Category: Anime Reviews

Hell yeah, 700th review! For this one I again wanted to do something special, so why not look at something that actually won an Oscar?

How much can you do in only 12 minutes? Tsumiki no Ie shows that even within such a short time-frame, you can tell a great story. Tsumiki no Ie is very imaginative, it’s very artistic and is really a must-watch for everyone looking for a bit of time to spend.

Within twelve minutes, the creators make optimal use of their time in order to show what kind of an old guy the central character is, and yet it never feels rushed: the pacing remains slow and natural, and the acting is incredibly subtle, yet full of life. I refuse to spoil what it’s exactly going to be about, but let me just say that the entire idea behind the setting of this very short movie is a unique one.

This is a very short review, because I believe that this is one of those movies of which you don’t need to say much, and trying to analyze it just takes away some of its meaning. Suffice to say that it’s wonderfully executed, blending video, audio and storytelling all into one to create a great experience.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Very natural pacing. Very detailed.
Characters:	9/10 – Great characterization for only 12 minutes.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Excellent and dynamic animation; soothing soundtrack.
Setting:	8/10 – Simple, but unique and original.

Suggestions:
– Comedy
– Genius Party – Hapy Machine
– Kino no Tabi

So with Firebal’s second season coming up in the Spring Season, I got curious about the first season, so I checked it out. The first season too is entirely done in CG, its episodes are also just two minutes long and it’s also a comedy. What kind of comedy? One with deapan humour. Lots and lots of deadpan humour.

This show is basically two expressionless robots talking to each other while making strange poses. The dialogue itself is really silly, but the voice actors deliver them like they were intended to be serious, and do so quite well without much overacting. And at the same time it’s not like the dialogue is completely stupid either: it’s creative and makes a ton of references to just about anything. Every episode feels different and I can see more than enough inspiration for a second season.

Overall this is a pretty good recommendation for those looking for a quick laugh. You really breeze through these episodes and especially the punchlines of each episode are quite funny and well delivered. The worst part of this show probably is the monkey that pops up in the llater episodes. The creators didn’t seem to really know what they wanted to do with him.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Good comedic timing, very consistently funny dialogue.
Characters:	8/10 – Good dialogue and excellent voice actors for such a short comedy.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Entirely in CG, but the character poses make up for it.
Setting:	8/10 – References everything from dolphins to jetpacks.

Suggestions:
– Usavich
– Omoshi Magical Theatre: Risky Safety
– Cromartie High School

So, I watch a lot of anime. With this, I’m only two reviews away from my 700th review on this site, and I really try to watch as much anime as possible. So with that in mind, I do not make the following statement lightly: Gankutsuou is my favourite series of all of the anime I’ve watched during the past year and a half, and perhaps even longer. It’s often referred to as one of Gonzo’s masterpieces, and I wholeheartedly agree. This is everything that I look for in an anime, and then some.

Good Gonzo has always stood out with how damn innovating they kept trying to be. Gankutsuou is a fantastic example of this, but that’s far from everything about this series. Aside from being consistently experimental, it’s also extremely well executed.

I have not read the story of the original Count of Monte Cristo, but regardless, the creators did a fantastic job of converting it into a story that fits perfectly into 24 episodes. They took the entire setting and turned it into a futuristic setting that at the same time retained the atmosphere of France of more than two hundred years and the aristocratic culture of the days before the french revolution. It’s completely fiction and even through the weird graphics style, it feels strangely authentic. The setting here is really solid, and yet it’s the part of this show that impressed me the least.

Instead, we have some fantastic acting from the cast of characters that really brings them to life. There is a ton of character development in this series, and the creators even managed to make an often whining teenaged lead into a compelling character (though granted, before his development he does not stand out as the strongest member of this cast). The characters in this series all have a ton of flaws, and this series uses those brilliantly. The entire plot weaves together all of the different characters and their backstories, and just about everyone gets his or her moment to really show off his or her character.

And the way in which this is done was a really emotionally resonating one. This series knows exactly when to be subtle, and when to release all brakes and go over the top. The delivery in this is just perfect, with creative poses and animation in which a lot his happening at the same time, yet the story remains focused on what it wants to show. It’s really well shown with a lot of detail in how the characters are reacting to each other.

And as for the graphics… they’re some of the best you can get if you don’t mind the intrusive CG. This series is full of excellent visual ideas. I mean, just about every shot is absolutely gorgeous and it’s ridiculous how creative the visuals can get. The creators really tried to stuff a ton of ideas into the visuals here, as long as they all fitted into the story. The result is a show that looks absolutely unlike anything else. The animation itself isn’t the most consistent, but when it delivers, it really delivers some amazing and hard hitting inbetween animation that combines perfectly with the storytelling. Gankutusou really was a show in which Gonzo could show off what it was able to do with its CG, and while this show is obviously heavy on the CG, it doesn’t feel out of place. Instead, the graphics create this gorgeous whole.

Overall, I found this series one heck of a ride, and Gankutsuou is very likely going to end up in my top 20 favourite anime, somewhere between #15 and #20. I absolutely adore these kinds of series that can get a huge emotional response out of me. It’s obviously not a show for everyone (and I did hear that this anime changed a ton of stuff from the original novel), but to me, Gankutusou took a while to build up, but as soon as it hit its stride just about everything fitted together perfectly.

Storytelling:	10/10 – Wonderfully paced and balanced, just about every episode significantly advances the plot and comes with new developments that are delivered strongly, knowing exactly when to be subtle and when to be over the top, all culimnating into an amazing ending.
Characters:	9/10 – Excellent dialogue and acting with really dynamic characters. There are a few stereotypes like the angsty male lead, but even he is portrayed and developed wonderfully.
Production-Values:	10/10 – Unique. Stuffed with tons of visual ideas, both in terms of art and animation.
Setting:	9/10 – Takes France of centuries ago, and successfully transforms it into something futuristic and unique while still remaining authentic.

Suggestions:
– Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette
– Mahou Shoujotai
– Casshern Sins

Anime Innovations Tokyo is an initiative to fund innovative and new projects. Tailenders is its second major production, after Cencoroll two years ago. Both resulted in a half-hour movie, but apart from that they’re completely different. By far the most apparent difference is that while in Cencoroll it was the animation that stood out, Tailenders has awesome artwork. Just about every shot in this show looks great and very stylish, with the only downside being some CG that doesn’t blend in well.

Furthermore, where Cencoroll really put in effort in putting forth solid and believable characters, Tailenders doesn’t care about that in the slightest. Here, the characters are simple, hot blooded and trying to look cool. They’re nice to watch, but completely one-dimensional with one-sided voice acting. Instead, the innovation here comes from all of the bizarre and original ideas that it put in its back-story. Seriously, this may be a racing show, but the how and why of just about everything is completely unconventional.

Unlike Cencoroll, which was down to earth in its action, Tailenders lacks any subtlety, and is pretty shallow in its execution and dialogue. Because of that, it just isn’t as good, but it’s still worth the watch for the effort that went into the good parts. And despite the shallow build-up, the ridiculously high-speed did manage to create quite a bit of adrenaline.

Storytelling:	7/10 – Dialogue and delivery need more work, but the high speed racing sequences are worth the watch.
Characters:	6/10 – Cool looking, but one dimensional with one-sided acting.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Gorgeous artwork with a unique style. Animation is a bit stiff at times, though.
Setting:	8/10 – Many neat and original ideas. The delivery could be better, but the concept of this movie is really imaginative.

Suggestions:
– Cencoroll
– Manie Manie: Meikyuu Monogatari
– Wonderful Days

So, before you start watching this show, you should note that it is a children’s adventure, and so it does have some of the cliches that usually come with this genre.But damn, is it a well executed one!

It’s basically the story of five kids who get to travel through space during their summer holidays, but the creators did a truly amazing job on the graphics. The designs in this show are really imaginative, and this show just consistently comes with new ideas and designs for the characters to run into. The artwork is gorgeous, both in the foreground and the background, but by far the best is how expressive the animation of the characters is. The character in this movie really come to life in the way they’re animated; it’s incredibly dynamic in the way that the emotions, poses and facial expressions are constantly changing. There are tons of details hidden in the nonverbal communication between these characters, thanks to the surprisingly fluid animation.

The characters in this movie, despite being kids, are really likable. One of the reasons is that this movie manages to remember that it’s dealing with kids here, and uses this well. There is an epic plot in this movie, but it devotes most of its time to simple explorations and characters running into new and strange alien things. The drama that pops up near the end of the movie is also surprisingly good.

But yeah, there are some cliches, the worst one being the bad guys with really terrible security staff. Near the end, the movie tried to be too epic. There is also little character development for a movie of two hours and fifteen minutes, despite the effective drama.

Still, this was A-1’s first movie and I’d say mission accomplished. It’s a really enjoyable family movie that keeps a great balance between life-like characterizations and imaginative space adventures. I wasn’t bored for once second.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Well told and believable, yet an entertaining adventure. Gets too epic at the end, though.
Characters:	9/10 – Terrific characterization, though perhaps not much character development.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Truly gorgeous animation and artwork.
Setting:	8/10 – A ton of great ideas. A bit childish, but they work quite well.

Suggestions:
– Mysterious Cities of Gold
– Secret of Cerulean Sand
– The Cat Returns

When the Earth is under attack from sort of menace, whether these are aliens, robots or giant mutated freaks, the trick is to make them feel like a threat. Really give off the feeling of “we’re screwed”. Blue Gender is really good at this.

In Blue Gender, the earth is overrun by freakish bug-like monsters. As the series went on, and showed how these creatures (called Blue) operate, it had convinced me surprisingly quickly: yes, these things are able to nearly completely wipe out the human race. They are completely brutal in their hunts, they have evolved to the point where they occupy every part of civilized areas, and whenever you try to kill them, they only evolve and get more nasty. Dying in this show is something really easy: just one careless moment can be the result of a brutal and unforgiving death and just when you think you’re safe, another threat just pops up from the corner. Blue Gender is a large part survival horror, and it really knows how to do that correctly.

As the show goes went into its second half, it really started to impress me, though. Beyond the survival horror, it is also really focused on the character development of its lead couple. This character-development is really excellent: at the end of the series, both of them have changed completely, but believably. The changes that their characters undergo gradually twist the series in a completely different mood and focus. The romance also actually gets developed believably and gets somewhere for once!

That’s pretty much the gist of what you need to know for this series: if you like survival horror and character development, then this is a must-watch. It’s rather simple, but this show hardly has any weak moment and does what it does really well. On top of that, it actually gives quite a bit of depth to its setting through a bit of political intrigue here and there. There are just three things that you need to be aware of here:

1). This show has a very low budget. It’s well directed, but the cleanup animation is lacking throughout most of the frames, and there are a lot of still frames around.
2). It’s a show with a lot of angst. And really, once you see the series you’ll see that there are enough reasons why this series has characters purposefully acting like idiots at times in order to show the mental state they’re in, it can be annoying. Clashes of ideals are also a big theme here.
3). Be prepared to go WTF at the ending. Just… be prepared…

Storytelling:	9/10 – Survival horror like it should be. Keeps the tension constantly high and interesting, despite the simple storyline. Excellent atmosphere.
Characters:	9/10 – The thing that really sets this show above most a lot of the other shows of its kind. Angsty, but amazingly developed and easily relatable characters. The main characters especially, but also the side characters do their job wonderfully.
Production-Values:	8/10 – The animation is obviously lacking, but not bad enough to get in the way of the rest of the series..
Setting:	9/10 – Few mecha series have been able to achieve this bleak of a setting. It really manages to portray that things have gotten completely desperate.

Suggestions:
– Shiki
– Gasaraki
– Armored Trooper Votoms
(I’m not putting High School of the Dead here, because it is inferior to Blue Gender in every way apart from the graphics; call it Diet Blue Gender if you will).

The Break Blade Movies are slowly getting better. The emphasis still is on slowly, though. After this third installment, I’ve still seen too little to really recommend it, but it’s not like the other movies will be doomed to this as well, but at the same time it also introduced a few plot points that I really wonder whether they will work in the rest of the story.

The third movie is the first that actually uses the build-up that the previous movies created, and especially Cleo makes good use of it, with a large portion of this movie devoted to her. This movie overall was quite good in getting the viewer accustomed to most of the side-characters. At the same time though, it still didn’t really solve the problem of its male lead: he still is one of the least likable of the series. This movie just didn’t have as much of him as the previous two, and it was particularly interesting when he wasn’t involved.

The action scenes also were pretty good in this movie, but they weren’t as well animated: there were a few strangely placed still frames, and they did not look as polished as they were in the previous two movies, but the choreography made up for that.

In the end though, I’m still missing something at this point. It fails to stand out in what it’s trying to do and the result is a series of movies that do have some interesting portrayal of warfare in mechas, but too little to make it really worth watching for three hours so far.

Storytelling:	7/10 – Solid, but nothing really attention-grabbing. Should have tried harder.
Characters:	8/10 – The characters make progression in this movie.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Solid, but nothing special.
Setting:	8/10 – It’s simple and therefore well portrayed and relatively believable.

Suggestions:
– Gasaraki
– Yomigaeru Sora – Rescue Wings
– Mobile Polkice Patlabor

I currently have reviewed almost 700 series (this is my 692th review, to be exact), and yet I haven’t quite seen anything like The Big O here. The way in which it somehow manages to combine film noir with giant robots fighting each other is really commendable. On top of that, the soundtrack is completely unique as well, it has a unique main character for an anime, and even the entire premise that this series is based on is just… unlike anything I’ve seen. Sunrise, I applaud you for creating such an interesting series!

First things first, though, because this series does like to toy with your suspense of disbelief a lot. You see, the protagonist, Roger Smith has the profession of “Negotiator”: he mediates between fair deals in order to solve conflicts. And seriously, you’d be surprised at how this show time and time again makes these negotiation jobs boil down to giant robot fights. Some villains have some of the most bizarre reasons to suddenly grab a giant robot in order to attempt to accomplish their goals.

I also hope that you like series that don’t bother to answer all of the questions they ask, because this show loves to pretend that it doesn’t make any sense. Instead, it leaves things up to the viewer to interpret, and fill in the blanks. And that’s the beauty of this series: none of the characters really has any idea what’s going on. What we see here is 26 episodes of characters struggling against the unknown, everyone doing this with a different interpretation. This show doesn’t just have an original setting, it also manages to make it very deep by consistently looking at it through different eyes and trying to analyze it.

It also helps that it’s wonderfully told. The entire series has this great mysterious atmosphere, and the stories it presents work really well with the lead couple, Roger Smith and Dorothy. The two of them also play off each other extremely well and are both very well written. Roger Smith is a great lead character because he constantly thinks and never takes anything for granted, while Dorothy’s deadpan portrayal of an android is consistently haunting. The dialogue is also really well written, and the scriptwriters time and time again manage to accurately portray all of the different characters end up in this series.

The Big O is mostly episodic, but it’s the kind where everything comes together at the end. When I watched some of the episodes, they seemed pretty pointless at first, but now that I just finished the final episodes, I’m surprised at how each of the episodes had its purpose, either by adding to one of the characters, giving the setting more depth, or the storyline itself.

My one complaint is that the action scenes, while wonderfully combined with the dialogue, do feel a bit formulaic after a while. This also has to do with the fact that the battles are often held held for… strange reasons. As the show goes on, the stakes that are put on the battles actually increase, though, which takes the monotony away again.

This show also has its share of mindscrew moments. If you’re looking for a confusing series to watch, then this definitely is a recommendation, because when you look beyond the unanswered questions you can see that this show has a story that the creators put a lot of thought and effort into.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Excellent atmosphere and good build-up. The script is great and everything nicely comes together after a while. Just don’t start nit-picking every tiny detail.
Characters:	9/10 – Diverse, no teenagers, and the characters fit the setting exactly and make excellent use of this.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Unique look, and during the money shots the inbetween animation really is impressive.
Setting:	9/10 – Imaginative, unique and thought-provoking. It doesn’t answer a majority of the questions it asks, but knows it and uses it to its full advantage.

Suggestions:
– Argento Soma
– Bokura no
– Gasaraki

I think it’s no surprise that my favourite director of all time is Kazuki Akane. If you look at my Top 10 favourite anime, this guy directed three of those spots, and even his flawed series of Geneshaft was fascinating science fiction. Now, I’m not going to compare Heat Guy J to his other series, though. The entire review would then pretty much look like “Yeah, the [insert element here] is very good, but not as good as Escaflowne, Noein and Birdy” over and over again, because as a standalone series, Heat Guy J has a lot to like.

Starting off, the action in this series is really good and also surprisingly varied. The animators here ended up experimenting with a ton of different styles for animating their action scenes, you have clean brawl-fests, there are fights with messy yet very expressive animation, there are gunfights, car chases, sword battles. This wide array of different styles makes every action scene here worth watching. If anything, just watch the first episode for some superbly directed and animated action. The soundtrack too is very excellent and varied as well. The character designs will probably take a while to (this and Escaflowne have the same character designs ;)), but once you do they too look great, diverse and imaginative.

The show is pretty episodic, and the ratio of random to plot related episodes is about 30 to 70, and even episodes that might seem random at first turn out to have some significance as the story goes on. Heat Guy J’s story is very much dependant on its cast of characters, which really is excellent. The acting is perhaps a bit stiff at times, but the entire cast grows into something lovable by the end of the series. All of the major side characters either get some significant development or an interesting back-story, and I especially loved how the final fight with the major villain at the end ties everything together, wrapping this series up very nicely without leaving any bad aftertaste whatsoever.

The series takes place in another one of those post-apocalyptic futures, but what’s interesting is that while most shows of this kind tend to have a very bleak and depressing outlook, Heat Guy J balances this out with also a lot of positive energy. On one hand, it delves into corruption and crime, but on the other it’s having fun and celebrating humanity’s collective ability to survive a harsh environment and making the best of what they have. This balance they create is great and definitely gives this show an interesting setting to work with.

So yeah, to get back to the first paragraph: this show has a lot of good stuff in it, though I also admit that it did not reach the heights of Birdy, Noein and Escaflowne. Most of the difference lies in the details, though: the latter ones were much better fleshed out and the only real flaw of Heat Guy J is its stiff acting at times, Still, it’s hard not to love the titular J and his constant one liners about what a real man should be, or any of the other characters for that matter.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Nice pacing, interesting stories.
Characters:	9/10 – Great and lovable characters with diverse backgrounds. Nice depth and development to them as well.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Excellent animation, especially during the action scenes. Awesome soundtrack.
Setting:	8/10 – Simple but effective. It’s well fleshed out at the end.

Suggestions:
– Noein
– DT Eightron
– Turn A Gundam