[Ended] Soul Eater: Grand Finale

After a full year of witch fighting saga, Soul Eater finally dropped its curtain. If you're a regular visitor of my blog, you'd have noticed that I never really commented on this anime asides from the initial one. The reason being it has never been anything for me to comment on. The plot is almost always predictable, and it never gotten good or bad enough for me to want comment on. But the fact it survived on my anime list for four fully packed season would tell you that this is a solid above average anime. I think what made it interesting is the small and quick shifts between comedy and serious plot. And also all the major characters are very well developed and interesting as well.

Drama: 80 (Somewhat epic)

Comedy: 87 (Ther are some funny stuff)

Action: 86 (Interesting)

Art/Animation: 80 (Interesting as well)

Sound/Music/Voice: 80 (Maka's voice seems a bit inexperienced)

Character: 80 (Also interesting)

Plot: 80 (Mostly straight forward, with few turns)

Ending: 80 (At least it ended everything)

Re-watch value: 50 (Don't really need to, and it's a bit too long)

Overall (not average): 85 ~ A Solid B+

Recommendation: If you're willing to sit through a 51-episode series, you might want to give this a try.

[Ended] Tytania: There Shall Be More

I haven't had too much exposure to political drama animes (some of you may consider Gundam a political drama, but I do not watch any sort of Gundam, period). I was especially skeptical towards Tytania before I started watching it because its art style are not quite the type I favor. However, Tytania has changed that. The space political and military play in the story are just so intriguing, that even though the plot movement is very slow, I don't feel it that it is.

Unfortunately, this is another open ended anime where nothing got tied up in the end. However, I have no doubt there will be a sequel, as long as the author doesn't pull a Trinity Blood where he dies before he finishes the story.

The author of the original Tytania novel, Yoshiki Tanaka, is also the author of Legend of Galatic Heroes, which is one of the longest running space opera anime. He's also the author of Yakushiji Ryōko no Kaiki Jikenbo which was somewhat a surprise to me because I don't think they're anything alike.

Drama: 90 (Political drama)

Comedy: N/A

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 80 (Realistic style)

Sound/Music: 85 (Good BGM)

Character: 90 (Depth)

Plot: 95 (Quite some twists and turns)

Ending: 70 (Open)

Re-watch value: 70 (I don't think political drama does too well here)

Overall (not average): 90 ~ One of the best political drama I've seen lately

Award: Political Drama Anime of the Season for October 2008 Season

Recommendation: If you have any interests in this kind of anime, you wouldn't be disappointed.

[Ended] Skip Beat: More, I Want More

This is the best show biz anime I've seen since Kaleido Star. Glass Mask was ok, but it was a bit too technical, and it wasn't comedy. As I mentioned in previous posts that this anime is a blend of many things with nearly perfect balance between the comedy and drama, I think this is one of the perfect example for what defines a comedy-drama.

It's really hard to describe the exact nature of this anime without spoiling anything, so I'm not going to waste my time and just going to tell you that you should watch it because it is great.

The only thing wasn't quite satisfactory is that the ending is completely open. Depending on how you look at it, it may be a good thing or bad thing. It is bad because open endings sucks, but it would be good if making sequels is what they intended for this ending. I would definitely like to see another season of this.

Drama: 90 (Loads and loads..)

Comedy: 95 (Some of the best comedy I've seen lately)

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 93 (Great usage of deformation)

Sound/Music: 80 (Not bad, but didn't leave too much impression either)

Character: 95 (This is where it shines)

Plot: 93 (Very interesting)

Ending: 70 (Not really one)

Re-watch value: 80 (I think it would still be funny second time around...)

Overall (not average): 94 ~ Defines Comedy-Drama Genre

Award: Comedy-Drama Anime of the Season for October 2008 Season

Recommendation: Watch it, watch it, watch it.

[Ended] Viper's Creed: Do and Undo

I liked this anime for many reasons, one of them being that important characters die in the story. However, after seeing the grant finale of the story, I realized that's just an illusion. Many things that happened in the anime got undone in the end. Although it's doesn't piss me off as much as those deus ex machina that we see all too often, I'm still a bit disgruntled about it. But I wouldn't burn the in my review for that.

Being only a short series, they spent significant amount of time to build each individual characters that was significant to the plot. They literally used half of the series just showing each viper team members' background story. In my opinion, character building is never a bad thing, though it is a bit excessive in this case.

The story certainly has depth, but it wasn't difficult at all to figure out what's going on along the way. For an action anime that is expected to be hack and slash only, this is superb.

Drama: 85 (Good amount of that)

Comedy: N/A

Action: 90 (Got some good ones in there)

Art/Animation: 80 (Ok, I guess...)

Sound/Music: 80 (Not bad)

Character: 85 (Almost too much)

Plot: 85 (Interesting twits)

Ending: 80 (Mostly preditcable )

Re-watch value: 50 (Action flicks usually don't hold up well here...)

Overall (not average): 88 ~ Action with plot

Award: Action-Drama Anime of the Season for January 2009 Season

Recommendation: This is one that I'd say is worth watching for this season. Though I would call it top notch just yet, I think it's well worth your time.

[Ended] Shikabane Hime Kuro: Unfinished Business

As this series progress, some stuff that in my opinion are quite retarded (such as the weapons of choice for monks' shikabane hime are uzis and sub-machine gun) has become less and less noticeable. Even with the sub-standard voice acting and semi-cheesy fight scenes, I can't seem to dislike this anime anymore. As the backstories of each major character are revealed, I grew more and more attached to them. It is basically a story built on top of a group of unfortunate people with regretable past. That, in my opinion is the best type of materials to build dramas of any kind.

I really can't say much about the story without spoiling the plot. But what I could tell you is that they didn't bother to end it. It is somewhat a stop point as they finished revealing the backstories for the main characters, but the story as a whole has been left wide open.

Drama: 80 (Ups and downs)

Comedy: N/A

Action: 75 (Some are ok, but some are just plain cheesy)

Art/Animation: 80 (Typical)

Sound/Music/Voice: 75 (Bad voice acting)

Character: 80 (Well developed, but there are holes)

Plot: 80 (Got some plot twists)

Ending: 70 (That's not an ending...)

Re-watch value: 30 (Don't really need to)

Overall (not average): 77 ~ Not bad, not great either

Recommendation: Even with somewhat nicely crafted plot to compensate the bad voice acting and somewhat cheesy action scenes, my opinion towards this anime is still neutral to negative. If you really don't have anything better to watch, then this is an ok one just to run off some of your free time. Otherwise, I wouldn't waste time on it.

[Ended] Tales of the Abyss: Epic Finish

Early on during the series, I almost threw this anime away because the main character was the biggest douche I've seen, and was really stretching the limit of how much douche-ness I was willing to tolerate. But luckily, the story took a sudden turn, not only it took my attention off the douche-ness of the main guy, it also managed to turn him into somewhat a normal person.

The story has quite a few twists and turns, though it's not too difficult to figure out what kind of curve ball they're throwing at you, it still provides quite some entertainment value. One other thing I really like about this anime is the fact they're willing to kill characters, important characters. In my opinion, all epic stories need to have some important characters that doesn't survive to the end. Otherwise it would be too boring.

Oh one more thing, what is Mieu's purpose in this anime? I though she'd be useful at some point before the story ends, but she never did anything asides from the early events that introduced her to the party.

Drama: 90 (Almost too much)

Comedy: 80 (Not bad for what it had)

Action: 85 (There are some lame fights, but it's not bad overall)

Art/Animation: 80 (Typical fantasy style)

Sound/Music: 80 (I like the theme song)

Character: 85 (Gone a bit overboard on the douche play...)

Plot: 85 (Quite a few nice little twists)

Ending: 80 (Too predictable)

Re-watch value: 50 (story like this doesn't really hold any re-watch value)

Overall (not average): 88 ~ Epic

Recommendation: If you can withstand 7 episodes of almost non-stop douch-ness, the you would find this anime very entertaining. But if douche-ness causes too much stress for you, then don't watch it, because you'll destroy your TV before you get through the first 7 episodes.

[Ended] Kuroshitsuji: A Real Ending

Nowadays it's all too common for anime to leave a somewhat open ending so a sequel can be made. It's especially common among manga adapted animes since most time, the adaption of anime is long before the manga ever ended. Kuroshitsuji, to my surprise, actually had a proper ending that didn't just leaving everything hanging. Although it ended properly, I still feel they went a bit overboard on making it too sentimental. Normally I would criticize it because it wipes out too much of the final climax. But in this case, an ending like this seems to be more proper than a dramatic climax.

The story itself is quite brilliant, especially with all the interaction between the devil, the angel, and the grim reaper. This is one of those smart plot build up that they seed some events from very early on to make use in the very end.

Drama: 90 (Good amount)

Comedy: N/A

Action: 85 (Some, not too much...)

Art/Animation: 80 (Dark)

Sound/Music: 90 (Love the music)

Character: 87 (Well developed, especially the devil himself)

Plot: 85 (Little twists, but mostly straightforward)

Ending: 90 (Properly ended the story)

Re-watch value: 70 (Maybe to catch some details you missed first time through)

Overall (not average): 90 ~ Very good

Recommendation: This is definitely one of the top 5 animes from October 2008 season. If you don't mind the religious implication, this definitely should be on your to-watch list.

[Ended] Ride Back: Up and Over

It seems that animes in general just can't keep themselves away from over-dramatize the glorious ending. In the case of Ride Back, though, it doesn't really hurt much in doing so. After seeing the final episode of Ride Back, it kind of reminded me the final episode of Macross Frontier. They tried to make the ending so impactful that they added in tons of dramatizing events that almost make the last episode feel somewhat detached from the rest of the story. But, I have no problem about that, as long as they don't get too far off track.

Ride Back is a story about how a series of unfortunate events throws an innocent yet talented girl right down in the middle of the political and military struggle. It's a very intereting and unique blend of politics and character development with the character being the main focus. Our heroine, like to do things without proper rationale, because most troubles she got herself into are completely avoidable if she had just calmed down and thought them over. It seems to be a flaw in her personality that the story doesn't bother address because overall, she doesn't appear to be a hot-headed person who would always make such ridiculous decisions.

Drama: 90 (Lots)

Comedy: N/A

Action: 93 (Great)

Art/Animation: 80 (Wasn't initially fond of its art style, but I learned to like it)

Sound/Music: 85 (Good BGM)

Character: 85 (Certain part of personality doesn't quite fit in with the character...)

Plot: 85 (Nice and straightforward)

Ending: 87 (Good enough)

Re-watch value: 60 (Stories like this usually doesn't hold much re-watch value)

Overall (not average): 91 ~ Very good...

Recommendation: If there weren't Viper's Creed I would award Ride Back the action-drama anime of the season. This is one of my highly recommended animes from this season.

[Ended] Maria Holic: More?

Obviously, this is one of those "for laughters only" comedy anime that the sole purpose is to make people laugh. And they're quite successful in achieving their goal. Amongst all the new anime series from January, this is probably the one that I want to see more of it the most. Early on, I was afraid that this is going to turn out to be another Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, where they just keep beating on a good concept endlessly until it got so repetitive that it start to suck. Half way through the series, I realize the story writer of Maria Holic is far more creative than those who did Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, and there was no need to worry about Maria Holic ever become dry and boring.

Though this series is officially ended, I believe we haven't seen the end of this anime just yet. Not only you really couldn't put a termination to a series like this, they also intentionally ended the series with a wide open gap. But again, there have been series in the past that ended with big gap with no follow-ups just to mess with the audience.

One more thing, after a little digging on the internet, I found out that the originaly author of Maria Holic also did Hatenko Yugi. That was a bit surprise because these two are nothing alike.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 74 (Some...)

Comedy: 96 (Brilliant...)

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 90 (Interesting...)

Sound/Music: 90 (Definitely good...)

Character: 90 (Deep, really deep :-)...)

Plot: N/A
Ending: -- (There wasn't one...)

Re-watch value: 85 (Still funny...)

Overall (not average): 93 ~ Brilliantly funny...

Award: Comedy Anime of the Season for Januray 2009 Seaason

Recommendation: If you like a good laughter, this is the anime from this season you want to watch. Even you're not too much into comedies, this one is still going to make you laugh.

[OVA] D.C.I.F. ~ Da Capo If

It seems to be a trend for anime production companies to produce spin-off OVA's that uses an alternative plot line that deviates from the original one. It's most common in the field of visual novel converted animes where an alternative story line is already available from the game. In a sense, it's nice to see the different path the original story could have headed if someone had made a different choice. But it cheapens the original story when you can just start to layout "x and y would happen if he/she would have done z". In my opinion, that should be left to the imagination of the audiences instead of having explicitly laid out.

Ok, enough of the theories about spin-off OVA's, let's talk about the anime itself. This is one of the better OVA spin-offs amongst those I've seen lately. Simply put, it tries to express a simple idea in a very simple way. Unlike some other ones (e.g. Kimi ga Nozome Eien ~ Next Season ~) where you are dragged around in circles for no clear reason and eventually end up pretty much where you started. This spin-off doesn't actually affect the original Da Capo story, except it would terminate the story without going to D.C.S.S. or D.C. II.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 75 (Some...)

Comedy: N/A

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 80 (Just like the original as I remembered...)

Sound/Music: 70 (Ok, I guess...)

Character: 70 (Really not that much more development...)

Plot: 75 (Simple)

Ending: 80 (You can totally see that coming...)

Re-watch value: 50 (Why would you...)

Overall (not average): 79 ~ Not bad, but not that good either...

Recommendation: It really doesn't add any value to the original story I wouldn't recommend it.

[Ended] The Tower of Druaga The Sword of Uruk: Less Good and More Bad

After seeing the ending, there is one big question in my opinion was left unanswered: what is the real motive for the final villain? Though it seems that the plot want you to come to the conclusion that he did what he did only because of jealousy, but I refuse to go along with that. If that really is the case, then this is a quite retarded anime. There ought to be something else I'm missing that someone else might have picked up, if you do, please let me know.

As a short series by itself, even though it demonstrated the cleverness of plot layout towards the end, I still think there's more junk than useful plots. Attach the first season to it, that doubles the amount of the junk. In my opinion, even with all the hoops they went through to try to cleverly disguise the real plot, I still think they can compact it into a single season when they get rid of all the junks. Because as it stands right now, I think close to 50% of the series is useless junk.

And just what's up with the opening scenes? Did they just make it that way for fun?

BTW, I still think Fatina is a better choice for him...

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 60 (Too much junk dramas)

Comedy: 70 (Most are retarded)

Action: 70 (Good and bad)

Art/Animation: 70 (Not that impressive)

Sound/Music: 70 (Didn't much impression)

Character: 65 (Missing key motives...)

Plot: 65 (Too much junk)

Ending: 70 (At least they finished it once and for all...)

Re-watch value: 50 (Don't even need to watch it the first time...)

Overall (not average): 66 ~ Junk plots everywhere...

Recommendation: Since I strike Gonzo off my favorite anime production studio list, this one being crap really doesn't surprise me any more. They took an ok conept, and added tons of junk to make two seasons of The Tower of Druaga. I wouldn't recommend this to anybody even if you run out of stuff to watch.

[Ended] Toradora: Just Right

One thing all romantic animes (including romantic comedies) suffer is that the ending is never a real ending, it's really just a transition to the new beginning. Toradora is no exception. However, it still makes a difference how they handle the transition. In many cases, what they want is to leave the story open enough so they can make a sequel or sell more manga where you feel the story really isn't quite complete if nothing comes afterwards. As for Toradora, even though it is still somewhat open-ended, it does bring a pretty complete closure to current drama chapter that you don't really have the urge to go find the critical "missing element".

As for the overall story goes, I think they did pretty well on keeping the balance of comedy and drama where they push the plot along the way in a slow but steady pace without making the audience feel being too dry.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 90 (Almost a little excessive)

Comedy: 90 (Definitely on the money)

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 85 (In a bit simplified art style)

Sound/Music: 85 (Ok, nothing really exceptional)

Character: 90 (Good depth)

Plot: 85 (Twists and turns)

Ending: 80 (Good enough)

Re-watch value: 70 (It may still be interesting second time through)

Overall (not average): 88 ~ Nicely done...

Recommendation: While I wouldn't call this top-notch just yet, as for romantic comedy, it's pretty good. So if you have some free time and feel like watching some romance with comedy, you can't go wrong with this.