Iron Man Review – 52,5/100




Madhouse, they’ve really established themselves as a powerhouse unlike any other animation studio, so when they announced their marvel project, I’m sure many people were looking forward to it: four twelve episode series, focusing on Iron Man, Wolverine, the X-Men and Blade. With two years of hype surrounding it, I was really looking forward to see what they could do with these premises. And then Iron Man finally aired. Oh boy.

Let’s start with the visuals. I usually don’t mind strange character-designs at all. In Iron Man though, people just look silly. The character-designs themselves aren’t particularly the problem, it’s just that all of the characters are drawn off-model 90% of the time. The result isn’t pretty: Tony Stark looks like a goat, one of the reporters looks like a warthog, it just screams uninvolved outsourcing all around. An interview with a Madhouse executive seems to hint at how the highest priority for their staff was spent on finishing the movie Redline, and it really shows that this had its effects on Iron Man.

If the graphics were just the issue then this could have been easily forgiven. But just about everything about Iron Man is just horrible mediocre. Take the plot: the series follows the tried and tested “first half random stories, second half plot”-pattern, and it fails at both of them. The random stories int he first half are just utterly stupid. Things are just there, without ever getting a reason why. They’re a complete mess at stupid decisions made by just about everyone. My favourite was the time in which Tony Stark gets attacked by a hacker, and the hilariously bad way in which he eventually gets defeated. Most of the stories though are so dull that they aren’t even bad enough to be funny.

The main story of this series on the other hand is just so ridiculously corny that it completely saps any kind of creativity that could have been put into it. These are especially the parts that feel like they were written by a twelve year old: it pulls the cheesiest twists in the book, over and over again. The dialogue is full of these cheesy morals without any attempt to give them depth: they’re completely shallow. Especially the final episodes are just one big soap opera that pull the kinds of plot twists that try to be sad but end up horribly corny and predictable.

That kind of a mess of a plot could in theory have been saved by the cast of characters… but no. They suck too. The worst is this reporter girl whose annoying antics have no place in this story, but every single character in this series is bad. Tony Stark has been turned in this moralizing womanizing dork, and the people around them lack any kind of creativity or even characterization.

I’ve been blogging for more than five years now. And seriously: I have never seen a worse season for Madhouse than the current Autumn Season. I wish I could say something positive about this series, and I guess that there is one episode that I actually liked. I mean the one with the psychic girl. It’s still riddled with problems, but at least it tried to be a bit genuine. The rest all is mediocre at best and while it may not be the worst series out there (hey, it’s nowhere as terrible as say KissxSis or Ladies Versus Butlers), this one could have been infinitely better, if it just was handled by a staff that actually cared about it. In the end, I can only say one positive thing about it: the soundtrack rocks. Seriously, go listen to it.

Storytelling: 5/10 – Moderately entertaining at best, cheesy, corny, shallow, superficial and just plain stupid at worst.
Characters: 4/10 – The character development that’s there is terrible, most of the characters are just paper bags.
Production-Values: 7/10 – I very rarely deduct points in this category: I only do that when the graphics actually get in the way of the rest of the series. They do here, making characters who try to be really serious look incredibly silly.
Setting: 5/10 – It’s the kind of setting that tries to be epic but fails horribly.

Suggestions:
Ultraviolet: Code 044 (This is how superhero anime should be done god dammit!)
Testujin 28-Go (Yes, Tetsujin roughly translates to Iron Man)
Mobile Police Patlabor
I mean, there are so many examples this series could have followed. And yet it went with the most generic one.

Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu Review – 82,5/100




Denyuuden… was definitely an interesting series. It’s the kind of anime that you normally wouldn’t expect anything great of at first sight (or at least I didn’t), and yet delivers some episodes that completely exceed expectations. The first thing I want to say to people who are planning to give this one a chance: wait until episode three.

This series is a typical example of a series with its ups and downs. About half of it is a bit of a boring fantasy, the other half is an excellent character study. The boring half resides unfortunately around the middle of the series, starting at episode five and lasting for around twelve episodes. They’re basically a long string of building up, filled with uninteresting side-characters and scenarios that have potential, but never really get interesting to warrant the amount of time this show devotes on it.

The final third is where the things get interesting, though: those with patience will be rewarded with some excellent character development: just about every character, even the most annoying ones, gets better, the plot finally spices up and develops as well, abandoning most of its generic fantasy tropes in favour of a much more character-based progression. It ends with a strong conclusion, albeit a very open ended one (and unfortunately the chances for a second season are looking slim).

In terms of graphics, this is a Zexcs production, meaning that a lot of the series looks rather generic. They did surpass themselves in this series at several areas, though. For once, some of the background art is just gorgeous, but there are also these select few episodes that finally ditch the generic looking characters that have been plaguing Zexcs for ages now and deliver some really good animation here.

Denyuuden is definitely unbalanced. For a 26 episode series, it spends too much of its time on building up that’s rather boring. It both makes it very hard for people to get through it, and takes time away from the parts in which this series gets really good. It definitely annoyed me for a couple of months when I was blogging it. And yet, I just can’t say that it left a bad taste. While not quite of Kobato-levels, the final third did make up for the boring parts. It’s a recommendation for people with patience who are looking for an interesting fantasy title.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Pacing could be better, but can really pack a punch when it wants to.
Characters: 9/10 – All characters have their moments of annoyance, especially side-characters like Milk will get on your nerves. Yet, the character development here is really good, especially for the three main characters.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Mostly nothing special, with some very notable exceptions.
Setting: 8/10 – Is at its best when it takes a back-seat and lets the plot and characters guide it. Standalone it’s pretty much your average fantasy setting.

Suggestions:
Tytania
Senkou no Night Raid
Pandora Hearts

Katanagatari Review – 82,5/100




Clocking in at 12 episodes of 50 minutes each, Katanagatari was definitely an interesting experiment of a series. At first sight it seems like a bit of a boring concept to base a series around a quest to gather a different superpowered sword every episode, in the middle of lots and lots of talking, but it’s got enough charms here.

I personally disliked Bakemonogatari, but Katanagatari finds a good balance between its dialogues. They’re interesting, varried and after a few episodes they become pretty able to carry the whole series. The dialogue does a good job at fleshing out the characters, and discussing what’s going on at the plot. The storyi itself is simple at first sight, but gets pretty detailed as it goes on, with quite a bit of historical significance, meshing in excellently with said dialogue.

Another thing that this series is really good at is its martial arts. The fights in this series are often short and to the point, but they’re often interesting looks at the applications of different fighting and weapon styles that together paint quite a complex exploration of martial arts.

There are some downsides to this, most of them having to do with the fact that this series can become a bit too shounen-ish for its own good. Fights are interesting to watch, but they’re also too unrealistic and too much based on logic and too little on physical flaws. It’s a good thing that this series doesn’t force its characters to play tic tac toe, because that would have kept them busy for an eternity.

That’s just a detail that is of course easy to ignore. What’s a bit less easy to ignore is that while most of the battles are down to earth and thought-provoking, there are these few battles that try to be epic and as a result go way too much in the Dragonball Z direction. Perhaps these battles aren’t incredibly long, but they do become rather uninspired with characters moving conveniently too fast for the naked eye to follow, eliminating any kind of strategy just for the sake of over the top fighting that’s done better in a ton of other series. Especially Emonzaemon is guilty of this, and he’s by far the least interesting characters of the series as well, and a very one-sided villain. That’s a big problem in the second half of the series because he features a lot there.

Togame and Shichika form a great led couple, though and the people they run into in every episode are varied and have great back-stories. When you want to watch this series, you really should take into account that relatively little happens in each episode, it’s a very slow paced series and the dialogues take up a HUGE focus of each episode. If you have the patience to appreciate this, then you’ll be rewarded with quite an enjoyable series.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Great use of dialogue to flesh out the story and characters. Great portrayal of martial arts.
Characters: 8/10 – The main villains could have been better, but the rest of the characters are well fleshed out, with the main characters well developed.
Production-Values: 8/10 – The animation is never spectacular, but does what it needs to do to make this series very stylish.
Setting: 8/10 – 5Interesting back-story in Japan’s history. Martial arts are interesting but unrealistic.

Suggestions:
Amatsuki
Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi
Blade of the Immortal

Irresponsible Captain Tylor Review – 85/100




As a reviewer, I often try to create parts of my reviews for anime in my head as I’m watching them. After 20 episodes of Irresponsible Captain Tylor, I had a fairly good idea of what I was going to say about it: it’s a pretty decent parody of the space genre, poking fun at the incredible luck that protagonists are blessed with, taking that to the absurd while still retaining a serious science fiction story, though it dragged too much at certain parts, had too many generic episodes and cliched characters.

Then I watched the final four episodes, and pretty much had to throw all of my impressions and assumptions overboard and start from scratch.

And I mean, it’s not like Irresponsible Captain Tylor doesn’t have its boring moments. It’s a parody, but sometimes fails in that, for example when it tries to parody the harem genre by having every single female fall in love with Tylor despite an overabundance of other hot guys. That’s not witty; everybody does that. Some of the premises for some of the episodes are also a bit uninspired, where the cliches overshadow the wit of the scenario, not to mention that Tylor himself is annoying beyond belief. And then this show comes and delivers an absolutely fantastic finale that is nothing like the rest of the series, yet ties everything together perfectly, delivers an epic climax and is completely unpredictable in every way.

I mean, it’s Koichi Mashimo here. Especially at the beginning and end of this show, he really shows that before starting Bee-Train, he already was an amazing director. The characters of this series have plenty of annoyances and flaws, and yet they’re far from one dimensional, and grow on you as the series progresses. The best scenes of this series are also amazingly well directed and this show contains some of the best animation I’ve seen from him. To make matters even more interesting, Kenji Kawai did the soundtrack for this one, and yet the music in this series is unlike anything from either him or anything else I’ve heard from Bee-Train. It’s very low-budget and especially excels in how well it’s used with the storytelling.

Whether or not I recommend it to you depends on your patience. I mean, Tylor is specifically designed to annoy both you and the other characters of this series. The middle part is also riddled with cliches that really could have used the parody nature of this series better, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to be annoyed and bored at some part of the series. I too had these points where I just wanted to get over with this series, and yet: most of these flaws are just annoying.

I could hardly spot any bad acting, directing or melodrama in this series and even the generic parts had one or two details that made them fresh and new. The finale of this series however made up for a whole lot for me, leaving behind an excellent aftertaste, compared to all of those series that keep building and building up, without actually knowing what they’re building up for. I would have rated this show much, much lower if it wasn’t for its guts that I wish a lot more of the mainstream series today had. And this isn’t entirely because I’m just a Bee-Train fanboy. I was fully aware that Koichi Mashimo made a really uninspired Sorceror Hunters two years after finishing this series.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Doesn’t aim to be consistently entertaining, is very annoying and cliched at times, yet comes together wonderfully in the end.
Characters: 8/10 – They can and will annoy you. Yet, they’re flawed, dynamic and lovable.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Some of the best episodes have truly excellent animation. The middle episodes are a lot more static, but also stilllook very good for its time.
Setting: 8/10 – 60% of the time it doesn’t make use of its parody status, resulting in a bunch of cliches lumped together. When it does though, it’s awesome.

Suggestions:
Mobile Police Patlabor
Kemonozume
Argento Soma

Zettai Shounen Review – 87,5/100




I’m fan of a lot of different genres, but personally my two favourite genres of anime are science fiction and mystery. Zettai Shounen is a typical example of the latter. Mystery definitely is a tricky genre that’s easy to screw up with, but when done right it can produce some of the most unique series. Zettai Shounen is definitely not for everyone, but at the same time it’s a wonderful example of the mystery genre done right.

First of all though, if you were expecting a fast-paced story, action, or a series that treats its viewers like idiots or people with a short attention span, then go and look somewhere else. A lot of the characters in Zettai Shounen are teenagers, a large theme of this series is adolescence, but at the same time the series treats them with a surprising amount of maturity. Most of the series just consists out of people talking with each other, whether in person or through a phone. These conversations can be short and to the point, but they can also take up half an episode. If you hate series with lots of talking, stay away from this one.

And yet, that’s also the beauty of this series. The thing that makes Zettai Shounen unique is that the mystery is actually fairly simple, yet the conversations that the characters have about it is what makes it deep and complex. Every character in this series has a different way to relate to the mysterious phenomenons that pop up throughout the series and everyone interprets it in a different way.

This is a series by Tomomi Mochizuki, which leads to a wonderfully realistic portrayal and dialogue. The characters all act naturally and far away from stereotypes; there’s nothing overly moe and instead the creators created this wonderful down to earth atmosphere that really draws you in.

This all leads to a truly excellent cast of characters. Aizawa Ayumu is a terrific lead character, unlike just about any other male lead I’ve seen. The relationship he has with his father is especially amazing, but just about half of the cast here in this series sets itself apart and stands as a unique and captivating character. I really loved characters like Miku, Wakkun, Sakakura, Okaka-baba and even the minor side-characters like an old man and his dog with a hat on leave their impression. There is A TON of character development in this series, and the cast gladly makes use of it.

This is a series that’s divided in two halves. The interesting part is that both halves have completely different focuses, and even the lead characters switch (only two regular characters of the first half return as regular characters of the second half). Personally I liked the characters of the first half a little better, but both halves have more than enough to make them worth watching, and the second half especially is where the character development starts shining.

What really sold me over this series however was that it knows exactly how to build up. Instead of wasting time, it’s constantly either trying to develop the characters or flesh out its setting, and it makes everything come together wonderfully during its rare climaxes. Both halves of Zettai Shounen have got some awesome endings that make wonderful use of the build-up that’s been handed to them.

Zettai Shounen is both a very relaxing, and very deep series. It’s skillfully constructed and the dialogue, in what form it may be, is constantly as sharp as a knife. The one thing you shouldn’t do with this series is get impatient, because then you’re missing the entire point of the story, but I really recommend this for any mystery-fan who doesn’t mind quiet stories.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Quiet, yet very sharp. Excellent dialogue, great sense of build-up that it manages to use really well.
Characters: 9/10 – The characters are charming yet flawed, they’re consistently enjoyable to watch and receive a ton of meaningful development throughout the series.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Dreamy soundtrack, undeniable visual style, though the CG can get intrusive at some points.
Setting: 9/10 – Realistic and down to earth, yet deep.

Suggestions:
Ghost Hound
Dennou Coil
– .Hack//Sign

Mahou Shujo Lyrical Nanoha The Movie Review – 77,5/100




So yeah, this turned out to b a recap. Or to be more specific: a retelling of the first season with nearly the exact same plot and scenario (with one major exception, but more on that below), condensed into two hours. The graphics got a major overhaul, and you can pretty much consider this as the cleaned up bite-sized version of Nanoha. It doesn’t take much risks, it does just what it’s supposed to do, but there are much worse recap movies.

Let’s start with the good parts here: the animation. I had to confirm this by rewatching some scenes of the original series (it’s been six years since I watched the first season), but the movie really put in effort to get rid of all of the chunky animation, still frames and deformed faces that riddled its counterparts. The dialogue and scenarios, which were excellent in the TV-series, were simply left alone. It makes flow of the movie a lot more dynamic.

Still, the movie did cut away pretty much four hours of footage, and that does hurt; especially on the titular character Nanoha. It cuts away a lot of the building up to make this movie much more action-packed than the TV-series, but in its turn it also skips much of Nanoha’s characterization: she no longer feels like just an ordinary girl: she just runs into Yuno, he gives her her magical powers and she’s like “okay”, without ever questioning him. These things happen more often in the movie, and that introduces cheese. Because of that, this movie just isn’t as good as the TV-series.

Also, there is one part of the movie that contains actual new footage. I won’t spoil exactly what part that is, but nevertheless I really appreciated that part. It wasn’t exactly vital to the plot, and yet it gave some new depth to one particular in this movie, and it also made the person in question a much more interesting character.

My general stance on recap movies is that I hate them unless they prove me otherwise. I believe that just retelling the same story again is lazy and that they should have come up with something more interesting, yet they can be good movies with the right execution. Nanoha’s movie did convince me, even though it’s not as good as its TV-series, because I can see what the creators wanted to do with it: Nanoha definitely looks better than ever now, and now you can also watch the first season during a random movie night with friends. If you’ve got more time than that though, I still recommend going for the TV-series.

On a side-note: the StrikerS Movie should prove to be very interesting, because of how much time its television series wasted on pointless build-up. The second Nanoha movie, which most likely is going to recap A’s will also fail to really condense the same story into just two hours: it’s just way too complex for that. StrikerS however really could use some overhaul.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Sacrifices build-up for a much better flowing story.
Characters: 7/10 – Skips fleshing the characters out, which ultimately bites the back with cheese, especially Nanoha becomes too static and perfect. Fate’s story still manages to shine, though.
Production-Values: 8/10 – For movie standards it’s perhaps nothing special, but for Nanoha’s standards the graphics really got a massive overhaul.
Setting: 8/10 – Ah, back when Nanoha’s setting still wasn’t so unnecessarily complicated (I’m looking at you, StrikerS).

Suggestions:
Air The Motion Picture
– Card Captor Sakura
Blue Drop

Kimagure Orange Road – I Want To Return To That Day Review – 87,5/100




It’s strange: you can pretty much predict what’s going to happen in this movie if you watched the TV-series and the OVAs. They just kept building up and up to this bubble, which finally bursts in “I want to return to that day”. But heck, this is one of the closest things you’ll see to a perfect movie: anything more or less and it would only have made the movie less memorable. Kimagure Orange Road already set a number of standards in the romance genre that have not been matched ever since, but this movie really is brilliant: it’s one of the best, if not THE best romance movies I’ve seen.

The TV-series were incredibly annoying: the movie is anything but. Gone are the silly hijinks and the annoying teenaged antics. Instead, this movie fleshes out its cast with some really realistic dialogue. I’m really amazed: I already thought that the TV-series was down to earth when it wasn’t annoying, but the movie just adds in a whole new layer of realism, which really allows the characters to shine.

Most romances tend to get a little cheesy because they want to try to be too dramatic and do too much in too little time, but this movie is completely different from that. The characters act subtly and don’t try to create more drama than what’s necessary. Because of that it has a full hour to develop the relatively simple premise of his movie, and it really results into a wonderful conclusion to the Kimagure Orange Road franchise. It should be noted though that you really need to have watched the TV-series if you want to touch this thing: otherwise you’ll just be left in the dark.

This movie can be compared to Tenchi Muyo In Love 2, but even with that kind of a movie, expect even more realism and less forced drama here. The pacing of this movie is slow, but if you managed to sit through the TV-series, then patience shouldn’t be an issue here. It’s really been a while since I watched a teenaged romance that was this grounded in realism.

Storytelling: 10/10 – Grounded in realism, both the quiet and the dramatic parts. Simple, yet extremely effective, with a wonderful ending.
Characters: 9/10 – Uses the main characters from the tv-series brilliantly, and gives them a very satisfying conclusion that many, many modern romances can learn a lot from.
Production-Values: 8/10 – The best animation from Kimagure Orange Road so far.
Setting: 8/10 – Do note: the telekinesis from the TV-series is completely gone. But then again, it has no point in this movie anyway and would only have ended up as an annoying cock-block.

Suggestions:
Umi ga Kikoeru
Anne no Nikki – The Diary of Anne Frank
Bokura ga Ita

Honey and Clover II Review – 87,5/100




It’s interesting how I decided to watch this right after Aria The Origination: in essence they are very similar series in the way that they both are meant to wrap up and conclude their respective prequels. The big difference is that while Origination had a positive outlook, Honey and Clover II is bleak. Where the first season’s main focus was slice of life and describing its characters, the second season is all about its drama.

And what a great drama it is! It retains the excellent dialogue that flowed through Honey and Clover’s first season and uses that to conclude all of the major plotlines that the first season left hanging. There isn’t really a main character in this season: there are about ten characters who get equal screentime to close off their characters. It’s a bit more rigid than the dynamic first season, but it leaves hardly a moment wasted and even though it only has half of the airtime as its prequel, it still closes off each character satisfyingly.

A lot of people predicted that I’d rate the second season even higher than the first, but in my opinion, I consider the first series to be better. The second season had a lot more drama which really made for strings of powerful episodes (especially the ending), but the first season was also wonderful in how easy it was to relate to it as a slice of life series, along with the way it described its characters.

In the second season, the characters do lose a tad of those charms, mostly because it spends so much time on developing them, rather than fleshing them out. On top of that, I also feel like the second season could have been a bit more dynamic: to me it felt like the creators were running down a bit of a checklist, especially with the big “Hagu twist”. They’re minor details, I know; but for me the way in which the first season both developed and fleshed out its cast at the same time is something for which I just can’t give its sequel the same rating. It remains a brilliant character-study, though.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Trades in the dynamics of the first season to a focused character-study that leaves hardly any scene wasted.
Characters: 9/10 – All of the characters develop here wonderfully, even though they lack a tad of their charms from the first season.
Production-Values: 8/10 – A bit less impressive than the first season, but it still is pretty sweet to look at.
Setting: 9/10 – Still thanks to the first season incredibly solid portrayal of the final years of college.

Suggestions:
Aria The Origination (after watching the first two seasons of course)
Asatte no Koukou
Aoi Hana

Aria the Origination Review – 85/100




The first half of Aria the Origination is pretty much the same as Aria the Natural, perhaps with a bit more focus on the characters and a little less on the setting. It was pretty much as good as it always was, but I still was left wondering why this series was held with such a high regard. Then the second half came, and I understood. Talk about saving the best for last.

The main purpose of Aria the Origination is to take all of the build-up that the previous Aria seasons put into the characters, and make everything come together. It’s here where the character-development really starts to become apparent, and it couldn’t have closed off this franchise in a better way. It’s only thirteen episodes long, and yet it contains some of the best Aria Episodes you’re going to run into.

Oh, and the graphics also got a bit of an upgrade: the animation is quite a bit more detailed and fluid throughout the series and you can easily see that the creators got themselves a bigger budget for this one, although it has to be said that the animators do try a tad too hard during the dramatic scenes. That’s about the only real complaint I have about Aria’s Origination.

Looking back, as a franchise Aria is neither the best slice of life or Sato Junichi series I’ve seen: I still think that I liked Windy Tales (which pretty much did everything Aria did in one fourth of the same time), Kaleido Star and Strange Dawn (both emotional roller-coasters) better. But still it stands out as a really good and charming series with excellent characterization that just gets better as it goes on. Aria the Origination remains a wonderful conclusion that deserves to be watched.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Brings a ton of build-up together wonderfully with morals that tie in really well with the characters.
Characters: 9/10 – Origination is all about the characters, and they give the series a wonderful conclusion.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Even better, though the animators try a tad to hard during a few dramatic scenes.
Setting: 8/10 – Much less of a focus compared to Natural, but still it’s a solid backdrop for the characters.

Suggestions:
Windy Tales
Honey and Clover
Beck – Mongolian Chop Squad

Mirai Shounen Conan Review – 77,5/100




Hayao Miyazaki scares me. Back in the late seventies, when anime wasn’t even twenty years old, it was really starting to evolve and mature, resulting in quite a few early masterpieces. There was one thing however that all of them had notable difficulties with, though: the inbetween and cleanup animation. And here Hayao comes and animates Conan with such a consistent crispness that was completely unheard of at the time. It would take the rest of anime five to seven year to come that kind of refinement. How the heck did this guy accomplish all of that?

I mean, this guy knows like no other how to make something mainstream with his innocent yet exciting storylines. Mirai Shounen Conan is pretty much the base of what every children’s adventure should be: a lead couple, exciting, yet varied action scenes, villains who actually know what they’re doing and aren’t complete pushovers (plus, they use actual gunpowder guns, not those phony laser-guns), a solid story without any plot-holes or cheesy deus ex machina, a balance between action scenes and build-up that can both be playfully childish and able to take itself seriously, never taking itself too far to become unbelievable, yet putting constant tension on the characters. This series is so incredibly solid, it must have made a HUGE impact on 1978, and the way that its formula is still being used today, it must have had an immense influence as it played a major part in Miyazaki’s role in revolutionizing anime.

And yet, I do feel a bit disappointed: I expected more from this. Part of this has to do with the premise being used so often now that it hardly held any surprises. Heck, even Miyazaki himself revisited the general premise here with Castle in the Sky. Out of all of the works I’ve seen from him, this probably is the one that aged the least well.

But even beyond that, I kept feeling like this series was missing something. This show has an incredibly solid base, but beyond that I feel like it did very little to spice itself up. There is surprisingly little character-development, and Conan and Lana as a main couple don’t seem to develop at all, and weren’t really interesting enough to really keep my attention. Conan also has this huge amount of strength in him. I can understand why this was done for the action and to keep the plot going, but it also rather makes this series a bit too predictable for its own good when his only weakness is not being able to be at two places at the same time. When the once smart villains also get completely stupid and arrogant near the end of this series, I do feel like this series could have been much more in terms of its plot and characters.

I am a big fan of both Miyazaki and children’s adventures, but I have to be honest and say that I didn’t enjoy it as some other anime of those genre. If I watched it as a child I have no doubt that I would have loved it, but when you look at the same year in which this series was made: 1978, I just have to admit that I liked Captain Hardlock and Perrine Monogatari’s stories and characters a lot better. Technically speaking, it’s one of the most solid tv-series of its decade though, make no mistake about that.

Storytelling: 8/10 – This series both contains exciting adventures and down to earth drama and they blend quite well. Solid in just about everything it does, but could have taken more risks.
Characters: 7/10 – Could have been better: the lead couple isn’t interesting enough to carry this show, the side characters have their charms but they don’t stand out, and the main villain gets too stereotypical near the end.
Production-Values: 8/10 – For the standards of more than thirty years ago, the animation was fantastic. Today, it still looks good. The soundtrack in contrast is used surprisingly sparingly, if used at all. That could definitely have been used better for a better atmosphere.
Setting: 8/10 – A solid post-apocalyptic back-story, with Miyazaki’s usual pet peeves of airplanes and environmentalism.

Suggestions:
The Mysterious Cities of Gold
Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Romeo’s Blue Skies