I am not a huge fan of the horror genre, especially when it attempts to gross the viewer out. I do enjoy seeing when the characters of a series or movie have their minds messed with, which probably explains why I think The Ring is my favorite horror movie. I figured I’d give Chaos;Head a chance since it was from Madhouse and maybe I could find an anime that could mess with my mind.

Final Series Score: 9/12 A-
Rewatchablity: low
Pros: story remains compelling till the end, does a good job of keeping the viewer guessing as to what’s really happening and what will happen, unique premise helped the show remain interesting
Cons: lackluster animation and very ugly school uniforms, the harem elements intrude on the story at times but never to the point of interfering with it, the ending is a bit of a let down, characters are not very deep nor do they develop much throughout the show

Awards given to this show by this blog

• Best Character Ability / Power for Fall Season 2008
• Best Story for Fall Season 2008
• Runner-up for Best Ending Song for Fall Season 2008

Story

Taku is an otaku nerd living in a converted shipping crate with only a tenuous hold on reality. A series of gruesome murders starts occurring in the area that he lives and it appears that he’s somehow connected these murders.

Thoughts and impressions

Chaos;Head tries to combine a harem type show with a psychological horror show and it’s about as successful as what’s humanly possible. The back story of the show is done in such a way that the harem elements don’t stick out really badly and at times these elements actually help the story along. I’m not a huge fan of harem shows so I was worried this would swamp the horror part of the show but it never did.

The psychological horror side was quite well done throughout the series and is the big draw to the series. It kept the viewer guessing what was actually going on and where the show was heading till the very end. I particularly enjoyed the fact that Taku was an unreliable narrator because as we watched the events unfold we were never quite sure that if what we saw was what really happened or just a figment of Taku’s insanity. I did think the ending was a bit of let down but that might be more from not having any more mysteries then the actual ending.

There were various little things that I enjoyed about this show that others might or might not like. One was the female private investigator because the voice actor, Kujira, was the same woman that did many of the background roles in Lucky Star (for example, the convention in episode 12). I love that voice, and wish she’d do more roles. Another was the ending song. It wasn’t because of the heavy amount of English used because it actually sounded like English but whoever wrote the English lyrics was not a native speaker and the lyrics only kinda make sense. Yes, I find the oddest things funny.

I would recommend giving this show a watch to someone looking for a psychological or suspense anime but with the caveat that it does have it’s flaws and if you have a low tolerance of harem elements, then you might want to look for something else – maybe try Paranoia Agent.

Essential Information

• 12 episodes
• genre: harem, suspense-horror, supernatural
• animation studio: Madhouse
• director: Takaaki Ishiyama
• OP: “F.D.D.” by Kanako Ito
• ED: “Super Special” by Seira Kagami
• Seiyuus of note: Eri Kitamura, Hiroyuki Yoshino, Akira Ishida, Daisuke Ono, Hitomi Nabatame

Here’s the ending:

Posted in anime, series review, youtube

Pushing this back a couple of days changed a couple of the winners and caused a few more categories to be added included one award that is my first award named after an anime - The Gurren Lagann Memorial Body-Count Award. I thought it was appropriate and I did make a comment a few weeks ago essentially promising to make this category.

Best Action

Winner: Soul Eater

Runner-up: Kurozuka, Ga-Rei: Zero

One of the problems with us humans is that we take so many things for granted when we shouldn’t. It happens in real life and it happens with our entertainment; in this case, after two cour (seasons) of Soul Eater – I was taking Soul Eater for granted and I feel bad that I was. I’d become complacent about the show and it took episodes 35 and 36 of Soul Eater to remind me that even Kurozuka and Ga-Rei: Zero can’t match this show in terms of action.

Best Comedy

Winner: Toradora

Runner-up: Clannad

The comedies of the season, like Kemeko DX and Kannagi, have not been nearly as funny as they should have been – Kemeko DX has been more weird then funny and Kannagi has suffered from the director’s desire to prove that he shouldn’t have been fired from doing Lucky Star. This allowed shows that aren’t true comedies like Toradora and Clannad, that only use comedy inside of a larger story, to sneak ahead. Of these two, Toradora’s humor has the slight edge because it’ll make me laugh when I least expect it and the humor has a broader range.

Best Story

Winner: Chaos;Head

This is one category that the slower paced release of subs for Mouryou no Hako makes me worried that I’m passing it over for a lesser anime. From what I’ve seen of Mouryou no Hako (5 episodes worth) it’s has a very intriguing story that still seems to have many mysteries left for us to uncover. But I got to use what I got and the story of Chaos;Head has been a very good one as well. I like a show that can create and maintain a sense of suspense about itself as Chaos;Head has done. I also like the idea of being able to use some sort of electromagnetic wave to make people see things that aren’t there. Throw in a strange string of deaths, strange earthquakes, and a main character with only a vague hold on sanity and Chaos;Head has one of most interesting stories of the year.

Most Interesting Setting

Winner: Michiko to Hatchin

Runner-up: Kurozuka

I’ve always been a fan of post-apocalyptic worlds for some reason but if you’ve seen one, you’ve pretty much seen them all. On the other hand Michiko to Hatchin takes place in a really unique and colorful place – Brazil. I’ve never had the chance to visit Brazil to know if the shows portrayal of the country is even close to reality but it does feel different from the standard Japanese setting. The colorful palette, the people that we’ve met, and the poverty and suffering that’s been seen all work to really set this world apart from other shows.

Best Seiyuu

Male: Hikaru Midorikawa as Lord Edgar from Earl and Fairy

Female: Yui Horie as Minorin and Rie Kugimiya as Taiga from Toradora

I was slightly surprised when I realized that I would give Hikaru Midorikawa best male seiyuu for his role as Lord Edgar from Earl and Fairy. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve it, he does, but what surprised me when I started trying to separate the voice from the character was that I realized that if he had done a poor job voicing Lord Edgar, then the show wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is. The entire show hinges on Edgar being royalty and Hikaru Midorikawa does a very good job convincing us of this. He also does Yusuke Yoshino’s voice, the electrician from Clannad that Tomoya works with.

The absolute hardest decision of all my picks was deciding between Yui Horie and Rie Kugimiya for best female seiyuu. On one hand, Rie Kugimiya has been one of my favorite voice actors and yet her work as Taiga has easily surpassed all of her other works. She has been able to make Taiga’s wide range of emotions all sound authentic and believable and is one of the reasons why the show has been as good as it’s been. Then on the other hand, Yui Horie has been nothing short of god-like as Minorin. Every moment she’s been onscreen literally makes makes me giddy with pleasure. In the end, I decided that I couldn’t really separate the two so I should just give them both the award.

Best OP

Winner: Clannad

Runner-ups: Index, Michiko no Hatchin, Toradora

For all my liking of KyoAni’s adaptations of Key, I don’t normally like the OP/ED that much – AIR’s opening and Clannad’s first closing being the only ones I really liked. Imagine my surprise then as the opening for the second season of Clannad started and I found myself instantly liking it. The song is my favorite new opening song of the season and because I already know the characters, the animation has more impact for me. It beat out many other good openings including both shows from J.C. Staff (who almost always makes good OP/ED) and Michiko no Hatchin – who had the most visually interesting opening of the season.

Best ED

Winner: Kannagi

Runner-ups: Soul Eater, Chaos;Head

I’ll be honest, I find it harder to enjoy a slower paced song in a language I don’t know then an upbeat one. As a result, I find myself likeing more openings then closings since many anime shows follow the format of having an upbeat opening and a more relaxing ending. Sometimes, though, I find myself instantly liking a slower paced song and that happened with Kannagi’s ending. For all the clamor over it’s opening, there was a something ethereal about the ending that I felt fit the show perfectly.

If Chaos;Head’s ending song had made a little more sense – maybe the Japanese won’t understand how nonsensical it sounds but I do – I would have given this award to it. I like many aspects of the song but the lyrics just kill it. I know the artist that sang it has talent, Seira Kagami, because she also did Kaiba’s opening and closing so I’m going to fault the record people on this one.

Best Overall Music

Winner: Clannad

A show’s background music truly has to be spectacular for me to remember it. If it’s just mediocre, I probably won’t even remember it enough to think it was mediocre. In Clannad’s case, I remember the music clearly. It’s gotten to the point that for some songs all I need is to hear a few bars and I have to start fighting the tears back.

Best Animation

Winner: Mouryou no Hako

Runner-ups: Clannad and Michiko no Hatchin

Like I said earlier, I’ve only seen the first 5 episodes of Mouryou no Hako but even if the animation quality dips later, it would feel wrong to name another show as having the best animation. This show is just drop-dead gorgeous to look at and it needed to be to beat the stiff competition from Clannad and Michiko no Hatchin.

Top Animation Studio

Winner: Madhouse

This was one of the easiest awards to give out. Exhibit A is Mouryou no Hako, Exhibit B is Kurozuka, and Exhibit C is Chaos;Head – case closed.

The Gurren Lagann Memorial Body-Count Award

Winner: Ga-Rei: Zero

I won’t spoil who exactly dies in Gurren Lagann but there was more then one of the main and side characters that die in it over the course of the show. When I decided to give Ga-Rei: Zero an award for the sheer number of characters that they’ve killed off, I wanted to convey that the people killed were not just nobodies – cannon fodder – but real characters so I had the idea to link the popular Gurren Lagann with the award. So, Ga-Rei: Zero is the first seasonal winner of this award and it’s most deserving of it. Even if the show was a dud, it would still be memorial for this aspect.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m always interesting in comments so if you liked or disliked my picks, feel free to post your thoughts. In a week or two, I’ll be posting my top five shows of the fall season. My 2008 overall award posts will come out sometime in the middle to late January so I can have time to write my impression posts of the new season, catch a couple series I missed in 2008, and allow the slower sub releases to hopefully finish up the 2007 series so I can make an accurate list. (Any subbers reading this – I’m not complaining, I realize stuff happens that can slow you down – I just want to give my rationale for waiting since many blogs do theirs at the end of December.)

And to end on a sad note, the sheer number of anime blogs going on hiatus lately almost made me do a ‘Favorite Blog That’s Going on Hiatus Award’. You don’t have to worry about me but if I was paranoid, I might think some sort of conspiracy was afoot.

Posted in anime, awards      

While I still am hesitant to list my top five shows of the season, I realized that I was much more confident when it came to picking my other awards of the season. This first part deals mainly with the characters in the anime and the second part will focus on the entire show in general and the work done by the animators.

For some of the categories it was tough to determine the winner so for those, I included the runner-ups as well.

Best Female Main Character

Winner: Taiga from Toradora

On paper Taiga appears to be another in a long string of the tsundere character-type that has become so popular in recent years. Not that I have anything against tsunderes, some of my favorite characters – Kagami and Haruhi – are tsunderes but to be the top, I need a character that feels orginal, is remarkable in their actions, and makes me happy to see onscreen. Taiga has all three qualities in abundance and by the end of episode 2, made it impossible for me to consider anyone else. Tsundere’s are supposed to be unable to admit their feeling to anyone, much less themselves; but, Taiga knows her feelings, is able to act on those feelings, and is able to show her vulnerable side to her friend Ryuuji. Even when she gets angry, it seems to be genuine anger and not just acting according to a character-type. So, for example, when she’s kicking the telephone, she’s doing it not because she’s violent but because she’s frustrated at the world.

Best Male Main Character

Winner: Ryuuji from Toradora

Runner-up: Tomoya from Clannad

“Call no man an island,” as the saying goes and in Ryuuji’s case that’s a very appropriate observation. Ryuuji has always been a nice, caring guy even if his looks suggest otherwise but it wasn’t until meeting Taiga that he was able to show this side of him. Episode after episode we see Ryuuji’s loyalty, goodness, and desire to help others and the viewer can’t help but like him and hope he finds the happiness that he deserves. Tomoya has shown many of the same qualities as Ryuuji which makes it hard to pick one over the other but for this season I’ll give the slight edge to Ryuuji because Tomoya shouldn’t have made Nagisa worry as much as she did during the fight in episode 8. Since both series continue for the winter season, it’s quite possible I’ll be picking between the two again.

Best Supporting Character

Winner: Minorin from Toradora

If you permit me to devolve into internet speak, I just need to say Minorin = Win. She’s like a shot of Awesomeness everytime she’s on the screen.

Best Non-human Character

Winner: Kelpie from Earl and Fairy

This was a new category I thought to add this time and silly me, I thought it would be easy to pick a winner. I envisioned giving this award to someone like Buta from Clannad but I forgot there’s a lot of characters that aren’t really human. There’s Soul and the other weapons of Soul Eater, the Corpse Princesses in Shikabane Hime, the majority of the characters of Yozakura Quartet – to name just a few. Since this is an anime blog and not a philosophical blog I just decided to pick someone that’s obviously not human.

Kelpie is definitely not human and definitely a great character on Earl and Fairy. His pursuit of the Fairy Doctor Lydia is one of the funny sidestories of the show, so is his belief that human females are less abusive then female sea horse spirits. Now I wonder if he’d look as good in a dress as Raven, the butler, did.

Best Couple

Winner: Aisaka Taiga and Ryuuji from Toradora

Runner-up: Tomoya and Nagisa from Clannad

I know we’re supposed to at least entertain the thought that various other couples are possible like Ryuuji x Minorin or Taiga x Kitamura but by episode nine it’s obvious that Taiga and Ryuuji are the real couple. It’s just cool to see a guy and girl that can be themselves – with all their warts and faults – around each other. Clannad hasn’t really focused much on Tomoya and Nagisa yet but like I mentioned above, both of the these shows are going to be around for another season so there’s a good chance that we’ll see again next time.

Best Character Ability/Power

Winner: Takumi of Chaos;Head for his ability to make his delusions real

We’re far enough along into Chaos;Head that some of the mysteries surrounding the show has been revealed. One is that Takumi can take what he thinks of and can make it physically manifest. Very useful power but personally, I’d be using that power a lot more then Takumi is and for better things then making his favorite figurine come to life.

Best Cast of Characters

Winner: Toradora

With three characters already mentioned, it was going to hard for any other show to earn this award but when you factor in the Ami, Kitamura, a messed-up parrot and a mom that enjoys being an entertainer at a local bar – it becomes the de facto choice for the season.

Best Dressed Characters

Winner: Clannad

One of KyoAni’s strong points is that they’re sticklers about the small things in the show. Other shows will have their characters wear their one, maybe two different outfits over the course of an entire series but KyoAni will have their characters wear two, maybe three, different outfits each episode – and then never repeat the outfit again. I hate to admit that one of the reasons why I like to watch a KyoAni show is to see what the characters will be wearing next because you’ll never see a KyoAni character on the show ‘What Not to Wear’.

Best Villian

Winner: Fuwa Sho from Skip Beat

Some villains are the old type – actually evil, some are the new type – businesses, capitalists, and anti-environmentalists, some are misunderstood, and some are just plain jerks. Fuwa Sho falls into the last category. In a single episode, he was able to make me so completely hate him that I’d sit through a bad anime series just to see him get what he deserves. Luckily, Skip Beat has been a very enjoyable series so far.

That’s the end of part 1. I hope to have the second part up within a day and I can say that Toradora only wins two of the awards. Comments and feedback are always appreciated – I’d love to see what others would pick.

Posted in anime, awards      

The big news in anime this week, at least to me, is that it appears KyoAni’s next series will be a Munto series that expands and retells the OVA. I haven’t seen Munto but I have an excellent AMV downloaded called “Sunlight” by Premonition Studios that uses Munto and makes the show look potentially interesting. It seems that it’s set to run Spring 2009. I can’t help but laugh when I think that I missed this possibility when I ran that poll question a couple months ago asking what KyoAni should do next.

The scores:

Soul Eater, episode 30 – 12/12

Kannagi, episode 5 – 11/12 A+

Kemeko DX, episode 4 – 10/12 A

Ga-Rei Zero, episode 5 – 12/12

To Aru Majutsu no Index, episode 5 – 11/12 A+

Kurozuka, episode 4 – 12/12

Earl and Fairy, episode 4 – 5/12 C+

Michiko to Hatchin, episode 2 – 10/12 A
Michiko to Hatchin, episode 3 – 11/12 A+

Somedays Dreamer’s S.2, episode 8 – 12/12

Chaos;Head, episode 4 – 11/12 A+

Yozakura Quartet, episode 6 – 9/12 A-

Toradora!, episode 6 – 12+/12

Xam’D: Lost Memories, episode 13 – 11/12 A+

Clannad S.2, episode 6 – 12+/12

Which shows have momentum this week

Up – Michiko to Hatchin: what’s up with that tattoo

Down – To Aru Majutsu no Index: please stop with the exposition already

Thoughts and Highlights

As you can see, I added a new feature; I wanted some way to call out shows that seem to be getting stronger or weaker over the multi-week period. For this week the two episodes of Michiko to Hatchin have really made me excited about the series. It seems like this series might become one of my favorites of the season. On the other hand, Index has shown a worrisome emphasis on excessive exposition for the past couple of episodes. The new developments dealing with the character Index at the end helped ensure a good score but we will need more fighting soon and less talking for it maintain this level.

The top episode of this week goes to episode 6 of Toradora, narrowly beating out Clannad. Taiga is quickly becoming my favorite Rie Kugimiya role yet. Even though Taiga shares much of the same personality quirks of Shana, Louise, and Nagi, I think the fact that she has a female friend in Minorin and that she’s not romantically interested in the main male character (yet) makes her a more likeable character. And it’s not just Taiga, all 5 main characters refuse to fall into stock character types and, instead, are refreshing different. I’m really excited to see where this series goes.

The most disappointing episode was episode 4 of Earl and Fairy. It starts off on the wrong foot by showing an important fight scene while the opening credits roll and the happy and light opening song plays. It felt very bizarre and frankly, it was incomprehensionable how the people making the show decided this was a good idea. At the very least they could have forgone the opening song, and let us hear the fight and I’d only grumble a little bit about credits rolling while a fight was going on. Sadly, that wasn’t the only problem with this episode. It was very apparent that they tried to cram at least 2-3 episode’s worth of plot into the last 10 minutes of this episode. The result wasn’t pretty, or comprendable. It was obvious that the animators did want to spend anymore episodes on the quest for the super-special sword but if they weren’t going to do it right then they should have streamlined the episode to make it stink less.

Watching Chaos;Head makes me want to move into a shipping container that’s bolted to the roof of a skyscraper, become an 2-D obsessed otaku and then lose my grip on reality. If this anime is to be believed, this would lead to many attractive girls practically throwing themselves at me. Of course, we all know that’s doesn’t happen in real life and it may not occur in this anime either because our unreliable narrator makes it impossible to know how much of this episode actually happened. Right now, the mystery is this show’s strong point and hopefully it won’t disappoint as the show continues.

And finally, in short:

• End of Clannad’s Sanae arc was fairly predictable but still very enjoyable
• Yeah for more Xam’d and it looks like a very interesting fight next time
• This episode of Soul Eater infers that the Grim Reaper is keeping stuff from Death the Kid and the librarian that we see this episode is my favorite bit character now – I hope we get to see him again

Posted in anime, weekly anime review      

Busy week of anime – between the couple summer shows finishing up and the many new shows to catch, there was hardly time for much else. I’m pretty happy with the autumn season so far; many of the shows are starting off very well and there’s been a few that have even been able to surprise me.

The scores:

Soul Eater, episode 26 – 12+/12

Natsume Yuujinchou, episode 13 – 12+++/12 (end)

Ryoko’s Case Files, episode 13 – 12++/12 (end)

Toradora!, episode 2 – 12+/12

Hyakko, episode 2 – 8/12 B+

(previously reviewed)

Kannagi, episode 1 – 7/12 B

To Aru Majutsu no Index, episode 1 – 12+/12

Shikabane Hime: Aka, episode 1 – 12/12

Tales of the Abyss, episode 1 – 04/12 C

Yozakura Quartet, episode 1 – 8/12 B+

Kemeko DX, episode 1 – 10/12 A

Ga-Rei Zero, episode 1 – 9/12 A-

Chaos;Head, episode 1 – 11/12 A+

Thoughts and Highlights

Let’s start with the only holdover from the summer season that I watched this week – Soul Eater. I was impressed by this episode a lot. I think the set episode count of this series is causing Bones to eschew the typical structure of a shounen show. After letting the Demon God go, I would have expected this anime to show the main characters training to power themselves up (like after the end of the Soul Society arc on Bleach). Instead this episode shows that some of our characters getting dispatched to the next trouble spot. The other reason that I liked this episode was that we got a lot of Crona, who is fast becoming one of my favorite characters. I feel odd saying that but then again, Sylar on Heroes is becoming one of my favorite characters especially lately with the writers making Hiro act stupid beyond belief.

Slice-of-life shows don’t, by definition, have a convenient plot structure that allow them to have an “ending” but it’s nice when some sense of closure can be given the viewer. I was really curious how Natsume would end, especially with the second season starting in the winter – would they try to give the show an ending or just act like the show was going on hiatus for a season? I wouldn’t have minded if this season didn’t have an ending but was happy that one was given. Having the chance to meet many of the ghosts and people one last time from the show was the perfect way to end one of the year’s best shows.

Ryoko’s Case Files’ last episode was likewise the perfect way to end the show. I hope this gets a second season, it really deserves it. If any of the fansubbers of [AonE-AnY] read this, thank you so much for providing a high quality fansub with a super-small file size.

Finally, onto the fall shows that had their second episodes this week – Hyakko and Toradora. The first, Hyakko, didn’t really impress me again. I want to like this show but I can’t quite figure out what it’s doing wrong or what’s wrong with me. I’m not even holding the drop in animation quality of episode 2 against it. On the other hand, the second – Toradora – was very awesome. This is definitely shaping up to be a more original show then I imagined and they haven’t even introduced the fifth main character that shows up in both the opening and ending. Also, Toradora is reminding me of another of J.C.Staff’s wonderful shows – Honey & Clover; I don’t know if this is intentional or just something I’m reading into the show that’s not there.

Posted in anime, weekly anime review      

The horror genre isn’t one of my more favorite genres. I like the occasional psychological suspense title but anything that’s considered a gore-fest I steer clear of. This show was billed as a psychological suspense so I had to give it a go.

Rating: 11/12 A+

Takki, our obsessed anime otaku, lives by himself in a shipping container on a roof. He only has a hazy hold on reality as shown by his propensity to hallucinate events that are common occurrences in eroge games as actually going on in real life. For example, he thinks he sees his sister take a drink of cola from a bottle he’s already drunk from but in reality, she’s poured the cola into a cup.

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be much of a problem but a string of disturbing murders and suicides are occurring in the area around where Takki lives. He even stumbles upon the person that appears to be responsible in the midst of killing another victim but he runs home thinking that he’s hallucinating because the scene matches a picture he saw the day before.

All-in-all this was a very good first episode. While I was watching this episode I was reminded of Higurashi in that this show seems to be trying to mix horror with another genre. In Higurashi’s case it was horror and a school comedy and in Chaos;Head’s case it appears to be horror with a harem show. The harem elements felt very clichéd and at odds with the horror but I’m wondering if they’re supposed to. As viewers we’ll have to remember that the show is being filtered (so far) through Takki’s eyes and as an unreliable narrator it will make actually determining what’s really going on difficult.

I really liked the first episode and hope the series turns out to be the great psychological suspense show that it looks like it’s capable of being.

Posted in anime, first impressions