious bearded guy, who seems to have created an entire legend around him. I love how this show is able to interweave so many of its storylines.

Okay, so basically, Mirepoc is searching for the book of an actress who died eight years ago, who searched for the bearded guy who turns out to be named Othello. In the meantime, Cigal’s former lover also is after the same book for some reason. On top of that, we learn that Othello is friends with the invisible guy from the Church.

There are still tons of mysteries though: what is Mirepoc after? What’s getting her so fired up? What’s up with that other woman? Who the heck is Othello, and what is he after? Why was Winkeny after Hiza’s book? In fact, why is the church after the books of the Armed Librarians? The way they’re after them seems a bit more obsessive than simply for tactical reasons, especially considering that they’re intent on collecting every single one of them.

Also, I love what Volken has turned into. He’s been gone for ages now, and yet it has become awesome to just see his name mentioned. :P
Rating: ** (Excellent)