Epi on October 2, 2009 · in Reviews

With the end of summer brings to the end many shows from both the spring and summer seasons. We thought it would be a good opportunity to wrap up our final thoughts on what has come and to look forward to the upcoming fall season.

In no particular order whatsoever:

Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ (26 episodes)

Epi: What started off as the typical Bee Train ‘girls with guns’ kinda series picked up serious steam after the initial few episodes. I have to admit I was one of the many people who wrote this show off as a pretty but ultimately boring assassin show that I’ve seen so many times over since Noir. It didn’t help that Ein/Elen looked more or less like Kirika Yuumura. Still the story picked up when Reiji and Elen got set up and escaped and didn’t stop from there. As the show went on, it became my number one most awaited show of the season, and it hasn’t disappointed. From PIMP REIJI, to Crazygirl “what do they put in that milk she drinks” Cal, to “reminds me of Oberstein” Scythe Master, to “why does she have a mullet but hey she’s awesome anyway” Elen this show had some great characters. With a solid and satisfying (although sad) ending, this has to be the best Bee Train anime to date.

Final rating: 9/10

Best parts: Reiji the pimp, Miyuki Sawashiro’s awesome voice acting for Cal  

Worst parts: Oil massage that I wasn’t allowed to do

Kabitzin: I agree, Phantom may have overtaken Noir as my favorite Bee Train series to date.  Most of the dreaded Bee Trainisms didn’t show up, and Cal’s watch was not nearly as bad as it could have been.  I liked all the Phantoms, although after watching the ending I’m afraid my wish for a Phantom Family spinoff will never be fulfilled.  I even liked Scythe Master, who is now my favorite crazy Bee Train villain.

Shangri-La (24 episodes)

Epi: Shangri-La was one of those weird shows where I found very little redeeming about the show but yet I kept on watching anyway. From the first episode, I was among the many who laughed at it’s ridiculous plot. A story based on carbon credits? Annoying pink haired girl with transsexual friend? Annoying bad guys all around? Really the only think that kept me going was the fact that Shangri-La had my favorite OP song of the season, had decent production values and that it was so ridiculous I watched it for sheer LOLZ. Eventually though the show did grow on me especially the episodes featuring by far the best and really ONLY good character in the show which was the hilarious bear-affectionado Karin. “Poor” Klaris wasn’t bad either, I mean she DID buy all of Ferrari. The show ended the way it started, kind of weird but hey I wouldn’t expect anything less.

Final rating: 6.5/10

Best parts: Best OP of the season, Karin

Worst parts: Plot, almost all of the other characters

Kabitzin: Although the plot was silly, I actually liked the story a lot more than I liked most of the characters.  I also thought the production values occasionally dropped pretty far at times.  What we can agree on is the awesome OP and Karin.  I thought Karin was annoying at first, but after the bad guys started to bear down on her, she got to be pretty cool.  I liked Ryoko too, since she tortured Kuniko so much and I despised Kuniko.  The beginning and end of Shangri-La were pretty annoying, but I did find the middle episodes to be gripping.  The one really unrealistic part of the show was when

CANAAN (13 episodes)

Epi: Starting off with one of the best first episodes in a while, CANAAN was full of promise. With absolute wackiness including a Shanghai festival where no one cared that people were dying left and right, a main character named Ozawa Maria, Maria picking up a bloody doll just ’cause and of course the absolute kickass fighting skills of well-toned Canaan herself, the first episode roared proudly and was heard by otaku everywhere. Unfortunately the show kind of fizzled out as it progressed. As the story slowly revealed itself, lots of seemingly random events happened, and for a show with only 13 episodes it did seem to be all over the place. Still there was a story behind the madness, and in the end the final battle between Alphard and Canaan was pretty fun to watch, toned bodies and all. I for one was not that impressed by the whole stealth bomber scene, I mean if they’re going to try to be Michael Bay, at least do it right. While Crusader did write up a brilliant post about how the show all fits together, I feel that it was a bit grasping at straws to get at what was not there. I didn’t have a huge problem with Maria though unlike Kabitzin, that Maria-hater.

When the anime finished, there were just too many unanswered questions, precisely because the show created too many questions deliberately as to allow the writers to end the show however they wanted. Unfortunately creating lots of random questions without answers doesn’t substitute for actual good writing in my book, it’s just laziness meant to create an air of depth that isn’t there. For instance, why did Maria have her memory erased? Why does Maria know Alphard? What was Alphard doing with her ‘not going to kill Canaan, going to kill Canaan’ attitude? What was the point of rounding up the world leaders (I don’t agree with Crusader that it was to expose a cure for the Ua virus, as we have a cure for anthrax but it’s still a terrorism staple)? In the end CANAAN was a fun mindless summer action movie show with some pretty action sequences and some really memorable characters (Liang, Cummings, Alphard, Hakko and of course Canaan herself) but a pretty forgettable plot. Seems like they did set themselves up for a second season though, so we’ll see where that goes.

Final rating: 7.5/10

Best parts: Alphard, Canaan, Liang

Worst parts: Wavering plot

Kabitzin: I won’t say too much because I want to save some mojo for my full review, but I thought that Canaan was an entertaining ride.  If you watch Canaan as an action flick with lots of underlying yuri, you probably got your money’s worth.  My view of Canaan is a little between that of Epi and Crusader.  I think that the writers did mean for a lot of the symbolism, but most of it was crammed at the end and poorly executed.  As for Maria, she was easily the worst character on the show, and barely anything about her made any sense.  I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she was created for the sole purpose of taming Canaan, and not at all a photographer like she ineptly pretended to be!  Also, between this show and FMA, amputees are really getting a lot of love!

Tears to Tiara (26 episodes)

Epi: Sometimes I feel that I was the only person watching this show this whole season and perhaps I should have blogged about it. Tears to Tiara was one of my more closely followed shows of the season. Based on a RPG, the story did suffer a bit as it was based around ‘party battles with grunts’ and a pretty random story but it did have some of the best animation of the season. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any show with such consistently well animated fight sequences. As well all of the LoTR influence was pretty fun to watch too (the harbour was a copy of the Grey Havens, Palladium was like Orthanc, and so much more). Tears to Tiara also managed one of the hardest tasks of such a ‘large scope’ anime in that it was able to create and sustain a huge cast without ever feeling like we were bogged down with too many characters. Still the show did have a serious flaw in the fact that half way through the show it suddenly and inexplicably changed directions. While the first half dealt with fighting the Empire, all of a sudden a new bad guy appeared in the form of the white spirit, and everything after that was kind of random (like how Palladium just suddenly appeared). In the end, it was a pretty fun show, with some awesome characters (Mo-chan yay!!! Octavia woohoo!) and despite it having a  huge cast, the characters remained quite likable to the end.

Final rating: 7.5/10

Best parts: Awesome cast of characters, great swordfighting animation

Worst parts: Plot that fell apart somewhere in the middle

Kabitzin: I fell behind on this show as it started to drag in the middle, but I do want to give Tears to Tiara props for its surprisingly awesome fight choreography.

Saki (25 episodes)

Epi: My own guilty pleasure of the season, all I can say is I can’t wait for season 2. I’ve always been a huge fan of tournament shows, from Flame of Recca up to Yakitate!! Japan. Even though in tournament shows the outcome is always certain, I just really love the matchups. Perhaps it was because when I was in high school I was involved in one of these tournament things before (not sports sadly, I’ll leave it up to you to guess:P) and these shows always capture the essence of it. Saki also managed to find the perfect blend of awesome Yuri without going overboard (so that the only male character in the show Kyotaro still thought he had a chance). When I first heard about this show, I wasn’t sure if I was going to really watch it. After seeing the first episode I was still unsure. I know nothing about Japanese mahjong, and I had no idea what was going on. But the awesome ‘putting down the tile with sparks’ thing was pretty cool, and eventually I got hooked. I’m not sure when knees/elbows/breasts that ‘blush’ became the new ~moe~ mode, but I’ll take it. From the training camps, to the incredibly long prefecture team and then individual tournaments to the last episode with its filled to the brim yuriness, this show was awesome to the last. Once again, I can’t wait for the second season.

Final rating: 9/10

Best parts: Wah haha!, awesome tile animation, that sound it makes when they get points, Nodaka <3, the supreme amount of yuri

Worst parts: I don’t know anything about mahjong

Spice and Wolf II (12 episodes)

Epi: Based on a best-selling series of light novels in Japan, Spice and Wolf season 1 was released a few years back. The original started off very strong, but as it progressed Lawrence’s money scams got a bit tiring and the animation dropped off a cliff. With season 2 animated by a different studio, I was excited for the return of the antics of Lawrence and Horo~~. While the plots have remained the same (kind of confusing, probably better in book form) the animation improved substantially this season and Horo was better than ever. Still, this was a pretty ‘low-key’ anime in that nothing ‘big’ ever happened. The first season at least had Horo transforming into a full wolf a few times, but this time around, it was mostly around Lawrence and his schemes. Regardless, it was great to watch the banter between the two which is really what this show is about. As the two get closer and closer, it’s fun to watch how their relationship grows over time. Unfortunately the season ended too abruptly and too quickly as it was suddenly over. I’m thinking that there might be a season 3 sometime in the future, but I have no idea where the books are. Regardless it was fun while it lasted.

Best parts: Lawrence and Horo, massively improved animation

Worst parts: Ending that just suddenly… ended

Kabitzin: I’m still catching up on this show, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about this season.  The studio handling season 2 is clearly either much more skilled or much better funded, but the same thing that pissed me off about season 1 still pisses me off in season 2 (i.e. Lawrence).  As much as I like Horo, I’m not sure if I will continue blogging Spice and Wolf 2, just because Lawrence bothers me so much with all of his retarded schemes.  However, if you liked season 1, I think season 2 probably improves on just about everything and the economic schemes are not quite as confusing this time.

Final rating: 7.5/10

Princess Lover! (12 episodes)

Epi: I was recommended to watch this show by a friend in the very beginning but I held off because I saw it was based on an ero-game. It didn’t help that it featured ridiculous character designs with ridiculously oversized boobs (so big it’s not even attractive anymore). Still I eventually did marathon the first 4 episodes, and I was hooked. The plot was pretty simple: a poor boy’s parents die, finds out he’s the grandson of the richest guy in Japan, goes to crazy private school and has all the hotties falling over for him. This was possibly the best animated harem show that I’ve ever seen. The fast pace of the show, the wonderful music (best ED of the season), and just the fun that the show exuded was great to watch. For a while I was hooked, but then as the show neared the midpoint it started to lose steam, and once the entire Arima Hills escapade came to fruition the show got kind of got dumb. The quality dropped massively and the show was no longer fun, but just filled with a dumb plot with a dumb villain. Sometimes I really wonder why they have to ruin a perfectly good slice of life type show with a plot. The ending was just really bad altogether. In the end, Princess Lover! was a show that was full of promise, but fell far short on execution.

Final rating: 6/10

Best parts: Best ED of the season, decent characters 

Worst parts: Decent characters got annoying, stupid final half

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 (11 episodes)

Epi: By far my most anticipated show of the season, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 was this season’s BONES show. Magnitude 7.0 is the highest that the Japanese earthquake scale goes up to, so an earthquake of 8.0 represents the equivalent of a 10.0 on the Richter scale… off the charts. Using a variety of experts and very careful modeling, the creators of the show tried their best to recreate what would actually happen if an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 were to happen in Tokyo. Considering the last BONES show I saw was Xam’d I thought this show would be pretty insane, possibly with random pillaging, the creation of an underground economy, totally Lord of the Flies type stuff. How wrong I was…

What we got was one of the most annoying main characters in a while, Mirai and her slightly less annoying little brother Yuuki. While Balsa Mari and her big boobed onee-samaness helped a bit it only made the show watchable. Instead of pillaging and underground economies, what we got was everyone banding together, acting sad and the government flying in to save the day with advanced robots and ready to make meals. While I finished the show out of principle (I try and finish shows that I start, although I don’t always succeed), I was sorely disappointed with it all. In the end, it was an interesting show, but more NHK than your usual BONES fare.

Final rating: 6.5/10

Best parts: Tokyo tower falling, really well researched real-life locations that reminded me when I was there myself a few years back

Worst parts: Mirai, Yuki, the ‘everyone banding together’ part of the story.

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood (1/2 way point, 25 episodes)

Epi: I’ll leave the best to last. Since this is my show I picked to blog, you can’t possibly expect me to say anything really bad about it now can you? The original Fullmetal Alchemist was by one of the most popular and beloved shows ever created. It seems like everyone loved that show, from the blogsphere, to the Japanese to my real life friends. I was perhaps the only person I knew that thought the original was merely good, but nothing that special. Of course it’s universally acknowledged that the ending was kind of dumb (WWII London? REALLY?), but it was also universally known that because the manga was nowhere complete the anime creators sort of tacked on an ending that they made up.

In the years since, the manga has progressed quite far, and with remakes being all the rage ever since Kanon, BONES decided to jump in and remake FMA as well. With Seiji Mizushima being busy with Gundam 00, BONES picked Yasuhiro Irie (director of Kurau Phantom Memory, another awesome BONES show that I think only I like if only for the AYAKO DOCTRINE) to direct, and a virtually new voice cast was chosen aside from the voices of Ed and Al. This time around, the anime was to follow the manga directly, and with new and improved 2009 HD animation, off we went.

While we’re nearing what I believe is the midpoint in the show, I have to say that this new version of FMA is much better than the first. It’s  much darker tone, and a lot of the filler/villain of the week episodes of the first season have been eliminated. This is all plot all the time with some really amazingly animated battles to boot. While the new Winry isn’t quite as attractive, this show still has the great characters  which made the first one so enjoyable. I especially enjoyed Kikuko Inoue‘s brilliant portrayal of Lust, Barry the Chopper, and of course everyone’s perennial favorite character… RAN FAN. As we enter the second half of the story, we’ve gone through all the similar plot points of the first anime, and as such at least for a non-manga reader as myself, we’ve reached all new material. I can’t wait.

Final rating: N/A, still in progress

Best parts: RAN FAN, top notch production values, great characters, great darker tone

Worst parts: Winry looked better the first time around

Kabitzin: RAN FANNNNNN!!!  I’ve loved this remake, and even the episodes that retread on season 1 were snappy and entertaining (plus the writers blazed through at an incredible pace).  I also like the remake a lot better, and much of the story makes more sense, especially in regards to Hohenheim and the Homunculi.