Category: Anime Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uninhabited Planet Survive. Now, if that isn’t a descriptive title, then I don’t know anymore. I do want to warn those who are planning to check it out, though: it is not a series that aims to be the most realistic. Some of the things that the kids here end up building and pulling off just stretch the suspense of disbelief. Not to mention that during the months (perhaps even year) that they spend on that deserted planet, their hair never goes off-model, and their clothes magically repair themselves. I know a lot of other anime do that and all, but with such a premise it really sticks out.

Having said that though, I am very impressed with this series, and the incredible amounts of challenges it puts in front of its characters to overcome. They may be kids, but damn: they really work hard in order to be able to survive; hardly anything is handed to them on a silver platter. Every day they need to find food and take care of themselves, they have to build everything, from tools to shelters from scratch. A lot of this series really is just these eight characters, trying to keep living on this strange and unknown planet. This show has 52 episodes, and this length really makes it into one heck of an engaging series.

So yeah, they’re kids, all of around fourteen years old. They start out pretty annoying and one-sided; especially Howard was specifically designed to get on your nerves. They really do grow on you, though. Throughout the series they are well explored and developed, and especially the bond that forms between them ends up as very memorable. The series spends plenty of time developing themes as leadership, sacrifices and family to really make this a well rounded cast (it really makes use of these 52 episodes to let everything change very naturally). The part that impressed me the most was the surprisingly mature looks on blame and forgiveness.

The main problems with this series lie in the way that it’s a children’s adventure. I personally like this genre a lot, but it has A TON of pitfalls that are very easy to hit, and this series unfortunately didn’t manage to avoid all of them. It’s not the fact that this series is childish: really, for a show of its kind it has plenty of mature moments. The thing is however that near the end it tries to be too epic, resulting into a ton of pointless and cheesy Deus ex Machina that could have been totally avoided by a much more mellow ending. The first episode also is probably the worst episode of the entire series, in which the creators for no reason put the characters’ lives in danger, before anything had even happened yet.

These cheesy episodes are a relatively small part of the total airtime of this series, but they’re a bit inconveniently placed, right at the beginning and end of the series. Apart from that though, whenever this series just focuses on the cast trying to survive, learn about each other and the planet they’re on, I really enjoyed it, and this just gets better and better as the show goes on.

You can really see that this is from the same creators as the Secret of the Cerulean Sand: both do end up stretching your suspense of disbelief, and try to be a bit too epic, yet they’re very engaging adventures. Secret of the Cerulean Sand has a much faster pacing, while Uninhabited Planet Survive has a much better cast of characters and feels much more natural in its pacing.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Wonderfully paced and played out, really giving the cast ample time on the deserted planet. The finale is riddled with Deus ex Machina, though.
Characters:	9/10 – Start annoying, develop wonderfully. Great themes between them.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Simple, but do their job. The soundtrack has some great tracks.
Setting:	9/10 – Tries to be a bit too epic for its story near the end, but it still is a very imaginative world that the characters ended up in. Lots of neat science fiction as well.

Suggestions:
– The Mysterious Cities of Gold
– The Secret of Cerulean Sand
– Mahou Shoujotai

It has really been a while since I watched a movie that had an introduction that was as good as King of Thorn’s. It is a movie with a ton of action, and yet the first 20 minutes have none of it whatsoever: this movie takes a great deal of effort to introduce its plot, build up the setting, and introduce its characters. Especially the latter, had my utmost attention, even though it’s not like we learn an awful lot about them. It’s just the build-up to the inevitable point in which all hell breaks loose that was perfectly executed, well timed, and had a top notch atmosphere. It really took its time to let everything progress naturally, and only afterwards it really went all out with its action.

Regarding the action and the rest of the visuals: it’s a very stylish movie; especially the landscapes are gorgeous, but the action too is well paced and keeps you to the edge of your seat. The only problem was that Sunrise lacked the budget to fully animate them, so at times they randomly switch to cell shaded CG; yes, even for the characters. Let’s just say that it looks out of place.

If this was a movie that was only carried by its action, I really could recommend a ton of other ones that did a better job. But really: King of Thorn does have an excellent story that keeps it together, and really makes it much more interesting than your average movie. Usually with these kinds of movies, they try to stuff too much into their story, or fail to stuff in anything at all. King of Thorn however is an hour and fifty minutes long, and fits this exactly. The plot is neither too big or too small: there are plenty of interesting plot twists, it has a detailed and imaginative concept, yet this concept isn’t so big that it shoots itself in the foot. Everything really gets the chance to play out naturally, with the help of perhaps a bunch of plot devices here and there to keep things on track.

The characters really made the first twenty minutes my favourite parts of the movie, but even during the rest of the airtime they remain interesting. This movie doesn’t really take its time to give them a lot of sides, or make them feel realistic, but it does develop the main cast effectively. Especially the ending: it’s a really good one, especially for a movie and I liked it a lot.

The movie does have a number of cliches, that’s something it doesn’t escape from. However, for every cliche that this movie uses, it also comes with a very neat idea. But really: this is how an action movie should be done: a plot that prevents it just from turning into a string of boring fight scenes, a cast who can carry that plot, enough scenes without any action in them whatsoever that don’t feel like mere time filler. Oh, and a stunning soundtrack. That also really helped here.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Excellent build-up, decent action, well paced and never gets boring, excellent ending.
Characters:	8/10 – Spectacular they are not, but they are solid and developed enough to carry the movie.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Again, movie standards: it had its gorgeous frames, but the action are sometimes done in 3D cell shaded CG. The soundtrack is great, though.
Setting:	9/10 – Creative, and just the right complexity for a movie of two hours.

Suggestions:
– Mobile Police Patlabor – WXIII
– Laputa: Castle in the Sky
– First Squad

I didn’t make the same mistake as with Kaiji; instead, I tried to marathon Akagi as fast as possible, and that really is the way to watch these series. When you look at the episodes individually, there is indeed very little that happens. In the big picture however, they’re morbid mind games in a tension that you can cut with a knife.

Akagi is definitely one of those series in which you need to know what to expect. You ain’t gonna run into complex characters here: Akagi’s character is completely flawless, the people he plays against just do what they need to do, they have their personalities established, but don’t really expect much more. What this show excels in however, is the way it analyzes what goes on inside the mind of these characters as they play Mahjong. It goes without saying that out of all of the mahjong anime I have seen, this has by far the most detailed and fleshed out matches out there.

Half of this review is going to be a comparison with Kaiji, because the two series are so similar, yet have some essential differences. First of all, when you look at the overall plot and premise, Akagi just tells the story of a god-moded guy who wins mahjong matches at unbelievable odds and that doesn’t even have a proper ending, while Kaiji shows human trash trying to struggle against silly gambling games set up by a bunch of bored mafioso.

However, Akagi is at favour when you look at how both series actually try to spend their time. They’re both incredibly slow, but Kaiji tries to fill its time by stalling: its games are all pretty simple, but it keeps delaying the inevitable, through which it creates its tension. Akagi however is about Mahjong: it creates its tension by constantly analyzing both the state of each of the players, in their minds and their hands. It shows all kinds of different strategies, worst case scenarios. In fact, I have seen very few board game anime that goes inside the minds of the different players this much, in which you can actually see nearly all of the different tactics and possibilities that they consider while playing the match. Sure, a huge part of Akagi is the crazy nature of luck, but unlike with series as Saki this doesn’t degenerate the characters’ abilities to shounen-like deus ex machina powers, but instead it becomes a core element of the game play.

Then there’s the acting. Kaiji created a lot of its tension by making an as large spectacle as possible, with a lot of screaming and overacting and stuff. Akagi doesn’t have that. Instead, this is cold and calculating: its atmosphere is the kind that creeps up behind you and doesn’t let go, even after an arc ends. It’s less spectacular of course, but also much more believable. Whether you prefer Akagi over Kaiji or the other way probably depends on what you find more important: the sneaky Akagi or the over the top Kaiji. Personally, I liked Akagi better.

In the end, Akagi has a similar problem as One Outs, in the way that its protagonist is so goddamn perfect, however there are some subtle differences between Akagi and Tokuchi. Tokuchi was a character who “pwns n00bs”, as a figure of speech: he loves toying with the weak. Akagi however is a complete lunatic who searches out the strongest opponents and the most impossible odds. It’s that what makes him unique and a much more interesting guy than your usual god-moded protagonist. My biggest advice though is: don’t plan to watch this series casually. This just is one of those series that should be marathoned.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Truly excellent atmosphere, grips you and never lets go. Excellent dialogue. Just ends in the middle of a big arc however.
Characters:	7/10 – Everything is kept as simple as possible with the characters and Akagi is god-moded, but their inner psyches really get thoroughly analyzed.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Simple but solid animation from madhouse, not to mention its unique character designs.
Setting:	9/10 – Both mahjong and the mindset of people during gambling are excellently explored.

Suggestions:
– Kaiji
– One Outs
– Yugo the Negotiator