[Ended] Aoi Hana: Plain

This is one of those animes that after I finished watching, I would ask myself: "Why did I keep watching this?"

It's a gentle story about love and friendship. There's nothing wrong with that. But in my opinion, it's a bit too "gentle", which in turn makes it flat and plain.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 85 (Girl drama, more specifically, Yuri drama)

Comedy: N/A

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 89 (Very interesting watercolor feel)

Sound/Music: 80 (Not much impression)

Character: 77 (Little depth, but not much)

Plot: 73 (Very flat)

Ending: 70 (Plain)

Re-watch value: 20 (Why would you ever)

Overall: 77 - Plain

Recommendation: For most people, if you don't watch this anime, you would miss nothing.

[End] Shangri-La: Flawed

Mixing scifi and fantasy is pretty popular for anime stories. Unfortunately, not many are well executed. In the case of Shangri-La, I think it's a somewhat brilliant plot got dragged under by a flawed concept with a flawed execution.

For one, it seems that certain aspects of the story is just too unrealistic. The measurement they took to stop the vibration of ATLAS, I don't believe that any civilized country would ever allow such a thing to happen for this reason. Are they trying to say that Japan would eventually become uncivilized like that when problems like global warming arises?! That's just a bit too hard to believe.

Then there's that final battle. Jump, dodge, throw, flash, bang, bang, we won! What the hell was that?!! Did they run out of budget making this last episode or what? This ought to be the worst final fight I've seen lately.

SciFi and fantasy could be a good mix, but this is definitely not one of them. However, if you could shut off some common sense, the story becomes somewhat acceptable. In fact, I think certain part of the grand plot was quite brilliant if certain stupid plot devices didn't exist.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 83 (Jittery)

Comedy: 80 (Not that good)

Action: 83 (The final fight is terrible)

Art/Animation: 80 (Average at best)

Sound/Music: 90 (Not bad)

Character: 86 (Depth and variety)

Plot: 86 (Interesting plot, flawed concept)

Ending: 76 (Terrible final fight)

Re-watch value: 60 (Once is enough)

Overall: 80 - So so

Recommendation: This is a classic case of flaw concepts and executions ruined an otherwise brilliant plot. Very wasteful. It's hard for me to recommend this to average viewer. But if you are the type of people who can easily shut off your common sense (or don't have any :-) you might actually enjoy this story.

I was hoping this series could earn GONZO a little star. But instead, they just got one more strike from it. Oh well, GONZO just has to earn back my respect some other time.

Basquash: High Intensity

Currently finished: Episode 23

There may have been some slow parts in the middle, but right now it is more exciting than ever. People who hung around with this series are now getting some well deserved excitements. With only three episodes left to go, I think it has enough time and potential to wrap up quite nicely.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0: Wow

Currently finished: Episode 10

I have to say I was a bit stunned about the development in episode 10. Come to think of it, there has been enough of foreshadowing in this episode and previous episode about what would ultimately happen. I guess in the back of my head, I just didn't believe that they would actually do it. And when they did do what I ultimately wanted to see, I was surprised. With only one episode left to go, I'm really interested to see how they would wrap it up.

I guess I should stop talking about it now, otherwise I might accidentally spoil some important plot.

Umineko no Naku Koro ni: Huh?

Currently finished: Episode 11

Yes, yes, my blog has been extra quiet lately. That's not because I've been slacking off. In fact, I've been spending more time daily watching anime than I had for last a couple of month. Because it's a season ending month, I'll need to catch up with everything so I can write series ending reviews. On top of that, someone just recommended a whole bunch of mangas for me to read, add that to the list of mangas I'm already reading, I literally don't have time to do anything else any more. Only if I can stop time... Anyway, before I digress any further, here is something I would like to say about Umineko no Naku Koro ni:

If you think it took long time for Higurashi no Naku Koroni to make sense, I can tell you that Umineko is worse. While the sub story is somewhat clearer than those in Higurashi, I'm at a complete loss when it comes determining the direction of where the big picture is heading. I guess that's partly why these series has been so interesting, because you see the clues, but you don't see where the clues leads you. However, these little things in Umineko have been a lot more irritating than those in Higurashi have been. Ultimately, I hope it is getting somewhere soon, because I'm running pretty low on patience. And according to many major anime sites reviews and polls, there are quite some people that have already ran out of patience.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0: The Essense of Disaster Story

Currently finished: Episode 9

In a natural disaster story like this, I was kind of expecting a bit more moving moments than what they have presented. Although the outcome was highly predictable, it does fill in the role of giving this story a dose of much needed and long overdue emotion. In my opinion, this should be the core of which a good disaster story build around.

While I normally prefer to see tragedies because they bring out much wider range of human emotions than any happy story could ever do, I could not bring myself to wish for something bad to happen in a disaster story. It just doesn't feel right. The only other anime has ever done that to me was Maria-sama ga Miteru.

[Poll] The Result of July Top 5

Even though there's no way my little poll represents the anime community as a whole, the result of this season's top 5 poll seems to agree with ratings I found from other more respectable sources. While the result is somewhat as I expected, there are something I'm not quite understanding. So let's just take a quick look at the top 5:

Spice and Wolf II being the undisputed winner of the popularity contest is something I've predicted. Who doesn't like the cute and wise wolf deity?

Bakemonogatari being the second is also quite understandable as well, consider it is the best anime from July season quality-wise. The only thing is that you need to be able to cope with is the weirdness and violence. Sometime they do turn people away...

Then there's the close third place, Princess Lover. Honestly, I'm a bit baffled why it has gotten this high on the poll.

True Princess Lover is a good anime. But is it good enough to hold the third place among all series that came out this season? I don't think so. In my opinion, Princess Lover is a well made harem anime. But harem anime is a harem anime. There's no way for it to get away from its formulaic nature. It may throw a twist here and there in the middle, but it doesn't matter how hard they try, it's next to impossible to get a plot or ending that isn't part of the well known and predictable formula.

CANAAN, who managed to outrank Umineko no Naku Koro ni, held the fourth place. Though I still have hope for CANAAN, I have to say the current state of CANAAN is mediocre at best. They need to do a lot more than what they have right now to make it great.

Umineko no Naku Koro ni, I'm glad to see it's still hanging in the top five. It has been somewhat a roller coaster ride. I think the reason it has fallen back so far is due to not live up to audiences' expectation. But since it's a 26 episode series instead of a 13 episode series as it was reported originally, I think there are still quite some time left for it to improve and redeem itself.

Shangri-La: Aha!

Currently finished: Episode 22

While there are still some loose ends, the final piece of the core puzzle has been revealed. I have to say this is a very interesting setup. While it did take quite some time to put everything together, I think it was worth the wait. From this point on, I think everything is going to be somewhat predictable, because everything seems to be on the route to be a classic ending routine. But you never know, they still might throw one last curve ball at us. We'll see...

Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood: On Its Own Course

Currently finished: Episode 21

In the beginning, this new series seems to be on the same course as the same series, except with 2x speed. Slowly, the story itself start to deviate from the course set by the previous one. Especially with what happened in last three episodes, this is now a completely a different story.

Supposedly this new series is more true to the story laid out by the manga. However, someone told me that this too is quite far from the manga. Since I've never read the manga, there is really no way for me to tell. I guess I would just queue it up in my endless to-read list and get back on this when I do finish reading it...

While no one seems to know how many episodes are there in this series, everything that has been happening in the last couple of episodes looks like a beginning of the final showdown. Because of the way they laid out the story, it has much fewer loose ends to tie up than the original series. It would not surprise me if they finish it by episode 26.

Valkyria Chronicles: Alicia, Alicia, Alicia...

Currently finished: Episode 21

"Alicia, Alicia, Alicia..."

Ahhhhhh, make it stop. It feels like it's going on forever. Is it really necessary to do that so many times? After the first 10 time, we got the point, there is really no need to repeat it for another 20 times or so.

Though it didn't last too long (well, I guess if you follow it week by week, it did take a week for people to find out), it was a pretty clever setup at the end of last episode to intentionally mislead the audience onto a different direction. In most story, I would immediately dismiss the event at the end of episode 20, because I know a "normal" story would not go down like that. However, because of what happened in episode 18, it did make me wonder a little bit about whether they're really going to actually let that happen.

Confused? Watch up to episode 21, you'll understand what I'm talking about. Or, if you so desire, go read anime blog sites that do spoil the plots.

One other thing I would like to comment on is that I think they went a bit overboard on the aerobatics. It felt somewhat...misplaced...

Bakemonogatari: Implicitly Creepy

Currently finished: Episode 8

There are many ways to present horror to audiences, but mainly they fall into two categories: implicit and explicit.

An explicit horror in my opinion are quite easy to make because all you need to do is to make something pop out and let the audience "jump". I consider explicit horror as "cheap" horror.

On the other hand, an implicit horror, in my opinion, is a much more difficult thing to accomplish: All contributing factors of a story have to all work well together to create an environment that isn't heavily relying on the visual and audio effects to send chills down the audiences' spines. Instead of using image, it uses audience's own imagination to create the horror effect.

Bakemonogatari is very much a story that uses implicit horror. In fact, it feels very much like a light version of Mononoke that doesn't have the crazy visual effect to help out. It was so well made that a rather simple form of visual effect sent quite a chill down my spine. This is the best type of horror I love.

I think this is the special element I was looking for. With this, I'm going to hand it the award

Anime of the Season for July 2009 Season

[News Flash] A.D.Vision and ADV Films

While browsing around AnimeNewsNetwork, I ran across an article about US anime distributor A.D.Vision in their front page headlines.

If you're too lazy to read the full article and those related to that articles, I'll sum it up for you real quick here (This is merely my understanding of the situation, don't quote me on anything I said here as reliable reference, it could be completely wrong):

In 2007 A.D.Vision (parent company of ADV Films) went into partnership with Japanese company. A year later, the partnership broke-up, and A.D.Vision got the short end of the stick, causing most of the licensed titles acquired by A.D.Vision during 2007 such as Air, Kanon, Tokyo Majin to be transferred to Funimation, which triggered an inventory clearance sale for many anime retailers (which I personally took advantage of, sales! yeah...).

The Bigger problem is that once A.D.Vision's partner from that deal are now hostile towards them but still holds significant amount of stakes of the company. The company's future seems doomed. However, through some clever business maneuver, it seems that the founder and owner of A.D.Vision managed to transfer all the asset of ADV Films out of the hostile environment to new business entities that many suspect are made up of original A.D.Vision's owner and management.

So, that's the short summary about the story of ADV Films. Again, this is only my understanding of collected rumors and facts, I could be completely wrong about it.