Category: Anime Reviews

The Hakkenden is an OVA that I decided to check out because it’s something like an animation fan’s wet dream. Seriously, it was a series that just kept returning on the resumes of famous, well known and very talented animators. To just name the most notable people who worked on this thing: Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game, Kaiba, Yojou-han), Takashi Nakamura (Fantastic Children), Shinji Hashimoto (Kid’s Story, Black Heaven’s OP), Satoru Utsunomiya (Animation director of Gosenzosama Banbanzai), Shinya Ohira (Wanwa the Doggy). And if that wasn’t enough already: among the key animators were Mitsuo Iso and Takeshi Honda (Dennou Coil) and Kenji Kamiyama (Seirei no Mobirito, Ghost in the Shell SAC) was one of the art directors.

Seriously, outside of anthologies like Genius Party, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a large amount of ridiculously talented animators and animation directors come together on one project. The producers really took both up and coming talent with the intention to make an incredible visual masterpiece.

And indeed: the animation in The Hakkenden is exquisite. It’s got thirteen episodes in total, and just about every scene looks gorgeous. The amount of still frames is kept to an absolute minimum, but what makes this show really stand out is its truly excellent inbetween animation. Let me tell you: this OVA has been one of the first, if not THE first, that managed to successfully and consistently animate small armies, never giving up any kind of detail on even the most insignificant soldier.

Beyond that, the animation also manages to bring its characters to life. The amount of detail that is in their movements is just completely amazing throughout nearly every episode, but the ones that really stand out are episodes 4 (Masaaki Yuasa and Takashi Nakamura actually worked together on that one), 9 (Satoru Utsunomiya has a unique style that focuses on many subtle movement and incredibly fluid framerates and gets total freedom to use it here) and 10 (Shinya Ohira and Shinji Hashimoto are both wild and vivid animators and show this off in an absolutely stunning episode) are absolute visual masterpieces.

As for the story and setting: the Hakkenden is a very authentic series: backgrounds are all excellent, the stories that it tells about its characters create a wonderful atmosphere of the darker days of Japan’s history.

This OVA basically has two major problems. The first is that it is a fervent supporter of a guy named Murphy. Seriously: whenever you find yourself thinking “this could go wrong really badly”, it does. This show really tries to drag its characters to hell over and over, and that does get a bit one-sided after a while. Especially considering how it paints the picture that anyone who held even the slightest amount of power in Japan was a total bastard over and over.

The second flaw is that sometimes, it really feels like complete scenes are missing. There are parts that this series refuses to explain, leaving huge holes in the story. The story jumps around way too much: at one time the eight titular dog warriors are together, then they’re split up again, then they magically are together again. The worst is how it just refuses to explain how they all meet each other: they just get introduced, they tell their story, and suddenly they’re all travelling together.

It’s definitely worth the watch, though. I’ve seldomly seen animation this consistent and this good at bringing its characters to life. The Hakkenden was an incredibly ambitious project, especially when you consider what some of the people involved all ended up accomplishing after they finished their work on this series.

Storytelling:	7/10 – Great atmosphere, but a bit disjointed and one-sided in terms of the big picture.
Characters:	8/10 – Solid characterization (also really helped by the animation).
Production-Values:	10/10 – Absolutely fantastic. Amazing and life-like animation.
Setting:	9/10 – Very authentic picture of the old days of Japan, with roots deep inside folklore.

Suggestions:
– Genius Party
– Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto
– Robot Carnival

I had my problems with the original cast of Gunbuster, but that was mostly because they didn’t try hard enough to step away from the stereotypes that they would later inspire. It’s also a bit of a matter of flat characterization, but overall I would not really call any character annoying.

Enter Nono, the lead character of Diebuster.

I’ll be honest here: the first half of Diebuster was a bit of a chore to sit through. Nono is not a likable main character at all with her one-sided overacted klutziness and stupidity, and the pointless fanservice actually gets in the way of the story. The drama in this movie also didn’t really impress; the major theme of this series is characters, refusing to grow up. This leads to characters refusing to accept reality, angsting quite a bit and and making a whole lot of dumb decisions. This drama is consistent (in fact, it’s about the only consistent part of this OVA), but it also just wasn’t interesting.

Nevertheless, this was written by Yoji Enokido. He shows this in the second half (and especially the final two episodes) by just going “screw being plausible, we’re just going over 9000 here”. The final two episodes are full of nice and awesome ideas that I very much suspect ended up as the inspiration for Gurren Lagann’s finale. Unlike the first Gunbuster, Diebuster doesn’t try to be physically plausible in the slightest, but that does allow it to to go with some interesting science fiction ideas.

Ideas which ultimately are reflected best into the graphics of this show. Seriously, the graphics look awesome here and are IMO the biggest reason to check out this OVA. They’re really imaginative and make excellent use of the creativity in the plot.

Above I mentioned that this is a very inconsistent series. That’s both a good and a bad thing. I mean, you don’t want to watch this for its cohesive plot, because the story is a bit of an undirected mess, not to mention the angst not being that impressive, but on the other hand this did make this OVA evolve through its episodes, and it prevented Nono’s annoying antics to ruin the entire OVA (she really gets better as the anime goes on).

Oh, and on one final side-note: I keep seeing everywhere that you need to have seen the original Gunbuster before watching this OVA, but I don’t really think that that is the case. You can watch them in any order really.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Not the best at drama, but when it’s on fire it really entertains.
Characters:	7/10 – Nono is annoying, and none of the cast really end up making this up.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Gorgeous, full of excellent artwork and ideas.
Setting:	8/10 – Not as interesting as Gunbuster or FLCL, but still full of nice ideas and concepts.

Suggestions:
– FLCL
– Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
– Wings of Rean

After the perfect first movie formed a perfect ending for the Kimagure Orange Road franchise, I was really wondering how the creators would be able to top that with the second and final movie. And yeah, this movie is a step back. It brings cheese into the romance and it requires a whole bunch of random coincidences, just to get going.

Especially the first half of the movie brings back a lot of stuff from the TV series that made it so annoying. Kyousuke’s powers at this point are like the nuclear power you see in a lot of American comics: they do whatever is convenient for the plot at the moment. Kyousuke himself also has this tendency to narrate a bit too enthusiastically at times, saying a lot of things that would have been much better off when left unsaid.

Nevertheless, I really urge fans of Kimagure Orange Road to check this movie out. If you’ve managed to sit through the hell that was the TV-series, this movie offers a HUGE amount of character development, showing the entire cast in their twenties. Ironically, it’s only until the aftermath when things get really amazing, but it’s so worth the wait. Whenever this movie isn’t cheesy, it really delivers a wonderful romance, miles away from just about any overused stereotype.

The animation… is surprisingly mediocre for a movie. I mean, for me, most of the TV series even looked better. Most of the budget of this movie is wasted on a pointless dance scene. For movie standards, I really expected more of the animation.

Oh, and on a side-note: this movie links Madoka to Yuki Kajuira. That is just awesome.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Okay, so it uses cheese and some coincidences, but those coincidences make sure that it has an awesome premise to work with.
Characters:	10/10 – The characters already had excellent development. Then this movie comes along.
Production-Values:	7/10 – The animation is disappointing for a movie. On the other hand though: it features Yuki Kajiura’s debut. Years before she got big.
Setting:	8/10 – Stays true to Kimagure Orange Road, though a little too well perhaps.

Suggestions:
– The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
– Maison Ikkoku
– Umi ga Kikoeru

Okay, so I ended up liking Gunbuster for a whole different reason than I thought I would. From one of Hideaki Anno’s earliest works, I expected this fun homage OVA to the giant robot genre with excellent action scenes, but that’s probably not going to be what I’ll end up remembering about this thing.

Now, Gunbuster is definitely a homage, but it doesn’t really do much for the giant robot genre. It’s got a very typical set-up with a lot of cliches and fanservice, but ends up playing a lot of them a bit too straight at times. The result is yet another teenager who ends up saving the world multiple times on a giant robot that she somehow ends up piloting. There also is quite a bit of romance, but that also doesn’t really get anywhere beyond your average cheese shop.

Instead, this IOVA is all about the science fiction. Instead of coming with your usual explanations and backstories, Gunbuster interestingly weaves pseudo quantum science with fantasy into a time travelling epic. It’s also one of those stories that changes significantly with every airing episode, making good use of its unpredictability to spiral out of control, despite the large amount of cliches that are in the story and characters.

If you’re wondering where the science fiction is when you start to watch it: the best episode of this OVA does remain the sixth and final one. It’s here where the creators say “screw it” and abandon the cliches in favor of its neat ideas, setting and background, and yet another proof of how Hideaki Anno is in his element when he goes over-budget.

Speaking of the guy, of course Gunbuster is very well animated. I can’t fault this show for looking pretty, and especially for its time it has detailed animation and a pretty nice direction. I can imagine how this movie was a big trendsetter, but it’s just a shame that half of the trends it set ended up horribly abused during the past decade. Overall I don’t think that Gunbuster is anything amazing, but it definitely has its good points and I still enjoyed watching it despite its cliches.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Makes up for its cliches pretty nicely with its good direction and constantly changing story.
Characters:	7/10 – A bit too many cliches and cheese, though it does have interesting character development.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Pretty impressive, though nothing amazing.
Setting:	9/10 – Great background stories and ideas.

Suggestions:
– Noein
– Macross Frontier
– Soukou no Strain

Legend of Galactic Heroes is a franchise that, more than any other one, baffles me as to how it got made. I mean, if it was just a television series or a few movies about realistic space battles between huge armies, then okay: it would have been an interesting experiment to do. Instead though, the creators here just dedicated more than an entire decade to something that seems such a commercial gamble. The creators just came out of nowhere and delivered first an OVA of 110 episodes, only to create two more OVAs of 28 and 24 episodes long respectively. How was this financed? How did the creators keep such a consistent production here on something that seems light-years away from the mainstream?

Anyway, this movie is the one that started it all, being released about half a year before the first episode of the OVA was released. It mainly is just a background movie, meant to tell the past and set things up for the OVA, but I already could tell that, yes: this would be something special.

The cast of characters in particular is what sets this series apart from all other space and science fiction series of its time. There just isn’t any cheese, no overacting, it’s not trying to be childish and neither is it trying to dumb itself down. The creators make sure to give character to not just the main characters, but also the side ones, and even some seemingly unimportant bystanders. The dialogue is well written, intelligent and detailed and does an excellent job of fleshing out both the characters and the plot. Something tells me that the creators of the Seikai trilogy were heavily inspired by this series.

One criticism I have for this movie right now is that one of its purposes is to make the two main characters look smart, and it does so by portraying their superiors as stubborn idiots (yeah, blame Gosick for me, being too focused on that). Even that though is far from as black and white as it seems at first sight, and both of the idiots serve are subtly different from all of the other moron commanders you see in anime. Again, the excellent dialogue is to thank for that.

As for the space battles: the thing with anime is that it’s near impossible to accurately portray battles on a huge scale. This movie was one of the few attempts I’ve seen that realizes this, and tries to give it its best attempt to stay as believable as possible,instead of just randomly copy-pasting the same drawing over and over. Huge fleets are drawn with depth and at the same time budget is saved cleverly with dynamic camera work and an actually readable strategic map for the main commanders. The latter may not look like much, but just try to think of how many other anime just show a bunch of nonsensical technobabble on these screens that are impossible to follow?

Storytelling:	8/10 – Mostly building up, but it does that well. The space battles are also unique.
Characters:	9/10 – Excellent dialogue and a realistic portrayal of its characters.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Nice and detailed animation. Classical music for the background works, but is a bit cheap though.
Setting:	8/10 – Potential to become really interesting in the OVA.

Suggestions:
– Armored Trooper Votoms
– Seikai no Monshou, Senki and Senki II
– Mobile Police Patlabor’s First Movie
(Note: I’ve decided not to put Tytania on this list of recommendations. Not because it’s so much worse, but because it has one vital difference with LoGH that really forces you to watch it with a different mindset: Tytania is very theatrical, while this movie had far more restrained actors.)

You might be wondering why I’m giving such a high rating to kiddie movie about a bunch of cartoonishly drawn dinosaurs. Believe me, I’m just as surprised as you are. For those of you who don’t know: Omae wa Umasou da (or You are Delicious!) is a project consisting out of a TV-series and a Movie, based on a picture book about a Tyrannosaurus who takes care of a baby Ankylosaurus. The TV-series was just… bad. Incredibly childish and ludicrously poorly animated. It really was aimed at children of two or three years old. Because of this, I also was just planning to only check out a few minutes of this movie before giving it a pass.

Now, the reason why I liked this movie so much is riddled with spoilers, so I’ll try as much as possible to avoid them. There is one thing however that I do want to warn about, considering the circumstances currently in Japan, and that is the huge amount of dead bodies that are shown in this movie. The creators really don’t shy away from the fact that dinosaurs eat each other and even innocent children aren’t except to this rule (au contraire, in fact). On top of that, a volcano also erupts during the airtime. Be aware of this when watching this movie, because the disasters that happen in this movie are in no way meant to be compared to what happened in Japan with the Tsunami. Regardless of whatever stories anime tried to tell, what happened in Japan is truly horrifying, and let’s hope for a steady recovery for everyone involved.

You are Delicious isn’t really a kids’ movie. It’s more like something for the whole family: it’s got cute dinosaurs for the younger viewers, but it also really doesn’t shy away from serious themes as prejudice, killing for a living, and parenting. It really can get quite mature when it wants to and unlike most other movies of its kind, it doesn’t dumb itself down. It has its silly moments, but by far the biggest purpose of this movie is telling a serious story, and taking itself and its audience seriously in the process.

Now, let me try to explain this in the least spoilerific way: the amount of character development in this movie is huge for movie standards. The premise of this movie is about a Tyrannosaurus Rex taking care of a baby Ankylosaurus, but there is much more to the story than just that. It even puts in effort to make its downright impossible scenario actually plausible. I’m not going to spoil the way in which it does that, you’ll have to watch the movie, though. Let me just say that the cast of characters ends up with a ton of depth and wonderfully fleshed out with especially the lead character being a joy to watch.

Obviously it doesn’t aim to be the most realistic movie: heck, it has giant dinosaurs doing somersaults and other kinds of battle moves. At the same time though it has a ton of these nice details that make it surprisingly down to earth, like those long neck dinosaurs getting dizzy when they they lift their heads too high. Plus, the fancy attack moves make for some really sweet choreography in the action scenes.

There have been more of those “Wolf and Sheep” stories before, but these all had their share of flaws. The amazing thing about You are Delicious is that I have almost nothing I can criticize it for. I mean, by comparison, Chirin no Suzu was very melodramatic; this movie instead manages to keep its balance between hard-hitting drama and subtle characterizations. Arashi no Yoru ni had a simple message that it was a little too keen on portraying. This movie has multiple strong messages that are all more than they seem and that it doesn’t try to shove down the viewer’s throat.

This movie really took me by complete surprise. I’t quite possibly the biggest surprise I’ve seen in years. Being based on a picture book of all things, I can only imagine how much extra the creators put into the story of this movie.

Storytelling:	9/10 – The proof that you can make anything awesome with the right direction. Well balanced and knows exactly when to be silly and when to take itself seriously.
Characters:	9/10 – Wonderful character development on adorable characters.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Nice animation, unique art style and great action scenes..
Setting:	9/10 – Paints its own original and imaginative picture of the time of the dinosaurs with just the right parts taken under the loop.

Suggestions:
– Chirin no Suzu
– Heartcatch Precure – Hana no Miyako de Fashion Show… desu ka?
– Kappa to Coo to Natsuyasumi

The great thing about Read or Die (one of the great things at least) is that you can pretty much watch the OVA and TV-series in any order you’d like. They have one similar character and take place in the same universe, but they’re completely different stories about completely different characters with completely different styles of storytelling.

The TV-series was mostly slow-paced. The OVA’s pacing is fast. It doesn’t care about being solid, and instead its biggest goal is entertainment. It does this with a tight and fast-paced plot and gorgeously animated action scenes. It’s really meant to be an adventure OVA, and does a lot of things right, considering that it’s only an hour and a half long. It’s got a great cast of characters, and especially Yomiko Readman is adorable to watch even if you haven’t watched the Read or Die TV-series.

Like the TV-series though, this is stuffed with neat ideas. The concept of people using paper to fight evil is of course very creative, but again this is just the tip of the iceberg. The different powers and plots of the bad guys in particular are just a delight to watch because of how creative they can get to accomplish their not-so-creative goals (granted, they are bad guys who are evil for the sake of being evil; it’s the ways that they use to destroy the world that are the really interesting part). The plot itself is simple, but effective, neither being too big nor too small for an hour and a half of airtime.

Now, the fast pacing does have the disadvantage is that the only positive thing that I can say about a lot of the side-characters is that they look cool, because we hardly get to know anything about them, the bad guys in particular being a problem with this. Still, for an OVA of this size it definitely could have been done better, and the characters that it does focus on are well explored.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Excellent fast-paced entertainment, though does make a few sacrifices to keep the pace going.
Characters:	8/10 – One-sided bad guys, but the main characters are very enjoyable.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Amazing action scenes.
Setting:	8/10 – Full of neat idea.

Suggestions:
– Read or Die TV
– Yozakura Quartet OVA
– Hyper Future Vision: Gunnm

There have been many slice of life movies about a young boy or girl growing up and the problems they face. Junkers Come Here is Sato Junichi’s attempt at this genre, created ten years before he would come with Aria. And really: it is among the best ones of the genre.

The thing with Junkers Come Here is that even compared to the other slice of life movies, it’s realistic (if you ignore the fact that it has a talking dog and all, but you know what I mean). This comes courtesy of an excellent characterization and a consistently detailed animation that causes the characters to nearly just walk off the screen. Hiromi (The lead girl) here just feels like a real teenaged girl and her problems are wonderfully down to earth.

On top of that, it’s also much more tightly paced compared to most slice of life series. Most of them follow the formula of first half random slice of life, second half serious story. With Junkers Come Here it’s only the first half hour that will be a bit uneventful. The movie has found a perfect balance between slice of life and character building: the events of Hiromi’s childhood that it focuses on all have a major impact on her and create a wonderful picture of her, coming together in an absolutely amazing climax.

It’s a movie with many truly heartfelt moments, even though at first sight it may be nothing more than a story about a girl and her talking dog. Everything here is very calculated, though, and it’s not just wasting time for the sake of wasting time. That’s the kind of slice of life that I personally really like.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Wonderfully paced. It’s really slow, but makes excellent use of its time.
Characters:	9/10 – even for a slice of life movie, the characters are believable with real problems. The characterization is just wonderful throughout the entire movie.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Very smooth animation that brings the cast to life.
Setting:	8/10 – Solid.

Suggestions:
– Anne no Nikki – The Diary of Anne Frank
– Aria the Animation
– Kiki’s Delivery Service

Bobby’s in Deep… definitely took me by surprise. I mean, at first sight it’s just a story about a teenager. With the vast majority of anime being about teenagers, I expected this to be some average romance movie. Nevertheless, after watching this I can say that this movie felt unlike any other anime I’ve seen. The animation, characters, direction and plot: they’re all totally unique.

The movie is a portrait of a 17-year-old guy who likes motorbikes. The thing is, that the way in which he is portrayed is what stands out here. The pacing is really slow, but this allows the creators to show who he is. His problems are wonderfully realistic and miles away from just about any cliche, all really helped by an excellent scriptwriter for the dialogue and narration. This movie knows exactly what to way, when to say it, and when to just shut up and let the animation speak for itself. Together with a very pleasant 80s soundtrack this creates a wonderful atmosphere and character whose realistic portrayal should have been an example for the future, which it unfortunately didn’t become.

And as for the animation: expect a lot of different animation styles here. The director for this one is excellent in the way that he blends all of them together. A lot of shots of this movie don’t contain any faces or close-ups at all, along with a few montages and quite a number of still frames. In contrast however, the animation in some of the other scenes is amazingly smooth. To come with a bit of an indication here: some of the Key Animators for this movie were Koji Morimoto and Takashi Nakamura. Believe me, this shows.

This is the kind of slice of life movie that I really like: instead of random events, every part of this movie is carefully planned out to try and give a complete view of the lead character and portray him for who he is, and do justice to some of the major events in his life. It’s all wonderfully compiled together with an amazing ending in which just about everything comes together with both a great subtlety and a power. This might be the first time where Madhouse really showed how unique they can be when they want to.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Terrific build-up, says a lot with both the dialogue and the nonverbal communication.
Characters:	9/10 – An excellent portrait of a teenager with many subtle characterizations.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Not the biggest budget, but what it has is excellently used. Some of the animation is breathtaking. Excellent soundtrack.
Setting:	8/10 – Excellent backdrop of the way and place where a kid like him would live.

Suggestions:
– Gosenzosama Banbanza
– Hitsuji no Uta
– Nasu – Suitcase no Wataridori