What Did You Just Finish?

[Krozam]

A topic for comments or short reviews once you've finished a series. I know I usually want to comment on a series after finishing it, hopefully there are others like that, too.

Ao no Exorcist
The ending truly surprised me with its quality. I don't know how much of the last two arcs were canon, but I think they're better than the rest of the series. Especially the final arc was very impressive, one of the best thought out final arcs I've ever seen in an anime. Everything fit so neatly, it's hard to believe they could have diverged from the original much. And it was pretty damn epic, too.

However, overall the series still isn't that clearly above average. Its strongest points are entertaining battles and great musics, but there were too many boring episodes between the first few eps and the mid-point, and only a few of the characters truly grew on me, made me care about them. Fortunately the Okumura brothers are pretty good protagonists, and Mephisto is brilliant, so I wouldn't say the characters are bad across the board. 3½/5 stars.

[Krozam]

Sacred Seven

It's nothing great, but I found it quite entertaining. In no way does S7 stand out among the anime of its type, but overall it's not such a weak anime that many make it out to be. The action is entertaining enough, the characters are likeable and have a moderate level of depth and development, and the plot isn't quite as straightforward as I feared it'd be. I even got a little attached to the characters, and was disappointed for the lack of a little romantic moment between Arma and Ruri at the very end. gg deserves a special mention for hilarious translations on Onigawara's lines. S7 is quite worth watching if you're in the mood for some simple action with a slice of romance. 3/5 stars.

[Hanover Fist]

R-15

So yes, this is a cheesy fan-service show with a potential harem setup. Also, the censored version bludgeons you with blatant and annoying white bars across the screen. On a couple occasions only a small pie slice of screen was visible with a face in it. So maybe it's better to wait for the BD release [last disc out late Feb 2012].

Surprisingly, there was more humor and plot than I was expecting in this story about the teenage pr0n novelist in the school for assorted geniuses. Taketo's flights of imagination visualizing dirty scenarios were quite funny. While there was the full complement of cliched ecchi situations, Utae's understanding and acceptance of Taketo was a breath of fresh air. Additionally there was more romance than usual in this ecchi show.

When it came to the final few episodes...

(click to show/hide)

... I was rooting for Utae [pun intended]. I liked her character a lot better than Fukune and wish she would have ended up with Taketo. Class 1-3's final acceptance of Taketo's talent was good and their chorus song with the pr0n lyrics was actually kinda touching. It was also nice to finally hear a new clarinet piece that hadn't been overplayed all season.

So overall it was good light entertainment. A flawed but funny show. 3/5

[Krozam]

Working!!

Slice of life almost at its best. The quirky, likeable cast keeps thing interesting from the start to the end. The useless manager got on my nerves, but otherwise I like everyone. Satou is my favourite, the most normal of them all yet he manages to be hilarious (also, his relationship with Yachiyo is the very thing that originally made me interested in the series, after I read a very good doujin about it). The childish Poplar, androphobic Inami, katana-carrying Yachiyo, blackmailing Souma etc... the show takes an understanding attitude to each of their problems. Even the protagonist, Souta, has a complex: he really likes small and cute things. Otherwise, he's an unusually reliable and sensible protagonist, he never once made me facepalm.

The comedy is good, I laughed quite a lot when watching, the romances are quite interesting to follow (however one-sided they seem at first), and overall the show left a nice, light-hearted feeling. I'm definitely going to watch the second season. I can't give a purely slice of life show without much depth a really good rating, but for this type of a show, 3½/5 stars is a pretty good rating.

[Chadwicke]

No. 6

Halfway into No. 6, I thought it was Nabari no Ou all over again. Nabari no Ou lured me in with its fantastic action scenes and good concepts regarding their skills and powers, only to turn to a totally different direction with the MC's BL tendencies. It lost the elements I liked halfway and replaced it with the MC's incomprehensible obsession over an introvert with a death sentence. However, since No. 6 only had 11 episodes, I thought I could just forced myself through it (I deleted Nabari no Ou when I was right in the middle of the series).

Rejoice! After finishing No. 6, I found out that it wasn't totally that bad. If you can stomach M2M kissing (I couldn't), the story is not bad at all. During late episodes though, it lacks a few explanations about what's going on.

Just a little rant, though:

(click to show/hide)

Holy crap, why didn't anyone warn me about this? Aaaaarrrrgggghhh!! I admired the girl, asking for sex like that, like a machine that only needed to get over it. But what did you do? You killed her! Son of a... Also, just when I was taken in again by the characters and the MC finally changing into a logical dude, during the ending you remind me again that they are a bit less of dudes after all! Deleted!

Personally I'd give it a 1/5, but thinking logically and imagining I wasn't homophobic, maybe it's 3/5.

[Krozam]

UN-GO

Well, look at that. Apart from some re-watches, this is the first time I watch anime for 1-2 months, and already I finished a series. With my track record (82 stalled anime series, as you can see from my signature), that's kind of unusual.

UN-GO was a bit of a surprise: I started watching it on a whim, not expecting much, but in the end it's quite possibly my favourite of the season. I'm so very glad I didn't miss this anime, because it's a rare treat these days: a classy, plot-driven (if episodic), intelligent anime with no fanservice and very little action to take the focus off what's important. Very enjoyable, especially since it's been a while since I last enjoyed a good detective story.

It's difficult to find anything bad to say about the anime. It's no visual masterpiece, but it delivered a pretty strong atmosphere nonetheless. As a detective story it has a couple of problems, namely two hax characters who gave the detective protagonist quite an edge, but since I like both of those characters, I don't really mind. Most of the arcs are kinda short: while the cases are intelligent, they lack the complexity that they could've been given with more time available. Thankfully, they were smart enough not to try and cram too much into the episodes, so the storyflow never gets too jumpy.

As for its strengths... the foremost among them in my opinion is the existence of multiple different moral codes. There's a character who regularly falsifies information, helps the government with propaganda and hides uncomfortable truths from the general populance. No, he's not an antagonist, although he occasionally sort of takes the role. His daughter, on the other hand, is the classic goody-two-shoes who doesn't lie or deceive. As for the protagonist, he feeds people's souls to his "assistant" - though oddly enough, it doesn't seem to really harm them. The protagonist of this show is a curious case also because he has character development. How many "great detectives" actually have character development? Not many. Also, the antagonists are all very much human. This anime has considerable psychological depth, and while the plots aren't bad, the characters are better.

One more thing worth mentioning is, the ending song is damn sneaky. >.< At first I didn't think much of it, but for some reason I still never skipped it... and then I realized I like the song. The more I listen, the more I like it. As a whole, I'll give the show 4/5 stars. I really wish there'll be more, 11 episodes is way too little of this.

[Hanover Fist]

Shiki

I had stalled out on this one sometime last year. I finally marathoned it from start to finish over the last couple days and I'm happy I did. It starts out slowly but develops well. One thing (of many) I'm impressed with is that it goes back to the roots of vampire stories: There are no sparkly vampires in the sunlight here. These are honest to goodnessbadness monsters. They're vulnerable to stakes and sunlight, have hypnotic powers and need to be invited to come inside.

The plot builds up well and has many intelligent touches. A few times I was pleasantly surprised by subtle reveals that I only caught on to a couple episodes later, causing me to go "Ooooh! Sneaky! That's what they're doing there." The development is very well thought out.

The characters also show that humans can adapt to just about anything. The huge cast is well defined and the show even has room to show the development in many of them. There are funny moments, but it's basically a horror show. There isn't much fan service and the gore in later episodes isn't excessive but rather complements the plot.

Overall, it's worth your time. I give it 4/5 stars.


Final Approach

I got curious about this one after seeing a 'cap from it in the games thread. It's a short little series from 2004 with 13 half-length episodes. It wasn't something I had saved on my HDs, but once I started watching it I had the strongest sense of deja vu. I must have seen it before but didn't archive it.

Wikipedia and MAL can give you a better plot summary than I can.

I found it to be pretty cute and pretty funny, doing a good job balancing between comedy, drama, romance and slice of life. It starts out leaning toward the comedy and finishes in the romance and drama section. It's not a waste of time, but then again it's not anything I felt the need to keep after watching: 3/5 stars.

[Hanover Fist]

Mawaru Penguindrum

I just finished this after watching it over the last two days. I made the post in the Enticing to Watch thread around episode 17, knowing even before then that it was really good. Now that I've finished, I'm trying to figure out if I liked it or not. well ... yes, I liked it. It tied things up nicely without any major loose ends hanging out. It's more that I'm still trying to wrap my head around the ending. I think it's one of those shows that will make more sense the second time through as you pick up the little clues you missed on the first pass.

Overall, I give it at least a 4/5. Its certainly sucks you in and I'm getting to sleep today much later than I should. On that note. G'night!

[Mortadin]

OH hell.. Why did i had to finish this...

School Days

I wish i didnt did a BroContract with my friend about me finishing this series... Frankly... I felt better being dropped by phone by my first girlfriend then watching this... But.. i guess this series is good as it broke many standard on how far can they go on a relatively '' Light '' anime...

It is the most shocking Anime i've watched yet... and i'Ve seen my share of gore and cruel thing...

[Khorne11]

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It was really funny, the characters are great, and the voice actors are just as good. The ONLY problem I had was the endless 8 section in season 2, it would be cool if it was just 3 episodes, but it was a deja vu' section about them repeating summer which was 7 episodes and nothing changed untill the last 10 minutes of the last episode, but besides that NO flaws. The movie (The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya) was awesome but didn't really rap up anything like movie continuations are meant to, it was pretty much just a prolonged episode.

Mikuru is by far my favorite character, shes adorable, awkward, and constantly being bullied buy Huruhi and forced to wear ridiculous (sometimes even fan service) costumes.

 While stoic characters are usually awesome (Mai from Kanon, Sakai from Woshizora e Kakaru Hashi, and Setsuna from school days to name a few), but Yuki was rather boring, she was just TOO stoic, and had no affect what so ever, she made the most boring (though my favorite) character genre seem even more boring.

The story is a 8/10 because of its inconsistencies but is very fun and a definate treat, I strongly recomend this anime to slapstick and mind f*ck fans.

-K11

[Krozam]

What, you review Haruhi without even mentioning the male protagonist? I mean, everyone agrees that Kyon is by far the best thing about Haruhi, as his sarcastic narration makes up at least half of the show's entertainment value... or at least I thought everyone agreed on that before you came along.

[XxanimefreakxX]

Shinryaku! Ika Musume 2, it was really awesome and it made me lmao really hard:D

[Krozam]

Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko

I remember that when I watched the first ep for the first time, I thought it was kinda funny, but a bit weird for my taste. The character designs are gorgeous, though, so I didn't hesitate giving it another episode. After watching it, I thought it was a very good anime. After the third ep I was convinced it was a great anime, with the potential to become one of my 5-star favourites. I stalled it after ep 7, because it was so good that I wanted to wait for all the eps to come out and then marathon it for maximum enjoyment.

Today was finally the day I marathoned it. It never let me down, not even once. To be honest, I was completely defenceless against Erio's moe, she's the only character to ever make me so completely and utterly surrender to moe that I wouldn't have cared if the show was horrible otherwise. The most beautiful character design I've ever seen combined with irresistibly moe personality. She's the heart and soul of this anime.

However, she's not the entire anime. The fact is, Denpa Onna has not only the most beautiful female character designs ever, it also has immensely entertaining dialogue, a lovable quirky cast of characters, lots of depth hidden beneath all the silliness, great character development, fantastic direction, storytelling and 'camera' angles, a harem that keeps me rooting for one character while being unable to bring myself to dislike any of the others, and finally, plenty of touching, beautiful scenes with strong atmosphere. It's mainly a slice of life story, so I can't say there's much plot, but there's plenty of development in characters alone, so you don't need any more plot than that.

The ending is... inconclusive, but definitely climatic enough. I didn't expect a conclusive ending, since there are still light novels left to adapt, so I'm perfectly happy with the 13th episode. I really, really hope that the whole story will be adapted to anime. I want more of this, I want to know more about these quirky characters, I want more scenes that make me tear up, and I want a fulfilling conclusion to the romance - even at the risk that it's not my favourite girl who wins.

Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko is now officially my fifth 5-star anime series, the fifth series I've ever seen that I consider near perfect. At the moment I'm unable to objectively say which place it takes in my top 5, but it's in there, that much is certain. It's a masterpiece.

[Fernando Factor]

Guilty Crown

Long time no see an Anime capable to make me excited. In the first episode I though it was too shounen to my likes and I was about to forsake, but the curiosity push me a little further, the character desing was really good, and in the following episodes the story was going deep and interesting (omoshiroi).

From the middle to the last episodes the results was changing, and a new course was going, I couldn't stop to think "what will happen next?" I can really recommend if you look for an Anime with a beautifull character desing, an unpredictable story and dramatically deep enough to reach your emotional side.

[Krozam]

Brave10

Entertaining action and cool characters, that's pretty much all there is to say about Brave10. The male lead is pretty awesome, strong from the start. The story is obviously incomplete, so I hope there'll be a second season, I would certainly watch another season of this. 3.5/5 stars.