One thing I like about watching a classic anime is to recognize the different anime that would pay homage to it in later years. Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky is another example of this. Mobile Suit Gundam (0079) brought the mecha-genre away from the cheesy giant robot-shows of Go Nagai to a more serious and realistic side, and traces of its influence can still be seen in today’s anime. Haro from Gundam 00 actually turns out to be one such example, and the three kids in Eureka7 have also been taken from the original Gundam.

After watching this series, I finally understand a bit why the post Universal Century-Gundam series are so shunned by the UC-fanboys, and at the same time I came to appreciate a series like Gundam 00 a whole lot more, but more on that below. The battles in Mobile Suit Gundam are indeed extremely realistic, and there’s one key element that made this possible: the great focus on logistics. With this, military bases suddenly don’t have limitless supplies anymore, and the fact that this series is mostly about just one battleship, instead of an entire fleet makes this one war-series that features some intense battles. It also never loses steam: every episode has at least one battle that fits in the story, rather than filling the audience’s need of action. And this intense attention to detail indeed seems to be missing in the other Gundam series I’ve seen so far (Gundam Wing and 00)

The second great strength of this series is the amount of attention it gives to the enemy forces. It’s not like they develop every single enemy soldier into a likable character, but this series gives a terrific overview of all the different kinds of enemies that you can run into the battlefield. All have their own priorities and agendas, ranging from low-ranked soldiers to high officials, none of them is ignored.

Still, the thing is that this series hasn’t been perfect. Based on the stories of the fans of UC, I expected Mobile Suit Gundam to be something like the epitome of realism, but this doesn’t turn out to be true, as it has a lot of points where it could have done better. The most obvious being of course Amuro, the lead hero. The guy just looks at a manual, and within three days he’s able to pilot a complex mobile suit like an expert and he also turns into a master tactician. Something that would take ordinary soldiers years of training. The reason this series gives for these abilities later on in the series is rather weak. If you want to god-mode your characters, you’ve got some good explanation to do, and the thing about Newtypes feels just like a lazy excuse to let a teenaged boy be the centre of attention.

Probably because of this, Mobile Suit Gundam also has a really weird difficulty-curve. In regular anime, the different enemies get tougher and harder to defeat as the series goes on, but here it’s just the opposite: during the first half, the enemies are all really tough and hard to beat. They come with interesting tactics and don’t let themselves get killed that easily. Then the second half hits and even though the enemies seem to get their hands on a more advanced mobile suit with every single episode, they also become a lot more stupid. At one point, they just become sitting ducks for Amuro to hit. I was rather disappointed by that, to be honest. When you realize that the enemies aren’t a threat anymore, the series does lose a bit of its tension. I think this is also the reason why the ending screwed up so badly.

Don’t get me wrong: Mobile Suit Gundam is a great series, but these flaws do remain. Of course, the following paragraph will be just speculation as I haven’t seen Zeta nor Victory Gundam, but I suspect that these two, despite whatever greatnesses they may hold, weren’t completely perfect either. The thing is that every Gundam-series seems to have its own strengths and weaknesses, and there’s no way you can be perfect at everything at such a large-scale series. Mobile Suit Gundam focused more on low-scale battles with a focus on logistics, while Gundam Wing on the other hand focused more at philosophy and large-scale politics. If you keep expecting the same thing as the originals, then you indeed will be disappointed.

That’s also what I find so interesting about Gundam 00, as only now I realize that it was partially an attempt to flesh out the areas in which Mobile Suit Gundam didn’t do so well. While the original series had a clear good and evil side with the Earth Federation and Zeon, Gundam 00 never depicts anyone as truly good or evil. Gundam 00 also never bothered to god-mode its characters, and instead only focused on upgrading its technology, and the closest things that resemble Newtypes have actually been explained well and don’t stand out too much. There also wasn’t really an explanation behind the huge level of technology of the White Base and Gundam on Mobile Suit Gundam, and Gundam 00 managed to find a pretty good explanation of a plot that took 200 years to prepare.

On the other hand, Mobile Suit Gundam shows more how the different battles affect the mentality of the pilots, it’s cast of characters is more dynamic. It also doesn’t have any characters that sit in their rooms for episodes after each other being emo, and whenever a character’s angsting, you’ll know that in the next episode that person will have already progressed past this angsting-stage. In this way, you can see that these two series complement each other pretty nicely. What you miss in Mobile Suit Gundam, you can find in Gundam 00 and vice versa.

Normally my reviews are geared towards readers that haven’t seen the anime in question yet, but in this case, I had too many thoughts I wanted to share. I tried to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but apologies if I ended up spoiling something. Despite its age, Mobile Suit Gundam is worth your time if you like war-stories. As it turns out, every war-anime is different and focuses at something different. Simoun had the religious influence, and showed what really happens if your technology is miles above that of your enemy; Heroic Age had space-battles of the highest possible epic-scale; series as Toward the Terra focused more on their characters and Flag was all about realism. I must say, that it’s a really diverse genre that you can’t possibly stuff into just one series.

There’s one big pitfall that strikes quite a lot of comedy-series: getting increasingly less interesting as the end nears. Generally, there are two causes for this: the insertion of forced drama at the last minute and a refusal to develop the cast of characters. The second season of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei manages to avoid the former, though I wish I could say the same for the latter.

It’s a shame, because Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei starts out better than ever. In the first half, there are a number of priceless episodes that really deserve to be watched (my favourites were the art-one and the gibberish-one). Episodes have also been divided into three parts to prevent them from getting boring, and for a while, this series overflows with laughs. But as is goes on, it becomes increasingly apparent that the creators shot themselves in the foot with their cast of stereotypes.

The thing with stereotypes is that they may be funny when they’re introduced, but there’s no way for them to remain funny for 26 full episodes without some development. In this series, it takes longer than usual, but the final six or seven episodes just lack the spark that made the rest of the series so great. Only two or three characters receive minimal development, and that just isn’t enough for such a huge cast. The social commentary that was once so interesting degrades into “social commentary of the week”, and ends up getting dull.

It’s a shame, I really thought that Shinbou had seen the light, but he still has a bunch of weaknesses, despite his unique style that made Shaft stand out. The second half of Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei is still funny, but nowhere near the standards that were set by the rest of the series. Still, if you finished the first season, then you at least need to watch the first half of the second season.

Let me start this review by stating the following: I did manage to finish watching Neon Genesis Evangelion a couple of years ago, before starting this blog. I ended up really liking the second half, though the first half of the series was a pain to get through. So yeah, after watching a movie that does nothing other than recapping episodes 1 to 5 (or 6), of course I’m in a bad mood. I want those 90 minutes of my life back!

Really, I fail to see the point behind this movie. All it does is follow the exact same storyline as the series did, with perhaps better graphics. To make matters worse, the only scene I was looking forward to (Unit 01’s little “itadakimasu!”-moment) ended up being cut out, for goodness’ sake! At least Death and Rebirth had a clear purpose: to silence the angry fanboys who were upset with the ending of the original series.

If you were planning to watch this movie, and you already saw both Neon Genesis Evangelion and Death and Rebirth, then don’t. In that case, this movie is just the same as a recap-episode. In fact, it’s even worse, because it’s freaking five times longer than your regular recap-episode, making you sit through scenes you’ve already seen for an eternity. I guess that if you’re one of the few who hasn’t seen the original Evangelion, you might give this movie a try, but I don’t see why you should pick this movie above the original series, apart from flashier graphics and a slightly shorter length. Gainax: stop trying to milk your dead cow!

So, most series have had four episodes aired now. So far, the season is looking quite promising, with many good series that have debuted. I’ve been noticing an on-going trend though, about how much more 13 episode-series appear. It’s a shame, because a lot of these series could have easily been lengthened to 24 or 26 episodes.

#39 (new) - To Love-Ru - (4,6/10) - If it was only the fanservice, then this show could have been good, but everything about this series is crap: story, characters, nothing stands out whatsoever. Dropped.
#38 (new) - Kamen no Maid Guy - (5,5/10) - Ugh… This turned out disastrous. Any potential in this series has left due to the incredible overuse of unfunny fanservice-jokes. Dropped.
#37 (new) - Kanokon - (5,7/10) - Well, I guess nothing much can be said about this series that hasn’t been said yet. If you like young boys getting it on with horny fox-spirits, then this is a must watch. If you don’t, then stay far away from this thing. Dropped.
#36 (new) - Kyou Kara Maou - Third Season - (6,5/10) - The episode I watched was decent, but in no way did it make me eager to check out the rest of the series. Dropped.
#35 (new) - Monochrome Factor - (6,5/10) - Okay, so here’s a potential trainwreck. Stay away from this one. Dropped.
#34 (new) - Neo Angelique Abyss - (6,6/10) - Mary-sue, anyone? Dropped.
#33 (new) - Naisho no Tsubomi - (6,6/10) - I am so NOT the target audience for this. Dropped.
#32 (new) - Penguin Musume Heart - (6,9/10) - A very strange series, but I doubt that I’ll continue it with so many good series this season.
#31 (new) - Zettai Karen Children - (7/10) - The fun in this series quickly dies. Dropped.
#30 (new) - Net Ghost Pipopa - (7/10) - Good show for kids; not for me, though. Dropped.
#29 (new) - Kyouran Kazoku Nikki - (7,3/10) - This might become funny, but I don’t feel like finding out. Dropped.
#28 (new) - Nabari no Ou - (7,4/10) - I wish I could watch every series that came out this season, but unfortunately I can’t. Nabari no Ou wasn’t bad, but neither did it impress me. Dropped.
#27 (new) - Special A - (7,5/10) - I decided to drop this series after finding out that it’s only going to feature 13 episodes. Four lacklustre starting episodes may be excused for long series, but one-season long series really need to have delivered at least something at this point, and Special A never really seems to want to go anywhere.
#26 (new) - Golgo 13 - (7,6/10) - Duke Togo is an interesting protagonist, but 50 episodes may be a bit too much for a concept such as this. I’ve dropped it for now.
#25 (new) - Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 - (7,8/10) - Well, it’s getting pretty hard to take the different plot-twists in this series seriously, ever since the infamous episode 22 destroyed my suspense of disbelief, but I admit that Code Geass has been solid enough so far. However, I KNOW THIS SERIES. I wouldn’t be surprised if Suzaku ends up slaughtering the entire world population near the end of this second season, seeing as how this series is so eager to copy parts of the first season.
#24 (new) - Junjo Romantica - (7,9/10) - Yaoi aside, I admit that the romance in this series has been pretty good, and it actually does have a sense of humour. That said, I still don’t know why I continued to watch this series…
#23 (new) - Chi’s Sweet Home - (7,9/10) - It’s amazing to think how deep the creators dived into Chi’s mind. The adventures of Chi are an innocent way to spend 2 minutes
#22 (new) - Druaga no Tou - The Aegis of Uruk - (7,9/10) - Okay, I admit that this series turned out better than I expected it to do after watching the second episode. The band of idiots does make sense so far, but I really wonder what the creators plan to use to get them to the top of the tower when they already struggle at the first level.
#21 (new) - Toshokan Sensou - (7,9/10) - A good show, but for Noitamina, this seems to be missing something. Kaiba would have fitted this timeslot much better, I think. It’s just not a good sign that in an 11-episode series, the characters already start feeling a bit annoying after the third episode.
#20 (25) - Bus Gamer - (8/10) - A nice enough short series. The characters were dynamic enough to keep me interested.
#19 (7) - Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei - (8/10) - Well, it’s taken a bit longer than usual, but Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei is finally feeling the repercussions of the fact that it refused to develop its characters beyond their stereotypes. This series is still fun, but nowhere near as brilliant as it used to be.
#18 (new) - Vampire Knight - (8,1/10) - Solid so far. I personally like a healthy dose of angst, and Vampire Knight so far has done well in staying away from emo. However, the bishies and squealing fangirls are just as annoying as the hot babes and drooling guys in the shounen counterparts.
#17 (new) - Soul Eater - (8,1/10) - So far, Soul Eater has been a really stylish show. Now let’s hope that it’ll know how to remain fresh for 52 episodes.
#16 (new) - Allison to Lillia - (8,1/10) - This series has an engaging atmosphere so far. This series feels genuine, and it really succeeds in bringing across its sense of adventure, even though it sometimes struggles with believability.
#15 (new) - Wagaya no Oinarisama - (8,2/10) - A surprisingly fun and down-to-earth series for me. Great music, and finally the male main character looks at least a bit different from his counterparts in other series.
#14 (21) - Gintama - (8,2/10) - While Gintama has definitely been better, the transvestite-joke was priceless.
#13 (new) - Macross Frontier - (8,3/10) - At times, it’s a bit too silly for its own good, but the likable characters and godly production-values have really made up for this so far.
#12 (17) - Persona - Trinity Soul - (8,3/10) - Persona has developed into a pretty solid mystery-series so far, but I do hope that the creators have been saving the best for last, because this series still feels like it’s missing something.
#11 (new) - Blassreiter - (8,4/10) - Surprisingly, this turned into my favourite GONZO-series this season. It’s got the best action-sequences so far, and the characters are pretty likable so far. Now let’s hope it doesn’t go trainwreck somewhere in the middle!

#10 (new) - Nijuu Mensou no Musume - (8,4/10)

Great character-development so far, although it’s sometimes a bit hard to believe.

#9 (new) - Itazura na Kiss - (8,6/10)

Without a doubt the best romantic comedy this season. Heck, this series has the potential to be the best romantic comedy since years if it keeps up with this pacing.

#8 (new) - Kurenai - (8,6/10)

Without a doubt the best voice-acting this season. More anime should record the voices before the animation-process.

#7 (new) - Crystal Blaze - (8,7/10)

The animation and graphics may look just average, but to make up for it, Crystal Blaze has delivered us a very solid cast of believable characters that have already started to develop within four episodes. A recommendation for any mystery-fan.

#6 (new) - RD Sennou Chousashitsu - (8,8/10)

This series intrigues me like no other. It’s got a fascinating concept and a pretty good execution so far. It’s away from any stereotype so far, which also makes me very happy.

#5 (new) - Amatsuki - (9/10)

A surprise hit for me. I already somehow suspected that this series would be more than just pretty pictures, but I never expected that it would turn this dark, deep and emotional in such a short time.

#4 (new) - xxxHolic - (9,1/10)

What a wonderful way to start the second season. xxxHolic Kei has been just as good as the best parts of the first season so far, if not better!

#3 (new) - Himitsu ~The Revelation~ - (9,2/10)

I’m an absolute sucker for these kinds of series, and Himitsu has shown that it’s by far the cleverest series of the new season. Great themes, great characters, a terrific concept. This really is one of my favourites of the season so far.

#2 (new) - Kaiba - (9,3/10)

Without a doubt the best new series to air. Everything about this series has delivered so far! It’s a series that makes you think, and at the same time it’s got a wonderful story and cast of characters.

#1 (2) - Porfy no Nagai Tabi - (9,5/10)

April has been a sensational month for Porfy! Every episode delivered, there was no weak moment, and everything about this series was just so gut-wrenchingly sad. With this, this series earned it’s title of “World Masterpiece Theatre”.

So, the nominations are over, and it’s time for the real voting. I’d like to thank everyone who nominated me in te preliminaries, I never thought that this many people consider this blog among the best of the episodic ones.

Apparently, the reader’s choice and blogger’s choice don’t start at the same time. I guess that the polls for the reader’s choice will be set up in a few days or so.

The individual ingredients of Asagiri no Miko (or Shrine of the Morning Mist) are not that impressive: a sentai-team of priestesses takes on the role of main characters, and they’re the only ones who can stop an evil demon from breaking its seal and destroying the world. At first sight, it seems like a yawnfest, and yet somehow, it works.

Thankfully, despite the boring premise, this series knows how to build up, and it pretty nicely alters between comedy-episodes and serious ones, rather than save the serious parts only for the final episodes. Both the comedy and drama gets better as the series progresses and the episode length of 12 minutes helps keeping things fresh and avoid dragging on. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that this series actually knows how to tell a story.

Unfortunately, Asagiri no Miko does have its bad points. The main lead is horribly ignored in terms of fleshing out when compared to the other ones. That’s fine by me, and it actually helped to prevent this series from getting dragged into pointless romance. The major problem with this guy is however, that in the final two episodes he suddenly becomes the most important character; a role he just couldn’t live up to, considering his huge lack of development. The result is that the final two episodes descend into a boring cheese-fest that end the series with a fizz, rather than a bang.

Still, despite this the first 24 episodes are a nice example of an enjoyable series that never really hits any highs nor lows. Asagiri no Miko is just one of these series that’s great for just a light watch, and in the meantime you also get to enjoy a healthy share of Japanese culture. Obviously, you’ll never see this series on any top-10 list whatsoever, but the average rating that the users of AniDB gave it (a 5.90; amongst the worst ratings on that site) is just way too low in my opinion.

Series that promise to be better in their second half are always tricky. You never know whether they can actually live up to their claims or not; it went well for series as El Cazador, Chevalier, NHK ni Youkoso and Full Moon wo Sagashite, but on the other hand, things went disastrously wrong for series as Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Utawarerumono, Mai Otome and Romeo x Juliet. Thankfully, D.N.Angel lies on the good side of this spectrum.

It starts out as a very strange series: a boy with a very bad haircut suddenly finds out that on his 14th birthday that he can change into a winged phantom-thief bishie called “Dark”. Not that promising, though thankfully this series turned out to have a similar story flow as El Cazador and Suteki Tantei Labyrinth: entertain your viewers with random cases (in this case random artworks that have to be stolen, or background on various main- and side-characters), and abandon these cases as soon as the second half hits, so that the characters can develop themselves.

Such a formula works surprisingly well, and indeed: once this series passes its halfway-mark the characters really start shining. Especially the teenagers turn into well-rounded characters that will make the journey through the first 13 episodes a rewarding one. Unfortunately, the other characters do feel a bit incomplete. Especially the major bad guys could have gotten more attention, there’s one particular side-character who feels out of place and doesn’t seem to serve any purpose whatsoever and Dark himself too feels like he could have been more if given more screen-time.

While I can’t say that D.N.Angel is a must-watch, I am at least glad that it managed to make use of its potential, and didn’t get itself caught in endless fillers. Even the random cases serve to flesh out and provide background for the different characters. If I recall correctly, then the creators completely rewrote the original manga for this anime, and I must say that they did a pretty decent job on it. Do note that the graphics can be a bit of a turn-off. Don’t get me wrong, they look great at times, but there are also quite a few lower-quality shots and the characters do take a bit of getting used to if you’re not a fan of bishies.

It’s not often when an anime is made about a manga that went down after only one volume. Apparently, the original mangaka ran into trouble with the magazine that Bus Gamer was published in, and only one volume ended up published before it was cancelled. Still, the premise had potential, which is probably why three anime-episodes were made out of it. Obviously, the budget was short, so don’t expect an epic storyline, high-quality graphics, deep characters or an ending that wraps everything up.

What you can expect from this series, however, is a well-developed cast of down-to-earth characters, interesting fights and three episodes that become increasingly more interesting as they go along. It’s especially the down-to-earth-part that makes this series worth watching, as it provides an interesting look at the concepts that were explored by Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji. Kaiji was basically about the scum of society, and made it very apparent that these guys were at the end of their line, piled up in debts and used the sick games as a last resort to get some money.

Bus Gamer is different: it just features three guys who just need some money, are willing to risk their lives to get it and are well aware of all the involved risks. There’s no attempt at all made to make any of them look pitiful, and instead it focuses more on the relationship between these three guys who are so different, and how they grow to get used to each other. The different teams also have no overmoralized respect to the other teams (”thou shalt not kill”, “thou shalt save thy enemy when he’s in trouble”) that is overplayed in so many other anime.

This is really one of these series that you want to watch on a rainy day when you’re bored. It’s nothing special by far, but it’s one of these series that is perfect for entertainment. Bus Gamer could have gone much worse: there’s zero filler, the characters are actually developed a bit (which is the reason why the best episode by far was the final one, rather than the opposite), it’s got a small police-subplot, explaining why the police isn’t doing anything about a bunch of punks, killing off each other.

Just a small note before I start: this review contains spoilers for the end of .Hack//Roots. You need to have seen that series anyway in order to understand Trilogy. In any case, .Hack//Roots has been my second-least favourite Bee-Train production (the least favourite being .Hack//Dusk, but that’s a totally different story), and that was a real pity because of all the great ideas it had. The Trilogy-movie at least eliminates one of the problems I had with this series: it provides closure! It answers questions! The movie still has its problems, but it’s a must-watch for everyone who managed to sit through the original series.

Nearly all of the bad points of this series can be traced back to just one simple decision: the decision to not include the final scene of the original series. The scene where Haseo stopped angsting and actually learned his lesson. In Trilogy, Haseo actually continues angsting, even after being defeated by Tri-Edge. The result is an obnoxious amount of forehead-shot and more scream-fests than you can shake a stick at. The character-development that does get included was by no means as memorable as in the original series (about the only thing that went right in .Hack//Roots).

In addition, the music has been down-graded as well. In addition, though, the graphics turned to 3D, which is of course perfect for a setting of an on-line game. The good parts of this series, however, are the times when characters aren’t screaming. There’s a clear line between angst and emo that Trilogy continues to hop back and forwards to, and the moments you want to watch out for is when the characters are on the angst-side of the spectrum.

I have no idea why this movie is called “Trilogy”. I can understand how the combination of .Hack//Roots, .Hack//GU Trilogy and .Hack//GU Returner together form a trilogy (Roots asks the questions, Trilogy answers the questions and Returner provides the aftermath), but I didn’t really recognize three parts in the movie. Trilogy is by no means a great movie, but it is a good one nonetheless, worth of your ninety minutes of attention. Oh, and be sure to watch the parody-modes that come included. They’re hilarious!

Sword of the Stranger is Bones’ first attempt at an original movie (as in not based on an already existing series). Masahiro Ando, who had no prior experience with directing an entire anime and instead seems to specialize in animation and character-designs, was given the director’s seat and the screenplay was done by the director of the third Patlabor Movie. That’s not really the best cast you’d expect from Bones’ repertoire, but still, Sword of the Stranger is a worthy movie.

Don’t expect too much from the story, though. It features an uberpowerful ex-samurai with a sad past who got tired of killing who meets up with a young boy with an equally sad past. The main villain is another uberpowerful guy who’s looking for a challenge that only this ex-samurai can give him. Yawn, yawn, nothing we haven’t seen before. The reasons why you want to watch this movie is because of the animation, the cultural reference, and most importantly the bond that develops between said ex-samurai and boy.

Most of the time in this movie is not actually spent on the fights, but on showing how these two, with totally different personalities come to understand each other amidst their arguing. The two of them are dynamic and a joy to watch throughout the movie. The plot basically only serves to get and keep the two of them together, and even though it’s nothing special, it knows how to not get in the way of the development of these two for a large part of the movie.

I think that the big problem with this movie is that it would have made a great family-movie if it wasn’t for the huge amounts of gore in it. Gore can be a tricky thing. It’s great to intensify your scenes (Shigurui, anyone?), but at the same time you do alienate those who can’t stand it. I can really imagine that kids would have loved the innocent moments of this series, if it weren’t for the umpth guy who got an arrow blown through his entire face, with all the graphic details of a movie-budget.

Still, if you don’t mind the gore, I can’t really think of a reason not to watch this movie. It’s the genuine moments that really were the most enjoyable, plus some pretty impressive sword-fights. Bones could have done a lot worse (just take a look at Gonzo’s first attempt at a movie). The music is also really solid. You wouldn’t guess that it comes from the same composer who did Eureka7 and Heroic Age, and yet it complements the movie perfectly.