Category: Anime Reviews

Many know the company Visual Arts/Key for their visual novels: Kanon, Air, Clannad, Little Busters, Rewrite, their kinetic novels, and so on. But while Kanon is the first VN that they produced under their Key banner, the staff that formed Key were actually part of another company before this, Tactics (Which would later come to be known as Nexton), and in 1998, they released an adult rated visual novel called One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e. It was initially never exported outside of Japan, but in its home country, it was quite popular, to the point of getting a ton of ports to different consoles and supposedly pioneering the concept of VNs having more low-key, emotional, character driven dramas that many Key fans endearingly refer to as “nakige” or “crying game.” One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e did get a fan translation and that was all it got as far as English exposure. So imagine my surprise when I found out that it suddenly got a complete, from the ground up remake out of nowhere that came out in December of 2023, and said remake getting an official English release, at that! I’m gonna keep referring to the game by its original title, One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e, because just saying the word One would just be confusing by itself. Seeing as a piece of gaming history was being released, I thought I’d give it a try and see what it’s like.

…Yeah, I regret that choice. A LOT.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Garbage with Firechick – One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e (48/100)” →

Show of hands, who here has ever heard of this old movie from 1969 called The Flying Phantom Ship before 2022? No? Me neither. I never even knew Flying Phantom Ship existed until Discotek Media announced on their Twitter page that they licensed it in May of 2022. Not only that, they even made an English dub for it because the original music and effects tracks, which are required to make dubs in different audio, were actually preserved, something which wasn’t considered a common practice back in the sixties. This effectively makes Flying Phantom Ship the oldest anime to ever receive an English dub in the modern era. I was already intrigued and decided to buy the movie just based on its history and significance in terms of dubbing, but hearing that Mona Marshall, one of many voice actresses who defined my childhood, was cast as the lead character pretty much cemented that decision. But what about the movie itself?

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Baubles with Firechick – The Flying Phantom Ship 74/100” →

Nostalgia can be a funny thing. One of the first anime I watched fansubbed was Air, and back then, I didn’t know it was based on a video game. I didn’t even know what visual novels were at the time. I did really enjoy the anime for what it was to the point where I bought the DVDs for it, and even though it’s been years since I’ve last seen it, I remember it pretty vividly. But the original visual novel was never localized in English in any official capacity, but there were a few fan translations that were made over the years. As of now, I’ve managed to play one of them in its entirety, specifically the PSP port thanks to finally learning how to use emulators on my PC. Though in light of the fact that after almost 25 years, Key announced that Kanon is finally getting released in the US in English, I think it’s only a matter of time before Air gets this treatment since most of Key’s other games were released in English as well. Plus, I have been curious about how the original visual novel for Air is compared to the anime, especially since games tend to be longer than their TV adaptations, resulting in a lot of things getting cut. Now that I’ve finished the visual novel…well, let me put it this way: As you grow up, you can find yourself either liking something you watched/read/played just as much as you did back when you were a kid, realize it’s not as good as you thought it was, or appreciate it even more than when you first encountered it. Air as a visual novel is an interesting piece of gaming history and an important game in Key’s legacy but…honestly, it made me appreciate the anime adaptation much more.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Baubles with Firechick – Air (Visual Novel) 68/100” →

The year was 2007. It was around that time that I was really starting to dip my toes deeper into the anime fandom beyond just Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or whatever was airing on TV. I was browsing some anime websites, and a promo picture for a new anime called Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette caught my eye. It looked interesting and I wanted to watch it…but at the time, little to no fansubs for it existed, and the few people that saw the anime hated it, dismissing it as a watered down version of the original novel right out of the gate. Back then, I wasn’t familiar with the original Victor Hugo novel Les Miserables, but I watched the few episodes that received subs and I liked it a lot. But Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette wouldn’t receive completed fansubs until 2011 (Thanks, Licca Fansubs!!), around the time I started college. During that time, I learned that Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette was actually made as an attempt to revive the World Masterpiece Theater franchise, which was notable for adapting Western children’s novels into Japanese animation, from the early 70s up to 1997, then from 2007-2009. Unfortunately, the attempt to revive WMT failed, and since Konnichiwa Anne ended, no new WMT anime have been made. Which is a damn shame in my opinion, because as of this writing, I’ve seen a good majority of the WMT, this anime included. While I do consider Dog of Flanders to be better, I’m thankful that I got to watch Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette, because it introduced me to the WMT as a whole and was one of the anime that helped refine my personal tastes. And because, honestly? Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette is pretty damn amazing. I did review this when the fansubs finished, but looking back, my old review for it is pretty overly fangirly and not up to standard with how my reviews are now, so I’m writing a new one.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Treasures with Firechick – Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette (95/100)” →

Hey Pokemaniacs, remember this game? Because I do! In fact, I bought this along with other mainline games when I had my first GameBoy Color, and I loved it! But back then, I was still very new to video games and never managed to complete all of its content, such as the secret hard modes and the extra Pokemon you can get. But Pokemon Puzzle Challenge is an old game that’s still spoken of fondly. It was readily available on the 3DS Virtual Console for cheap, and I often find myself playing it whenever I need to let off steam. Seriously, this game is such a good outlet for when I’m angry. Basically, Pokemon Puzzle Challenge is a Pokemon game but with the gameplay of the famous Panel de Pon concept, where the main gameplay focuses on blocks falling into a well. You earn points by connecting three or more of the same blocks together, or getting rid of them with creative combos, like swapping them around. In this case, stacking four or more blocks causes damage to your opponent, and if the block piles manage to reach the very top, you lose. You basically go through the various towns and the Pokemon League in the Johto region, but instead of battling trainers traditionally, you fight them with blocks. Yeah.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Baubles with Firechick – Pokemon Puzzle Challenge (72/100)” →

(According to MAL, this is my 570th completed anime!)

I say in a lot of my reviews that it often times doesn’t matter if a piece of media’s tropes and premises are cliche or overused, as these days, nothing is truly original anymore. There’s really nothing inherently wrong with cliches in and of themselves. It’s the execution that counts, and if you actually care about what you’re making and manage to create interesting characters and a solid, engaging premise, people will like it regardless of how cliche its premise is. After the end of the fourth Ojamajo Doremi season, Toei needed something to fill the timeslot up for the next year, and they decided, rather than another magical girl series, that they’d do a historical shoujo adventure instead, in line with stuff like Hello Sandybelle and Lady Georgie. That anime was Ashita no Nadja, which was an oddity in the year 2003, as by that time, according to Justin Sevakis’ article about the World Masterpiece Theater here, Japanese-produced shows that were set in Europe were going out of style. Which is honestly a shame, as even with the context Justin mentioned, a lot of these shows were quite amazing and made the most of what they were given. Nadja as a show is an original anime, not based on an existing property, making it even more of an oddity in 2003, and it did get admittedly low ratings from what I’ve heard, but the people who did stick around to watch it really liked it and have fond memories of it. I myself didn’t even know this show existed until I came across this review of it here on the site, and I did watch the first episode and liked it, but couldn’t finish it due to other obligations and because at the time of the blog post, the final quarter of the series didn’t get completed fansubs. This is no longer the case, thankfully, and I finally found time to watch this. And yeah, I agree, Ashita no Nadja has no business being this good and this well-written. More series should aspire to be like Nadja.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Unearthed Treasure with Firechick – Ashita no Nadja (88/100)” →

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)” →