Shinigami no Ballad

 

 

Shinigami no Ballad is a short series of six self-contained stories about Momo, the god of death, her cat Daniel, and their ventures in the human world. All stories involve young people having to deal with the loss in some way or another. This might sound like heavy drama but Shinigami no Ballad manages to tell stories in a fairly lighthearted, soothing way. 

All stories are very well written and have a point to make, which is really refreshing when most anime have a tendency to have scattered plotlines just in case the show gets renewed for a new season. Watching stories that have clean and nice resolutions feels almost like a privilege and I really appreciate it. This is an older anime and it has that early 2000s charm to it. 

The innocent yet brave way these young students deal with loss and receiving a visit from Momo gives  a dreamlike quality to this show that is very appealing and fun to watch. The original material is in fact an series of visual novels but I can't find it anywhere. Hopefully I'll be able to check that material soon.

Girlish Number

 

The main character in this is the cheeky Chitose, an aspiring voice actor. She's a breath of fresh air in this genre where the leads tend to be very wholesome characters. It's not that Chitose is a bad person at all, but she's quite the arrogant, self-centered, brash individual. Her conversations with her brother, Gojou, is by far the most interesting thing in this anime because we get to see how far Chitose can go on thinking very highly of herself.

Girlish Number is a show about a group of voice actors, most of them just getting into the business. We get to see a little bit of their daily lives, talking with the producers, the recordings sessions and the conventions. The characters are interesting enough and the plot gives ample space for character development so it's always fun to follow this people around. 

There's this one scene where the girls meet the author whose's work is the base for the anime they're recording and they do their very best to avoid him. I wonder if this particular scene comes from personal experience or was just a moment of brilliant inspiration. I wish there could be more awkward moments like that between authors and actors.

Gosick

 

It feels like Gosick tries to have everything in there somewhere. This is a 24 episodes long and for half of it it manages to keep its pace. There's a lot to know about the country of Sauville, in particular the Saint Marguerite academy, an elite school that our leads Kujo Kazuya, a Japanese student, and Victorique, the daughter of a cultist (yes there's a lot going on here) attend. Well, Kujo does attend, Victorique is a prisoner there because of her family's involvement in Sauville's political life. She also happens to be a little genius girl with beyond human mistery solving powers. And a pipe that she never actually lights it.

There's also colorful and interesting side characters populating Sauville. Grevil, the police investigator and Cecile, a teacher at the academy are my favorites and always welcome when they show up. Despite having a lot of things to solve, the story here has a tendency to forget about itself. A lot. Many episodes are self-contained tales  but many of them are not particularly interesting, though a couple are really good. Kujo and Victorique go around solving misteries out and about, though the mysteries here are not the type that invites the viewers to solve it. We just get to see Victorique putting random things together that happens to be right because she's the main character. That's her on the cover of course. 

The characters are interesting enough and you do care for them but not even that can conceal the fact that the plot here is spread too thin. That's the biggest fault of Gosick. This would be very good if it had half the episodes so Kujo wouldn't need to go screaming for Victorique up and down for so long. It does get exhausting at certain point. Then the last two episodes come in and solve everything very, very fast and ads a 10 years gap on top of it on its way out. Because it's one of those. There's a good story and good character development here somewhere. This anime is based on a visual novel, maybe it's worth checking that out instead.