Seriously? That's how they decide to solve the problem? She was going for the kill, yet he can simply grab her just like that?! I knew from the beginning that it's going to be something lame, but I wasn't expecting it to be this lame. Well, I guess you can't really expect too much out of a cookie cutter harem anime.
Final scoreboard:
Drama:80 (Cookie cutter)
Comedy:82 (Typical)
Action:80 (Can't exactly call it good)
Art/Animation:80 (Looks nice enough)
Sound/Music:80 (Nothing special)
Character:78 (Typical harem)
Plot: 70 (Highly predictable)
Ending:60 (Lame!)
Re-watch value:30(No need for the first time through)
Overall:73 - Cookie cutter harem
Recommendation: If you are really interested in watching some cookie cutter harem anime with some fan service, then pick this one. Otherwise, you're not missing much by skipping this.
It's a little late, but it's better than never :-)
With a very disappointing January season, it seems we're in for a treat this season. By the information I can gather, there are about 29 new animes coming out this April 2010 season. Some of them look like they have real potential to be awesome. Without further ado, I present you the April 2010 anime season preview.
Same as last time, I'm keying the detailed description of each anime following the video with the order of their appearance in the preview video.
Another anime about girls that took on names of the warriors from the Three Kingdoms.
Forecast: The first one was interesting enough, but the second one didn't even last past half way. I'm probably not going to bother with this one either.
A student from a school for the handicapped has a special ability. Then some mysterious events drags him into wars against demons. (Seikon no Qwaser without the milk?)
Forecast: Looks like a fan girl anime. I'd give it 4 episodes.
Everybody should know by now that I'm evil and like tragedies. If it was up to me to write the story, I'd totally put an tragedy into this episode--it has THE perfect setup for an unexpected (well, kind of) tragedy, probably a simple run over by a car would be sufficient enough.
I've read quite a few negative reviews about this anime. Although there are many different reason people are not liking it, lately I've seen more and more negative reviews starts to draw some kind similarities to the Twilight series. Although I've never read Twilight, from all that I've heard about Twilight, this could be one of the biggest insults against Dance in the Vampire Bund.
Anyway, this time, I'm not here to talk about how great I think this anime is so far (although I do want to mention that it is :-). Rather, I'm here to make a comment about how they're not holding any thing back on things that aren't generally acceptable by civilized societies. Although it's pretty clear from the beginning, they have no problem with loli, now they've just taken a step further. So for those who have issues with this kind of things, I think you probably want to stay away from it all together.
Up to episode 9, the series seemed had no purpose other than just having a light comedy-drama lying around. However, episode 10 changed all that. It almost threaded everything happened up till now up to now together and created a purpose for this story to exist.
The entire Kiddy Grade series is somewhat fan service themed, and it was apparent from the beginning they intend to make this one more yuri themed than the previous one. Now they finally broke down the thin paper and made this obvious what this is all about.
As for the story, I'm a bit more fond of it at its current state than what it started as. Without the pure stupidity in the first half of the series, this is almost a semi decent story.
I want to say that I am a bit disappointed because what I thought going to be extended to the grand finale was only a local climax of some sort. However, this currently segment further affirmed me that with a proper ending, this is going to be one of the most amazing story I've seen lately.
Having said that, I can already tell you that you'll need quite some patience to get through first half of the story in order to see the brilliance of its plot construction. That's probably why so many people have rated this anime so lowly.
So now the role reversal has been sorted out, now all there is left is the harem and ecchi symptoms keep getting more and more severe. Yes, it's dumb, it's tasteless (well, depends on how you look at it). At least it keeps pulling out new threads. I wonder when it's going to finish touching all stereotypical harem anime archetypes and have to recycle some of them.
Sorry about the week and a half long dead period. Other things in life has been keeping me busy. But now I get my free time back, I'll try to zip through the backlogs I've piled up as quickly as possible.
Anyway, back to the relevant topic. Are they going to ride the side story all the way till the end of the series? I really want to see more Sawako's story and hopefully an semi wrap-up before the series ends.
Very much like Lucky Star, this series has been either hit or miss for me on an episode-by-episode basis. So far, there has been a lot more hits than misses. Especially this episode, the parities drawn from many animes as well as games are quite brilliant. Though everything is progressively getting more and more retarded/idiotic/moronic (take whichever one offends you the least), I think this occasional showcase of brilliance still outshines all the shortcomings it possesses.
p.s. If you're confused about the sentences inside the parentheses, read the comments for this post.
Overall, I can see many similarities between this and Saiunkoku Monogatari. I wonder, though, whether this is because all the reverse harem stories are really all the same. Don't get me wrong, I think Hanasakeru Seishounen has many great things. It's just there aren't enough reverse harem animes out there, so every time a new one comes out, you just can't help to compare with others.
Hanasakeru Seishounen is a very good story. In my opinion, romance and politics is almost always an interesting mix. Here we high level politics, high level inter-corporation play all mixed up with a strange romance. On top of that, all characters are really well developed. Despite many seem somewhat unrealistic (well, maybe it's just that I don't know enough about how extremely rich people live), you still get a sense of connection to the characters.
As for the way it ended, generally, I'm not a big fan of nearly perfect endings. But in this case, I have to say, after watching what every character has to go through, I think they've earned it.
Final scoreboard:
Drama:92 (All about drama)
Comedy:86 (Not bad for what it had)
Action:82 (Somewhat corny, but not bad)
Art/Animation:80 (Looks somewhat...unusual)
Sound/Music:80 (Nothing special)
Character:89 (Very well developed)
Plot: 87 (Twists and turns)
Ending:90 (Tied up all loose ends)
Re-watch value:30(Wouldn't be nearly as interesting)
Overall:88 - Well made reverse harem
Recommendation: Being a season and a half long (39 episodes), I don't think people with little patience would be able to even get through the first half. But if you do manage to get through the first half, you'll find this is a plenty interesting story.
