To save time and not become every other otaku infested blog out there I’m going to quickly condense reviews of the past few animes I somehow managed to keep up with as well as my thoughts on the new season in one post. Yoshu, ikimasu!

Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~

Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~~~ is the (second) anime adaptation of Nitro+‘s very first visual novel, Phantom of Inferno. If you know me well you’ll probably know I’m a big Nitro+ fan ever since reading Fate/zero and Saya no Uta (both of which I highly recommend), so you can imagine I was very excited upon hearing the announcement of this show.

First airing in spring ’08, Phantom started off as your seemingly generic action thriller involving assassins, the mafia, and girls with guns. Nothing new eh? Unbeknown to me however, the show would take upon a huge change of pace once the first arc ends. The original novel was split into three separate chapters with a large amount of time dividing each, all of which had significantly different themes and moods; where the first was about the protag’s trials of becoming an assassin (against his will) and how he adapts to killing, the second was about his relationship with Cal Devens, a caucasian loli he picks up on the street, who helps him regain his human emotions, and the final chapter was a party in a church in Japan or something. Anyway, spanning 26 episodes, Phantom was indeed the first anime (with over 12-14 episodes) series ever that I have kept up with from the beginning to the end and I can definitely say it holds a special place in one of the corners of my shriveled ronery heart.

Visuals 4/5 – At times Phantom displayed splendid animation quality and beautiful CGs, however it seems like the studio had to take some of the budget from the other episodes (notably from the third chapter) to do it. Thankfully the final episode was not one of those.

Audio 3/5 – As far as voicing goes, there was nothing wrong with Phantom. Ayahi Takagaki and Miyuki Sawashiro did absolutely wonderful jobs as Ein and Cal. The soundtrack on the other hand, while presented with several well orchestrated tracks, was rather repetitive and unfortunately reused much too often (DUN DUN, DUN DUN – Zweiji theme). And Ali Project is frowned upon in my eyes (or ears), however Kokia definitely made up for that. I couldn’t help but feel Code Geass 2 syndrome in which the first OP should have been used for the final ED making it several times better.

Plot 4/5 – I’m being Nitro+ bias but all in all I very much enjoyed Phantom’s story line. One of the few anime (in recent years) to keep me on my toes wondering what happens next even though a lot of it should have been easily seen coming. Plus as lame as it sounds, at the death of a certain someone I managed to shed a tear, but only one, as they didn’t make it as dramatic as they could have with a certain other blond haired green eyed girl.

Overall 4/5 – All in all I very much enjoyed Phantom and would be very interested in playing the visual novel if it wasn’t completely wack (not the game but the format and engine it ran on). I don’t feel that it was produced anywhere near it’s absolute best, but I realize that it did have the potential to be a near if not a 10/10 in my books.

Canaan

Canaan is the questionably Type-Moon directed spin-off anime of the 428 visual novel that infamously received a perfect score from Famitsu. Though they also gave the Wii’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl the same score which makes one question the validity of that title…

Visuals 4/5 – If anything the show was indeed very pretty with several HIGH TENSION action scenes involving ass kicking girls and mystic eyes of rainbow perceptions, and while not as impressive as other Type-Moon anime adaptations, was still very well produced and choreographed.

Audio 3/5 - Nothing bad, nothing special. Only notably music related thing in this show was JOUJI singing.

Plot 2/5 – Bad. Bad bad bad bad. Probably the worst and weakest aspect of the show was the aimless plot line originating as a terrorist attack in Shanghai ending up in some Middle Eastern train. All the emotional drama conflicting between the two ‘heroines’ of the show should not have been such a large part of the series which leads me to wonder if this really was written by Nasu himself who apparently hasn’t even watched past the first episode.

Overall 3/5 – To me it seems like Canaan never really became what it tried to be; an action thriller full of guns, military, and non-Japanese related things, and thus somewhere along the way fell apart. The only episode which captured that HIGH TENSION image was the very first in Shanghai, before all the Canaan’s light crap. Oh well, at the very least the show ended better than I expected (not that I expected much), and the final epilogue bit was a great way to end it (or possibly set up a sequel).

Bakemonogatari

Aaaaaaaaaaand I’m not going to review this show. Well for one it’s not done (though I’m not caught up either), and two I’ve pretty much lost much of my interest of the show after an ordeal of complicated events that I do not wish to discuss about. The only thing that matters is fuwa fuwa ri fuwa fuwa ru.

Fall 2009

And as we drift away from the spring and summer seasons, we grow closer to the new year and a new age of anime. So let’s see how fall season is turning out so far! (…not very interesting)

Seitokai no Ichizon

Seitokai no Ichizon aka Student Council’s Judgment, is perhaps this season’s Lucky Star, but to a (much) lesser degree, directed by quality producers Studio DEEN. Devoid of any songs and dance (so far), the show is a slice of life (so you already know the plot or rather lack of one) mostly taking place in the student council room made up of four girls and one guy. I most likely will not finish this show, but I will admit that the several jokes and references on otaku subculture made me laugh.

Kämpfer

So moe I died...!

Kämpfer is this seasons leading ecchi harem anime, but with a twist (almost literally). The main protagonist unintentionally becomes a Kämpfer, a fighting unit, however Kämpfers can only be female and so by Japan law he is transformed into the horribly moe bishoujo pictured above. Conveniently the rest of the Kämpfers in the show fall in love with both the male and female personas of the protag, thus sparking the love triangle phenomena formula. Why Kämpfer reaches out to me though, besides the gender swapping protag and lesbian harem, is the remarkable voice casting of the show boasting several favorites like Marina Inoue (Yoko from Gurren Lagann) and Megumi Nakajima (Ranka Lee from Macross F), and if you know me just a bit you’ll probably know I’m a raging Yui Horie fanboy. Apparently there’s a storyline in the show but of course, with such succulent fruits of fanservice as this, what plot do I need?

Darker than Black 2 – Gemeni of the Meteor

hnnnnnnnnggggggggggg!

And thus we have the only anime this season that I can take seriously. But that’s perfect, I don’t even need to watch anything else with this. The highly anticipated sequel to badass anime Darker than Black – The Black Contractor has finally launched better than ever. Picking up after some time after the first season ended, the episode starts off introducing a somewhat calm atmosphere revolving around the queen of Soviet moe, the Kana Hanazawa (Nadeko Sengoku from Bakemonogatari) voiced Suou Pavlichenko. By the end of the show however, things begin to heat up with a spectacular battle between Contractors. The episode leaves off with an ambiguous image of Hei the protagonist from the first season, covered with his trademark mask but now with much longer grown hair. Now we are only left wondering how the OP will be done and if it can live up to Darker than Black’s previous ones.