Category: Anime Reviews

The most popular premise for a movie by far is the one where a guy (or in Spirited Away’s case: girl) winds up in a fantasy world, and meets a beautiful girl (or in Spirited Away’s case: guy) who is special in some kind of way, and the two of them predictably fall in love. A Chinese Ghost Story shows the Chinese attempt at this trope, as it’s one of the few anime that has been fully produced in China. Interestingly enough, the creators did a pretty good at this one. Okay, they didn’t create a blockbuster, but it’s definitely better than Gonzo’s attempt at the trope: Brave Story. There are two reasons for this: the deep roots into Chinese Mythology, and the fact that it doesn’t take itself too seriously at times. It’s not a pure comedy, and the fantasy does take priority throughout the movie, but the inclusion of quirky characters and dialogue makes sure for a light-hearted feeling to the entire movie. You can especially see this in the fights. Due to their semi-serious nature, in combination with a movie-budget, they turned out to be really fun to watch, and a highlight for this movie. Something that doesn’t happen often. The roots into Chinese Mythology also made sure that the fantasy-world didn’t turn out to be to be the same like the others. The main character for this story works as a debt collector who just got dumped by his girlfriend. During one of his assignments, he runs into a ghost town. As I’ve seen mostly Japanese mythology in my anime lately, it was refreshing to see the differences in both. For starters, the ghosts can just be seen by normal people and even a bunch of stairs turns out to be a ghost. It’s also been a while since I saw people talk this lightly about reincarnation. The movie does have flaws, though. The most obvious one is concerning the graphics. This movie uses traditional drawings, combined with a huge amount of CG-backgrounds and animations, and the two just don’t blend well together, and end up looking fake. Another thing is that the animators just didn’t figure out how to synchronize the mouth movements with the voice-acting. It makes for a nice style, but sometimes it’s a bit too obvious. The rest of the animation for the traditional drawings looks excellent though, just like what you’d suspect from a movie. Another flaw comes with the writing. Through most of its part, it makes the movie fun to watch, but sometimes it’s just a bit too far-fetched. Especially the ending comes with a few twists that just don’t feel right. Be sure to expect a Deus ex Machina here and there as well. Overall, if you’re looking for something different, you might give this one a try. The Chinese definitely have a different style of dialogues than the Japanese have. It won’t win any awards, but it’s a fun movie.]]>

Released in 1985, this movie is already 22 years old. It tells the story of two Italian male kittens, who board a train on the galactic railroad. The train stops at various constellations, and various people step in and out, with all their own story. This is a movie about travelling, and all the things you experience in the process. I must say that A Night on the Galactic Railroad has been quite an interesting watch. Mainly because of two things: its mood and symbolism. This movie really gives a feeling of silence and loneliness, it’s really slow-paced, and the mood of both the expanding space of the universe, and the silence in a train-cabin work perfectly, and create a really eerie mood for this movie, even when people are interacting with each other. There’s also lots of symbolism; each station on the different constellations is full of imagination. They’re all really diverse, ranging from religious messages to references to the time of the dinosaurs. The movie does have its flaws, though. Near the end, the entire mood disappears a bit, when the focus comes to the two main characters. They’re these kinds of main characters who are great as side-characters, watching from the side-lines, but fail to deliver when put on the spotlights. The amount of religious messages also may have been a bit too much at one point. Be also aware that this movie doesn’t really pay attention to the whys of its world. Fantastic things happen, though we never know why most of them do. The graphics, well, they’re not that interesting. But what did you expect from such an old movie? Basically, the anime takes place in a world where cats live, instead of humans; they walk on two legs and wear clothes. Our two main characters are also the only ones who have been obscurely coloured, everyone else is just brown or grey. The music-department is interesting, though, as this movie has a rather unique soundtrack. Especially the main tune is worth listening to. Overall, this movie is definitely not for the impatient ones, as it moves really slow. It’s an above average movie, though it’s not a big disaster if you haven’t seen it. If you have the chance of watching it, though, you can indeed give it a whirl, as it definitely has a few worthwhile elements.]]>

Last year, in November, I made myself a little list of worthwhile-looking 13-episode series, as a means of systematically catching up to the ones that I hadn’t seen yet at that point. I’ve been gradually working down that list for the past year, as some of you might have already noticed. Some series turned out too bad to continue (Aquarian Age and Gun Frontier, for example, and Kokoro Library was just too boring), but there also were some true gems among these anime. And I’m glad to say that today, I finally managed to finish the list! There’s a reason why I chose Haibane Renmei to go last, as I’ve heard nothing but positive reviews and raves from it. And boy, does it deliver! Haibane Renmei truly is one of the best slice-of-life series I have ever seen! It first takes four episodes of building up, introducing its unique setting and its characters, and then it waltzes the viewer down with one of the most amazing storylines, perfectly fitted for 13 episodes. The thing is, that I’m having a lot of trouble finding anything bad to say about this series. Most series have obvious flaws, like dragging on too much, spending little time on their settings, making no sense, but Haibane seems to have done everything right. The only thing you should note is that you need to get through the first four episodes, which are nice to watch, but nowhere near as emotional as the rest of the series. The character-designs look realistic and down-to-earth, just like the rest of the series. You won’t see any blue-haired moe-bait Konatas here. One of the biggest things to note, though, is that the soundtrack is a masterpiece. It comes from Kou Outani, the same guy who did soundtracks for among others Ayakashi Ayashi, Popolocrois Monogatari 1998 and Deltora Quest, and this may be one of his best works yet. I see no reason why not to recommend Haibane Renmei. Not only does it keep delivering after it gets really started, I also didn’t cry as much at a final episode apart from Noein. This definitely is a memorable series, and it couldn’t have been a better way to close off my attempt to catch up with the 13-episode series.]]>

I actually started watching anime quite late. At the moment, it’s a bit more than three years ago since I started with my first fansubbed series, .Hack//Sign, when compared to most people. That’s why I’ve got a huge list of anime that I still need to catch up to. Anyway, another series I tried around that time, perhaps a bit later, was Now and Then, Here and There. It looked all-right, and I saw some good reviews of it. I didn’t even last half an episode. The way this anime seemed to start was like a bad shounen-title. We’ve got a brat for a main character, who happens to practice Kendo. He’s got a rival who is always better than him, and of course a girl he has a crush on. All signs pointed to the fact that the guy would grow, beat his rival and get the girl, and that lady luck would smile at him all the way. Boy, was I wrong. If I had only watched till the second episode, I would have realized that this anime is something very special. For starters, we never see the rival and crush again after the first episode, and already with the second episode, things are done to that boy you just couldn’t imagine. A lot of taboos in anime are scarily brought to the surface, and the first half has to contain some of the saddest hours of anime. I’m SO glad that I decided to give this anime a second chance, as it really is something unique. It’s one of these anime that isn’t afraid to pull its protagonists through hell, and it actually succeeds in making this avoid the pits of cheesiness by developing a cast of excellent characters. The graphics may not seem to suggest it, but this is one of the darkest shounen-titles I’ve seen. And especially one of the most realistic ones. The music also comes with a perfect score to accompany this. Still, all good things must come to an end. The problem with this series is that the second half of the series just doesn’t live up to the first half. Oh, it’s by no means bad, it’s got about half a dozen of awesome moments, but the entire thing is nowhere near as intense and unique as the first half, and at a number of points, it gets a formulaic and a bit unrealistic. Still, you just have to see this series for its first half. It’s been a long time since I last awarded a rating of 90/100 and above, and this series deserves it. Like Eureka7, it’s a great example of how wrong first impressions can be.]]>

It’s hard to find a good way to start this review. I think the best way is to compare this series to a very badly manufactured jigsaw-puzzle. Some pieces are too big, others are too small, pairs of pieces don’t attach to each other when they’re supposed to, and vice versa. There are pieces missing everywhere, and now it’s up to you to make some sense out of it! This, in essence, is basically Boogiepop’s best and worst point. What we’ve got here is basically a case-based series, in which we some really deep case-studies of some seemingly random people, throughout the twelve episodes of its airtime. The catch is, however, that beneath the surface of this series, there’s an incredibly complex plot going on, that pops up once in a while. Boogiepop Phantom may be a case-based series on first looks, at heart, it’s a fully fledged mystery-series. The mystery in this series is slightly different from other mystery-series. While most series of the genre choose the easy and straightforward way of “Hey, I’m a mystery-series with an unknown plot; through the course of my episodes, I’m slowly going to reveal my secrets so that you’ll understand everything in the end”, Boogiepop goes “Hey, I’m a mystery-series with an unknown plot; through the course of my episodes, I’m going to keep dropping references that you’ll only understand in four episodes, so that you’ll need to rewatch me at least once in order to understand the vital parts of my plot”. And that’s the beauty of this series. It’s basically chockfull of references to other episodes, it keeps hopping from one time to another one, and the amount of red herrings it throws at you could satisfy an average fish-factory for at least a week. If you want to understand this series, you’ll have to work for it, as it’s not going to present itself on an open platter so easily. As mystery is my favourite genre, I just couldn’t help but love this. In fact, I’ve only seen one series that carried its mystery even further, and that is Ergo Proxy. It’s series like this one that really show the beauty of the mystery-genre. Unfortunately, I think that this series went a little too overboard with this. After rewatching the important parts of the series, I think I now finally have an understanding of what’s going on, but there are still plot-holes that seemed to have come from nowhere. I remember seeing at least two characters who came from nowhere, did something important, and then vanished again. Kirima also lacked a reason for her actions (at least, I think she does, it may be a plot-hole I missed). Still, this series also shines in its cases. Rarely have I seen a series that went so deep into the minds of its characters with a relatively low amount of time spent on them, and the results are great. A few cases really stand out as memorable. If I had to describe my feelings of Boogiepop Phantom with one word, it’d have to be “fascinating”.]]>

This probably is the anime with the biggest amount of different names. Every website I run into seems to classify it under a different one. 100 Stories, Kousetsu Hyaku Monogatari, Requiem from the Darkness and Natsuhiko Kyougoku’s Worldly Horror Stories all refer to the same anime. It basically tells horror-stories, as told through the eyes of the beginning writer Momosuke Yamaoka, as he follows a peculiar threesome go after demons. 100 Stories (as I’ll call it in this review) is basically a case-based horror show. Through the course of 13 episodes, we see 12 different horror-stories told. I love case-based series, as well as horror anime, so I was looking forward to this one. I guess that that’s why it disappointed a bit, since I’ve both seen much better case-based and horror shows. The problem lays with the fact that this anime tried to limit itself a bit too much. The stories are not just random stories, they’re all about some individual, gone insane, involving a monster in some way. After six or seven of these stories, they do begin to look like each other. Another problem lies with the main character: Momosuke. He’s by no means a bad character, and the anime is a perfectly fine coming-of-age story of him, but he limits the side-characters from getting attention. It’s especially annoying because they are the really interesting ones. But they never get the chance to really develop because of Momosuke, resulting in incomplete backgrounds and a love-relationship that just feels forced. Still, despite the flaws, 100 Stories remains a nice watch. The horror that is used is Japanese Classic Horror, which tries to captivate its audience not by gore of surprises, but with a creepy mood and storytelling. This especially works well in the early half of the anime. And even though the characters lack development, they’re all really interesting to watch. My favourites were Mataichi and especially Nagamimi, voiced by the god-like Norio Wakamoto. The graphics fit the horror-mood perfectly, apart from the CG-perhaps. Sceneries are always dark, with few and dark colours used. The CG, however, showed that the creators weren’t really gifted in that part. One particular episode featured a really strange sea, in the middle of a storm, that just didn’t work well. The music contributes enough to the mood, but it isn’t anything special, although I do need to note that the OP and ED are not what you’d expect from a horror-show.]]>

After “this guy” predicted how I would review Kamichu, I just had to watch it. Lately, I’ve been getting more and more interested in slice-of-life series (I’m currently a huge fan of Kaze no Shoujo Emily), so I was willing to give this series a try. However, when I started watching, I didn’t really understand what was so special about this series. Sure, it was a nice watch, and it definitely had heart-warming moments, but it didn’t really set itself apart from other series, and I’ve seen much better attempts at slice-of-life anime. I also didn’t understand Omo’s line of “But for those of us who can see beyond that, Kamichu is a masterful reprise of a childhood to remember and the fun people had growing up.” But now that I finished the series, I understand. I totally understand. The final four episodes (so the last two TV-episodes, and the last special episodes that came with the DVDs) were bloody awesome, and they definitely make Kamichu something more than “just another slice-of-life” series. So basically, if you start Kamichu, you just have the obligation to finish it, or otherwise you won’t feel the magic. The series does have its problems, though. The biggest one being episode four, which makes it really hard not to lose interest, when it comes with a really bad premise, changing the entire tone for the series, just when you began to get used to it. A ridiculous idea that you just can’t take serious is used, involving a creature that can be best described as “Pururin” from NHK ni Youkoso gone wrong. Plot elements that come from nowhere are introduced, and we never see these again, and afterwards the series goes back to its original focus, like nothing happened. There are more of these continuity errors, by the way. One episode, for example, ends with a giant pudding in the middle of the school square, and the next episode just happily acts like none of it ever happened. Still, you’ll definitely get rewarded once you get past this point. The characters are really charming, and even though you wouldn’t say it at first sight, they’re very compelling. Kamichu is one of these series where the best comes in last, once you’ve come to know all the different characters. The graphics and the music also look decent enough; they’ve got some nice production-values, though they’re a tad too plain for my tastes. They’ll never beat the music of Figure 17, the art of Asatte no Houkou, or the OP and ED for Mahou Tsukai Tai. Overall, if you’re a slice-of-life fan, I see no reason why you shouldn’t give Kamichu a chance. Just remember to stick with it, even after the horrible episode four. A personal complaint of me is that it could have used a few more episodes, though. Seeing as it ends, just when things are getting really good.]]>

Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge: Nabeshin’s latest work. Four bishounen get to live in a huge mansion, on the condition that they can make the owner’s niece (who is the worst gothic horror-freak possible) into a lady. It’s sense of humour is based on energy. Lots and lots of energy, and over-the-top dialogues. Obviously, the entire concept of bishounen is made ridiculous. Few series can claim to have as much energy as this one, and the result turned out hilarious, though it’s got a few problems. One thing this anime did right was its characters. There’s basically one bad character, but apart from him all characters are fleshed out and made more than just 2-dimensional ones. Polar opposites have always worked well together, and the four most good-looking guys, combined with a gothic-horror freak can hardly move further apart. This combination makes sure that the laughs keep coming, especially with this series’ sense of humour. Just when the humour starts to become stale, the characters start to develop and get fleshed out, making this hilarious till the end, with perhaps only the middle section a little weak. Heck, even the final episode delivers; something only few comedies can claim. The graphics and music are both something incredibly subjective, though. They’ll make you either love or hate this series. The fact remains that almost the entire soundtrack, especially around the climax, consists of fast-paced rock, to help this anime create its energy. If you’re more of a j-pop fan, or like silent music, this will be hard to swallow. The art is also something you’d easily find ugly, and even though the main characters are supposed to be extremely attractive, they don’t look that way and I suspect that Nabeshin went for the concept of ‘suspense of belief” with them. Personally, I didn’t mind the art, and I loved the soundtrack, but people can easily dislike them, so don’t expect any Lucky-Star-like art here. The only really bad thing about the art is that the main female lead, Sunako, is way too often portrayed as a chibi-figure, while her normal character-art looks (ironically) beautiful. For me, Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge was a huge success as a comedy, despite five or six weak episodes around the middle part. Some of these episodes liked to use a reset-button as well when characters made huge amounts of money, which I didn’t like either. I definitely recommend this series, though, because I loved the over-the-top-ness of this series, along with all the methods to make the bishounen-stereotype ridiculous.]]>

Okay, so I’m biased; I like Bee-Train, and their unique style. I’m not exactly sure how they did it, but they somehow caused me to really like this obviously flawed anime. I’ve seen lots of people give it bad reviews; it even turned into the “worst anime ever” for some. I’d like to say something positive about it, though. A lot of things ‘clicked’ for me in Avenger. Its got a really interesting setting: Post-colonizational Mars, where no child has been born for ten years. The children have now been replaced with child-like robots called “dolls” (and finally we see androids who don’t look exactly like human beings. The dolls really look like machines in this series, which is really refreshing compared to the countless robotic harem maids that seem to be rather popular). The soundtrack also is awesome. I seriously demand for the ALI-Project to do more of them for different anime, because their work in both Avenger as .Hack//Roots is really good. The OPs and EDs that they sometimes do for random shows might be good, they’re nothing when compared to the magic that they can do for the background music. The character-designs are also really appealing, but that’s to be expected from Bee-Train. I’ve never really been an animation-expert, but the three or four major fight scenes featured some great animation and coordination. The animation for the rest of the series was nothing special, though. Then the characters. Unlike other reviewers, I really liked them. Some of them may lack background or reasons, but they’re well fleshed out through the course of thirteen episodes. Their character-development is very small and subtle (apart from Layla, perhaps), but it is there, just enough for such a short series. These factors, the music, animation, setting and characters, combined with Bee-Train’s direction provide a great atmosphere, which is despite all flaws, fun to watch. Still, the flaws remain flaws, and this anime could have been so much better if Avenger took the time to answer all of its questions. This is another one of those series that suffers from the fact that its story was meant for 26 episodes, not thirteen of them. Because of this, things had to be sacrificed. In this case: the background information. How did people get on Mars? How can people breathe there? Where did Nei come from? These are just a small portion of the questions that this anime leaves behind. Even the ending continues to ask more questions. While it’s not as bad as in .Hack//Roots, the fact remains that this is a major thorn for this series. About the question whether you will like this, you should ask yourself the following: do you like the so-called “Bee-Train Pacing”? If the answer is no, then stay far away from this series, because if you don’t like the whole atmosphere, you’ll be sure to hate it, especially with the relatively slow turns of events. I’ve also seen many people complain how the entire series is too confusing, though I didn’t run into the same problem (probably because I’ve been watching raws I don’t completely understand for a relative long time ^^;). In any case, I had a lot of fun watching this.]]>

Tokyo Tribe can be described as a fun brainless action-show. It features Kai, a member of one of the urban tribes of Tokyo, and it basically shows what happens when all these tribes are put under the same threat. “Suspense of belief? Screw that, we don’t need it!” – This is probably what the creators thought when they wrote the plot. It’s a well-constructed one, but some elements are just overly far-fetched, even more than most action-shows. To give some examples, it’s got an incredibly fat Yakuza-boss, who likes to rape innocent schoolboys, and kill them in the process and an android who likes to bite people’s eyes out. This implies that there’s a large amount of gore in the series, and indeed. The creators aren’t afraid to show blood, and some scenes are particularly raunchy. Still, the story itself was quite fun to watch. The middle section may have taken itself a bit too seriously, but it did make sure that the final few episodes avoided the pitfalls of becoming too dark for their own good, turning them into quite a fun ride. What I especially liked was how the series continued to introduce unique side-characters, who never felt boring at all. The only bad character, though, was Hashim, the standard stupid best buddy, with no connection whatsoever to the story. At the times when he took the spotlight, he rather ruined this series. The graphics look quite interesting. You’d expect this show to be dark and gritty, but instead of that, almost every scene is filled with bright-coloured neon-lights. The character-designs are also quite unique. The music comes with a bunch of hip-hop tunes. They’re quite nice, actually, but there have been better. I wouldn’t really recommend Tokyo Tribe 2, though. It’s got a few too many flaws, and it’s actually a miracle that Kai survived the entire series. There are enough series who’ve done better than this one, and only if you want to watch the unique style or the action then you could give it a chance.]]>