[Ended] Tsuritama: Excitement from Simplicity

The level of nonsense in this series is almost comparable to those in Star Driver, which is more or less the defining anime of recent years as far as out of whack nonsense goes.

The concept underneath is amazingly simple and amazingly straightforward, yet, they somehow managed to make it amazingly exciting. Seriously, I never would have thought fishing can be so exciting. There's no drawn out complicated plot, they're simply fishing, from the beginning all the way to the end; There's no unexpected twists and turns, everybody had a simple goal of their own: the aliens wants to fish, the duck wants to catch the alien, Yuki wants to have friends, and Natsuki wants to be a pro. But roll them all together, it somehow become a weird ball of cluster f**k that was extremely entertaining to watch.

The pacing of the series is also great. Early on when people still aren't familiar everybody's intent, it paced moderately while intentional let loose some WTFs to keep people iinterested. Once all foundations are laid out, it wasted no time and immediately shifted into high gear and unfolded in an explosive manner. The excitements just keeps on piling up until the very last moment, while they still not forgetting throw in some WTFs once a while. Overall, it is just very well paced plot development.

If Mawaru Penguindrum is something that uses its craftiness and complexity for an dazzling display of storytelling, then Tsuritama is something made best use of simplicity and what simplicity could achieve in terms of explosive excitements.

In my opinion, Tsuritama has done everything right. If Space Brothers (Uchuu Kyoudai) is the most underrated long series of spring 2012 season, this would be the most underrated short season series of spring 2012 season.

A quick word about the ending. I can see they're trying to throw some more fun WTFs around. But by doing so it left a bit WTF with a huge question mark in the end where I think did more damage then good--it just doesn't make sense, period. Well, the rest of the anime doesn't really make too much sense either, but it does in its own realm. This ending, however, doesn't even make sense in their realm. That makes me wonder what's the purpose of putting that 2 minutes in the end of last episode there...

Final Scoreboard:

Drama: 94 (Simple and with WTFs)

Comedy: 97 (Lots of WTFs)

Action: 93 (Made excitement out of fishing)

Art/Animation: 90 (Simple yet effective)

Sound/Music: 83 (Interesting)

Character: 92 (Simple but interesting)

Plot: 93 (Well paced)

Ending: 90 (WTF?)

Re-watch value: 50 - Still fun WTFs to watch

Overall: 92 - Excitingly simple

Recommendation: If you haven't gotten the point after reading everything I wrote above, let me spell it out for you. This is an amazingly interesting anime that belongs to the "must-watch" list so long you don't mind some out of whack WTFs. And it would no doubt get the award

WTF of the Season for Spring 2012 Season

and even though it's a little stretch, I'd also hand it

SciFi Anime of the Season for Spring 2012 Season

[Ended] Sankarea: The...End?

Was it just me or did everybody else feel the story ended a bit too abruptly? I was fully expecting another episode or at least another scene after the final scene of the final episode. But no, there isn't such a thing. It just ended there. That was just extremely unsatisfying.

Back to the story itself, it's about someone who's obsessed with zombies, in a strange way: he wanted to have a romantic experience with a zombie. How he find zombies attractive, I'm yet to understand. While the story is rather compact, it feels a bit disorganized. It shifts focal point from zombie to Rea then back to zombie. In the end, they managed only have a partial closure to one of the thread and left rest of them terminated in a very cryptic manner. With no announcement of follow-up season, this is a highly undesirable ending. This, in my opinion, is another otherwise good series that is ruined by a bad ending.

Final Scoreboard:

Drama: 82 (Zombie romance)

Comedy: 85 (Somewhat)

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 90 (Quite good)

Sound/Music: 85 (Eh...)

Character: 92 (Definitely character centric)

Plot: 86 (Weird)

Ending: 70 (Weak!)

Re-watch value: 30 - Not really worth it

Overall: 80 - Very Weak Ending

Recommendation: While the ending is rather weak, the rest of the story is rather interesting. I would either wait to see whether there's a second season or just read the manga.

[Ended] Nazo no Kanojo X: Srange Fetishes

This story has a very strange concept, very very strange concept--people can feel each others inner thoughts by simply tasting their spits. The interesting implication about this concept is that people could learn each others true intent by exchanging spits (yuck!). That alone creates a very strange dynamic where lies between the couple could be simply exposed by merely tasting the other person's spit (yuck! yuck!). The story, which is about how two people get close and fall in love with each other (in a very strange way more or less) fully exploit this idea where misunderstandings are solved through this method and in turn brings two closer to each other.

While I more or less got used to (or numb about) the whole spit exchange thing, every time it comes up, I still can help but to think how bizarre it is for anybody to perform such act.

Final Scoreboard:

Drama: 87 (Weird)

Comedy: 83 (Strangely funny)

Action: 84 (Scissor actions)

Art/Animation: 80 (Somewhat weird)

Sound/Music: 85 (So so)

Character: 88 (Slow and steady depth development)

Plot: 86 (Weird)

Ending: 90 (Decleared)

Re-watch value: 50 - If you happen to like spit exchange...

Overall: 84 - People with Strange Fetish

Recommendation: As far as recommendation goes, it's an interesting story, but definitely on the weird end of the spectrum. If you like weird stuff like this, go ahead give it a try, maybe you'll like it.

[Ended] Natsuiro Kiseki: Lightheartedly Charming

Animes about cute girls' life are drop a dozen, hardly any of them are worth mentioning or even watching. But once a while something pops up, that is special not in terms of being extraordinary, rather, being ordinary.

The story is about four BFF girls due to a certain circumstance that their friendship is on the brink of destruction. By an odd chance, a rock with mysterious powers that grants wishes made some interesting wishes of the girls came true in a very strange way. With those wishes, not only they have reaffirmed their BFF status, some of them also learned to accept changes of life as it is and make best of it. The story may not sound that interesting, but the distinct personalities of the four girls just made it so much entertaining to watch. And since the rock grants wishes in a very peculiar and unpredictable way, there's no lack of fun mishaps these girls suffer through.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Natsuiro Kiseki is a comedy that does not rely on exaggeration to make its point. While animes like K-ON! emphasizes on moe plus over the top bounciness to attract audience, Natsuiro Kiseki on the other hand is far calmer than those in the same category. It showed that subtlety can be equally funny if done right, and it adds an extra dimension of mellowness where it would be somewhat difficult to insert into a bouncy comedy anime.

 Final Scoreboard:

Drama: 90 (BFF drama)

Comedy: 90 (Subtly)

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 86 (Cute)

Sound/Music: 85 (So so)

Character: 91 (Very interesting)

Plot: 83 (Slice of life)

Ending: 90 (Ended well)

Re-watch value: 50 - For fun, maybe

Overall: 89 - Lightheartedly Charming

Recommendation: I don't think I'd put this on a "must watch" list, but I'd definitely put it on "if you have extra time to burn" watch list.

[Ended] Sakamichi no Apollon: Jazz of Life

The animation style is simple, the settings is the era when people still have simple lives, but the story and the characters involved are anything but simple.

The story started with a rather simple concept, the love of Jazz music and how it connected a rather unusual group of people together. Slowly, as each character's back stories being revealed (to each other rather than to audiences), situations grew complex. What's so intriguing about this story is how it portrayed the relationships between different people in a very delicate manner.

The ending, in my opinion, managed to escape the pitfall of similar series where they end with either an unreasonable happy ending or an overly blunt shutoff. Most plot threads met with either a full closure, or a partial closure where the result is implied. Technically, the story ended on a somewhat tragic note (it actually depends on which thread you consider the primary one), but it isn't anything need to be upset about because characters in the story have simply accepted the fact and moved on. Since it's a story about how kids mature emotionally and eventually become an adult, I think that's a very fitting ending to the story.

Final Scoreboard:

Drama: 92 (Love and Jazz)

Comedy: 82 (For what it had)

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 88 (Simple and interesting)

Sound/Music: 92 (All the Jazz)

Character: 98 (Very well developed)

Plot: 96 (Life's twists)

Ending: 90 (Casual yet effective)

Re-watch value: 60 - May catch certain details you missed

Overall: 93 - Jazz of Life

Recommendation: While it isn't anything ground breaking, this is an example of a solid good anime. If you are looking for something to watch that won't disappoint you, this is it. And I'm handing it

Best Short Season Drama for Spring 2012 Season

[Ended] Fate/Zero: Sophisticated and Explosive

Fate/Zero is probably one of the most highly anticipated series in both 2011 and 2012. People say bigger expectation brings bigger disappointment, but I can assure you that is not going to be the case here. In my opinion the production team of Fate/Zero did everything right to meet the expectation.

As the prequel to Fate/Stay Night, it's quite a bit more sophisticated than its predecessor, both in plot and character design, probably due to the fact it was trying to tie the back story of every major character from Fate/Stay Night into a single plot. It presented few interesting philosophical dilemma, especially the discussion between the different historic figures about what it really means to be king.

Alongside with the complex plot and interpersonal relationships, one of the selling point of the story is the explosive battles among the summoned warriors. Although from the get-go it was pretty clear who is the ultimately dominating servant (even when you haven't seen Fate/Stay Night, you could tell), the battles along the way (both between servants and the masters) are rather exciting.

I can go on for quite a while about Fate/Zero, but the bottom line is that it is definitely worth your time, whether you have previously seen Fate/Stay Night or not.

Final Scoreboard:

Drama: 97 (Exciting)

Comedy: 85 (For the little it had)

Action: 98 (Explosive)

Art/Animation: 95 (Same style, more sophisticated)

Sound/Music: 97 (Great theme songs)

Character: 96 (Very interesting)

Plot: 98 (Well crafted and sophisticated)

Ending: 99 (Great)

Re-watch value: 80 - May be good for catching some missed plot point

Overall: 97 - Sophisticated and Explosive

Recommendation: Fate/Zero is probably one of the "must watch" anime of 2011/2012. Regardless what your background in anime is, I think you'll enjoy it. Anime studios lately have gotten a habit to taking a season break between two parts of long series, probably to ease the financial strain on producing large projects like this (this way they can use the profit from the first part to fund the second part). It makes it difficult to decide which season this series actually belong. But for now, I'd just shove it under October 2011 season and give it

Best Long Season Action-Drama for Fall 2011 Season

[Ended] Tasogare Otome x Amnesia: Good Story, Terrible Ending

First thing first, WHY do they have to destroy a perfect ending of such a good series?!! Aside from potential future profit, I really can't see a real reason why they would do this. I mean it's so terrible that it's comparable to the level of disappointment I was met while watching Clannad After Story's finale. It's like they are up to toy with your emotion all series long, and after they finished performing the final act and had all of our hearts twisted and turned out of shape, only to see them taking a backstroke to invalidate them all. That's just completely maddening . 

As far as the story goes, the first half looked like a horror and comedy mix that plays off various urban legend where the latter half thread them together to be part of Yuuko's past that the characters trying to resolve. It's rather cleverly written how all unrelated haunts all comes to play part of Yuuko's background. If it weren't for the ending, this may be award worthy. But as it is right, borrowing my friend and fellow blog contributor danchou's words, the ending just kill it for me. 

As art style and directing goes, I can't help but notice it has borrowed certain techniques on directing and art direction from studio SHAFT, whose style is just so vastly different than conventional anime and is rather easily identifiable. While many who tried to imitate SHAFT's style have failed in the past, MediaFactory (the studio behind Tasogare Otome x Amnesia) did rather well here.

Final Scoreboard:

Drama: 90 (Dramatized)

Comedy: 90 (Very good)

Action: 89 (Haunting)

Art/Animation: 89 (Little SHAFT influence)

Sound/Music: 90 (Good music)

Character: 92 (Very interesting)

Plot: 90 (Nicely crafted)

Ending: 50 (Terrible)

Re-watch value: 60 - Maybe

Overall: 87 - Good Story, Terrible Ending
 
Recommendation: Generally it's a good story, but I'd say you probably want to skip the last 5 minutes of the last episode, if you don't want to just feel being played emotionally. If I'm to hand it an award, it'd probably be the most disappointing ending of the season.

[Ended] Jormungand: Excitingly Explosive, and Intricately Crafted

At first, it may look like a Black Lagoon style shoot 'em up story, but as the story progresses, it quickly transformed into something that is much more: it combine geopolitical issue and negotiation tactics along with some very interesting character development and some philosophical discussion about weapons and arms dealers.

First thing first, Jormungand is an action anime, and this story got some gooooood bullet flying, blood spilling, and even brain splattering actions. As many head shots as this anime has, I don't think this is suitable for the faint hearts.

The story is on a case-by-case format, where the previous case really doesn't have much connection with the next one. But there are some small key details that do spill over. It's very much like how the original Darker than Black is formatted, which makes me think whether there's also a grand conspiracy towards the grand finale of the story (not this season obviously, but we already know for sure the second season is coming in October). The plot format too somewhat resembles what we've seen in Darker than Black: The arcs shifts between being character centric and plot centric. With a large central cast, this is probably the best way of introducing all characters without getting too dry.

At the center of the story, Koko is the key to all everything. While her goal is only to profit from arms dealing and wouldn't really hesitate on killing people that got in her way, she does have certain principles. Those principles are really what distinguishes her from the other low lives in the story. In certain sense, you can even say she's a dark knight, without the will to go after bad guys that is. LOL

Final Scoreboard:

Drama: 92 (Dramatic)

Comedy: 90 (Dark humor)

Action: 96 (Explosive)

Art/Animation: 89 (Interesting enough)

Sound/Music: 90 (Great theme songs)

Character: 98 (Very interesting)

Plot: 90 (Slowly building up)

Ending: -- (To be continued)

Re-watch value: 75 - Still might be interesting

Overall: 93 - Explosive and Exciting

Recommendation: While many may still disagree (include my fellow contributor to this blog, danchou), in my opinion this is unquestionably the best anime of the season. So I'm handing it

Anime of the Season for Spring 2012 Season

[Ended] Medaka Box: Trolling Along

Medaka Box is one of those animes that you have to know the background of the author and his other work in order to understand and enjoy it. I've seen quite some negative reviews about it floating around the internet which it is pretty obvious they either aren't aware of who the author is and what other works has he done, or just somehow didn't bother to draw the connections between this and his other works.

In short, Medaka Box is meant to be a troll, so anybody who's accusing that it trolls too much just didn't get it at all. If you have seen all the *~gatari series, you'd recognize just how much he pooled contents from his other stories only to be trolled here. (And just in case you still don't know, the author of Medaka Box is also the the author of Bakamonogatar, Nisemonogatari, and Katanagatari).

While everything is exaggerated to certain level, it's somewhat interesting that they explain itself within the story why they exaggerate to the level they did (the conversation at the beginning of episode 12). I guess in a sense they're trolling their own trolls, LOL. While visually, it's not nearly as intriguing as any of the *~gatari series, the character development is just as intriguing.

Final Scoreboard:

Drama: 83 (Overly dramatized)

Comedy: 88 (Somewhat brilliant)

Action: 83 (Over the top)

Art/Animation: 84 (Interesting enough)

Sound/Music: 84 (So so)

Character: 93 (Brilliant!)

Plot: 83 (Kinda sorta, mostly character centric)

Ending: -- (To be continued)

Re-watch value: 30 - Mostly not worth it

Overall: 85 - Just Trolling

Recommendation: Once you understand this is supposed to a big troll, you'll probably have a somewhat different mentality while watching it. That could be the difference of able and not able to appreciate this story.

Space Brothers (Uchuu Kyoudai): Highly Underrated

Currently finished: Episode 12

As I mentioned in my initial post about this series, despite neither the art style nor the topic is something I'm interested in, it somehow managed to grab my attention from the get-go. Now having seen half of the series already (assuming it's a long season, not longer), I have to say I agree with my friend danchou's assessment that it is probably "the most underrated or under-appreciated show of the season".

There are some amazing depth and very well paced character development along with some highly interesting plot development. Though I have to say they've pushed a bit too hard on the some plot devices that any intelligent person would have figured out what's coming. LOL.

Put that aside, however, so far this has been a very interesting story, along with some witty humors here and there to keep it from getting too dry in pushing the plot along. If you haven't started it, I would highly recommend it to give it a shot. I think this may very well on its way to become the best drama of the season.

[Ended] Kore wa Zombie Desu ka of the Dead: Lost the Touch

Throughout the first series, there have been series of cleverly setup moments that are designed to create some heart-wrenching moments to contrast the over the top outrageousness that the other 90% of the anime consists of.

This second season, however, either they've lost their touch, or they have intentionally tuned it down, these supposedly heart-wrenching moments has not been nearly as effective or emotional. In my opinion, that was about the only redeeming point of the story. Without that, it has gone from an emotional turmoil to some cross dressing nonsense. Grant it that it still retained some intricacy in some of the plot setup, but it's not nearly enough to make the story impressive.

Final Scoreboard:

Drama: 80 (Scattered)

Comedy: 82 (Getting old)

Action: 82 (Magical Girl Man)

Art/Animation: 81 (Same stuff)

Sound/Music: 80 (So so)

Character: 86 (Somewhat interesting)

Plot: 76 (Too much filler)

Ending: 80 (They want to make more)

Re-watch value: 30 - Mostly not worth it

Overall: 80 - Far Inferior

Recommendation: If you really like the first series, I'd say give this one a shot, you may find something else they did in this series to be interesting. But if you didn't care much for the first series to begin with, then I'd say this series does not worth your time.

[Ended] Upotte!!: Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People

I have to say this is one of the more ridiculous ideas I have seen lately. While it's much like series such as Nodame Cantabile or Mayoshimon, where it cleverly packed useful knowledge everywhere, unlike the two I mentioned, these vast knowledge about assault rifles feels somewhat...out of place. I'm not sure what exactly, something just doesn't feel right. And, unlike Hetalia, even though this is mostly nonsense comedy, the serious part of the plot makes these personifications of assault rifles feels rather...odd. Still, the informative side alone would be enough to make it receive a better grade than some of the online reviews that just shreds it to pieces.  I am rather impressed with what they did.

While most of the story is just a jumbo of nonsense, there is however one very good message it hammered in at the very end: Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Without the people who wield them, guns could not have taken a single life.

p.s. I wish they had my favorite, FN P90 personified in the story. But I guess the reason it's not in the story is because technically, it's a sub machine gun rather than assault rifle and this story is all about assault rifles, sigh...

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 77 (Somewhat stupid)

Comedy: 80 (There are some ok ones)

Action: 80 (Personified assault rifles...)

Art/Animation: 80 (Acceptable I guess)

Sound/Music: 76 (So so)

Character: -- (Assault rifles -_-')

Plot: 78 (Assault rifles, team spirit!)

Ending: 80 (Rather impressed by the way they sent the message)

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

Overall: 80 - Ridiculous, informative, and with good message

Recommendation: This is one of the edge cases that I don't really want to give advise either direction. I myself is having trouble to decide whether I should give it a thumb up or a thumb down >.<