Now that we’ve entered the second half of this series, the main storyline pops up again. It’s pretty early this time, in comparison to most other series in the same situation. Five episodes will be plenty of time to get a good climax out of this series, and I wonder what kind of tricks the creators still have up on their sleeve.

The episode starts as Tamaki takes Murasaki to the college she attends. As it turns out, she herself claims to be an expert in terms of love, and yet she gets dumped by her boyfriend because she’s been too rough on him. That female friend of Tamaki really reminded me of the early Rachel in Red Garden. I must say that the director here has been really good realistically portraying the dating scene, as opposed to 90% of the other anime, who strangely enough never heard of the word “party”. Are these that rare in Japan? I can imagine how series with a serious story don’t have time for these, but I’m really surprised that of all these slice-of-life series, nobody seems to celebrate their birthday with a big party…

The second half finally shows some depth to the bad guy, which is about time. The guy turns out to have been in love with Murasaki’s mother. Murasaki was also raised, not knowing who her real mother is, and only just before she died (or just after it) she found out the truth. What the cretors now need to do is continue this development. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but he needs more attention if he wants to end up as a successful antagonist. I may be comparing him a bit too much with Hervé, though. (From Red Garden, who in my opinion was a great example of an antagonist that works).

Okay. That was awesome!

I really admire the balls of the director to cast voice-actors who can’t sing to save their lives, and then force them to put down a passionate song multiple times. At this episode, I was nearly disappointed when the piano started playing and the voices started sounding like they were recorded in a studio, just when the characters were having the time of their lives, singing their lungs out, but as it turns out, this never ruined any of the genuine-ness of the song. Those were probably some of the worst performances to ever have been recorded in such a studio, but it really fun to listen to. :)

Those who’ve been reading some of my entries for Macross Frontier probably know how I kept whining about how the singing-performances in that series have felt too forced. It’s episodes like these that are exactly the reason why. Plays and musicals have always been a double-edged sword: in the hands of a lazy staff they’re terribly predictable and an absolute cheese-fest, but talented writers can turn these things into gold and this episode yet again proves that. There wasn’t much in terms of storyline, and yet this episode was one of the most fun episodes to watch, and at the same time it did a terrific job in fleshing out the characters.

What I also loved was how Kurenai was able to tell Yamie that her singing was a bit off, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to say the same to Yuuno (who sung just as bad, if not worse). Even Murasaki was scared of her. :P

Ah, what an adorable episode! Hardly anything new was introduced, and yet it was so much fun to just see the characters. This is exactly what I mean by a well-written series. Everything about this episode was just so enjoyable.

I love it in a series, where the characters are coming together. This series shows how far you can come with realism, because Murasaki and the five-year old sister of Yuno felt so real together. It’s just like how real little kids would spend their time when bored and not used to each other. And poor Yayoi! Everyone was having fun and eating at the end of the episode, and she was standing out there in the cold, getting hungry.

There’s nothing much else about this episoe to say, though. This really is an episode you need to watch for yourself, rather than read about it. I do want to say, though, that if this is really going to be a 13-episode series, then it’s well on its way to become a classic.

As much as I like the animation-style of the OP, the song does get annoying really fast! I’m hoping that if this series actually has more than 13 episodes, it’ll at least change the song for the OP.

In any case, this episode was chockfull of development and background. The big fight that takes place leads to Murasaki knocked out, and her guardian getting incredibly angry at Shikurou. What follows then is finally Shinkurou’s background, as both Murasaki and above mentioned guardian (forgot her name) learn more about the guy. It turns out that he not only lost his parents in that accident, but he also got picked up by what looks like child-smugglers. The interesting thing is that Ginko was with him at this time, and apparently he learned to fight because of Yuuno, who seemed to already posses a black belt in Judo when she was twelve.

There’s still no explanation of that strange body of Shinkrou, but now we at least know why he had trouble with his elbows: when he gets out of control, spikes not unlike those we see in Soul eater come out of his body, though for Shinkurou, this hurts like hell. Benika also tells about why she helped Murasaki escape, as it was basically a request by her late mother.

I’m also curious about the villains of this series, especially since Red Garden spent such an surprisingly large amount of time on Hervé, and yet we’ve seen hardly anything about the bad guys in Kurenai. I really hope that the director will give them the same treatment as Hervé, because this guy has really been one of the memorable villains I’ve watched.

How awesome! With this episode, there’s no mistake: the voices in Kurenai are recorded before the animation, instead of afterwards. Otherwise some of the conversations this episode could never have turned out as they did here, with characters who spoke right through each other, without having to worry about matching the lips. Seriously, more anime should attempt this style, because it gives the voice-actors so much more freedom. I think that by far the best example of this is the fight between Claire and her father in Red Garden. It was an absolute masterpiece, and it would never have turned out so incredibly emotionally intense if the voices were just regularly recorded after the animators did their work.

In addition, this episode was also a lot of fun to watch. Murasaki pays a visit to Shinkurou’s school, and for once Shinkurou wasn’t attacked by every single male in the school who was jealous of how he was living with a cute girl. I love how this series has been shattering clichés one after the other. A while later, we see a bunch of punks bully an old lady, and even though I dislike it when a series uses a bunch of punks as a random plot-device, it was probably one of the first time where the main character refused to save their victim. Murasaki tries, but it really looks like Shinkurou hates fighting. As it turns out, he only does his jobs because of Kuhoin (I hope that that was her name), who saved him after his parents were killed off. Makes sense.

The best thing about this episode was without a doubt Murasaki’s innocence, though. Both the comical and serious parts. I really laughed when Murasaki mistook a biology-puppet (how did you call these things again) for an actually live human, and yet her inability to understand why Shinkurou didn’t stop the punks really hit a spot, even without the amazing voice-acting. I can really understand why this series has become one of the most popular series of this season. It’s solid, it knows its characters, it’s fun and it’s got without a doubt the best voice-acting of all new shows that aired this season.

After the first episode, I was pretty sure that I’d end up blogging this series. The second episode of Kurenai is less impressive then the first one, but that’s only natural. If you’re going to start with a bang, you obviously need to take things easy in the second episode so that the characters can be fleshed out a bit. Especially Murasaki and Shinkuro got a lot of attention in this episode.

What immediately stands out for this series, apart from the art-style, is that these two main characters don’t act their age at all. I can imagine how Murasaki was educated early on, as she already speaks Japanese at adult-level, though at the same time she’s just like a princess who has been pampered for all her life. And yet she’s more than your typical spoiled princess, because most of her arrogance comes from her ignorance, and not her need to feel superior to all lower life-forms.

Shinkuro on the other hand, doesn’t show any signs of puberty at all (something of which I’m REALLY glad). We still don’t know much about him, but he’s seen his dead mother right in front of his eyes, he probably lost his father as well, he’s turned into a killing-machine with purple blood and strange elbows.

Another thing about this series is the use of dialogue. When the tension increases, the characters hardly let the others finish speaking before they say something. Where you’d usually hear a one-second pause between one sentence and the next, Kurenai shortens this to a quarter of a second. I’m not sure whether this series is the first one to do this, but it is the first time I’ve noticed it.

One thing I’m quite curious about is the length of this series: will it be 13 or 26 episodes, and if there are 26 episodes, then how does this series plan to fill its time? Some series are quite sneaky about it. For Persona, for example, I realized really late that it was supposed to run for two seasons, instead of just one.

Allison to Lillia

Ah, the first good series of the season. This episode was pretty solid; it started out as not anything special, but as it went on, it became more interesting by the minute, and this is just the first episode. You can really see the influences of both Mokke and Kino no Tabi, and yet this series goes into its own direction. It turns out that this series will be about two couples: Allison and Will, and Lillia and Treize, who have yet to be introduced. My only point of critique would be that Will’s voice-actor sounds a bit too young for his age, but that should be easy enough to get used to. Another interesting thing is that the female lead likes to ignore rules if necessary. It never really came to me, but you don’t often see people that break rules as easy as she does in anime. One thing I’m hoping for the future episodes is to explain a bit more about the politics of the country that the two main characters live in, but with 26 episodes there should be plenty of time for that.

Kurenai

Whoa! Here’s a contender for the best first episode of the season. You can really see that Brains Base (who did the animation for Baccano!) worked on this series, and the result looks absolutely gorgeous. There are hardly any still frames, characters make subtle gestures, the 7-year old girl really sounds like a young girl instead of a squeaky 30-year old voice actress and the OP has been done entirely in flash. The art style is a strange combination between that of Red Garden and Baccano, which only makes things better. The scriptwriting also is quick and witty. Here’s a potential classic, if the creators can keep up this level of quality, at least.

xxxHolic Kei

What an awesome episode to start off the second season! This episode was exactly the reason why I fell in love with the first season. Watanuki is downright hilarious, and stands miles away from your “typical high school boy”. On top of that, this series has always featured thought-provoking cases, and this episode was no exception. I won’t spoil anything, but if you liked the first season, you just have to watch this episode. Really, this series makes coming up with an entertaining storyline look so incredibly easy.