Magical Girl Madoka Magica 3 – That Just Happened

It’s been a couple weeks, and we’re already about a quarter way into this show. I wrote mainly about the art style and potential for things to get interesting in my post on the first episode, and episode 3 saw this show make good on that potential. Now, this should be assumed for any episodic blog post, but, be warned, there are spoilers ahead.

Star Driver 15 – Time Twister

No Cybody fight this week, but this episode did a lot to bring the two big storylines closer to their conclusion. While I know a lot of people have been focusing on the Mizuno’s endless eight like experience, I thought the far more interesting storyline came from the very short segment between Sugata and Head.

Magical Girl Madoka Magica 1 – An Eyeful of Potential

So Shaft and Shinbo’s hightly anticipated original magical girl show has started, which means we finally get to see what all the hype was about. At the same time, this was still just the first episode, so the “wait and see” approach would be the right one to follow at this point. Still, what was shown was unique and displayed a lot of potential, leaving me excited for more.

12 Days of Christmas – Day 8 – FLCL 5 – Brittle Bullet, 10 Years Later

So this is a bit of a cheat, as it’s about something from 2000, not 2010. It’s about something exactly 10 years ago, in fact, as today, December 21, 2010, is still the 10th anniversary of Gainax’s release of the 5th episode of FLCL, Brittle Bullet. This is part of a series of posts I’m making on looking back at FLCL 10 years later. Like all my other posts, I opted not to rewatch the episode for the post and to write based only on memory instead. You can read the other posts here: (1 & 2: Fooly Cooly and Firestarter) (3: Marquis de Carabas) (4: Full Swing).

I see this as a bit of an odd episode. It was right in the middle of the tour de force that was the entire 2nd half of FLCL, yet it didn’t have the same magic of episode 4 or the significance of being the true climax of episode 6. Still, this episode was a major part of the reason that the last half of FLCL was as amazing as it had been, and it provided some of the best action sequences in the show while also pushing the plot along.

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes 23 – Good Stories need Good Transitions

That is the one thing I learned from my 10th grade English class. I had written an otherwise excellent (for a 10th grader), well sourced paper about Herbert Hoover’s life and she gives me a B- for no other reason than that the paper had no transitions. Suffice it to say, I’ve never made that mistake again in an academic paper. That’s one of the big issues with Legendary Heroes that has bothered me for some time; there are no transitions. Now, there has been the constant shifting from one story to another, and I’m cool with that. However, putting characters in unexplained situations, like the show did in episode 15, or the weird shift in tone from the last episode to this one are disappointing, to say the least.

Episode recap in four words: Sion goes crazy, finally.

Star Driver 10 – Tipping its Pitches

For those of you who aren’t with it, that’s a baseball reference. After finishing this episode, I couldn’t help but think everything that happened was already hinted at in previous episodes, or was so predictable that a blind man could have seen it coming. Now, I’m all for solid character development, but it didn’t seem to me that Star Driver was the type of show to bash us over the head with it. So in case is wasn’t already clear, both Mizuno and Marino like Takuto.

"You, me, and my sister behind the dugout in five minutes"

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes 19, 20 – Come Together

Since school kind of took up most of my time the past week and a half, I decided to combine the past two episodes into one somewhat longer post. While it would seem like a lot of things have happened in these two episodes, and a lot has, it also is clear that for many characters, especially the main ones, change is a slow process.

FLCL 4 – Full Swing, 10 years later

10 years ago today, on October 24, 2000 (correction: actually October 25, 2000), the 4th episode of Gainax’s OVA series FLCL was released to DVD. This is part of a series of posts I’m making on this show. In my first post, I covered how I came upon this series and my reaction to the first 2 episodes. My second post was made a day late and covered episode 3, Marquis de Carabas. This one covers what my initial reaction was to the 4th episode, Full Swing. (note: for the purposes of this post, I did not rewatch the episode. The last time I watched it was some time in the summer of 2009)

What is there to say about Full Swing? Quite a lot, probably. I could talk your ears off about this episode. It is unequivocally my favorite episode of any anime, all time (so far). Others have come close, such as The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the final episodes of Gunbuster, Diebuster and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and Bakemonogatari episode 12, but Full Swing still holds the number one place in my heart.

Star Driver 2 – Putting People in their Place

Don’t let appearances fool you, this isn’t a mecha anime show with high school elements, but is instead a high school anime that happens to have robots in it. After reading a transcript of a conversation between Igarashi Takuya and Enokido Yoji, the director and writer for the series, one aspect of this show that is the most interesting is the fact that no one is going to die. Say what you will about Code Geass, but some characters did die (and stayed dead) in that show. Now by no means am I saying this show is going to be better or worse than Code Geass, or any other mecha anime, because people don’t die.  But when you really think about it, the concept of giant mechas fighting, regardless of the body count, is a pretty ridiculous idea and Star Driver seems to understand that. However, with that said, this series needs something to hang its hat on, and some of the show’s elements indicate that redemption may be a core theme.

 

On another note, I fear for the future of Cosplay.

 

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes 15 – Dreams of a Dango Empire

 

You know a show is running on fumes when it employs a nonsensical time skip and uses the old strand our main characters on an island to force character interaction with the hope of moving the story forward routine. Unfortunately, that is where Legend of the Legendary Heroes has found itself after 15 episodes. Despite some new revelations about some characters and few minor plot twists, this episode highlights the glacial pace this series has taken on. To the creator’s credit, I think they know this, and they have tried their best to insert more humor into the series. However, when the best jokes they can muster involve stale Ryner sex fiend quips by Ferris, that increasingly question his sexuality, something needs to happen soon, especially considering the large amount of promising new shows.

This plot line would make the show far more interesting than it currently is.