Category: Anime Reviews

Not many people know this, but visual novels, in spite of their seemingly limited gameplay and interface, are actually a more versatile medium than they’re usually given credit for. This is pretty common knowledge in Japan, where the medium of visual novels has been around since the eighties, but North America only ever had them through hard to find fan translations, with no official releases until the 2010s. But even with the genre’s renaissance in the US and people learning what they can be capable of, certain types of gamers are quick to dismiss visual novels as nothing more than either moe waifu porn games or digital picture books. Games such as Ace Attorney, Steins;Gate, Digimon Survive, AI: The Somnium Files, and everything in Visual Arts/Key’s library (Clannad, Air, Kanon, Little Busters, and so on) disprove this, but would you believe me if I told you that there’s such thing as a visual novel that also has rhythm game elements and was the brainchild of one Sui Ishida, the man who created Tokyo Ghoul and Choujin X? Ladies, gentleman, and everyone in-between, I introduce to you Jack Jeanne, one of many visual novels brought to the US by Aksys Games. I remember first seeing ads for the game in the Nintendo eShop while browsing through it, and the premise did intrigue me, but I initially had a bit of a hard time getting a hard copy. It took my dad showing me a random game store while on our trip to New York for me to find a copy, and I gotta say, I have him to thank for this, because Jack Jeanne is not only one of the best otome games in existence, it’s one of the best, most immersive visual novels period, barring a few flaws preventing it from achieving true greatness.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Treasure with Firechick – Jack Jeanne (87/100)” →

I hadn’t initially planned on buying this, but it showed up on the Nintendo eShop one day, and seeing as I liked another kinetic novel made by Key/Visual Arts, Harmonia, and had some eShop money left over from Christmas, I figured I’d give Lunaria: Virtualized Moonchild a shot, as I do want to support the visual novel industry. Granted, Lunaria is another kinetic novel like Key’s previous ones Harmonia and Planetarian, so you don’t get any choices to change the story and get just one ending. And initially, the first half of Lunaria was kinda…cliche and boring. But I stuck it out, and that wound up being a good decision on my part since the second half drastically improves and makes up for the problems the first half of the game had.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Baubles with Firechick – Lunaria: Virtualized Moonchild (77/100)” →

Alright, let’s get the elephant out of the room, the only reason anyone even heard of The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons is because of the fact that for some reason, when the first episode went up on Crunchyroll, it was saddled with the most absolutely abysmal English subtitles. No, I’m not kidding. The subtitles were not only extremely literal, with zero syntaxes, punctuations, and sentence structure, there are times when sentences are repeated for no reason, and they even went as far as to straight up translate some characters’ names. It was especially bad because other streaming sites in other regions had their own English subtitles for it, but they were nowhere near as bad as the ones Crunchyroll got. Luckily, the ensuing backlash convinced Crunchyroll to reach out to the original licensor to give it a newer, better translation, and the subtitles have since been updated. It is a shame this is how people had to get introduced to the series, because The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons is honestly a very sweet, heartwarming, low-key drama that deserves more appreciation than it gets.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Treasure with Firechick – The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons (80/100)” →

(This review covers both seasons, not just the first one)

Fairy tales have always been a staple in our lives, whether because our parents read them to us, we learned about them in school, or saw the Disney movie versions. Everyone’s probably heard of at least one fairy tale, like Snow White or The Little Mermaid. Even other countries have their own fairy tales, or their own original spins on familiar ones. But what many don’t know is that often, the original sources are a lot darker and less kid-friendly than the interpretations we were exposed to. Such is the case of the fairy tales by the Brothers’ Grimm, who are famous for having much darker and more cynical versions of popular fairy tales. Of course, in the eighties, Japan had the bright idea to adapt some of Grimms’ fairy tales into an anime series, titled Grimm Masterpiece Theater in Japanese, retitled Grimms’ Fairy Tale Classics in English. If you can believe it, this was one of the first anime that Saban Entertainment dubbed and brought to America back in their heyday. It even got aired on Nick Jr of all things. I was born in 1993, so I never saw it growing up, but I became friends with many people who did grow up with it. But because of Saban’s tendency to never put stuff they license out on home video, or in some cases not completely, many episodes of this series were considered lost media until just a few years ago. Thanks to Discotek Media not only finally re-releasing this series on Blu-Ray, but even released the Japanese version with English subs. Curious, I bought both sets and wanted to see what this was all about.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Treasure with Firechick – Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics (77/100)” →

I normally don’t try to review an anime before it ends, as I prefer to watch it all the way through before sorting out my thoughts on it. But dear lord, Prima Doll as a show annoyed me so much that I honestly just couldn’t hold my feelings on it back any longer. Prima Doll is a new multimedia franchise created by the company Visual Arts/Key, who many will know as the people who created beloved visual novels such as Air, Kanon, Clannad, and Little Busters. They’re still making games to this day, and I remember watching the anime adaptations for Air, Kanon, and Clannad when they came out, and loving them, though if I were to watch them now, it’s likely my feelings on them will change. But lately Key has wanted to expand their horizons, and I can understand wanting to try something new…though multimedia franchises usually don’t fare well in this oversaturated market. Yet even by those standards, Prima Doll just absolutely screams shameless corporate artifice that’s only there to sell products, and literally nothing else.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Garbage with Firechick – Prima Doll (50/100)” →

(This review will cover seasons 1-4, and as of this writing, I still haven’t seen seasons 5 and 6, along with the movie and some of the OVAs. I really need to change that)

Man, Natsume’s Book of Friends, or its Japanese title, Natsume Yuujinchou, is such an important series to me, you can’t imagine. I remember seeing a promo image of it on the AnimeSuki forums and thinking it looked nice, along with thinking Nyanko-sensei looked cute. But I’m not gonna lie, the second I finished the first episode of this series, way back in 2008, I was hooked, and continued to devour more of it as the series churned out more new seasons…until the fourth season ended in 2012. Four years passed until a new season came out, and another one after that…but I couldn’t bring myself to watch them, because it was during that time that I was in my massive anime burnout phase. It didn’t help that since it had been years since season 4 ended, I wasn’t sure if I could keep up with any new developments the new series had, and I had no motivation to just go back and rewatch the series in Japanese. It also didn’t help that in 2011, NIS America announced that they would release the seasons that were available later down the line, but with no English dub. I couldn’t afford to buy the DVDs NIS put out back then, as they were too expensive for me and I didn’t have a job. As of this writing, I still keep up with the manga and even own the volumes that are out in the US right now, with intent to keep buying them until the series reaches its conclusion, whenever that’ll be, and since I have a job, I can actually buy the manga volumes as they come out! So as much as I absolutely love Natsume’s Book of Friends to death, I couldn’t bring myself to get back to it for some reason.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Treasure with Firechick – Natsume’s Book of Friends Seasons 1-4 (95/100)” →

On April 3rd, 1952, Osamu Tezuka started up a new manga that would later become not only one of his most iconic works, but become a staple in Japanese children’s media that still continues to be beloved to this very day. That manga was Astro Boy, or its Japanese title, Tetsuwan Atom. Astro Boy as a character became a popular icon, helped by the fact that the 1963 anime adaptation of the manga was the first ever serialized anime series to ever air on Japanese television (Or at least, one with an ongoing plot), running for a full 193 episodes across three to four years. Said anime was also the first Japanese animated TV series to be brought over to the United States and dubbed into English, though not every episode was dubbed. I’ve only seen one episode of the 60s anime for a college class, and…it’s definitely a product of its time, mainly because its animation, while it may have been considered good when it was first made, by modern standards is extremely primitive. Seriously, most of the action scenes in the 60s Astro Boy consist of nothing but still images and cutaways, that’s it. Though it seemed even Tezuka and his team realized how poorly the 60s series had aged, as later on, they decided to form a company called Tezuka Productions for the sole purpose of remaking the Astro Boy anime from scratch, which would come to fruition in 1980. Said 80s remake of Astro Boy is the subject of today’s review, as last year, the mad lads at Discotek Media managed to license it and put it out on Blu-Ray. Now that I’ve seen the entire series, my verdict is…it’s okay. It definitely looks amazing for its time, and is a pretty good kids show in its own right, but even without having seen the 60s series, the 1980 remake has some problems of its own.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Baubles with Firechick – Astro Boy 1980 (70/100)” →