Category: Anime Reviews

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

While not technically a WWII-movie, (but rather a movie about the aftermath of WWII) I still decided to include Barefoot Gen 2 in this mini-marathon I’m having, because I watched the original movie yesterday. At first I feared that this would be a cheap cash-in to the success of the first Barefoot Gen, but in the end there was no reason to worry about this: it’s completely different. Don’t go into this one, expecting the same.

The graphics really got a major upgrade. My big issue with the first movie was that the animation just couldn’t handle the things it wanted to portray, but the second movie suffers from none of this. The animation is very smooth, detailed and crisp. It’s amazing considering it was only made three years later. And it’s not something that you only see for these two movies: somewhere between 1983 and 1986, something happened that completely revolutionized the anime industry in the graphics department.

The tone, atmosphere and themes are also completely different. The intention of the first movie was to portray a hellhole: there was no subtlety whatsoever, instead it wanted to make very clear what happened in Hiroshima during the bombing. The second movie is much more subtle: it focuses on the characters, three years after the bombing, as they try to sustain themselves. It’s a movie that combines the dark realities of war, like the overabundance of street children, mourning the loss of loved one, and the heavy scars (the visible and invisible ones) from the bomb, along with more positive themes as hope, enjoyment, education as it portrays people who struggle to pick up their lives again.

It’s also in this movie where Gen gains his depth: you can see that he’s grown up and changed, while still remaining the playful boy he was in the first movie. The new characters are also likable and well characterized, although at times they do try a bit too much to look cool. The second movie is much more a family movie than the first one was; it’s all focused to cheer up, while not shying away from the harsher aspects of the aftermath of a nuclear impact.

I guess where this movie drops points is that it only shows one side of the argument: it only shows Gen and his friends. The Americans, working adults and other people in the neighbourhood are just a bunch of random drawings with only one or two short lines of dialogue.. The movie just assumes that we can imagine what these people are going through. While this is indeed partially true, I do think that the creators could have added an extra layer of depth if they showed a bit more of these guys.

I’m not going to say that this movie is better than the first. The first movie, while I may have given it a lower rating still deserves to be watched because of its subject matter. I have not seen any other anime with such a realistic attempt at portraying the effects of a nuclear explosion; so what if the characters lacked depth.

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

In case you’re wondering: I recently discovered that there were quite a few WWII-movies that I have yet to see, so I’m going to be watching and reviewing them in a sort-of mini marathon for the next couple of days. Today I’m taking a look at Barefoot Gen, as it portrays the citizens of Hiroshima before, during and after the bombing. In particular a young boy called Gen.

It’s another movie that’s hard to watch. Most of these movies go for subtlety and shy away from showing the biggest amounts of violence. Barefoot Gen does not. Especially the scene of the bombing is truly gruesome. In this act, more than one hundred thousand people died, which translates to roughly a third of the city’s population. Barefoot Gen tries to make sure to show the true horrors that went on in Hiroshima at that point.

The problem with this, however, is that this movie was its time far ahead. And by that, I mean that some of the things it wanted to animate, it simply didn’t have the resources, technology or budget for. This movie was created in 1983, in which anime was still in its relatively early stages. Because of the animation errors, the victims of the atom bomb sometimes look gruesome, while at others they look like those zombie people you see in cheaply animated fantasy flicks. The animation simply wasn’t able to show enough details of all the victims that pass the screen, which is a damn shame. I wonder what would have happened if this movie were to be animated today.

Gen as a lead character does an adequate job. There’s not much depth in this guy, but you can see that he’s an innocent young boy who is caught up in everything and especially for the movie’s time, he’s well portrayed. He likes to fight and play around, but he’s colourful enough to carry this series as its main character. His mother surprised me: I really thought that she would turn into another one of these stereotypical mothers who are completely useless and too mentally weak to do anything, but she actually shed away her stereotype to become something more realistic than that.

With these reviews, I don’t intend to judge the characters or the settings themselves, nor do I intend to offend anyone. We all know horrible things happened back then. There’s no need for me to repeat it. Instead, I’m simply judging the storytelling here: are the characters well portrayed? How much impact did it make on me? Is it properly animated? That sort of stuff. Barefoot Gen is a flawed work that was a bit too ambitious for its time and resources, but it’s definitely worth the watch.

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

I actually watched this movie once before. It was about five years ago, I think. I just had discovered the wonders of the online anime community, and therefore was also keen on trying out the supposed “best anime ever”. It’s a movie that always gets listed among the most famous pieces of anime, alongside Ghost in the Shell and Hayao Miyazaki’s works. I didn’t like it, though. It bored me, it went on for too long and eventually I quit the movie about two-thirds in because I was bored out of my skull.

I finally gave in now. I figured that I might as well try it out a second time, especially considering how my taste has changed a lot during the past five years. And indeed, it made a totally different impression on me. I hated it once, but it’s actually a very well constructed movie. It’s not the saddest movie I’ve seen, but at the same time I can understand why this is regarded by some people as a masterpiece.

Grave of the Fireflies has a few things that set itself apart from most other WWII movies. Unlike most of them, it doesn’t start off with slice of life: it immediately throws the characters in darkness even though we hardly know anything about them at that point. After that, it’s basically the two lead characters as they try to survive after the horrible things that happened to them. Most lead characters in such a situation are written to be likable. This however is one heck of an exception. I won’t exactly go into the how and why for the sake of spoilers, but there aren’t a lot of lead characters that are more flawed than he is. And that’s what makes this movie so great.

The second point at which Grave of the Fireflies stands out is the realism. It was directed by Isao Takahata. I’ve often called this guy the king of realism, and this movie only reaffirms this. WWII-anime are already often realistic, but Grave of the Fireflies adds a whole new layer of realism with all sorts of small details and subtle touches that you can’t find in any other movie. Takahata really is one of the greatest anime directors out there: setting aside Pom Poko, there are absolutely no other series or movies that are more realistic than the works he directed.

I can’t call this a true masterpiece, though. This movie falls a bit short at fleshing out its characters. At the end of the movie, I still don’t really have the feeling that I truly know the two lead characters. While I originally dropped this movie for being too long-winded and boring, I now feel in retrospect that it easily could have been half an hour longer, so that the characters could get the time they need to properly get fleshed out.

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