One of the lighter weeks in terms of number of episodes that I watched in a long while but the over quality was still very high. What made it feel even less was that almost half of the new anime I watched this week (Index, Toradora, Soul Eater, Xam’d, Clannad) was watched with my sister. Since we normally watch a bunch of anime together, I set those series aside so when I felt like watching anime by myself this week – I didn’t find much. Not that I’m complaining, it’s really fun to watch anime with someone.
The scores:
To Aru Majutsu no Index, episode 10 – 11/12A+
Toradora!, episode 10 – 12++/12
Toradora!, episode 11 – 12+/12
Soul Eater, episode 36 – 12++/12
Michiko to Hatchin, episode 7 – 12/12
Michiko to Hatchin, episode 8 – 11/12 A+
Michiko to Hatchin, episode 9 – 9/12 A-
Kannagi, episode 10 – 11/12A+
Skip Beat, episode 10 – 11/12 A+
Chaos;Head, episode 9 – 12/12
Xam’D: Lost Memories, episode 18 – 11/12 A+
Yozakura Quartet, episode 11 – 11/12 A+
Clannad S.2, episode 11 – 12+/12
Which shows have momentum this week
Up – Toradora! : It continues to amaze week after week
Down – nothing this week
Thoughts and Highlights
It almost doesn’t feel right to say that Toradora has been gaining momentum since only episodes 1 and 5 received a score lower then 12/12 but what else do you call this feeling that each episode is building upon the past episode without losing what’s been gained. Compare that to Index, all that time before the main character’s memory loss feels lost and wasted to the viewer – about 6 episodes worth – and it’s only now that the show is starting to feel good again. Or look at Kannagi, doesn’t the land needed purifying? That seemed important to Nagi at the beginning but we haven’t seen any of this in a long while. Then there was the dad that asked Jin to get the spirit of Nagi’s sister out of his daughter’s body. Why show us this if Jin isn’t even going to worry about doing this. Or look at Michiko to Hatchin. Episode 9 of this show totally killed the buzz it had been developing.
Episode 10 of Toradora was also the best episode I watched this week with Soul Eater a very close second but as much as this show is being analyzed and talked about, I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said. Though I did come up with one speculation about the show after episode 11 – wouldn’t it be funny if Ryuuji’s Mom and Taiga’s Dad hooked up? That would be a hilarious turn of events.
Episode 11 of Clannad continues to focus on Tomoya’s effort to become a working adult and the problems this causes in his relationship with Nagisa. I have the feeling that how a person takes this episode depended on how old the viewer is. It’s easy for younger bloggers to rake Tomoya over the coals for not going to the Founder’s Festival with Nagisa but I can’t fault Tomoya for his desire to help fix the mistake he made on the job. I’ll fault him for not calling Nagisa to say why he wasn’t going to be there so she wouldn’t be waiting for him the entire time. And if he was really on the ball, he could have called around to see if some of the people he knows would go to the Founder’s Festival with Nagisa so she wouldn’t miss out on the fun. The fact of the matter is that Tomoya needs this job if he’s going to be able to support Nagisa and himself once they get married and his limitation is going to make this tough without the help of his co-workers. Saying all that though, Tomoya better come up with some way to express his regret for making Nagisa sad since she’s too good of a person to not be treated right.
One of Soul Eater’s strengths is that it seems to be aware of the shortcomings of it’s older shounen brethren. We all know that the characters of a shounen will have to level up at least once during the course of the show to be able to defeat the stronger opponents. It’s the same case with Soul Eater but instead of showing the characters “training” or suddenly getting powers, they use a method that’s realistic and fits with the basic premise of the show. In Soul Eater, a master and weapon need to form a link with their souls if they are to work as a team. So, you might ask yourself if one master/weapon team links with another master/weapon team what would happen? The obvious answer this that collectively there’s more power and hence one master/weapon team will be much stronger. In episode 36, we see Maka, Death the Kid, and Black Star – with their weapons – link up and when one of them fought they were stronger then the sum of the three, individually. Maka, for one, was able to power up Soul to a freakish large double headed scythe and use a demon hunting technique that was able to split Mosquito guy in half. Really cool to see and like I said, way more realistic then what most shounen titles do.
Due to the relatively light week and none of the other episodes taking me by surprise, there’s nothing else to say that will take me a paragraph to say. So here’s the rest of my comments, in brief:
Yozakura Quartet had it’s best episode so far but the show still suffers using clichés too much and should be trying to make itself feel more original.
Skip Beat and Xam’D: Lost Memories continue to impress in their respective ways.
The Null Set 