Progress report

Seeing as everything's been thrown out of whack this week and MovableType offers the worst tech support ever (at least if you don't pay them), I'm going to go out a bit and digress from the straight up reviews that I do. Put some of the hated word "blog" back in the phrase "anime blog" and lose all of my readers.

I have completed a RahXephon review, but the edited version is lost in the ether and I couldn't be bothered re-editing my draft. You can get that in time, but here I'll editorialise and say that I think that Argentosoma, despite holding more flaws, was an altogether better series - at least on the sci-fi scale.

I've been watching complete fansubbed series on the trains, which strikes me as somewhat against the "spirit" of fansubbing - that is, watching it in instalments almost as if it's real TV. The two series I've watched, however, are so good that I could put that aside. I'm not sure if I'll write about them, though.

The first series was Beck, which had many little storylines I didn't like - such as a stupid bullying exposé - but which I really cared about. The characters were excellent and I wasn't as annoyed by the English as many of my anime compatriots were. Even the whole "Leon Sykes" story didn't annoy me, possibly because I was not watching on a weekly basis. I never found him much of a threat.

Monster is my current train series and, twenty episodes in, it is excellent. By the same team as Master Keaton, both anime and manga, it is just pure rock. It takes a few episodes to set itself up, but there's enough suspense and such great characters that it picks up momentum quickly. The shadow of Johan casts itself over the series and I think that Inspector Lunge's theory is too naff and convenient.
I might get to modern times, do a write up, and then pick it up weekly. Who knows, everything I say is always speculation.

Finally, the DVD series I just finished was A Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar. Entire series take a while to write up, so I'll get back to you on that. I tells ya, I teared up at the end.

I'll watch Honey & Clover 19 and write it up later.

How was that for an experiment?

The Snow Queen - episode 2

“Aurora Town”



I would say that it took them long enough, but I’m in no position to talk. Perhaps there is a reason beyond control for everything.

In this episode, Gerda is making a living in the winter time by doing laundry, while her grandmother Matilde is working hard into the night making tapestries. In nineteenth century Denmark, it was vitally important to be able to pay for winter provisions, so Matilde overworks herself sick.
Meanwhile, the Snow Queen goes about her rounds, and Gerda has to find a cure for Matilde in a blizzard. The episode ends with the original story’s beginning … slightly altered to take care of the troll characters.

The story is presently in melodrama stage, setting the scene for Gerda's character. Her dedication is shown in her trips out into the snow; this will come in handy for later on, as the whole story of The Snow Queen is about facing hardship and having strong faith. I doubt that there will be quite a Christian moral as there was in the original story, but it's possible that I will be surprised.
The highlight for the episode, therefore, was seeing the Snow Queen get around. Suzukane Mayo's character is a woman of few words, but she exudes an air of sadness and her snow song was mesmerising.

While I like a lot of the techniques involved in this program, and that I think the Snow Queen is a semi tragic figure, the secondary character designs leave quite a lot to be desired. The washerwomen were hideous in this episode. Even in the normal characters the eyes seemed off, with Gerda occasionally looking at nothing.
The other factor is that the Red and Blue Trolls simply suck. They look like refugees from bad eighties’ American cartoons contracted to the Japanese for animation. When I was about five, I watched a hell of a lot of that sort of stuff - and it just doesn't cut it for me anymore.

The Snow Queen is good, but not good or fast enough to warrant having to wait two months between episodes. The sudden possession of Red Troll and Blue Troll suggests that there is something evil afoot here – which is important because the Snow Queen is by no means bad, she just doesn’t undersand.
By virtue of its basis in a short morality tale, this anime had to branch out somewhere. Next week episode, at least, appears to be the pivotal mirror fallout.

Tide-Line Blue - episode 5

"Attack - Offense"



This is more like it.

Teen misbehaves with Aoi and Keel decides that he wants to "help" Gould again. Unfortunately everything that Gould does is vaguely militaristic, which clashes with Keel's pacifistic nature. Keel's a bit slow. The way that things work out, and the realisation that Keel comes to, however, are well worthwhile.

Gould is finally becoming the interesting character that he needs to be for this series to work: his methods may seem brutal, but they are effective. The sheer disappointment that Keel feels when he realises that Gould was right all along is fairly powerful, and all the moreso due to the fact that this episode uses very little in the way of SD shots for once.
That said, Joze is not very sympathetic at all: her grey hair and yellow eyes make her far from trustworthy, almost implying that she is ruthlessly behind everything.

I didn't much like the Teen scenes because that smug bastard look he carries on his face annoys me to no end. This time the Gould side has enough information to make me start caring about them, but the Aoi side is still too mysterious: unexplained contraband communications systems and all sorts of new characters aren't getting me going.

This is good enough, but nowhere near gripping; the characterisation is slightly annoying in Keel, and Teen takes too many notes from the book of Joze rather than Gould.

Honey and Clover - episode eighteen

“He’s back”



I would say that this was the best episode yet but for two reasons: it’s likely to be surpassed and I didn’t really like the ending.
Honey and Clover is at its manic comedy best when it has Morita in the spotlight. It is no spoiler to say that he’s back, as the end of episode seventeen was blatantly obvious … and he was always going to come back, we just didn’t know when.

Basically this episode kicks off with the group watching Morita win a Mochademy Award for special effects in the hit movie “Space Titanic”. They watch his rambling speech with horror, then realise with more horror that he is in the hospital bed next to them.
What ensues is an excellent episode about graduation and Takemoto’s uncertainness about his relationship with Hagu.

For a minute there, I thought that Morita had really graduated, that he had learned. I can be forgiven for thinking this, as the “finally serious” Morita was very strong indeed, before he went all bowtie and first year.
I loved the sunset feel of the graduation scenes, which is why they were kind of ruined by the dawn feel of the new university year. I understand the necessity of first year Morita, especially after so long in the wilderness for him, and it’s not a ruiner – it just slightly cheapens the emotions.

I think that Yamada must work in the pottery department of the university, because she is still there despite graduating at the same time as Yamada. It is slightly confusing when these characters have to have their majors when Hagu-chan does such a wide variety of work: starting in pottery (where she met Yamada), working in sculpture (where Takemoto became surprised by her skill, and where she showed her desperation), but dedicating herself to painting as well (such as her giraffe experience).
Of course, this is the point of Hagu-chan: she is endlessly talented, but she needs to focus that talent or become distressed - which is Morita's problem and precisely why he's coming back. This is yet another thing to add to the list of comparisons between Takemoto and these two: directionlessness.
However, I could argue that this is common among students.

Overall a strong episode that had to work as it did, even if I didn't quite like the outcome.

Shameful return

The reason I have not updated Batrock.net's Anime Pilgrimage for a week is because the MovableType system refuses to acknowledge my username.. I said that I would be back on Blogspot in the event of Batrock being hacked by terrorists, and this is close enough.

With my head bowed down low in regret, welcome back to Blogspot. I'm uploading all of my images in the event of a triumphant return to Batrock, but this layout can't really handle such large scale quality images at the low low prices I normally offer!