Category: Anime Reviews

The first season of Digimon has a lot of sentimental value for me. I discovered it back in high school, when I was about 13 years old, and after Pokemon, it was the series that made me aware of what anime was, and how different it was from all the other cartoons that aired on television. And on top of that it had a great and very enjoyable cast of characters.

The second season, though… was a different story. Looking back, I have very little positive to say about it. It’s not really the ending that bugged me, aside from the epilogue, the final episodes were actually some of the few parts that did catch my attention, but overall it just covered boring and repetitive stories, while completely abandoning the few interesting subplots it introduced completely. The characters were nowhere as interesting as the ones from the first season, who were demoted into side-characters for very shallow reasons. It was overall just one big letdown, so originally I wasn’t planning on watching any more of the movies beyond the first two. Until I found out that Shigeyasu Yamauchi (the director of Casshern Sins and Yumekui Merry) directed the third movie.

And I’m glad I did. I mean, seriously: this movie is absolutely not what you’d expect from a movie targeted at kids. The direction of this movie is just unique for such a movie: it’s both adventurous, has gorgeous action and yet has many quiet and down to earth parts that make the characters wonderfully believable. This movie is without a doubt the best part of the second season.

The bad guy in this movie actually isn’t someone who is just out to destroy the world, or wreak havoc for the sake of wreaking havoc. His personality is simple, but he has a great backstory. The second part that makes this completely unlike most other adventure movies is the build-up in the first half. It’s nearly entirely dedicated to just showing the characters slowly travel from place A to place B, taking its time to bring them to life. There is none of the cheesy dialogue that you usually see in adventure movies, but instead the characters talk with each other believably, both verbally and non-verbally.

Now, the budget of this movie isn’t stellar, but still very impressive. The result is smooth animation during the quiet parts that really brings the cast to life. And as for the action scenes: they’re completely gorgeous. Shigeyasu Yamauchi knows like no other how to direct compelling action sequences, and this movie is another excellent example of this.

The flaws in this movie are in the details. Te most glaring is the one that has the characters hitchhike from New York to Denver. Now, I’m no American or anything, but is that even possible? Not to mention that the movie takes place in America, yet everyone talks Engrish. The cutting overall is a bit erratic. Sometimes this works great, but at others it feels like entire scenes are cut off. You especially need to watch the second half twice in order to really get what’s going on.

Despite these flaws though, I praise this movie for trying to be different from the original, its solid storytelling, its imagination and the way that it doesn’t try to spoon-feed itself to its audience. This movie has the mindset that I really wish more franchise-based movies would do nowadays, instead of just making movies for the sake of making movies. Yes, Toei, I’m looking at you.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Wonderfully told for a kids’ movie; great pacing, excellent climax.
Characters:	8/10 – The characters never really caught my attention in the TV-series. It says something for this movie when it actually made me care about them.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Shigeyasu Yamauchi excels in both the action and quiet scenes.
Setting:	8/10 – Dares to be different from the TV-series, though it does have a bit of a bad portrayal of America.

Suggestions:
– Digimon Movie 1
– Yumekui Merry
– Casshern Sins

Fantasy stories that focus on a war between two kingdoms, a light and a dark one, are a dime a dozen. When you make one, you really need to set yourself apart. Windaria did this through its development. If for the first half of the movie, you feel that the story is perhaps a bit too generic, then don’t worry: it’s meant to be that way.

Windaria takes your general fantasy set-up, and does a lot of things right with it. The animation is pretty good for 1986 standards, with a lot of fluid movements. The story at the beginning may be generic, but it’s well told: ample time is given to each of the major characters to flesh them out, the artists do a wonderful job to draw and animate the people from the two different countries, and the biggest flaw is probably the very stereotypical evil king.

Obviously since the development is the strongest part of this movie, I’m not going to say much about what happens next due to the spoilers and all. Let me just say that this movie knows how to use its build-up. Its ending especially is wonderful. The second half of this movie did some really neat things to the cast of characters and made sitting though the first half entirely worth it.

This one is definitely recommended if you like old fantasy movies. It’s underrated, exactly because of how much the first half looks like your average fantasy that DOESN’T develop its characters well, but this is one wonderful exception to this rule. Well acted, well developed and averting quite a few cliches, Windaria was a very interesting movie.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Excellent use of build-up, and a very solid fantasy story overall.
Characters:	9/10 – Excellent development.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Very fluid and a good soundtrack, though not the best for movie standard.
Setting:	8/10 – Starts off with a few too many cliches, but ends up as a great story of fantasy war.

Suggestions:
– Escaflowne – A Girl in Gaea
– Tales of Vesperia
– The Cockpit

Break Blade has what I like to call the “bad main character syndrome”. His story, back-story and development: they’re all completely uninteresting and generic, and he takes away a lot of screen-time from the more interesting parts of this movie. He has nothing to do with the politics, so that too gets pushed completely aside whenever he is on the screen, in favour of bland romance, a bland rival story and bland morals about killing. Four movies in and this still hasn’t gotten any better.

The fourth movie pretty much was the same as the previous ones: whenever the lead character was on the screen it was boring, whenever it focused on the other characters, it was quite interesting. The rivalry was completely absent from this movie, but instead we got a lot of boring romance build-up. On the other hand, the side characters are getting better, and this had the best battles of the movies so far. I’d say that the ratio of Rygart vs. the rest in this movie was about 35:65.

I’ve whined enough about Rygart for now, but let me at least comment a bit on the battles here. The battles here were again in a larger scale than before, up to the point that two small armies actually faced each other. The resulting battle was a great combination between large-scale tactics to small scale ones, from regular mechas to overpowered ones: it was a surprisingly well balanced one. That was exactly what this series needed: it already had the down to earth battles, and this movie took that formula, added some extra spice to it and made it even better.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Good action scenes. The warfare works here.
Characters:	7/10 – Bad main character syndrome. the side characters are interesting, though.
Production-Values:	8/10 – A step up from the previous movie.
Setting:	8/10 – This instalment was low on politics, but makes up for it with its military analysis.

Suggestions:
– Sengoku Basara
– Seirei no Moribito
– Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu

Here is something that dawned to me while watching A Wind Named Amnesia, about modern anime movies: they aren’t rushed. Sure some of them are bad and all, but I don’t think I can name any movie that premiered during the past years whose story did not sort-of fit in the time that was allocated to it. Some may be fast-paced, but no movie really lacked entire arcs that should have been animated as well. It’s an interesting observation, considering how this is a problem that many TV-series and OVAs suffer from.

Some of the old movies also suffer from this, to take A Wind Named Amnesia just as an example. I haven’t read the manga (coming from the same original author as Vampire Hunter D), but at times, especially near the end, it feels like the creators skipped entire volumes out of time constraints, just to get to a very strange and confusing ending that doesn’t fit in the story in the slightest as a result. If you plan to watch this series, be aware of a very incomplete story.

The story that’s there impressed me, though. It is centred around a basic, but very interesting question, and the vast majority of this movie is dedicated to studying human behavior. It asks questions behind human culture and civilization, and what would happen if all of that would disappear: what would drive them and how do they survive when suddenly their entire lives are turned upside down? The movie is only 80 minutes long, which is way too little to really get in depth on the theme, but the stories that did make it into the movie are wonderfully told, and very interesting to boot.

It’s a very lonely movie. There’s this melancholy throughout the entire airtime that only gets strengthened thanks to some well chosen and performed background music. The protagonist here is excellent in the way that he is easy to relate to in the chaotic world that this movie portrays, while learning a lot throughout the movie and his backstory.

The animation isn’t the most consistent for a movie: some parts are really well animated, others a bit less, but it still is a visually impressive movie with strong character designs. But yeah, the ending jumps around way too much without any build-up. Ideally, this should have been a TV-series, not a movie.

Storytelling:	7/10 – Excellent atmosphere, but way too short for its story, which especially bites back at the end.
Characters:	8/10 – Both the lead and side characters are wonderfully portrayed in the short time that this movie has for them.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Excellent soundtrack, nice, though not the most consistent animation.
Setting:	9/10 – Based on a number of excellent ideas, and takes excellent advantage of this.

Suggestions:
– Please Save my Earth (done by the same director, and again ridiculously rushed despite having an awesome premise)
– Strange Dawn
– Saishuu Heiki Kanojo

Ah, a story about a wolf and a goat becoming friends. Going into this movie, I expected a lot of cheese with this recipe to get it even remotely off the ground, but The whole set-up of the premise was surprisigly well told here. Sure, the goat is a bit of a masochist, but the writing of the parts where they meet each other and become friends is top notch.

Instead of the usual cheesy lines here, the characters can actually speak to each other in a normal way, and they’re aware of the issues that come with their friendship. It’s both interesting for kids and adults to watch. It takes a deeper look at the usual “wolves and goats don’t go together”, and especially the nonchalant way of the lead characters, instead of the usual angst you see with these kinds of stories, stands out as interesting. Beyond that there are also enough comical moments for the kids to enjoy.

As the movie goes on however, it turns more and more into a “been there done that” star crossed friends type of story. It starts to more and more follow the generic formula for these kids of stories, but the characters make it nice to watch. The creators lose it near the ending, though. The movie ends with a bunch of really weird deus ex machina that have no purpose whatsoever, especially considering the messages that it wanted to convey. It’s the type of ending that actually makes the rest of the movie also less good, because of all of the build-up it just nullifies thanks to the completely stupid twists it pulls.

So yeah, for the Wolf versus Sheep/Goad storyk, I’d recommend Chirin no Suzu over Arashi no Yoru ni, but at least it has a lot of eye candy here. This movie looks unlike any other movie I’ve seen. The camera work is also pretty interesting here. It’s a nice watch in any case, though don’t expect anything special.

Storytelling:	7/10 – Nice atmosphere and pleasant pacing, though it also has a number of very blatant Deus ex Machina, and these are pretty bad ones.
Characters:	8/10 – Good and down to earth chemistry between the lead characters for this type of story.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Very interesting looking graphics and animation, though some parts (most notably the muddy river) stick out as a sore thumb.
Setting:	7/10 – Some nondescript landscape. I feel like the creators could have done better to flesh it out.

Suggestions:
– Chirin no Suzu
– Yobi – The Five-Tailed Fox

Here’s another one completely done in CG. Mr Stain has thirteen episodes of seven minutes long, plus one that clocks in at half an hour. It pretty much tells fourteen standalone stories about Mr Stain, and some of the things that he finds around his Junk Alley (why yes, this one has a very descriptive title).

The character models are much more cartoonish than usual with CG anime, which solves the Botox faces problem quite nicely. In fact, the entire series has no words in it whatsoever, and it entirely reliant on the nonverbal communication between the different characters, and that is something that this series is really good at. The facial expressions, the way that the characters move, their gestures. It’s all simplifies, but very sincere and genuine. Also be sure not to miss the EDs for this series, which are based around a wonderful idea.

The stories themselves are a bit of a mixed bag. There are about five or six episodes, like the one with the fish or the one with the fridge that are rather uninspired, and don’t do much interesting. On the other side of the coin though, some of the episodes are shocking, some are touching, some are hilarious and others are just completely bizarre. Some of the things that Mr Stain finds but especially the things that the creators do with them are very imaginative. I especially loved the episode with the Flower and the one with the Baby, due to the bafflingly unexpected twists that the stories in these episodes take.

Beyond that, there isn’t much to this series: episodes don’t build up for each other and the characters just reset themselves after episode after the final one, so there’s not much depth to this thing. It’s a great quick watch though, if you’re in for something strange, yet uncomplicated. What really sets this one apart is some of the bizarre and sometimes even macabre ideas it goes with. It’s completely unpredictable, and yet it’s not just random for the sake of being random.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Fourteen standalone stories, told without any dialogue and makes good use of the fact that there isn’t any dialogue.
Characters:	8/10 – Lovable and well acted, but completely one-dimensional.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Simple character designs, but well animated. doesn’t have the graphical problems that most CG anime have, and yet it was made eight years ago.
Setting:	8/10 – It’s just a strange alley, but the things that pop up there are very creative.

Suggestions:
– Hoshi no Umi no Amuri
– Genius Party – Deathtic 4
– Fireball

They may look similar, but make no mistake: Appleseed 2004 and Appleseed Ex Machina (2007) are two completely different movies. They’re both action movies, but the former’s big focus was on its setting; the latter’s is on its characters.

Seriously, Appleseed has a great and interesting concept. Ex Machina doesn’t really use anything of it, and pretty much reduces everything to “humans, androids and hacking”. It doesn’t ask any of the interesting questions that the 2004 series did, and just takes its setting for granted, coming with a generic brainwashing thriller.

On the other side of the coin, the characters are far from as clumsily portrayed as the 2004 series. Oh, it’s still cheesy, but it’s nevertheless a major improvement. The characters actually developed a bit in between the two movies (though don’t expect any development in the movies themselves), and the drama between them is simple, a bit cheesy, but effective enough for the action to not become boring.

The 2004 movie also had its botox faces problem. You know, the faces that may look good in screenshots, yet look plastic as soon as they try to move. Ex Machina also has this problem a bit, but it’s much less severe. The cutting and camera work is much more skillfully done and this make the jerky and unnatural movements a bit more bearable to watch.

Basically things come down to this: the 2004 series had a lot of flaws and one thing that it was very good at (the setting), while Ex Machina doesn’t have any flaws that are as big as the 2004 movie, yet also doesn’t really have anything to stand out, and is simply a decent action movie to pass an hour and a half. Take your pick.

Oh, just one thing: this movie does have its share of Deus ex Machina. I mean, what moron really calls his movie “Ex Machina” anyway? You’re just going to draw extra attention to them anyway.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Well cut and unambitious, though nicely built up. If you ignore the Deus ex Machinas in the plot.
Characters:	7/10 – Not as one-dimensional as the 2004 movie, but these people have cheese.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Nothing special, but decent action and a solid soundtrack.
Setting:	7/10 – Loses a point by not using its setting in the slightest and making it really simple.

Suggestions:
– Wonderful Days
– Black Magic M66
– Catblue Dynamite

So, time for me to review another installment of the World Masterpiece Theatre. Little Princedss Sara tells about about a young, really rich girl who joins a boarding school in London. What happens after that though… let’s just say that I’ve rarely seen so much suffering in just one series. If you’re planning to watch this series, be prepared for a gruelling journey.

It’s hard to talk about this series withuot spoilers, but let me just say that Little Princess Sara has very strong messages against poverty and the hypocricy to which people look at it. It’s a long series, 46 episodes. In this time it delivers a haunting and very in-depth portrayal of poverty and neglect on children. Beyond that, ti also has strong morals and values that are delivered with heart, instead of cheese.

The scenario really helps by being wonderfully realistic. Seriously, a ton of time in this series is spent on very mundane tasks and nothing else. The creators strike an excellent balance between this and character development, leading to an entire cast of characters with a lot of depth and development, miles away from your usual stereotypes.

Like all good WMTs, it also really knows how to build up. It’s a very one-sided series, but the final climax is without a doubt a highlight of the entire series in which everything it built up to comes together. This show definitely knows how to do drama well, and even if the animation is dated at this point, it still manages to bring the characters to life with more detail than most series nowadays can.

I’ve got lot of praises for this series, but at the same time I also want to say that I do not consider this series amongst the best of the World Masterpiece Theatre. I’m going to be nitpicking a bit here, but the standard of this franchise is just so damn high. My issue with this series was that at times, it was a bit too “shoujo”, if that makes any sense. Some twists were delivered with a sense of shoujo-ific melodrama that definitely could have been done more subtle, and some characters spend a long time as cliched and boring rivals who do exactly what you predict them to do, and there is one twist near the end that is just… way too convenient. Sara herself is also way too pure. It’s like she could have been the love child of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa, or in that direction. All of this does not create characters as realistic, as some of the other WMT series, plus the one-sidedness of the plot also doesn’t create them as dynamic as the others.

At this point I’vwe managed to finish 10 WMT-series, so here I present an updated ranking of my favourite WMT-series to close off this reivew (the ones that I fully finished, at least), in the order of the ones I liked the least to the ones I liked the most. Little Princess Sara ranks fifth. It’s a wonderful series with amazing and unique characters, despite my above criticisms I really recommend it if you like the kind of children series that really try to tell an excellent story that takes both itself and its target audience seriously.
10. My Daddy Long Legs
9. Konnichiwa Anne
8. Tom Sawyer
7. Ie Naki Ko Remi
6. Romeo’s Blue Skies
5. Little Princess Sara
4. Anne of Green Gables
3. Porfy no Nagai Tabi
2. Perrine Monogatari
1. Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette

Storytelling:	8/10 – Realistic, detailed and down to earth, though a bit one-sided and melodramatic at times.
Characters:	9/10 – Realistic and full of depth and development.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Dated, but very detailed. The soundtrack is a bit disappointing, though.
Setting:	9/10 – Excellent social commentary, themes and messages. Plus a wonderful portrayal of London of more than a century ago.

Suggestions:
– Perrine Monogatari
– Anne of Green Gables

Now, I am writing this review as a fan of the Votoms Franchise. If this movie had not been part of it, I probably would have rated it higher, but only slightly.

The reason I’m saying this is because of the following: I became a fan of Votoms because of the alternative it provided to your average cheesy and angsty giant robot series. Where series like Gundam and its ilk were full of angst and cheesy morals, it provided a mature storytelling that took both itself and its characters seriously, going beyond characters screaming and yelling melodramatically. And really, I’m all for going into different directions with your franchise, but Case;Irvine does everything that Votoms avoided so well.

In Votoms, the fact that people die in a war was taken for granted. That’s what allowed it to pull so much interesting drama. Case;Irvine meanwhile is all about “war is bad”, “thou shalt not kill”, “oh, I’m the villain so I kill people for no reason at all muaha” and “ooh, I killed many innocent people in the past. I’m very angsty now! And this just goes on and on. You remember that little girl in the promo art? Her entire point in this movie is to angst and remind the lead character of how he shouldn’t fight. This is not Votoms at all. Heck, it’s even too cheesy to be like Gundam.

I’m also am not kidding about that villain, by the way. Case;Irvine could have been at least a decent angst movie if it wasn’t for this guy. While the lead character still had his scenes in which he doesn’t angst, this guy absolutely doesn’t. He’s consistently yelling, sprouting cheesy morals and looking for a fight with the lead character. This guy is completely overacting for the sake of overacting. To make matters even worse, Votoms also stood out in the way that it didn’t have any custom built mechas besides slight upgrades or colour changes. This guy then comes out of nowhere and mounts these gigantic hands to his own mecha, making it look completely silly in the more realistic setting of Votoms. The entire final battle (which takes up a lot of the time of this movie) is reduced to this really boring angst-fest in which the umpth strange robot has to be taken care of.

The sole salvation of this movie is the music. It’s perfect, and really atmospheric and does a truly excellent job of building up the atmosphere. But seriously. Please let Finder and Koei Futatabi not be so ridiculously angsty. Or heck. This wasn’t even angst, this was downright emo.

Storytelling:	6/10 – It’s definitely different from the usual Votoms. However, instead of experimenting with a unique new style, it got turned into a generic super robot movie.
Characters:	5/10 – Pathetic villain, way too much angst and none of the characters make any impact at all.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Awesome soundtrack. The animation is there… but not really remarkable in any way.
Setting:	5/10 – Destroys some of the the core aspects of Votoms. Not good.

Suggestions:
– Mobile Police Patlabor WXIII (an example of how to correctly get a movie to take on new characters and a new direction).
– The Wings of Honneamise
– Jin Roh – The Wolf Brigade

In 1977, the people from Sanrio came together and determined that kids’ movies overall were a bit too happy and cheerful. So, with some excellent writers and one heck of a catchy theme song, they created Chirin no Suzu. A story that does exactly the opposite of what the cover seems to suggest.

Believe me, this movie is dark. It’s still aimed at children, but unlike the vast majority of the other movies of this genre, it refuses to dumb itself down for its audience. It starts out as your general lamb versus wolf story, but quickly steps away from all other stories that follow the same trope. It’s packed with mature life lessons and morals that other kids’ movies usually just gloss over, or refuse to even mention.

Let me tell you what makes this such a great movie, though: it’s a movie entirely dedicated to character development. It’s a character study, and a wonderful one. The movie is only forty minutes long, but it’s entirely dedicated to the lead character, Chirin, learning new things and changing significantly because of this.

It does have some flaws though. The only available version seems to be an English dub. Most of the voices are very good (especially the voice of the wolf is awesome), though the voice for the little lead sheep can be very hammy. This does lead to a number of very melodramatic scenes that really could have been done more subtle.

Now, the character designs are very simple. At first sight they may not look like much, but the inbetween animation is actually very good here. It’s very smooth, especially for an anime. Overall, if you don’t mind the melodrama and are looking for an old, yet different movie, this is a very interesting one to watch.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Dark and very violent for a kids’ movie, but packs a great story with many morals and life lessons. At times it’s overdramatic, though.
Characters:	9/10 – Great character development that is really well used.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Okay, so it looks dated, but the inbetween animation still is very good and the soundtrack is excellent as well.
Setting:	8/10 – Not the main focus of this movie at all, but doesn’t get in the way of what’s important.

Suggestions:
– A Tree of Palme
– The Dog of Flanders
– Oseam