And somehow, it mostly works.

Impressions:

As much as it pains me to compliment this show in its eleventh hour, the scenes leading up to Lyuze and Ohji’s deaths were excellently done. Very subtle use of music and just open space to let their passings sink in without being heavy handed about it. Yes, something in this show was done without the use of a 500 ton cluebat, I’m as shocked as you. It was still a bit surreal to jump to them all growing flowers by the ocean, but I think if it had just ended there with some words from Casshern and/or Ringo about accepting death as a natural part of life and finding meaning while you’re alive… which were the central themes of the entire bloody show… it would have been just about as good of an ending as they could have salvaged. Unfortunately, they decided to have Casshern assault Luna’s home and fight Braiking Boss to change the world once again. And then he literally left with an "I’ll be back." Thanks, T-800.

It wasn’t really bad though. Rather it was undoubtedly one of the strongest episodes of the series, and easily the best of the entire second half of the show. The second half of the episode just felt like a bad coda and mostly an attempt to toss in some action just for the sake of having some action. Casshern just broke in, killed some grunts, fought Braiking for the sake of having a final villain, then let himself be stabbed to ‘change the world’ while delivering yet another pithy speech to Luna before wandering off into the sunset. Hasn’t Casshern spent most of the series bleeding on various things already? I’m pretty sure the answer is "it’s convenient for the plot." So much for the subtlety of the first half.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

No matter how solid of an ending this actually somehow ended up being, the fact remains that the vast majority of the second half of this show was a disjointed, undirected mess. The first half was rather enjoyable, with a lot of action and the introduction of all the various ways people are still living on in the world of ruin. Unfortunately, they never really did a great job of bringing those together in the later going, instead getting more and more obtuse in the imagery and still never answering some of the central questions introduced at the start of the show.

Overall, if you average the first and second halves and the particularly strong ending, it’s a pretty decent show, but the later going can be pretty rough, especially when it becomes clear that they’re never really going to get around to clarifying some of the central mysteries of the series. Where did Luna go when Casshern ‘killed’ her? Where did Casshern go? What was the deal with Ringo? Why was Casshern’s brand of earth-draining immortality so different from everybody else? So long as you don’t care about those answers and treat this as just a particularly heavy handed 500 minute version of "It’s a Wonderful Life" with occasional Rock’em Sock’em Robots, then there’s a lot to love.

I can’t say that I’m overall pleased with the show, especially given the plunging production in the second half. 8 weeks of lingering bitterness have a way of coloring your opinion. Still, I’m very glad that I stuck with this to the end as it really was mostly a pretty satisfying ending… outside of I’LL BE BACK at any rate.

It’s reading 0.0, Vegeta.

Impressions:

Going from ZKC, Spidey, Minami-ke, Spidey again for good measure, and then to Casshern is like sandpaper on my soul. The Dio fight was better than a lot of things in the second half of this, but it still didn’t hold a candle to their original fight. At least they didn’t throw in stills, but having the two of them rush at each other, then cutting away to a closeup of Casshern’s stomach so that we can watch Dio’s fist fly past it gets old fast. Very fast. There were a few moments of real movement, but after Dio went Super Saiyajin and exploded his helmet, I clocked out. I don’t even know what to begin thinking about the little Braiking/Luna teamup in the last 15 seconds of the episode either. I feel that if I try to make sense of it, I’ll have an aneurysm.

However, the worst part about this episode wasn’t the half-assed Dio vs Casshern finale, but how absolutely nothing really important happened. Dio fought Casshern and lost… then died (or passed out after an arm fell apart), and Leda turned into a monster thing and got herself stabbed by Luna before curling up next to Dio. Then Casshern just up and left after proselytizing Luna a bit. "Your way of life is wrong and you are a terrible person… Okay, that’s all. I’m leaving now. Ciao." Is this really how they’re going to end the series? "And Casshern’s journey for answers continues…" With one episode left, and really no explaination for really any of the umpteen thousand questions this series has asked in sight, that’s certainly how things are looking.

Also, important note… Casshern’s headhorn is apparently vestigial, so doesn’t heal like the rest of him. It makes me wonder about his hip mounted rockets.

Preview:

I don’t even care anymore.

That was deep, Dio.

Thanks for eating my post, WordPress. Been awhile since that happened. *sigh* Unfortunately, being forced to write this for a second time has really drained the anger out of me and replaced it with a cold hard ball of sarcastic frustration.

Impressions:

Dio himself said that the reason for them to fight is irrelevant, which is perhaps the most intelligent thing any character on this show has said to date because Dio seriously has absolutely nothing to do with the plot anymore. I think it’s just a plan to stretch out the time a little bit so the writers can desperately scramble to find a way to wrap things up. Lord knows the characters are still all fumbling around without any idea what to do. Two episodes left, and they still have no real clue what they’re doing. Something’s wrong with this picture, and that’s not even taking into account the half dozen other plot holes so massive I could drive a yacht through. At this point, I think I’d just settle for one of them realizing that the little girl who appeared in a ball of light and instinctively hates the crazy vampire queen might somehow be worth taking a second look at.

I’d be a little more interested in the bits with Leda and Luna if they weren’t so obfuscated. First, Leda drinks Luna’s blood and heals her eye. Then her eye explodes because it’s not ‘true’ healing (keeping in mind that Casshern and Luna both have ‘true’ healing from this same brand of immortality). So Leda decides that she needs more, which makes her convulse in pain, turn white, and smile so crazily that the Joker would be proud. Of course, in the next episode preview, her eye is gone again.

Maybe we’ll at least get a watchable Dio/Casshern fight next week, as meaningless as it is, but given how bad the action has been in the second half, I have a hard time even caring.

Preview:

2 episodes left. Let’s see what’s left that they can screw up.

Because nothing says dystopia quite like a circus.

Impressions:

I really have to wonder what goes on in the script writing rooms at Casshern central. "Okay, let’s have them rehash the last episode for 6 minutes… then… what if there’s a robot circus recapping the whole destruction thing as comedy. Hmm… needs a cliffhanger though… ah, have an evil robot army show up and the immortal guy can just let himself get beat up! Perfect! Print it!" It just reinforces my belief that the writers have lost all their facilities. In many ways, tossing a circus in is even worse than the dream episode. At least that was meant to be unreal. The circus was the kind of thing I expect from a French art film juxtaposed with a man smoking a hookah and standing on a beagle.

Not the most exciting episode even outside of the pretentious circus. Lots of "what’s up with this!?" angsting and even more exposition, plus the shocking SHOCKING revelation that there’s something suspicious about this Luna. Thanks, Ohji. I never would have guessed it if you didn’t say anything. Although at the same time, it’s kind of sad to see the party jump on the "but isn’t that the real Luna?" boat after expressing some doubts last episode. Oh well, me wanting to throttle the characters on this show is certainly nothing new. At this point, I’m just hoping we get an impressive Dio/Casshern final battle at some point, but given that they’ve all but phased out the action for arthouse nonsense… inertia and misplaced hope are really the only reasons I pay attention to this these days.

Preview:

Hanging out at Dio’s crib.

Oh? Something having to do with the plot?

Impressions:

It was rather frustrating to have Luna about 100 yards away for almost the entire episode, and then have the entire thing focused on Dune, with pretty much nothing indicating that she’s the real Luna. Or at the very least, she’s a very corrupt Ivory Tower version of the idea of Luna. She can heal things, but she hates anything and everything touched by the world’s decay and has absolutely no pity or respect for the dead. Either that, or she’s getting some killer feng shui from the giant pile of half dead robots behind her cave. 

This would be surprising… if I hadn’t called something like this about two months ago. It’s a little disappointing that they haven’t even fooled the relatively braindead Casshern. I suppose that they could be building her up a little bit as the real end villain with some kind of twisted purification plan for the world, but… well… actually… that does sound kind of interesting.

While this episode was still somewhat slow and featured Dune’s 3rd apparent death scene so far (but who’s counting?), it was still miles ahead of the last couple months. The action was alright, but about on par with the slower episodes from the first half of the show. It was a step in the right direction though, so I’m hoping they build on that momentum a little more, although it looks like the show’s going to skirt around them directly confronting Luna about everything going on next week as well. Hopefully they’ll prove me wrong.

Preview:

Let’s bring the whole cast into this why not?

Who’s the main character again?

Impressions:

Boy, it’s a good thing I have severe retrograde amnesia and have absolutely no idea what last week’s episode was.

Yes, it was marginally different from last week. Instead of being about wanting to kill Casshern, it was Lyuze slicing the face of some other female robot that attacked them out of nowhere and had maybe 4 lines the entire episode. Then she got obsessed with death and destruction, as well as her own mortality, and hallucinated butterflies (SUBTLE) before making a half-assed attempt to stab Casshern. Then she nuzzled his hand and was happy again.

Somebody wake me up when this damn thing starts moving forward again, or at least breaks out of this vicious Lyuze angst cycle. They did show one shot of ’Luna’ in the next episode preview, but I won’t believe it until I see it. Hell, it’s probably just another Lyuze flashback so she can angst out over the world’s lack of baby ducklings.

Also, what the hell was up with the giant penis rock? I mean, there’s generically phallic, and then there’s a massive earth boner jutting out of a flower field.

Preview:

Yes yes, more flowers and new characters.

Oh good, an episode that doesn’t even happen.

Impressions:

I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to be excited over a dream episode. All too often, instead of telling useful parts of a story, they’re just used to retcon in some random thing or character aspect so it can be resolved at the end of the episode and this one was really no exception. The fact that child Lyuze and her sister look like alien brain suckers may also have colored my judgement here. One can only  look at those uncanny valley mugs so long before being filled with a primal desire to rend and tear.

So, yeah, twenty minutes of pretentious displays to convey that Lyuze is saying goodbye to her "KILL CASSHERN" past. I thought we covered that weeks, maybe even months ago, but here we are, rehashing it for the slower members of the crowd. Combine that with her apparently having sex with some random black guy (or maybe just both of them getting naked, laying on her back, and then killing him… WHO KNOWS), about 8 shots of her killing her sister, and another five or so of Casshern either groping her or hugging her naked body, and a grainy video of a girl waving goodbye shown about a dozen times through the episode, and we’ve left subtlety mugged, ravaged, scarred, and broken somewhere in a ditch outside of Newark. A light touch is a virtue. Retconning in extra angst in a dream episode just so we can go back to where we were a few episodes ago is pretty much the exact opposite.

I’d compliment the action scene for being at least something of an improvement over the last month or so, but then I remember that they used the exact same bit at both the start and end of the episode, and went ahead and tossed in one of the fight scenes from episode one to fill out another minute or so and remind me of the better times. Thanks, writers. Not that there was an danger of me thinking that you knew what you were doing.

Can we get to ‘Luna’ yet, please? You know… that person that you introduced over a month ago and have been talking about since nearly 5 months ago? Jeepers, that’d sure be swell. I can only imagine that we’ll be getting Friender’s angsty dream sequence instead.

Preview:

Stabby time? Please let it be stabby time?

Basement’s the limit.

Impressions:

Another boring episode. Leda plays a broken piano in a lake before terrorizing some kids who have the Crystal of Nyarlathotep stuffed inside them. Casshern shows up. Terrible fight that makes anything from the first 13 episodes look brilliant resulting in Leda getting a scratch on her face (and now probably a complex over it), all the kids die to summon a horrific avatar of an elder god. Unless that thing in the preview is meant to be some other robot child. It’s kind of hard to tell. It’s been a month since they showed ‘Luna’ alive and wandering around, but have gone absolutely nowhere and done absolutely nothing with it. Instead, we’ve now had four weeks of Ringo Ringo Ringo. Ringo sucks. If you wanted to make a show about a horrifying little girl who has a robot buddy who sometimes beats things up, make that. I don’t think anybody thought to themselves, "You know what would make Casshern great? More little girls."

*sigh* Sadly, next week looks like more of the same, plus Lyuze turning naked and glowy. If only Casshern had crushed Ringo’s head when he had the chance. Man, has this show been quagmired in a rut since this season started.

Preview:

It’s more hideous than a thousand… wait… haven’t I said that before?

Can’t we get a paper bag to put over her head?

Impressions:

Hrm, well… let’s see… which to talk about first, the 100 ton Ringo flashback foreshadowing, or the 7 minutes of Dio fights, loses, wins against some random robots? I guess let’s go with the painfully boring one. Okay, so Ohji heard Luna telling him to live, and her voice led him to a glowing baby. We’re now past any pretense of subtlety (like there was any to begin with) and it’s starting to get embarassing. How much longer are they going to drag this out? Because we still need to sit through some kind of foreshadowing and then revelation that the other ‘Luna’ isn’t real or something along those lines.

At least the Dio fights were better than the last couple weeks, but very very truncated, and his whole little segment only lasted about 10 minutes anyway, so it felt extremely rushed. I was a bit shocked for a moment when he did lose and wondered if they were going to introduce some other more sinister villains this late in the game, but no… both were dead about five minutes later. I think it does diminish Dio quite a bit to let him get beaten by a pair of random throwaways though. So much for manhandling Dune and going toe to toe with Casshern. Throw enough junkbots at him and he’s apparently going to lose. I also wished he had shown some overt sign of being pissed off (or accepting) Leda when she saved his tail. The emotionless schtick while she drapes herself all over him like a drunk 19 year old at Mardi Gras is getting old.

Preview:

How did they even manage to overlook an ocean that stretches across the horizon anyway?

The helmet… It does nothing!

Five seven shows is too damn many for one day. Good lord.

I’d wait a little longer for a better rip, but last week, that meant Tuesday. I watch stuff windowed anyway so I can take notes.

Impressions:

Well, second worst thing I watched today, but don’t take it too personally, since ZKC, Slayers, and Minami were excellent, and Spidey is freakin’ Spidey, even if Mysterio is a little lame. At least he ripped off Mysterio’s arm and used it to decapitate another Mysterio. Snow bunny Liz making the power play too, eh?

Back on point, not the most important of episodes no matter how you slice it. Casshern and Lyuze come across Dune, and after spending about 5 minutes talking about him, Lyuze finally looks at his face and realizes who he was, prompting some recap about Dune being Luna’s guardian yada yada. What this episode really did was cement Lyuze as Casshern’s woman once and for all. She tripped and Casshern literally caught her in a dance dip, prompting blushing and gratitude. He then saved her when they were ambushed and she proceeded to stand around uselessly during Dune and Casshern’s brief squabble and lament everybody fighting each other. Weren’t you an assassin a month ago? Now you’re slightly less useful than the dog.

I was pretty disappointed in the fight again this week. Lots of sounds of Dune’s blades, but very little actual motion. They also had an EXTREME CLOSEUP sequence of Dune’s head in the middle of the fight that became Casshern’s head that became a cloak that became a leg. It makes about as much sense as you think. If they had at least used a bit more contrast through the episode as a whole, it probably would have improved things. Once I got tired of blue, everything turned green, then blue, then pink, then a blazing orange. The art did look a bit better than usual, but I think that’s because they just drew a lot of ground this episode and focused on being all artistic instead of drawing… well… scenery.

Also along those lines, you are so not fooling anybody writers. Gee, I wonder who the ‘real’ Luna is… the mysterious little girl in a space helmet who is in touch with nature? Or the bot with a messiah complex living in a cave? Yeah, Ringo is going to be a real shocker when she’s revealed to be the true goddess or wherever the hell they’re going with her.

Preview:

Lelouche arrives to fight the decay.