Shingeki no Kyojin – Episode 17

It has been a while since I last reviewed an episode of Shingeki no Kyojin. Two months to be precise. Back then, things were already starting to look bad and the following episodes confirmed it; the show was dragging on for too long and as a result of that the animation suffered and the anime stopped being as interesting. This episode, though, should give people some hope that the show still has the potential.

Armin

After the somewhat boring previous three episodes, episode 17 features once again Titan killing action; the show definitely shines during these scenes and it’s a shame most episodes are plagued by quality issues and an overuse of stills. Sometimes, though, we get episodes that can overcome these faults with good direction, and despite this one certainly not being the best, it’s definitely one of the better ones in the past month and a half. But what exactly makes it good (or in this case, better than most)? Well, it’s an episode that once again shows just how hopeless the fight against the Titans is, and does it pretty well; the change of scenario, from a city to the plains surrounding the walls is also very welcome, as the way the troops have to approach the fights is very different. Above all, it’s an episode that keeps you entertained and interested in what’s going to happen next, something the previous episodes had failed to do.

Jean

This is the first episode where we get a chance to see how the Recon Corps actually do things; the way the strategy is explained is pretty easy to understand and shows just how professional and important the mission actually is. Obviously it being the 57th expedition outside of the walls means there was a lot of room to improve the strategies over the years, but even still, the number of soldiers that are killed is pretty high and just goes to show how dangerous fighting the giants in their territory is. In terms of overall animation quality, the episode does a good job by being consistent, especially during the Titan combat scenes, something the show has always been good at. The change in the “battlefield” actually helped these scenes get more amazing, as without buildings the soldiers have to latch on to the giants in order to fight them. The entirety of the episode consists of horses moving across the fields so there’s a ton of movement and not a lot of stills, which is very nice; and after the boring actionless previous episodes, the show seems to be going back to its roots: interesting episodes that, despite using a bunch of stills for no apparent reason, still manage to have great action sequences that are really entertaining to watch!

Reiner

Shingeki’s story is extremely interesting, but the dragging of the Trost’s defence arc hurt the anime a little bit. Nevertheless, things are starting to get back on track again so let’s hope the show doesn’t disappoint too much again.

4/5

July 2013 Anime Ranking

After a month of vacation and catching up to my backlog, I’m finally back and ready to meaninglessly start ranking chinese cartoons again! That being said, I’ve decided to turn this monthly ranking into a top 5 for various reasons; the biggest one being that I’m watching too many shows and it would be a pain to rank them all. Thinking of a top 5 for each month, however, is way easier, and at the end I can still talk about the shows that almost made it in.

#5 – Free!

Hey look, it’s a Kyoani show! I guess that means more cute girls doing cute th- NO. NOPE. WRONG. Free! is Kyoani’s go at sports anime, in this case swimming. Now, instead of having a main cast composed entirely of females, almost all the characters are male. You could say this show is more directed towards the female audience (and let’s be honest, it is) but if you like sports anime, swimming, or just beautiful animation and quality, this show is for you!

#4 – Ginga Kikoutai: Majestic Prince

With a new opening and the introduction of a new character, Ange, the show got really interesting and has a great start of a second half. Majestic Prince never really took too many risks and sticking with the same guns definitely paid off, in this case. Once again the show is able to demonstrate just how good it can animate its space battles, as July had some of the most intense and well animated scenes in the show so far. The overall quality is just right and the show almost never enters the QUALITY territory. The anime also continues to have just the right amount of comedy and action, and the two mix up very well. Let’s see how well it can handle itself in the following months.

#3 – GatchamanCrowds

Not only does Gatchaman Crowds have the cutest main character out of all the summer 2013 shows (Hajime), it also has one of the craziest plots. The show’s strongest points are, undoubtedly, its unique artstyle and amazing soundtrack, and the CGI, that many people thought would look terrible, is actually quite acceptable. Each of the characters have a distinct personality and it’s easy to grow fond of them, especially the aforementioned Hajime. The plot is slowly revealing itself, but for a 12 episode long show it’s essential not to get too sidetracked on non-important things (hello Gargantia). The craziness of the plot can be a strong point but it’s also possible to be a bad one. Let’s wait and see how Gatchaman Crowds handles its plot in the following episodes/months!

#2 – Uchouten Kazoku

After the mediocrity that was RDG, it was natural to look at Uchouten Kazoku with a bit of reserve. Despite everything, P.A. Works’ newest show surprised everyone by actually being good. Really good! Without trying to be too fancy but also not trying to take itself too seriously, this show offers a great mix of comedy and serious moments, with an interesting set of characters that isn’t too big (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, quite the opposite) and a fascinating world that draws you in and makes you smile as you watch all the events unfold; to help with this the show has amazing visuals and a very unique art style, which help complement everything very well.

#1 – Uchuu Kyoudai

So this is what happens when there’s no more Chihayafuru… Uchuu Kyoudai just takes the 1st place spot by being consistently good and entertaining. In many ways, this show is similar to Chihayafuru, and although it obviously had a full year to build up its characters and story, you can definitely find some similarities in the two shows. For example, the importance both shows give to the characters, even the less important ones. Developing everyone like that just helps the world feel alive; everyone has an important role in the story and the anime is very good at showing that. Sometimes the episodes do drag on for a while, for the sake of developing even more its cast, but if you’ve stuck with this show for this long, then you should be used to this by now!

Honorable mentions (no particular order): Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi, Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S, Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C³-bu, Monogatari Series: Second Season

Kakumeiki Valvrave – Episode 11 & Episode 12

Because it wouldn’t be fair to only blog about the last episode, I’ve decided to include episode 11 in this post, since they also have continuity. I’ll save my overall opinions on the show for the end, so let’s talk about the episodes themselves first!

A good character and a bad one

“Valvrave’s just getting started”. This might sound strange but believe me, after watching episode 12 it will make perfect sense. Indeed, despite 12 being the final episode of the “first season”, it actually looks like the start of the plot. You might be thinking to yourself: “Well, a show that took 12 episodes to finally get started can’t be very good.”. That’s true, Valvrave is not a very good show, it was obvious from the start. It took too long to get to the important bits of the plot, the pace was all over the place, especially at the start, and most the characters are dull and devoid of personality, except for the few that got miraculous screen time and development. Despite all of this, let’s be real: at least Valvrave tried something different; it’s not a great show but it is without a doubt an entertaining one, and there aren’t many of those this season. The two final episodes have as their focus the – you guessed it – final Dorssian invasion (for now), this one led by Cain, the man who taught Eru Erfu everything. Cain is a complete mystery and it’s clear, from the last episode, that he is going to be the main antagonist in the second season. Without going into much detail about the invasion (because who cares, really), there’s a huge drill that spreads poison gas around and it must be stopped before it reaches the top of the module. If that wasn’t enough, the Dorssians are also trying to put pressure in the poor students by holding Shouko’s father, the real Prime Minister, hostage! Because all the Valvraves are outside defending against the huge invasion, no one can stop the massive drill… except for the last Valvraver, revealed in the last episode: Akira!

Smile for the camera

One thing the show did very well until the end was keep the identity of the pilots a secret until they were revealed (well, except for that “Inu and Thunder” episode title, that was a given). Because of this, some of the pilots ended up being extremely unexpected and having these surprises definitely helped increase the entertainment and enjoyment levels of the show; Akira was not an exception, as I’m sure not a lot of people expected her to be the last Valvraver! Her weapon, the Humming Bird, is a staff that, when it makes contact with electric devices, can hack into them. This is shown when she uses it on the drill to make it stop or the Dorssian droids to make them fight each other. This power is very Akira-like, and it’s a good thing the Valvrave powers resemble the characters’ personalities.  As usual, this Valvrave is different from all the other ones in terms of appearance; it’s also piloted by the best character, so you know it’s the best one! It’s too bad they had to wait until the final episode to reveal it. In terms of overall quality, these last two episodes did a good job by not messing up too bad; Valvrave has been known for having some atrociously badly animated episodes with loads of QUALITY, so it’s refreshing when the episodes are actually nice looking. The animation quality, particularly at the end of episode 12 was pretty good but it’s clear that never was Valvrave’s defining point. Nevertheless, the space fights were always nicely animated and, despite being a bit repetitive, something to look forward to every episode. With that being said, I’ll write my final thoughts on the show now!

Valvrave-tan

It’s funny, really. Valvrave is the only show I’ve blogged since the first episode and out of the three (the other two being Gargantia and Shingeki) it was clearly the one that showed the least potential. In the end though, it ended up being way more entertaining than what I expected. I’ve mentioned this before, but Valvrave was one of the few shows that tried something different this Spring season (the other one that comes to mind right now is Aku no Hana) and that definitely helped making it fairly enjoyable to watch. The show is far from perfect though; as I pointed out before, Valvrave did a lot of things wrong: for starters, the main character, Haruto, isn’t interesting enough and ends up being quite annoying sometimes; this is where Eru Erfu comes in. Eru Erfu can be considered a second main character, as his role on the story has been pretty important so far. He is the complete opposite of Haruto, an interesting character capable of turning even the most boring of episodes into something fun to watch; the only problem being that he needs some more development, as we still don’t know a lot of stuff about the mysterious Dorssian soldier. Before putting the issue of the cast’s quality away, it needs to be said that the pilots didn’t get enough development (except for Saki, she got quite a bit of screen time), especially Inuzuka and Thunder. All they did in the last few episodes was enter their respective robots and use their weapons to stop Dorssian invasions; it’s hard to care about certain characters when all that’s shoved in your face is their reason to fight: revenge. Some shows try to remedy this by having an episode completely dedicated to one character, but Valvrave managed to screw that up by having two new pilots show up in one episode. Because of that, Thunder didn’t even get an episode dedicated to himself and hell, even some less important characters got more screen time than him. Moving on, the plot at the start was a complete mess, and it was clear why everyone was saying the show was going to be a complete trainwreck. Slowly but surely it managed to fix the plot issues but not everything was fine. The episode formula rarely changed after the convoluted start and pretty much consisted on throwing in a Dorssian invasion every single episode, each one with different gimmicks; despite these, though, the repetitive nature of the attacks was also a problem the show never managed to fix, so let’s hope it can in the second season. Despite all of this, it’s unfair to completely judge Valvrave now. The show was, from the start, meant to be 2-cour long so it’s natural some things were left unexplained and at least we’re left with stuff to speculate about. One thing I can say, though, is that it was definitely a good watch.

From the start, it was clear Valvrave was going to an average show; it had some potential but it never quite realized or made use of it. Even still, I’m excited and can’t wait for the second season because you never know what to expect from this show. October can’t come soon enough!

Overall
3/5

Exams Exams Exams

It’s that time of the year again, where school gets in the way. Well, studies should obviously be a priority so I’ll be blogging less for the next couple of weeks. The spring season is also ending and next week I’m probably only going to blog about Gargantia.

With that being said, have a cute Saki image!

Kakumeiki Valvrave – Episode 10

Cute episode where nothing happens, typical Valvrave style. Rape and NTR warning.

Cute teachers doing cute things

Hey look, it’s another one of those episodes where nothing happens. Come on, Valvrave, the season is almost over and these types of episodes are not exactly what you need! To put it simply, this is an election episode; for some reason, Nanami (the teacher in the first picture) thinks it’s a good idea to have everyone choose an official representative for the module. As you can probably guess, it’s a slow-paced lighthearted episode with not much going on. Because of this, there’s hardly anything to talk about except for how pointless this election seems to be or the rape scene at the end; yes, there is actually a rape scene at the end of the episode and it’s one of the things that make this episode not as boring. The other thing being the interesting stuff that’s happening inside the Dorssian ship, but unfortunately the episode seems to completely forget about it and doesn’t touch it again… maybe next episode.

I’ll never be important even though I’m so cool

The quality in this episode is average going by Valvrave standards and well, there are no cool looking space fights. After a few interesting episodes Valvrave once again commits the mistake of having a meaningless episode; even though it shows some characters’ sides we don’t know about it ends up being unimportant for the overarching plot. The only thing we learn from this episode is that apparently vampires have a strong sexual desire, and Haruto’s keeps increasing every episode. Yes, so much that he ends up raping our pure Saki. Also, Eru Erfu doesn’t show up as often as in previous episodes, which once again proves that the more Eru Erfu an episode has, the better it is!

Yes we can!

Two episodes and one robot left to introduce. I’m sure Valvrave can come up with something entertaining but nothing that can top the brilliant ending this episode had.

3/5

Suisei no Gargantia – Episode 10

Whalesquids, teenage angst, pirates, treasures, photon canons, booze, mechanic girls. This episode has it all, but not what it takes to be good enough.

Killing squids makes you go crazy

Alright, I guess good things don’t last forever. This week on Gargantia we get a slow episode where nothing happens until the very end. For some reason they decided to turn Pinion into an asshole, or maybe he was already like this before, who knows. Because of that, he looks like some sort of bad guy for most of the episode, going around boasting that he has the strongest fleet (which is probably true, let’s be real), something they shouldn’t have done. Pinion was a nice character, actually somewhat likeable and one of the few to get a bit of development. In any case, this episode doesn’t really have a primary focus, but Ledo’s self-reflection is what stands out the most, as it gets a bit annoying at times. Turns out that after finding out what whalesquid truly are, he becomes depressed and doesn’t know what to do, and asking Chamber for help only makes him worse. Honestly, his 180º change in mindset feels very sudden and out-of-place. The only explanation to this is that Amy somehow managed to warm his heart or something.

The brightest smile

Despite all of this, the episode doesn’t really amount to anything; you’d think they would build up on the whalesquid story some more while at the same time just advancing the plot a little bit at a steady rate, but nope. It’s sad, really, because this episode has some really nice visuals and it can even compete with the first ones in terms of quality; it’s not Gargantia (the ship) levels of pretty scenery, but it’s alright. This is partially due to the fact that these episodes have had a darker tone than usual, and also because the ship just plainly sucks. The fog being everywhere doesn’t exactly help either!

Surprising ending

Overall, not the best episode but definitely not the worst. Something else definitely could have been done but the final scene is a great indicator that stuff is going to happen in the next episode. Come on, Gargantia, don’t let us down again!

3/5

Shingeki no Kyojin – Episode 10

This week we have a slightly disappointing episode with not much happening at all, something that probably disappointed a lot of people that got high expectations from last week’s ending.

Surprised faces

You’d think, after what happened at the end of last week’s episode, that this one was going to be crazy, with stuff happening everywhere. It actually ended up being crazy, by which I mean “crazy how pretty much nothing happened at all”. Indeed, this was a very slow-paced episode with a lot of talking and not many animations. Now episodes that consist simply on talking are not always bad, but this one just wasn’t handled the best way, and the slowness of it all is something that might infuriate some people. It was obviously necessary, but not to the point where they had to waste an entire episode on it; in the end, they probably wanted to end the episode exactly where it did, so it turned out like this.

Inside a Titan’s skeleton

The entire episode consists of Armin, Mikasa and Eren trying to come up with a plan to escape the situation they’re in, followed by Armin trying to convince everyone that Eren can be useful in the fight against the Titans, despite everyone thinking he’s a monster. His great arguments aren’t enough to change the commander’s opinion, though, but at the last second the order to shoot our heroes down is stopped by Commander Pixis, the only new character that’s introduced this episode (he showed up briefly in one of the previous episodes, if you remember). Truth be told, there’s not much to talk about this episode, it’s slow, has very little animation; the overall quality is below average, something that shouldn’t exactly bother anyone because come on, there’s no action. Still, at least the godly soundtrack is still present!

Commander Pixis

With one of the most slow-paced episodes, Shingeki makes a sliiight mistake that should be easy enough to correct in the upcoming weeks. Knowing this show, the chances of it disappointing hard are very slim, but we’ll see!

3/5

Kakumeiki Valvrave – Episode 09

Unfortunately being sick thwarted my plans of blogging about this show sooner, but now that I’m feeling better it’s time to talk about Valvraves!

Teacher Eru Erfu

Oh, the wonders of actually advancing your plot… Valvrave is easily turning into one of the most enjoyable shows this season because of this. This episode pretty much confirms the direction the show is taking, with a fast paced, action packed episode that never feels boring or meaningless. The fact that they not only introduce one, but two new Valvraves and respective pilots should be a big indicator that the show is finally starting to move in the right direction. At this point I believe only one more Valvrave is left to be revealed, but who can tell? That’s something this show does very well, despite being quite silly sometimes: you never know what’s going to happen. Sure, this can sometimes backfire if not done right, but so far the unpredictability adds to the entertainment and has been paying off.

Some character that died

The title of the episode (it’s always revealed one week prior, in the preview) kinda spoiled the new pilots but, for those that didn’t catch it, we have Inuzuka-senpai as the new blue Valvrave pilot and Thunder as the new yellow Valvrave pilot. Each with their own reasons to fight back the Dorssians (it’s mostly revenge though), these two new robots are the heroes of the episode because Haruto is too busy doing nothing! I know I’ve already talked about this with Saki, but now that we have 4 Valvraves, it’s easy to tell how distinct they are from each other: different looks and different weapons are just some of the things that make every single one so different. Because let’s be real, it wouldn’t be any fun if they were all extremely similar except for the color and the pilots! Despite the reveal of two new Valvraves, it’s still your typical “Dorssian Invasion of the Week” episode, this one slightly more boring than last week’s, but the action scene more than makes up for it; the quality in this episode is also one of the best, if not the best, so props to the show for not slacking off when the first cour is almost over!

Mad scientist and a soldier

All in all, a decent episode with a cliffhanger reveal at the end that should help keep people’s interests high. With one Valvrave pilot (?) left to reveal, the show has to hurry up and probably have everything ready before the 2nd season rolls around.

4/5

Suisei no Gargantia – Episode 09

Warning, there will be some spoilers below! This episode was exactly what Gargantia needed and gives me hope that it might actually manage to pull off a decent ending! Let’s see why.

Best girl

It’s a shame this episode didn’t happen last month, as it does exactly what most people were asking for: actually progress the plot and develop some characters. You could even go as far as to say that this is the most important episode in the anime so far, because what it reveals is really massive. The episode gives us a flashback of Pinion and his brother, showing us what exactly happened to both in the past, but that’s not exactly the reason why this episode is so fundamental; no, the Pinion development is interesting and somewhat necessary, but the real meat is all the whalesquid murdering, because screw them!… Okay, so maybe that’s not what makes this episode good, but I assure you it has something to do with whalesquid.

 

Best girl

Indeed, what makes this episode so important is the data Ledo finds in the underwater research facility, containing records on all the experiments that took place there a long time ago, back when the actual base wasn’t underwater. The entire second half of the episode is dedicated to the footage of the Evolvers, the group of people who used it. Their dream? Migrating to space. Due to how long this would take using normal means, they resorted to science and thanks to the whalesquid’s cells and their implantation into a human’s body, it was now possible for humanity to withstand space’s perilous conditions. It is then that we start understanding what hideauze and whalesquid really are. And it’s about time that gets cleared up!

Best girl

The story progressing isn’t everything to talk about, though. The quality in the episode isn’t the best but it does its job perfectly fine, but the underwater visuals are honestly quite dull and feel uninspiring, and it sometimes looks like Ledo is killing whalesquid in the middle of nowhere; there are also no pretty Gargantia shots this episode, as it doesn’t show up at all. Despite all of this, all the development more than makes up for it, and we get a very good episode that should pique people’s interest again.

4/5

Shingeki no Kyojin – Episode 09

In this week’s Attack on Stills, exciting stuff happens and the stills are as pretty and engaging as ever! In all seriousness though, episode 9 manages to keep the characteristic consistency that this show is known for and introduces some amazing characters that should get everyone excited for the future!

Hanjiiiiiiiiiiiiii

As mentioned, this episode introduces some new characters belonging to the elite Recon Corps, mankind’s best and brightest soldiers, giving special important to two of them: Levi and Hanji. The first one is considered humanity’s most powerful soldier and as strong as a whole brigade, but very few people know that he’s also a clean-freak and cares for his team, despite the sometimes cold attitude. The second one is a funny woman who gets excited just thinking about the different Titans out there, especially abnormals. Despite these being the best of the best soldiers, the casualties are still above 30%, further proof of just how terrifying the enemy is.

Mikasaaaaaaaaa

The eight minutes of screen-time these character get are the highlight of the episode, with little to no stills used and good animation for all the titan killing, done in very cool fashion; you can clearly see this was the main focus the animators had: to make these characters look cool and strong, something that ends up being fairly successful. Of course the songs help contributing to the awesomeness of the action scene, so let’s not forget that! I know I keep talking about the soundtrack every week but it’s really one of Shingeki’s strongest points; because some people might not realize this, but the OST is one of the most important things in any anime, and putting it to use perfectly to build up the setting and the tension is something that only a select few can pull off.

Ereeennnnnnnnn

Overall, though, this was definitely a solid episode, and even though the second half is not as interesting as the first one, the final minutes more than make up for it; with Eren back, we’re starting to understand what exactly happened to him and the cliffhanger at the end is perfect and will most likely get everyone excited for next week!

4/5