Category: Anime Reviews

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

Before I start, I’d like to note that this is actually my 500th anime review I’ve written for this site. Gosh, time sure goes fast.

Anyway, for this review I wanted to do something special, and therefore decided to pick out a very unknown movie, watch it and hopefully give a bit of attention to a nearly forgotten gem. Thankfully, I was right in picking out Ushiro no Shoumen Dare. While not the best of the WWII movie genre, it’s a very charming and bittersweet story about a little girl, and her experiences during the war.

What I like about this movie is how down to earth it is: it doesn’t try to be overdramatic, or show as much death and destruction as possible. Instead, it focuses on the lead character, her life and her family. The major part of the airtime is mostly spent on slice of life, while the final parts of the movie show how the lead character survived through the war, and the few years after that.

The slice of life is really good. The lead character really is just like a bratty little girl, who just has fun and cries a lot when something goes wrong. A lot of details has gone into just the every day lives, and one particular thing that this movie likes to do is show off various nursery rhymes that were popular in those days. It’s an interesting watch for anyone who’s interested in the Japanese culture around these days, and it makes sure that the characters are all fleshed out well enough, when the darker parts of the story arrive, resulting in a bunch of bittersweet scenes.

The flaws in this movie simply stem from the fact that it really kept it down to the basics: While I very much assume that a lot of people have had to go through what the lead character has gone through, it does have this air of “been there, done that”. The dramatic parts of the movie, while sad, are also one-sided. When you compare this to other similar movies like Chochhan’s story, which was much more balanced and interesting, I just can’t label it among the best ones of the genre.

Nevertheless though, if you’re into this genre of realistic war stories, then it’s definitely worth the watch. At the moment it’s pretty difficult to track this movie down, but if you happen to find it, why not give it a chance?

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

Right now, I’m going to be saying something that I never would have thought to claim a year and a half ago: Sunrise Mecha-series rock! Of course, I’m not talking about their cheesy Gundam or Code Geass series, but their lesser known works: I’ve seen quite a few of them by now, and time and time again they deliver an amazing series. Gasaraki is another one of Ryousuke Takahashi’s series. I was already a huge fan of him before I started watching, and this series made me an even bigger one. He yet again puts down an original series that takes both itself and its audience seriously.

Even though the series has a teen-age couple as its main characters, there’s much more to this series than just that. In fact, the most interesting part of this series is a huge political scheme to try and take over Japan, executed by the superiors of the male lead. The politics in this series are deep, imaginative and detailed, and a great watch for anyone who’s looking for a mature series with a lot of emphasis on dialogue. The teen-aged leads aren’t that bad themselves either. They’re nowhere near those annoying teen-aged brats that you usually see in the lead character’s seat, and they contribute really well to the mature nature of this series despite their age.

At its core, this is a series that combines action with politics. However, those who are merely looking for the former will probably be very bored by the latter. It’s because of this I guess that this series is very underrated: Ryousuke Takahashi’s series have always put a lot of emphasis on very complex dialogue to flesh out their setting, and with Gasaraki this goes more than ever. If you’re not interested in Japanese politics, you probably won’t find much enjoyment in this.

The animation in this series varies from standard, to absolutely beautiful. the frame-rate at times is so unbelievably smooth that it becomes hard to believe that this is a TV-series, made more than ten years ago by now. Especially the first episodes are incredibly well animated because of this, but even after that, the animation kicks ass at times. The music is also simple, but effective.

Overall, Gasaraki’s politics are incredibly fascinating and its action is gripping and down to earth. If I had to mention a flaw, then it’s that the characters lack a bit of spark and could have been more fleshed out and a few of the plot events could have been more explained, but the rest of this series really makes up for it. This is no series with good guys or bad guys, but instead it’s about people with different morals and ideals. I really enjoyed watching it, and the show closes off with a strong finale.

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

Anime Innovation Tokyo is a project meant to sponsor young and talented creators in creating something new and innovative. These people often have great ideas, but lack the budget and experience to really put these into practice, and that’s where this project helps them out with. I really like this idea, and therefore I’ll gladly promote their efforts. Cencoroll is the first project of theirs to be completed.

Cencoroll mostly stands out with its animation and storytelling. Regarding the former, you can see that the creators have gotten themselves a nice budget, but a limited one nonehteless. They make up for it with really good keyframes though: they’re very expressive, and well drawn, and a lot of time went into each frame.

I also like how down to earth the characters remain: despite that this is an action-series, none of the emotions of the characters are ever cheesy or overdone. In fact, the lead character is as nonchalant as you can realistically get. The storytelling also has a little bit of wit inside of it, when some plot twists aren’t explained and the writers assume that the viewers themselves are able to figure out that A + B equals C, which is something I appreciate.

The question however is: is this movie truly innovative? To that question, my answer is no. I wouldn´t exactly label this series as unique. However, it does have a “screw conventions we´re going to do it our way!”-mindset, and that’s the thing that counts: you can really see that the creators wanted to be innovative, and this is actually a great start for Anime Innovation Tokyo, as they come up with a concept that will generally be very well liked, andnot just be popular amongst the arthouse fans, while at the same time they put in a few neat ideas. I’m hoping that the future projects are going to be a bit more daring in trying out really new things, but it’s a great start nonetheless.

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

Summer Wars is the latest highly anticipated movie from Mamoru Hosoda, the director of Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo. As expected, the movie comes with a lot of ideas, attention to detail and really attempts to innovate. It’s a very nice movie, however I didn’t like it as much as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

The movie basically focuses on two things: slice of life around a really big family who has come together for the birthday of its oldest member who owns a huge mansion. The other focus of the movie is some sort of science-fiction story in which the Internet has evolved into some bizarre world called “OZ”. This eventually gets hacked, and it’s up to our teen-aged lead to save the world from this threat.

And I’m sorry, but as a student computer science I just could not buy this premise. It’s utterly ridiculous and makes no sense whatsoever. While I agree that it achieves new heights in the fantasy-ish portrayal of hacking software, and I know that there’s something as artistic freedom, but this movie went completely beyond my suspense of disbelief as it turned the teen-aged leads in this movie into somehow the only ones who were able to save the world. Especially the finale hung together in a string of Deus ex Machinas.

I know I’m harsh, but this is a big-budgeted movie. Take Real Drive, released last year. It’s vision of the future of the Internet was much more creative, realistic, believable and explained, even though it also used a bit of fantasy in its premise. I appreciate the attempts of the director, you can see that he really tried, but he was too torn between creating a good story and appealing to the mainstream in this part.

Okay, so that was the bad part, now the good stuff: the slice of life. What I absolutely loved about this movie was the way the family was portrayed. Every single character was behaving realistically, even taking the ridiculous setting into account. The cast is incredibly large, especially for a movie, and the creators actually developed all the characters a bit throughout the movie. I especially liked the chaos in which a lot of things happened at the same time and everyone was doing something at the same time.

You’re definitely going to recognize the art style from Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, and Madhouse really made sure to breathe life into every single character with some incredibly good and realistic animation. This slice of life makes this series really fun to watch. But yeah, compared to Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, it just isn’t as powerful. The soundtrack is less impressive, and it really gets hampered by that ridiculous setting and superficial climax.

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

Well, so I finally managed to find this Korean animated movie: Yobi – The Five-Tailed Fox, otherwise known as the impossibly named “Chonnyonyeouu Yeouub”. At first sight, it’s yet another children’s adventure: mystical girl (in this case, a fox spirit) meets regular boy, the two fall in love, the two fight some sort of evil, ended with a Deus ex Machina. However, this movie makes up for the bland premise through its execution, and not just because of its nice graphics.

First and foremost, it’s a really enjoyable movie to watch. The cast of characters is full of quirky characters that at the same time don’t exaggerate their quirks, yet deliver them with subtlety. A lot of the movie is spent on diverse characters, just having fun, and the movie-budget animation did wonders in making them come alive. While it’s not the best animation you’re going to see in a movie, it definitely does the job in portraying lots of non-verbal communication between the different characters through their gestures and way of moving, and that was for me without a doubt the most enjoyable part in this movie.

Also the premise is also about the only thing generic about this movie. It’s a shame that all family-movies seem to need to follow these same rules (especially that deus ex machina ending remains annoying), but outside of that you can see a lot of creativity in the storytelling: the situations the characters are put in are very imaginative, the locations have a lot of ideas put into them, and the background art is absolutely gorgeous in their portrayal.

There are problems with the animation at times though: the characters’ expressions sometimes look a bit too much like clay figures at times, and you can see a bunch of lazy frames in which the characters are drawn cell-shaded in CG. And granted, at times some events are introduced a bit too sudden, and we still don’t know why Yobi finds humans silly, yet she walks around in a human form most of the time. Overall, it’s perhaps not the best movie to come out of Korea; they’ve done a story better with Oseam, and better-looking graphics in Wonderful Days, but nevertheless Yobi is a very enjoyable family movie with an excellent characterization.

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

When I posted my first impressions on Kobato, I noted how incredibly cute its lead character Kobato was. I then started watching Risky Safety, and suddenly Kobato looked more like Hamako from Gintama in comparison. Omishi Magical Theater: Risky Safety has got to be one of, if not THE cutest anime I have ever seen.

And it’s not like most series that attempt to go for cuteness, in which they try to make everything as brightly coloured and fluffy as possible with a lot of energetic overacting. The titular characters, an apprentice Shinigami and Angel named Risky and Safety respectively, have such a natural charm that’s near impossible to plan out. Nearly all of their quirks are just too cute to watch when combined with the incredibly talented voice actres of these two (why yes, they’re voiced by the same voice actress, who does a fantastic job portraying both of them). They’re the type of characters who make all of the scenes they’re in a joy to watch.

The ten-minute episodes basically consist out of the two titular characters helping out a kid with worries, but the storytelling is genuine enough to make something interesting out of such a simple premise. The stories are well built up, and are about serious themes as undecisiveness, love, good and evil that aim to teach simple moral stories. You can also see that the creators like to try out new ideas: sometimes they like to show a bit of what happens in the setting around the characters, like showing a random conversation between a few passers-by that has nothing to do with the story, or showing some sort of reference to an earlier story. It’s interesting how in this story, whenever something gets destroyed or changed, it remains changed. For example, the stuff that Risky breaks in one room still remain broken 24 episodes later.

Overall, this series shows that anime can also be simple, yet effective. It’s an excellent recommendation for those who are looking for a quick watch. It’s such a charming series from beginning to end, and surprisingly solidly produced as well with detailed animation that hardly cuts any corners. With an excellent dreamy soundtrack excellent voice acting and incredibly cute antics, I really enjoyed this little series. It’s a shame that we never hear anything from its production-company anymore, APPP. Around ten years ago they used to do a number of series with very neat ideas, but right now they only seem to concentrate on in-between animation jobs (but doing a great job at them nonetheless).

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

I’m getting more and more impressed at Sunrise’s lesser-known mecha series. Sure, they have made plenty of series that just consist out of a string of random action-scenes without much substance, but on the other hand there also are series as Overman King Gainer, Zone of the Enders, Zegapain and Votoms, which all sparkle with creativity. Brigadoon is yet another one of those.

Brigadoon is one of those series with a cute and brightly-coloured outside, but a dark and lethal inside. It starts off pretty innocently, in which a 13-year-old girl suddenly gets hunted down by evil aliens and needs to be protected by some sort of combat android. The series is at these points fun to watch, and a very energetic action-series, but as the series goes on, the dark side of the series shows up more and more, and isn’t afraid to put the lead characters through hell and beyond in order to get its points across. The formulaic setting of the series is also completely abandoned in the second half, for a far more interesting plot with a lot of twists and turns along the way.

This series is especially good with its characters. Not just the main characters, but also most of the side-characters get their own share of depth that makes them engaging to watch. Especially Marin strikes as an excellent lead character for this series: she has plenty of flaws as a character, and yet her energy carries the series and prevents it from dragging.

This series also has a unique visual style. The animation during the light parts is very quirky, and during the dark parts it’s detailed and intricately shaded to get the best out of the seemingly childish graphics. The soundtrack is also unique, and has a number of very noteworthy tracks.

Granted though, this series does have its share of flaws. One of the most notable is the regeneration powers that the androids (called Monomakia here) in this series seem to have. I’m really not much of a fan of those sorts of powers; after all, why care about a character getting injured if he can easily be zapped back to good health. And yeah, because of this the characters get injured to near-death a few too many times. Not only that, but sometimes the regeneration rules also go inconsistent with their own inner logic.

This becomes mostly apparent in the ending, which really wants to bring everything to a happy end a little too badly. Revelations are pulled out of thin air, deus ex machina make sure that everyone gets to have the easy end, and all in all it’s just one huge rush-job that the creators didn’t put much thought into. Nevertheless, this remains a pretty good action-series. There are some really neat ideas stuffed into it. Sure, there is a bit of fanservice here and there, but it never gets in the way of what’s really important.

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

Mamoru Oshii really is one of the most unique anime directors out there, his sense of dialogue is really unrivalled. Gosenzosama Banbanzai came from the period in which he was still in his experimental phase. As a result, this has been one of the most unique OVAs I’ve seen, there truly is nothing like it, even though it’s already 20 years old by now. It’s a unique take on the genre of series that focuses on long strings of dialogue, and gets the formula right.

The only way to get a really good impression on what this OVA is about is to actually watch it, but to give an attempt to describe this thing: the setting is incredibly simplistic. Every episode takes place for about 90% in one single room, with only a select number of cameras that it feels like a stage. In fact, the creators often use stage-lights to confirm this. On these stages, the anime shows all of the different characters engaging in seemingly endless dialogues and monologues, often about things that at first sight don’t even seem to matter.

In this OVA, Mamoru Oshii brilliantly manages to tell his story through this dialogue, in which he loves taking his arguments to the absurd while making them seem like they make sense by creating a context in which they seemingly do. The dialogues and monologues are brilliant at messing with their own logic and taking the piss out of themselves, and yet at the same time they manage to create a serious story with quite a number of interesting twists.

The visuals in this series also rock. Like I said, they’re simplistic: there are hardly any changes of cameras, but this has enabled the animators to really focus on animating the characters, and the results show. The animation is incredibly smooth and a lot of effort has been put into making the characters move naturally. On top of that, the visual direction also provides plenty of strong shots, creative situations and simple yet effective action-scenes.

It’s really a shame that they don’t make anime like this anymore. There really aren’t many series that can claim to be as unique and yet as well produced as Gosenzosama Banbanzai. With an excellent soundtrack done by Kenji Kawai and a great stab at in-series advertising more than fifteen years before Code Geass came with its Pizza Hut, I really recommend this for those who are looking for something short and different.

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

I remember how I watched the original First Squad Music Video, and thought to myself “this is awesome, they should make more about this”. Well, someone at Studio 4C must have heard this, because here it is: a full one-hour-length movie about Russia during the second World War. And really, they’ve done it again. First Squad yet again stands out with its absolutely gorgeous graphics and new ideas that the producers could try out in this movie.

Out of all the anime studios out there, Studio 4C see anime the most as an international medium, rather than just something for Japanese audiences. First Squad is probably the first Japanese-Russian co-production, as it shows a bit of WWII from the Russian perspective, combined with a fictional story of the occult, the realm of the dead, and packaging everyting as a semi-documentary with live-action bits of people from all sorts of backgrounds, who tell about their experiences during the war, and their comments on the story of this movie.

And I know that I talked down on live action during the past days, but here’s one who actually gets it right, and I think that this has been the best combination of animation and live-action I’ve seen: the live-action serves to add that bit of extra depth to the setting, while it never gets in the way of the animation. It’s a very neat idea, and really works.

And yeah, I just have to mention the graphics for this movie, which turn it into a visual feast. The character-designs are typical of Studio 4C, and they really make use of the advances in CG of today in order to mesh the two seamlessly. The animation itself isn’t as good as your average movie, but the sheer beauty of all of the different shots definitely makes up for it.

You can see that the story and characters take a bit of a back-seat in favour of the setting and animation, but they’re in no way bad. The story revolves around a typical plot to summon an evil demon to help the Nazis, but it’s well built up, and it slowly unfolds as the movie goes on. Despite its simplicity, the story is well told and will keep your attention. The lead character is a teenaged girl who somehow weilds a katana in Russia, but again: her background is nicely explored, and she serves her function. My only complaint here is that the story ended with a rather pointless cliff-hanger, even though the creators could have easily just ended it.

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