Category: Anime Reviews

Every season comes with its surprises. The summer-season last year had Night Head Genesis and Chevalier, the fall-season had Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto and Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, and winter-season had Manabi Straight. I normally tend to dislike school-based slice-of-life series, and okay, the series wasn’t awesome, perfect, stunning or extremely heart-warming. But I still have to say that I had a good time watching this series. The thing that immediately strikes about this anime is its energy. Seldomly I’ve encountered an anime which almost sparkles with its energetic characters. The unique art style, the great animation and the perfectly fitting soundtrack turned this into one of the few slice-of-life series which actually caught my interest. Another strong point of this anime is how it quite easily breaks a lot of stereotypes that have been plaguing other school-based anime oh so often. The most striking is the student-council president: Manabi, the main character of this anime. Up till now, a student-council president either was an arrogant but rather stupid bitch who likes to abuse his/her students or a perfect human (you know, the rich, smart, talented, high-classed and uberpopular one). Manabi Straight finally puts a human being in the seat of the student-council president, someone who loves her school, and wants to keep it alive. Not only Manabi, but also the four other main characters felt very refreshing. Usually, in a show of this nature, the story usually revolves around two characters, while you can replace the other main ones with paper bags and still not notice any difference in the story. Manabi Straight makes sure that each of the five heroines has a significant role in the story. Sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious. Also, even though Manabi is the main character, and the central person in the story, she doesn’t necessarily get more screen-time than the others. Mikan and Mei get just as much airtime as Manabi, while the other two also are quite present. Okay, so the anime is not going to go down as the “best anime ever” anytime soon. At times, the drama was a bit too forced, and the ending was a bit cheap. And okay, for a show which is supposed to take place in 2035, the only thing we got to see to illustrate this were strange-looking gadgets. I still enjoyed the unique parts in this one. I liked the quirky humour which showed up once in a while a lot. The animation was excellent and full of creativity, I hope it’ll set a standard for future anime to work towards. It’s a show, perfect for a light watch, but don’t expect anything amazing.]]>

After Sentimental Journey and Human Crossing, the only natural next step would be Seraphim Call. This one tells the story of eleven girls between ages 12 to 25. I expected it to be similar to Sentimental Journey, but surprisingly, the romance-element is no central theme in this anime, you can only see it in two or three cases. Each of these girls has her own unique story to tell, some of them have worries, some of them have a rather strange quirk, some try to fool themselves, and some are just telling about something that happened to them. But can Seraphim Call call itself equal or perhaps even above Sentimental Journey and Human Crossing? Well, for one, it was definitely enjoyable, but it had its bad points. While Human Crossing was consistently good, Seraphim Call had a few cases which weren’t as good as the others. The first two episodes also were goofy, while the following episodes were serious. I had trouble getting used to that. The music also lacked a bit. Sentimental Journey featured a great soundtrack which just screamed “eighties”, and Human Crossing’s OST wasn’t bad either. But I just didn’t really notice the soundtrack for Seraphim Call. The only interesting thing to point out is that every episode has a different ED, but for some strange reason I caught myself with the highly addictive ED from Sentimental Journey stuck in my head after watching this. The way this anime ended was also a nice idea, bringing all eleven girls together, but there is only so much you can do in a single episode. The final bad point is that about 50% of the character-designs just don’t look right. The hair is way too unnatural, not to mention that nearly every colour of the rainbow is represented in our eleven girls. Still, you have to hand it to Seraphim Call, in terms of creativity, it really managed to beat Sentimental Journey and Human Crossing easily. There are some episodes which showcase some brilliant ideas. One of the best ones is showed entirely through the eyes of a stuffed animal, ingeniously named “Margarine von Half-Calorie”. Another one showcases a girl, and nothing but this girl. We never get to see or even hear the people around her. Another brilliant piece was episode 7, which starts playing with time and paradoxes. Episode five and six are incredibly subtle. They nearly show the exact-same footage, just with a few scenes swapped, and some few subtle differences added. And episodes 1 and 8 are just plain weird. Nearly every case also seems to have a deeper message behind it. The stories are told, and while it’s told, it’s trying to give the viewer some sort of idea or message, which works quite well. There’s also a good deal of symbolism used at times. I’m also glad to see that this anime actually succeeds where Human Crossing failed, in terms of episode endings. Human Crossing just had to end its stories on a good note, while Seraphim Call just tried to make the endings as natural as possible. Heck, one episode doesn’t even have a conclusion, while other episodes are only halfly-solved. Still, this prevents the endings from being rushed, forced or incomplete, and they work really well, in my opinion. Overall, it may have bad points, but if you liked Sentimental Journey and Human Crossing, you’ll definitely like Seraphim Call. Also, if you liked Seraphim Call and Sentimental Journey, you’ll probably like Human Crossing as well, and of course if you liked Human Crossing and Seraphim Call, you’ll like Sentimental Journey as well. Ah well, they were some great series. Next up are some more “normal” series. (Note, don’t pay too much attention to the rating. I’m currently trying to find a good rating-system, as I caught myself handing out way too many ratings between 80/100 and 90/100. This anime was just as good, if not better than Sentimental Journey.)]]>

Don’t let the title fool you. It may be cheesy, but there’s a good reason for the show to be named like this. Sci-fi Harry is a mystery-drama, focusing at a psychic named Harry. He’s an incredible social outcast, unable to talk even normally in front of people, who discovers that he’s got huge psychic powers. Through pressure of one of his few friends, he ends up in his own tv-show, called “Sci-Fi Harry” because people are so enthusiastic about him. The thing is, however, that he doesn’t know how to control his powers, which causes quite an incident. Ever since then, different people try to obtain his powers. First, let me say that this anime features some great moments. It isn’t afraid to show some disturbing scenes (like people with their necks all twisted around), and Harry works as a great main character, due to his constant worries and inabilities. To add to this, Sci-Fi Harry comes with a multi-layered plot, where nearly every episode reveals a bit about a huge complot which is going on. Lots of storylines happen at the same time, ranging from decent to excellent. A huge theme in the anime is betrayal. Nearly everyone who runs into Harry tries to manipulate him. Because he’s such a weak character, this actually succeeds most of the times. In addition to that, the other members of the rich side-cast also all have one or more instances where they betray, and are betrayed themselves. Especially Mother and Chinori turned into awesome characters because of this. I liked the fact how this anime follows so many different storylines, but there lies also the problem. Managing all these different storylines which split up and get combined frequently is extremely difficult, and in the end, the creators of Sci-Fi Harry didn’t manage to do this perfectly. Because of this, some of the storylines are more interesting than others, and it’s annoying to see the more interesting ones get interrupted by the less interesting ones. John, an interesting main character in the beginning also gets condemned to the role of a mere unimportant side-character after the first half of the anime, which was a pity, actually. The fact also remains that this anime took a bit more on its plate than it could take. Especially the final two or three episodes lose a bit of steam when compared to their predecessors, and yet they continue to introduce more plot-elements which could have been easily omitted. Because of this, the ending left a bit too many questions unanswered, and some answers that were given weren’t really satisfying. The identity of “Accuser” just didn’t fit right, and we never know who keeps sending the text-messages through the computer. The final episode itself also was a bit disappointing. Not because it was rushed, but it lacked a decent aftermath. Something very interesting happens at the end of the episode, and I would so have loved to see how people reacted to this, but instead the anime ends and left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Still, despite this, I really enjoyed this anime. If you like dark mystery-stories, then this is definitely an anime that you should check out. Just be aware that Harry’s art style may be a bit annoying at times, but I think that that was what the creators had in mind. He really looks like a worthless person. And Chinori looked too scary at times.]]>

Okay, so I just finished watching the second season of FLAG (thanks to w for pointing out that it already was released). I have to say that it looked much more like an anime, with multiple climaxes, a small break, and a bit more focus at the different characters, but still retaining its original style and narrative. Even though I missed a few points here and there, I have to say that the second season was even better than the first. Mostly due to a few very strong episodes, a great climax and a charming aftermath. For those who haven’t seen its first season, not only is FLAG a unique anime who knows no equal, it also is probably one of the most realistic mecha and war-based anime out there. It’s a war-based documentary-anime, featuring a civil war in a fictional country, somewhere in Asia. Its main character, Shirasu is a photographer, who managed to take a picture of a flag, which became the symbol of peace for the country. Peace is finally about to be formed when this flag gets stolen by rebels. Shirasu has now been asked to report and record the mission of a military team, which has been assigned to retrieve the flag. Among others, this anime sets itself apart from all other anime through its narrative style. The entire anime is seen through camera lenses. It’s basically one huge collection of movies and pictures. Heck, we hardly ever see Shirasu, because she’s behind the camera. The camera-movements are extremely realistic. You can really see that the Shirasu’s camera is controlled by a human, instead of a machine. But that’s not the only thing that’s realistic in this anime. We get treated to a nice dose of politics and we get to see a number of investigational reporters doing their job. Also, the military has possession of a few mechas, which finally make an attempt to deviate from the stereotype that each mecha can just be piloted by a bunch of kids. Especially the first season of Flag shows that you need an entire team behind these mechas to make them do their job properly. The animation also is gorgeous, like mentioned before. The only small remark I have is that the creators didn’t synchronize mouth-movement with the voice-acting, but this is a minor detail. The character design also has been done in a style which bothers to differentiate from the usual, giving some very interesting effects, and the background art is just absolutely beautiful. It’s needless to say that the pictures we see flashing on the screen were very interesting to see. In terms of the musical department, this anime also delivers. Most of the anime doesn’t have a background sound, but when it does (mostly during the climax), it comes with a near-perfect soundtrack for an anime like this. If you managed to sit through the first season, then I definitely recommend you to check out the second season once it gets subbed. I’m hoping for this to happen soon, as this anime definitely deserves some attentions because of all the new things it tried out. Still, one of the few downfalls in this anime is that at times, it spends a bit too much time preparing and building up. Especially the first three episode are just one big introduction.]]>

Human Crossing tells the tale of thirteen different people. Each episode is dedicated to one of them. All these persons are unrelated, but they all have some kind of worry, or something that occupies their thoughts. Human Crossing features these people, it explores them as they encounter events that make them see the light. We’ve got another highly unpopular series here. So far, only 18 people have voted for it on AnimeNewsNetwork, and AniDB has similar numbers. Does it really deserve this much negligence? Well, people who’ve been reading my blog probably know my opinion about shows like these by now. ^^; The thing I really liked about Human Crossing is that nearly every episode features a heart-warming tale. This is one of the very few anime which features actual adults as its main characters (okay, 12 adults and one high-school kid), and it makes perfect use of this by portraying some of the worries that adults get through. This can go from as simple as forcing your own memories down to your 4-year-old son and being heavily abused by your husband to an old man who teaches younger people a lesson so that they don’t end up like he did. Some of the stories are very different from each other, but nearly all of them were full of atmosphere, and I couldn’t help but feeling along with its characters. It indeed was a good choice to watch this one after trying out Sentimental Journey, as these two anime are very similar. It´s just that instead of high/school girls, Human Crossing uses all kinds of normal people, mostly adults. Instead of past crushes, the main characters are or were already married. Still, I have to say that overall, Human Crossing definitely was better than Sentimental Journey. Apart from a few cases, Sentimental journey never really made me feel the emotions of its characters as much as Human Crossing did. I definitely recommend this anime if you’re into stories, but there’s one point in which Human Crossing messes up at times: the point at which a character sees “the light”. In about 50% of the cases, these work very well, but in the other 50%, the change is a bit too forced. It’s a pity, as the episodes build up perfectly, with many interesting cases. But yeah, there’s only so much that you can do in only 20 minutes. The background music also perfectly fits the atmosphere in this series, but you may have to get used a bit to the character-design. It’s obviously not something this anime focuses on, but it may lose viewers because the character-designs look a bit “standard”.]]>

Okay, that was weird. When this anime showed up, I knew nothing about it, but the title was interesting so I decided to download it to try it out. So, what do I get? Nine minutes of insanity. Seriously, this is another one of those short 9-minute films. It looks quite old, I expect it to have been released somewhere around 1990. It’s another great example of a good old show. I definitely recommend this series if you like fantasy-stories. It’s basically one big parody of the fantasy-adventure genre. Due to its length, it’s impossible for it to get boring. The evil lord Memphis has kidnapped the students of the Magic School Lunar and he demands the power of the Blue Dragon for ransom. The only problem: the head of the school doesn’t know what the Blue Dragon is. It’s now up to our three main heroes to explain this to Memphis. It may be a story, but after the first sentence of this anime, it becomes clear that it doesn’t take itself seriously at all. The best point about this short film? The pacing. It’s really the same as the anime: totally insane, which really becomes apparent in the first scene. A character also warns in advance that this anime may be over before you know it, and that’s the perfect way to describe it. If there ever was a roller-coaster ride, it’d be this one. And guess what, despite the age, the animation is excellent. It makes great use of deranged character designs to accompany the insanity. If you need 10 minutes to burn at one time, then this one is definitely recommended.]]>

I may have said it before, but for the past few months, I’ve been checking out several 13ish-episode series I’ve been wanting to check out for a long time. I went to AniDB and made a list of all anime that looked interesting to me. Right now, I’m working through this list, with the ones that look the least interesting to go first. Because of this, I saw many great things, such as Figure 17, while series such as Aquarian age turned out to be pure pain. Right now, I’ve put my interest to three case-based series. Sentimental Journey is the first of them (let’s see if you can guess the others ^^). I’ve always been a fan of case-based series such as Mushishi and Kino no Tabi. About these three I had some doubts, though, as they’re all kindof slice-of-lifey. Especially Sentimental Journey had me worried, since the description said that it consisted out of 12 episodes, all dedicated to the relationship of a girl to a boy. Thankfully, this anime turned out much more interesting than that. It’s true that each episode focuses on the relationship of a girl with a boy, but for starters, all these relations were past relationships. All couples got separated at one moment, mostly due to moving away. The boy never really is put in the spotlight. Heck, we never even get to see their faces. What this anime really focuses about is how this boy changed the girl. Each of these boys had some kind of influence, and the anime features these girls, years after they said goodbye, dealing with these experiences. I must say that I’ve never been a really big fan of slice-of-life romances, but this anime felt like a very pleasant surprise. Each of the twelve tales are heart-warming stories, some better than the others. While I would normally find stories like these rather boring, the fact that each episode took a different focus was really refreshing. I therefore can say that I really enjoyed the calm and peaceful mood for this series. The first episode serves as a nice introduction to the general premise of the story. It already shows that this anime can come up with some original twists to make each case unique, and it showcases the typical quiet mood. The second episode comes with a totally different girl, and it’s one of the few in which the girl actually managed to find a new boyfriend. The third episode was one of the lesser episodes. The premise was nice, though I felt that it lacked something. Episode 4 asked nice questions about life and memories, though I didn’t like how everything was based on one huge misunderstanding. With episode 5, however, this anime captured me for the first time when it features a greatly emotional tale about two best friends, about to be separated. The definite highlight for me came with episode six, where the slice-of-life elements take a small step back, and the anime turns more into a crossing between a documentary and a case-study, where it features a fascinating discussion about earthly desires. Definitely recommendable. Episode 7 proposed some very interesting questions about lying, and how the girl has experienced this. Episode 8 showed nicely how influenceable a human could really be. Episode 9 was one of the more thought-provoking episodes, when it provides a very good twist to the arranged-marriage-plot. Episode 10 was another highlight for me, when it comes with an actual ghost story, or something similar. Episode 11 comes with a love-triangle, I expected it to be rather uninteresting, but somehow it managed to hold my interest throughout the entire episode. Episode 12, finally comes with a rather peculiar case. Even though the execution was nothing special when compared to the others, it remained very interesting to watch. One of the things I like about case-based series is that the creators just can’t get away with cases in which nothing happens. They have to actually put some work into making each case unique. Furthermore, because all cases only take one episode, it’ll rarely drag. Sentimental Journey is a great example of this, even though it covered a genre I mostly find boring. Nearly each case has something unique. It’s also not always the girl’s viewpoint we see. One story gets told by an adult, one story doesn’t really have a main perspective, heck, one story even gets told by an empty soda-bottle. If I had to mention one down-point, it’s that some stories are too much focused on a misunderstanding. It made things a bit too repetitive for the stories-in-question. In terms of graphics, you shouldn’t expect too much from this, though. The animation is nice, but the fact remains that this anime comes from 1998. Add that to the fact that it wanted to create a rather “old” feeling. The music, however, fits perfectly for the show. It really gave a feeling of the first years of the nineties. Especially because of the OP and ED. If you happen to read this, and you also happed to see this anime as well, I’m interested in your favourite episodes. For me, it were episode 6, with episode 10 as a second place, though I feel that this an anime that can appeal in lots of different ways to lots of different people. I’m suspecting that everyone will probably have his or her own highlight of this series. I’m curious to see if that indeed is the case.]]>

Hanoka is a unique anime. It’s the first anime which has been entirely made out of vector-graphics in flash. The result is quite interesting. It’s also one of the shortest tv-series ever. It’s got 12 episodes with a length of 5 minutes. If you deduct 90 seconds for the OP, and 30 more seconds for a recap of the previous episode, then all this anime has is 3×12 = 36 minutes of airtime. For the story, the creators must’ve been put in front of quite a challenge. Not only did they have to think of a story to fit inside those 36 minutes, it also had to comply with the episode length of 3 minutes, and it still had to give enough opportunities to show the capabilities of flash-graphics. For that, it chose a story about a war being fought, between humans and large machines, owned by strange creatures called the citizens of the stars. The story is extremely basic, but still the creators managed to add romance, betrayal, a bit of background, and a fairly consistent story. The creators could have done so much worse with this. The story was nothing special, but because the episodes were so short and the creators threw in enough interesting plot elements due to a fast pacing, this anime never really felt boring or annoying. The only really bad point is the ending, where the creators suddenly introduce another villain for no possible reason, even though it already had the material to make a good ending. Instead of focusing on this, this anime preferred to focus on that final antagonist, who didn’t really add anything to the story. The graphics in flash are a hit or miss. Because they’re made in flash, don’t expect the drawings to be of an extreme or realistic quality. Personally, I quite liked the style though. Animation in vector-graphics is quite different from the animation in normal anime, so it was really refreshing to look at it. Others, however, might get too bothered by the unusual look. Overall, it’s been a cute, short show. I rather enjoyed watching, even though this is nothing really special. Still, I’m suspecting that by far the largest part of the anime-community will never touch this show. It’s been made in a style that you have to like. If you’re into experimental anime, then you could check this out. However, you won’t find much joy in this if all you can stomach is Kanon-styled graphics.]]>