Category: Anime Reviews

Interestingly enough, Hashire, Melos! has already been adapted into an anime once before (twice, actually, but here I’m focusing on the 1992-movie), so while waiting for the final instalments of Aoi Bungaku, I figured that I might as well check out a completely different interpretation of the classic story by Osamu Dazai. It of course isn’t as good as Ryousuke Nakamura’s version, and it even seems that the entire part of the author writing this story was completely new. But nevertheless, this movie shows that even the original story without this interplay between author and fiction had a lot of potential.

Because of the different ages, direction, themes and focuses, you really end up with two completely different stories that just happen to have some of the same characters. The dialogue in the movie isn’t as complex as the Aoi Bungaku version, nor is it an as big of an emotional roller-coaster, but it does allow for much more time to flesh out Melos and Celine, the two lead characters. And it’s in these two that the power of this story lies.

They’re both two men with their own strengths and weaknesses, and my favourite part of the movie were their reasons for doing the seemingly stupid things that they did: they’re well-backed up and powerful motivations. The ending is a bit rushed and predictable, but it’s not what’s important to the story at all; heck, even the movie realizes this by telling how the story ends right at the very first scene.

The music isn’t anything special, but the animation is really what you’d expect from a movie: very smooth and detailed with a real minimum of still frames. Despite again, this animation being not as expressive as Ryousuke Nakamura’s version I still very much recommend this movie because it really has its own points where it shines, and despite my rather repetitive complaining, I didn’t feel like watching a copy of something that I already watched once before at all. This movie adds quite a bit of depth and colour to the already interesting characters of Melos, Celine and Dionysius.

Storytelling:	8/10
Characters:	9/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	8/10

Those who have been reading some of my past mecha series reviews will probably know that I’m not the biggest fan of the Gundam franchise. These series often degenerate in strings of random fights that hardly ever resolve anything, and the storylines are way too often taken over by angsty and emo teenagers (or in Gundam 00’s case: angsty and emo young adults). However, this isn’t the case for Turn A Gundam!

I’m really glad to see that Turn A Gundam, directed by Tomino himself, manages to keep a solid direction and focus throughout the series. Okay, it’s a bit of a flawed direction here and there, but at least the plot is continuously moving. Something very impressive considering the complex, detailed and imaginative world that this series has to work with.

While on one hand, Turn A Gundam doesn’t escape some of the big clichés of the mecha-genre (a teenaged lead-character who just “happens” to find the “superpowered mecha of awesomeness”; “fighting is bad, so I will fight for these ideals!”), it makes up for it with its attention to detail: the cast for this show is huge, but Tomino manages to create lots of different fractions, all with their own ideals and morals. It has a carefully constructed setting, and the attention to detail for each of the mechas, airships, hovercrafts and spaceships is very impressive. I personally loved how at random times, Tomino liked to subtly flesh out random nameless soldiers, as they reported some news right next to a very important queen that everyone looks up to.

The large focus on politics is also one of the highlights of this series. While there are of course plenty of mecha-battles, a major theme of this series can also be found in the continuous peace negotiations, and how things like this that are so seemingly easy and obvious can be hampered by bad luck, just two or three people, or just plain bad planning and coordination.

As the show moves into its second half, it does lose a bit of steam, though. While definitely not bad, the second half of Turn A Gundam is inferior to the first. For that, I blame the series’ major villains: Agrippa has just way too little airtime and therefore makes no impact, while Gym Ghignham is just a plot device who continues to shout cheesy one-sided ideals. The two of them really put an evil side (and subsequently turn the lead characters into somewhat stereotypical good guys) to a series that had such a fine blur in morality, in which nobody really belonged to the good or bad side, and drag this series down.

Because of the lesser second half, I can’t quite call this show top-notch, but there is a lot to like in it nevertheless. Yoko Kanno has really worked her magic on the soundtrack, and the direction is strong under Tomino, with his trademark fast-paced dialogue that will keep the viewer on his toes. I’ll continue to raise eye-brows at teenagers who somehow end up piloting the most important military weapons in a single war, but hey: the rest of this show has enough other stuff to offer.

Storytelling:	8/10
Characters:	8/10
Production-Values:	9/10
Setting:	9/10

Here’s a quickie: Usavich may be 39 episodes long, but each of these episodes is just a minute and a half long. You can breeze through this series in about one hour. But is it worth it? Yeah.

The thing with comedy anime, and especially those very short and strange looking ones is that you’ll never know whether or not they have enough inspiration for their jokes after some initial hilarity. Usavich is the story of two CG rabbits, who we can see in jail, an later on in the series they escape. The sense of humour in this series is downright absurd: there are tons of violence jokes, toilet jokes, sadism, flat-out randomness and let’s not forget the three musical episodes that are some sort of musical medley throughout various sound-effects. Just watch it, it’s very hard to explain.

The lead characters have absolutely no lines, and are pretty stereotypical, but what makes Usavich awesome is its sense of timing. The jokes are all delivered spot-on, and it retains its hilarity throughout the entire series. It loses a few points by repeating some of its jokes at times, but most of the episodes sparkle with creativity. A recommendation if you’re looking for a really quick watch. Heck, even Chi’s Sweet Home’s episodes were longer.

Storytelling:	9/10
Characters:	7/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	8/10

Matantei Loki Ragnarok is the first installment of Hiroshi Watanabe’s “Mystical Detectives”-trilogy (along with Tactics and Suteki Tantei Labyrinth). Those who’ve read some of my earlier reviews about this guy’s work know what I think about him: he can be incredibly talented, but also incredibly stupid. Whenever I go into a series of his, I absolutely have no idea what to expect.

I actually watched an episode of Ragnarok before I started this blog, and I wasn’t that convinced. It seemed just like any other silly adventure series that had nothing but a group of characters, going on silly adventures. And here the danger of first impressions shows up again, because against all my expectations, this turned out to be a genuinely excellent series. It’s a bit silly at times and sometimes it leaves a few small questions unanswered, but oh boy. This series really delivers when it wants to.

Like I said, the ingredients are pretty formulaic. In fact, you can see a lot of parallels with Hiroshi Watanabe’s other shows: we have the mahou shounen, his butler. There’s the annoying female sidekick, the animal sidekick, the complete moron, the energetic guy who runs a lot of jobs. Yet, this series actually makes something out of it. The cliches are there, but really: the characterization is so damn good.

This again isn’t a show for everyone, because it’s another one of those series that has a lot of slice of life in it. You might think that this will devolve into a series where most of the time is spent on random mysteries, but those actually play a fairly small role. Much more important to this series is showing the characters interacting with each other, and just having fun on a daily basis. And it does so with creativity. Loki is actually a pretty likable male lead: he’s mature, despite his looks, and likes to tease others. The female side-kick does yell a lot, yet she’s not stereotypical enough to get annoying, and she has enough other sides to her than her constant “mystery!”-catchphrase.

Throughout the majority of its airtime this simply is an enjoyable, varied and sometimes silly slice-of-life/adventure series. There are a number of goofball characters, and therefore also a number of goofball episodes with a sense of humour that’s typical to Hiroshi Watanabe (no idea is stupid enough!). This series really sets itself apart in its final quarter, however. It’s astounding how much this series takes its time to fully develop its main characters AND villains. This series has a really heart-warming finale that made me rate this show much higher than I was originally planning to.

The animation is basic, but it’s being made up by the visuals themselves. The character-designs were done by one of the best character-designers in the business (she also did the character-designs for Ghost Hound, King of Bandits Jing and not to mention Jigoku Shoujo). The music, especially near the end, also manages to create a great atmosphere for this series.

I might be one of the very few in this, but I’ve really become a fan of Hiroshi Watanabe. It’s obviously not because he’s a consistently good director: Star Ocean Ex and Shining Tears X Wind were just terrible, and Suteki Tantei Labyrinth was a trainwreck (an incredibly fun trainwreck yes; but a trainwreck nonetheless). However, the thing with this guy is that he just keeps surprising me. No matter what kind of series he’s doing, every single one of his series have caught me off-guard and surprised me with a sense of creativity I truly did not expect. Whether it’s good or bad remains to be seen, though.

Storytelling:	9/10
Characters:	9/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	8/10

For most of the series I review, I watch them in their original language. There are exceptions, however, and this is one of them. The original Gakkou no Kaidan is beyond mediocre. The characters are shallow, the stories are stupid and formulaic (there are twenty episodes in total, and it rips off The Ring in at least five of them), depthless, predictable, full of plotholes and every ghost is stopped right at the last possible moment. If I were to review the Japanese version, you could subtract at least 20 to 30 points from the rating.

Interestingly enough, the person in charge of the English Dub thought so too, and decided go with his own version. The result is a hilarious parody chockful of American pop culture and jokes that are so wrong that you’d normally never see in anime. Think sex, drugs and violence here. On top, the characters also love to break the fourth wall whenever something doesn’t make sense in the script. And it actually works!

The lead characters also get transformed from just another standard group of kids without much of a distinct personality, to a group with a retarded dyslexic kid, a drug addict, a closet pervert Jew and an obsessively devoted christian. The funny thing is that despite these seemingly offensive stereotypes, the characters are actually much more colourful and developed than their original versions.

I’ve heard plenty of stories about dubs who completely ruin their original series. However, with everything there are some definite exceptions: with Gakkou no Kaidan, there hardly was anything left to ruin, and the writers for the dub had a clear vision of what they were going to do. It’s an interesting experiment that really brightened up an otherwise horribly dull series, and the humour isn’t like anything you’re ever going to encounter in anime. The only thing that really stands out in the original version is some nice shading and the OP. Talk about catchy.

Storytelling:	9/10
Characters:	8/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	8/10

Well, so here’s my review of the second OVA of the series that has the dubious honour of having been ripped off the most amount of times by lazy writers. It also includes the special Bangaihen episode that aired in between the first two OVAs for convenience’s sake. Overall, you can see that this series holds an edge over most other harem concepts. It’s still a bit of a hard to believe premise and the reasons for the different females to stay with the lead characters are… silly to say the least. But hey: at least they’ve got reasons!

I actually like the second OVA better than the first. My big problem with the first is that it lacked balance, especially the serious parts just dragged on for ages. This really was fixed in the second OVA: the action, serious parts, slice of life and comedy are all nicely balanced. At first, this show might make it seem like it starts with a random filler episode (like so many other shows have), but thanks to detailed slice of life and good characterization there’s hardly a moment in this show that’s really boring. On top of that, when it does tend to drag on, some character-back-story suddenly pops up.

The OVA does a great job to flesh out and explore a majority of the characters here, and you definitely get to know them better throughout the series. That’s definitely a plus. And even the purely slice of life special bangaihen is enjoyable to sit through thanks to the characters and the comedy. When the main storyline for this OVA pops up, it actually delivers, and it has a much more interesting villain than the rather dull one that the first OVA had to use.

There were only two major annoyances I had with this OVA. The first is Ryo-ouki. I know that she must have meant well and all, but near the end her excessive nondescript squealing becomes just too annoying. This didn’t work in Pokemon, and it also doesn’t work here. The second annoyance is the final ten minutes of the OVA: for some strange reason, they’re nothing but a slide-show with people talking in the background. Did the budget ran out at that point or something? It’s surprising, because the rest of the budget is actually really good with very smooth and detailed animation.

Tenchi Muyo isn’t really going to make it to my favourites anytime soon. It might be very good for your average harem, but there still are tons of non-harem series that are just better and have more interesting and believable stories. It’s just isn’t my kind of setting here and the seemingly endless amounts of times at which this formula has already been ripped off didn’t really help increasing my enjoyment of it. Nevertheless, this second OVA yet again stands out with some pretty nice characterization of its characters, and that has to say something.

Storytelling:	7/10
Characters:	8/10
Production-Values:	9/10
Setting:	7/10

Wow, what a ride. The underworld is a popular setting for anime, and this genre has already produced quite a few wonderful gems, such as Kaze no Youjimbo, Michiko e Hatchin, Baccano and many more. Gungrave, without a doubt, also belongs in this list.

This series tells about the lives of two thugs called Brandon Heat and Harry MacDowell, and chronicles their lives. And boy, it really takes the extra mile to develop these two! The majority of this series is just one huge flashback, which takes a look at the many, many events in their lives that made them into the characters that they are at the beginning of the story. Throughout the series, we get to see the two of them, and the people around them, during all kinds of different ages, ranging from when the two are about 10 years old, until they’re in the middle of their forties. Now that’s some awesome character-development right there!

On top of being a character-study, this also is an action-show. Quite a few of the fights are beautifully animated (courtesy of Madhouse) despite the rather sloppy drawings at times. The fights are varied, ranging from simple duels to huge shoot-outs, although during the second half, I do admit that they turn in this series’ weakness. Especially the fights against the big overpowered monsters are a bit dull, because these monsters have no personality nor free will at all. It’d be just like fighting your way out of a bunch of paper bags. I also didn’t quite like the concept of the so-called “Superior”-monsters: to me, they seemed a bit of a convenient excuse to give the important characters some cheap superpowers.

Nevertheless, this series ends with a very strong finale. All of the important characters get enough of a chance to close off their stories (and considering the development they’ve gotten, this really is a great thing) and that makes the entire finale just bittersweet. This series explores themes like trust and betrayal, family and loyalty, and it does this so well. This definitely is a series to look out for, with its deep characters and in-depth look at large mafia-organizations. Despite the few humps in the middle I really give my thumbs up for this one.

Storytelling:	8/10
Characters:	9/10
Production-Values:	9/10
Setting:	9/10

Okay, to close off this mini-marathon I’ve been having the past week is Rail of the Star, a movie about the Japanese in Korea during and after WWII. It’s not just a movie about the horrors of war, but nationality is also a very huge theme. It again focuses on a young child as the lead character, called Chitose Kobayashi. Like most of the WWII movies I’ve reviewed in the past couple of days, it’s an autobiographical story. it’s not the best, but nevertheless worth the watch if you’re interested in the Second World War.

This movie is also structured in the way that the first half deals with slice of life, while the second half chronicles the characters during what probably was the hardest moments of their lives. In this movie, the second half clearly stands out as superior: the slice of life itself is decent, but it lacks soul. That soul appears during the second half of the movie.

The movie feels too short, though. It feels like the creators took too little time for this movie, and it could easily have been more than half an hour longer. The story feels incomplete, and there sometimes are huge holes in characters’ backgrounds. It’s a shame, really.

With movies, based on literary works, cuts have to be made; it’s impossible to put every single line of a novel inside a movie that only takes up 90 minutes. Its the task of the people who adapt these works to capture their spirit, while cutting the story down to its necessary time frame. Movies like The Diary of Anne Frank, Grave of the Fireflies, Ushiro no Shoumen Daare and Chocchan’s Story did this really well. Rail of the Star however, drops some points here, and is clearly inferior as an adaptation.

Of course, this is from the perspective of someone who hasn’t read these novels.

Storytelling:	7/10
Characters:	8/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	8/10

Whoa. I might have found another entry in my top 10 of favourite movies with this one. First a bit of back-story though, because this movie made an huge personal impression on me. I’ll just say it right here: I’m biased. But even without my bias, this is one heck of an underrated movie.

Before I started watching this movie, I had no idea how I’d perceive it. I actually live less than a 10 minutes walking distance away from where Anne Frank once hid from the Germans, and wrote her famous diary. Heck, I walk past the Anne Frank House every time I need to go to the university! Being this familiar to the setting in which this movie was adapted, I really didn’t know whether the creators could do it justice: would the movie be a huge bomb of nostalgia, or would I spend its entire airtime picking apart every detail they got wrong?

I never actually read Anne’s diary, though. As a kid I had little interest in her. The primary school I was raised in found the Second World War a very important issue, and thus we were thrown to death about her and how important her diary was and how famous it has become. As a kid, I really could care less about those things, and as such, I never really understood what was the great deal about her.

I’m glad to see that this adaptation of her diary shattered both these stereotypes. The creators, despite being Japanese who often have overmoralized stereotypes about the western world, really got the setting right. I loved how I wasn’t just able to recognize the famous landmarks like the Western Church, the Palace on the Dam and the office behind which Anne and her family were hiding, but even some of the individual houses, the river the Amstel. The characters were obviously a bit Japanese, because there are some things that just get too lost in translation here, but I loved how the creators did manage to cast some of the characters with that typical Dutch rudeness. The creators did an incredibly accurate job in making this setting come alive.

The rest of the movie is also superbly done. The creators managed to portray Anne really well as an average teenager, with her strengths and her flaws. The other people around her are also wonderfully characterized: you can see them slowly get used to each other, and very subtly change as the movie goes on. The “chemistry” between the characters is really well done, and keeps the movie interesting, despite how relatively little happens. If this indeed is a very faithful adaptation, then I must applaud Anne for being an excellent writer, despite only being so young.

The story is also unlike any other WWII movie I’ve seen so far. Most deal with the horrors of death and destruction. However, this movie is about the fear of death and destruction. Anne and her family, along with a number of other people were locked away for two years, without ever going outside. They had to live for two long years among hunger and not knowing what’s going on, amidst the boredom of having hardly anything to do; it’s a very unique sort of slice-of-life story. The drama is very subtle, and usually comes from this, and the fear of being discovered. On top of that, this has one of the most powerful endings I’ve seen in a movie. So incredibly subtle, especially considering that this is non-fiction.

The animation was done by Madhouse, and it just spells out quality. The animation is just incredibly smooth. Even for movie standards. There are hardly any still frames, and even frames that have eight or more characters in it have every single character animated, instead of just standing still. The soundtrack is also haunting. It’s full of powerful piano tunes that create a fantastic atmosphere.

There’s just one huge but with this movie: it assumes its viewers to have background information on the story. This story is called the “Diary of Anne Frank” for a reason: we only see what Anne Frank experienced during these two years. There were certain things that she didn’t know, and therefore the movie also doesn’t show it. While I can really recommend this movie to the Dutch people who visit this blog, I really don’t know how much, say, Americans know about the German oppression in the Netherlands.

I’m very surprised at how little known this movie is. It’s not like I’m watching another one of those obscure unsubbed anime either: there’s a very fine subbed version floating around the Internet. If people request it, I might do a little write-up of the things you need to know in order to watch this movie. It’s well worth it, even to those who don’t live in Holland. It did a wonderful job in portraying the setting without falling into stereotypes. It’s a claustrophobic movie which for its majority just plays out inside one single house. it’s a real recommendation for those looking for a movie and don’t mind the lack of action.

Storytelling:	9/10
Characters:	9/10
Production-Values:	9/10
Setting:	9/10