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Kimi ni Todoke Second Season Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kimi ni Todoke




Each year, before the start of each Autumn Season, I hold a little poll in which you can all force me to blog a series I wouldn’t normally even consider to cover. The only time at which I could not complete such a series was in 2009, with Kimi ni Todoke’s first season. It had very solid production values; Production IG made sure of that. However, as a romance it just had no idea what it wanted to do. Any scene that focused on Sawako’s (the lead character) growth as a character was overshadowed by its romantic drivel that refused to go anywhere.

It really was the classic syndrome of romance shows, where the creators just refuse to let relationships play out normally, in favour of forced and artificial cheese and drama. It’s because of this that I wasn’t looking forward to its second season. But lo and behold: it actually redeemed itself a bit. The biggest surprises of this season definitely lie in its sequels.

This second season really shows that the creators took a good look at what happened to the first season, with the intention to fix its major flaws. They put aside the romantic nonsense and simply constructed a series with the sole purpose of resolving the romantic relationship between the two lead characters. It’s an in-depth look at how the relationship between the two lead characters grows. It’s no longer another simple “will they won’t they”-story, but instead the series changes into a “when, how and why will they hook up”. A much more interesting premise, and to make matters even better: the creators also figured out how to use slow pacing. Instead of using it for stalling, they use it to slowly build up everything they need, deliver one hell of a climax, and afterwards carefully wrap up everything that needed to be wrapped up. It’s a massive improvement over the first season.

At the same time though, I wouldn’t say that this is the second coming of White Album. The fact remains that the first season just left a lot to be desired, and it didn’t even seem to build up for this second season. The second season does make use of some of the things that happened throughout the first season, but it mostly feels like the creators went “oh crap, we actually need to develop these people”. Kimi ni Todoke still is an overly pure portrayal of teenaged romance: great to swoon away, but at the same time it’s not like the story behind it is really deep and thoughtful. The characters remain one-sighted teenagers who only seem to think about romance and the drama still is based entirely around the fact that they refuse to talk to each other. They’re just much better written and portrayed than in the first season.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Has exactly what the first season lacked: focus. Carefully builds up its simple but effective romance.
Characters: 8/10 – They refused to develop in the first season. In the second season however, they do, and IT’S ABOUT BLOODY TIME.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Production IG is solid as expected, though there are too many distorted faces.
Setting: 8/10 – Nothing special nor nothing bad here aside from an overly idyllic portrayal of teenaged life. But then again, something tells me that was very much intentional.

Suggestions:
– Bokura ga Ita
– Aoi Hana
– True Tears

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka Review – 70/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka?




That’s it. With this I’m done giving these generic looking moe shows a benefit of doubt. Kore wa Zombie Desu ka is not as bad as Dragon Crisis. In fact, it has a few parts that are actually good, especially in its first half. It lead me to believe that, in fact, we might get a very enjoyable fanservice show here. Unfortunately though, this show then proceeded to run all of my hopes into the ground.

Let me start with the good stuff: this show is quite creative when it wants to be. When it wants to, it can use its cliched ingredients, insert some good chemistry between the characters, throw in some crazy plot twists and create an excellent tension. There really are a few excellent episodes in this series, especially the first and the one about the slasher. It’s just that there’s just so much crap in the rest of this show.

Zombie is at its best when the chemistry around its characters is dynamic. It’s got well written banter that works well with its nonchalant zombie main character. It’s quite enjoyable when it doesn’t take its own cliches seriously and instead tries to put them into a creative scenario. Most of the time though, it just forgets this and devolves into dull moe hi-jinks. Eventually, it just gives up trying to be interesting and just opts for lazy slice of life that’s just there to fill up time. The characters in this show are nowhere near well written enough to remain enjoyable when they’re not funny.

The big nail in this one’s coffin though is that it has no bloody clue how to tell a good story. The drama in the first half can actually get quite good when the show still is a collection of random episodes about the important characters, but it completely falls apart when it tries to build up for some overall storyline. The drama gets incredibly cheesy, and the worst part is that the creators don’t even realize this, so they just keep stretching the cheese ad nauseum.

The entire second half of this series is based around complete stupidity from one character that ends with one heck of a Deus ex Machina (several of them, actually). And then, when the climax is over and you thought that things couldn’t get any worse… episode 12 will destroy any good memories that were still left with one giant middle finger to both its audience and cast of characters.

Studio Deen. Please put some people who can actually tell a story on your next series. I mean, you’ve showed in the past that you can make genuinely good moe shows with Touka Gettan and YamiBoushi. Why so much laziness?

Storytelling: 7/10 – When it wants to, it can be very enjoyable and dynamic, but this doesn’t happen often enough and gets ruined by some terrible episodes and drama.
Characters: 6/10 – Try to be serious, but fail. Try to be enjoyable, but fail as well. Only when they try to be themselves they work well.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Pretty decent animation. Certainly not the worst.
Setting: 7/10 – Has nice ideas, but doesn’t use them often enough.

Suggestions:
– Touka Gettan
– Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
– Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito

Dragon Crisis Review – 55/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Dragon Crisis




The past Winter Season was a dark season… for Studio Deen in any case. They came out with more series than any other series, and all of them were disappointing even despite my low expectations. I mean, I am a fan of them and all, but the reason for that is most definitely not their consistency!

I originally wanted to be a bit more generous with my rating for this series, but the more I thought about this show, the more I realized that it just doesn’t have anything redeemable. There’s no reason to watch this thing; everything it does has been done better a thousand times already. Dragon Crisis at heart is a boring cliche-fest that lacks any sort of ambition.

The structure of this series consists out of six two-episode arcs. This show somehow manages to do the impossible and become progressively worse with every successive arc. Seriously, just when you think that this show couldn’t get any worse, it manages to finds some way to prove you wrong until at the end, the creators just outright give up. Every arc is pretty much focused on adding someone to the lead guy’s harem. Yeah, that loses its charm really quickly.

Beyond that the writing is just outright stupid. This is the kind of show that was written by people who think that teenagers (its target audience) have the mental capacities of a lobotomized squirrel. Characters act solely on what’s convenient to the plot and make the most bizarre leaps in logic at times. Any attempts of this show to become genuine is overshadowed by their complete stupidity. Add that to a plot that is just chockful of plot evices, deus ex machinas and inconsequential techno-babble that too make no sense whatsoever. All of that really is not helped by a really annoying cast of cliches and stereotypes that are supposed to be characters in which hardly anyonee stands out.

One of the big eslling points of Dragon Crisis looked to be its animation, with Masashi Ishihama (the guy behind the gorgeously animated Read or Die and Welcome to the Space Show) as its animation director. But even factoring in the lower budget that this series received, the animation is surprisingly bland: it’s not used well, the characters are all carbon copies of each other with just different hairstyles and despite a relatively high framerate for Studio Deen’s standards, none of the visuals stand out as particularly impressive.

The reason why I still consider a series like Fractale to be good, despite the way in which it too has a lot of flaws, is because it still is a very enjoyable adventure. There is absolutely nothing enjoyable about Dragon Crisis. None of the drama works, its stories are completely void of any creativity, its characters are just there to get in the lead guy’s pants and it just had no intention of trying to do anything even remotely interesting.

Thats the big problem with Studio Deen: they’ve been losing their talent left and right and just aren’t trying hard enough most of the time. They need some incentive: something to really get them to produce the really good stuff again, because this… this just is a complete waste.

Storytelling: 4/10 – Completely unambitious, doesn’t know what it wants to do and therefore is full of deus ex machina and plot induced stupidity.
Characters: 5/10 – None stands out. It’s just one big harem with all the cliches in place.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Not as good as you’d expect, but doesn’t cause this show to get any worse than what it already is.
Setting: 5/10 – This show looks like it adctually has a complex background with its dragons and rare artifacts, but in the end it’s nothing but mere cliches and techno-babble.

Suggestions:
– Dragonaut The Resonance (Yes, I’m actually recommending Dragonaut over this one. At least that one had some ambition!)
– Fractale
– Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou

Letter Bee Reverse Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Letter Bee




Letter Bee as a series that’s difficult to recommend. I mean, the heights it can reach is amazing, but its quality does tend to fluctuate and it tends to waste time, the fillers of the first season being the biggest example of this. The second season of Letter Bee is a huge improvement over the first, though, let there be no mistake about that. The amount of amazing episodes has pretty much doubled and the cast of characters grows into an amazing one that plays off each other wonderfully. It’s just not as good as what it could have been, but more on that below.

First of all, the first Letter Bee Left with an absolutely amazing cliff-hanger. It was tedious to sit through that series at times, but everything just came together in those final ten minutes. The second season immediately builds further upon that, and does so wonderfully. The creators just come with episode after episode of character-building that makes the main cast a delight to watch, with some of the most gorgeous artwork and very imaginative episodic stories that are just full of charms. The first half of the second season shows Letter Bee at its utter best.

And then… the creators found out that they only had 50 episodes to work with. With a manga that’s still ongoing, they had to make the choice to continue adapting the manga that this show is based on, only to cut off somewhere in the middle of the story, or make up their own finale. They chose the latter.

Now, I know that anime original endings are notorious, but Letter Bee actually does a very good job of wrapping up its story: a breath of fresh air after all those countless series that just refuse to end because the manga or light novels that they’re adapting doesn’t fit into 13, 26 or 52 episodes. Most of the storylines that needed to be wrapped up are wrapped up pretty decently while at the same time most of the characters also get a good closure.

This really could have gone wrong terribly, but the end result is a cohesive and enjoyable series. But the fact remains that the creators of the anime just aren’t as good storytellers as the writer of the manga. The adventure parts feel a bit sloppy and lack detail, and the emotional turmoil dies down a lot in the anime original parts. The tension becomes just less dynamic and interesting and overall it just never really manages to reach the height it once got to. It’s not bad at all, it’s just… less good. That’s one disappointment that you do need to take into account when watching this series.

Overall, today it’s very rare for series to have 50 episodes. Letter Bee’s biggest fault was that it didn’t use them well. Make no mistake, though: when this series is at its best, it really is amazing and this last for more than a dozen episodes. The big difference between the first and second season is that even when the second season is disappointing a bit, it’s not like it becomes too annoying, boring or unwatchable: there’s definitely enough interesting stuff happening, it’s just not as interesting or well executed as it once was.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Excellent at building up and closing off its story. Especially the first half is wonderfully told with a lot of creativity.
Characters: 9/10 – The main selling point of this series: at this point in the series the characters have received some excellent development that is used wonderfully.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Gorgeous at times, but unremarkable at others. The soundtrack still is very good.
Setting: 8/10 – Dulls in a bit after a while, but still good and full of moral dilemmas.

Suggestions:
– Popolocrois Story 1998
– Argento Soma
– Natsume Yuujinchou

The Hakkenden Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




The Hakkenden is an OVA that I decided to check out because it’s something like an animation fan’s wet dream. Seriously, it was a series that just kept returning on the resumes of famous, well known and very talented animators. To just name the most notable people who worked on this thing: Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game, Kaiba, Yojou-han), Takashi Nakamura (Fantastic Children), Shinji Hashimoto (Kid’s Story, Black Heaven’s OP), Satoru Utsunomiya (Animation director of Gosenzosama Banbanzai), Shinya Ohira (Wanwa the Doggy). And if that wasn’t enough already: among the key animators were Mitsuo Iso and Takeshi Honda (Dennou Coil) and Kenji Kamiyama (Seirei no Mobirito, Ghost in the Shell SAC) was one of the art directors.

Seriously, outside of anthologies like Genius Party, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a large amount of ridiculously talented animators and animation directors come together on one project. The producers really took both up and coming talent with the intention to make an incredible visual masterpiece.

And indeed: the animation in The Hakkenden is exquisite. It’s got thirteen episodes in total, and just about every scene looks gorgeous. The amount of still frames is kept to an absolute minimum, but what makes this show really stand out is its truly excellent inbetween animation. Let me tell you: this OVA has been one of the first, if not THE first, that managed to successfully and consistently animate small armies, never giving up any kind of detail on even the most insignificant soldier.

Beyond that, the animation also manages to bring its characters to life. The amount of detail that is in their movements is just completely amazing throughout nearly every episode, but the ones that really stand out are episodes 4 (Masaaki Yuasa and Takashi Nakamura actually worked together on that one), 9 (Satoru Utsunomiya has a unique style that focuses on many subtle movement and incredibly fluid framerates and gets total freedom to use it here) and 10 (Shinya Ohira and Shinji Hashimoto are both wild and vivid animators and show this off in an absolutely stunning episode) are absolute visual masterpieces.

As for the story and setting: the Hakkenden is a very authentic series: backgrounds are all excellent, the stories that it tells about its characters create a wonderful atmosphere of the darker days of Japan’s history.

This OVA basically has two major problems. The first is that it is a fervent supporter of a guy named Murphy. Seriously: whenever you find yourself thinking “this could go wrong really badly”, it does. This show really tries to drag its characters to hell over and over, and that does get a bit one-sided after a while. Especially considering how it paints the picture that anyone who held even the slightest amount of power in Japan was a total bastard over and over.

The second flaw is that sometimes, it really feels like complete scenes are missing. There are parts that this series refuses to explain, leaving huge holes in the story. The story jumps around way too much: at one time the eight titular dog warriors are together, then they’re split up again, then they magically are together again. The worst is how it just refuses to explain how they all meet each other: they just get introduced, they tell their story, and suddenly they’re all travelling together.

It’s definitely worth the watch, though. I’ve seldomly seen animation this consistent and this good at bringing its characters to life. The Hakkenden was an incredibly ambitious project, especially when you consider what some of the people involved all ended up accomplishing after they finished their work on this series.

Storytelling: 7/10 – Great atmosphere, but a bit disjointed and one-sided in terms of the big picture.
Characters: 8/10 – Solid characterization (also really helped by the animation).
Production-Values: 10/10 – Absolutely fantastic. Amazing and life-like animation.
Setting: 9/10 – Very authentic picture of the old days of Japan, with roots deep inside folklore.

Suggestions:
– Genius Party
– Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto
– Robot Carnival

Aim for the Top: Diebuster Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




I had my problems with the original cast of Gunbuster, but that was mostly because they didn’t try hard enough to step away from the stereotypes that they would later inspire. It’s also a bit of a matter of flat characterization, but overall I would not really call any character annoying.

Enter Nono, the lead character of Diebuster.

I’ll be honest here: the first half of Diebuster was a bit of a chore to sit through. Nono is not a likable main character at all with her one-sided overacted klutziness and stupidity, and the pointless fanservice actually gets in the way of the story. The drama in this movie also didn’t really impress; the major theme of this series is characters, refusing to grow up. This leads to characters refusing to accept reality, angsting quite a bit and and making a whole lot of dumb decisions. This drama is consistent (in fact, it’s about the only consistent part of this OVA), but it also just wasn’t interesting.

Nevertheless, this was written by Yoji Enokido. He shows this in the second half (and especially the final two episodes) by just going “screw being plausible, we’re just going over 9000 here”. The final two episodes are full of nice and awesome ideas that I very much suspect ended up as the inspiration for Gurren Lagann’s finale. Unlike the first Gunbuster, Diebuster doesn’t try to be physically plausible in the slightest, but that does allow it to to go with some interesting science fiction ideas.

Ideas which ultimately are reflected best into the graphics of this show. Seriously, the graphics look awesome here and are IMO the biggest reason to check out this OVA. They’re really imaginative and make excellent use of the creativity in the plot.

Above I mentioned that this is a very inconsistent series. That’s both a good and a bad thing. I mean, you don’t want to watch this for its cohesive plot, because the story is a bit of an undirected mess, not to mention the angst not being that impressive, but on the other hand this did make this OVA evolve through its episodes, and it prevented Nono’s annoying antics to ruin the entire OVA (she really gets better as the anime goes on).

Oh, and on one final side-note: I keep seeing everywhere that you need to have seen the original Gunbuster before watching this OVA, but I don’t really think that that is the case. You can watch them in any order really.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Not the best at drama, but when it’s on fire it really entertains.
Characters: 7/10 – Nono is annoying, and none of the cast really end up making this up.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Gorgeous, full of excellent artwork and ideas.
Setting: 8/10 – Not as interesting as Gunbuster or FLCL, but still full of nice ideas and concepts.

Suggestions:
– FLCL
– Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
– Wings of Rean

Kimagure Orange Road – Summer’s Beginning Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



After the perfect first movie formed a perfect ending for the Kimagure Orange Road franchise, I was really wondering how the creators would be able to top that with the second and final movie. And yeah, this movie is a step back. It brings cheese into the romance and it requires a whole bunch of random coincidences, just to get going.

Especially the first half of the movie brings back a lot of stuff from the TV series that made it so annoying. Kyousuke’s powers at this point are like the nuclear power you see in a lot of American comics: they do whatever is convenient for the plot at the moment. Kyousuke himself also has this tendency to narrate a bit too enthusiastically at times, saying a lot of things that would have been much better off when left unsaid.

Nevertheless, I really urge fans of Kimagure Orange Road to check this movie out. If you’ve managed to sit through the hell that was the TV-series, this movie offers a HUGE amount of character development, showing the entire cast in their twenties. Ironically, it’s only until the aftermath when things get really amazing, but it’s so worth the wait. Whenever this movie isn’t cheesy, it really delivers a wonderful romance, miles away from just about any overused stereotype.

The animation… is surprisingly mediocre for a movie. I mean, for me, most of the TV series even looked better. Most of the budget of this movie is wasted on a pointless dance scene. For movie standards, I really expected more of the animation.

Oh, and on a side-note: this movie links Madoka to Yuki Kajuira. That is just awesome.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Okay, so it uses cheese and some coincidences, but those coincidences make sure that it has an awesome premise to work with.
Characters: 10/10 – The characters already had excellent development. Then this movie comes along.
Production-Values: 7/10 – The animation is disappointing for a movie. On the other hand though: it features Yuki Kajiura’s debut. Years before she got big.
Setting: 8/10 – Stays true to Kimagure Orange Road, though a little too well perhaps.

Suggestions:
– The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
– Maison Ikkoku
– Umi ga Kikoeru

Aim for the Top: Gunbuster Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Okay, so I ended up liking Gunbuster for a whole different reason than I thought I would. From one of Hideaki Anno’s earliest works, I expected this fun homage OVA to the giant robot genre with excellent action scenes, but that’s probably not going to be what I’ll end up remembering about this thing.

Now, Gunbuster is definitely a homage, but it doesn’t really do much for the giant robot genre. It’s got a very typical set-up with a lot of cliches and fanservice, but ends up playing a lot of them a bit too straight at times. The result is yet another teenager who ends up saving the world multiple times on a giant robot that she somehow ends up piloting. There also is quite a bit of romance, but that also doesn’t really get anywhere beyond your average cheese shop.

Instead, this IOVA is all about the science fiction. Instead of coming with your usual explanations and backstories, Gunbuster interestingly weaves pseudo quantum science with fantasy into a time travelling epic. It’s also one of those stories that changes significantly with every airing episode, making good use of its unpredictability to spiral out of control, despite the large amount of cliches that are in the story and characters.

If you’re wondering where the science fiction is when you start to watch it: the best episode of this OVA does remain the sixth and final one. It’s here where the creators say “screw it” and abandon the cliches in favor of its neat ideas, setting and background, and yet another proof of how Hideaki Anno is in his element when he goes over-budget.

Speaking of the guy, of course Gunbuster is very well animated. I can’t fault this show for looking pretty, and especially for its time it has detailed animation and a pretty nice direction. I can imagine how this movie was a big trendsetter, but it’s just a shame that half of the trends it set ended up horribly abused during the past decade. Overall I don’t think that Gunbuster is anything amazing, but it definitely has its good points and I still enjoyed watching it despite its cliches.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Makes up for its cliches pretty nicely with its good direction and constantly changing story.
Characters: 7/10 – A bit too many cliches and cheese, though it does have interesting character development.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Pretty impressive, though nothing amazing.
Setting: 9/10 – Great background stories and ideas.

Suggestions:
– Noein
– Macross Frontier
– Soukou no Strain

Legend Of Galactic Heroes – My Conquest is the Sea of Stars Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Legend of Galactic Heroes is a franchise that, more than any other one, baffles me as to how it got made. I mean, if it was just a television series or a few movies about realistic space battles between huge armies, then okay: it would have been an interesting experiment to do. Instead though, the creators here just dedicated more than an entire decade to something that seems such a commercial gamble. The creators just came out of nowhere and delivered first an OVA of 110 episodes, only to create two more OVAs of 28 and 24 episodes long respectively. How was this financed? How did the creators keep such a consistent production here on something that seems light-years away from the mainstream?

Anyway, this movie is the one that started it all, being released about half a year before the first episode of the OVA was released. It mainly is just a background movie, meant to tell the past and set things up for the OVA, but I already could tell that, yes: this would be something special.

The cast of characters in particular is what sets this series apart from all other space and science fiction series of its time. There just isn’t any cheese, no overacting, it’s not trying to be childish and neither is it trying to dumb itself down. The creators make sure to give character to not just the main characters, but also the side ones, and even some seemingly unimportant bystanders. The dialogue is well written, intelligent and detailed and does an excellent job of fleshing out both the characters and the plot. Something tells me that the creators of the Seikai trilogy were heavily inspired by this series.

One criticism I have for this movie right now is that one of its purposes is to make the two main characters look smart, and it does so by portraying their superiors as stubborn idiots (yeah, blame Gosick for me, being too focused on that). Even that though is far from as black and white as it seems at first sight, and both of the idiots serve are subtly different from all of the other moron commanders you see in anime. Again, the excellent dialogue is to thank for that.

As for the space battles: the thing with anime is that it’s near impossible to accurately portray battles on a huge scale. This movie was one of the few attempts I’ve seen that realizes this, and tries to give it its best attempt to stay as believable as possible,instead of just randomly copy-pasting the same drawing over and over. Huge fleets are drawn with depth and at the same time budget is saved cleverly with dynamic camera work and an actually readable strategic map for the main commanders. The latter may not look like much, but just try to think of how many other anime just show a bunch of nonsensical technobabble on these screens that are impossible to follow?

Storytelling: 8/10 – Mostly building up, but it does that well. The space battles are also unique.
Characters: 9/10 – Excellent dialogue and a realistic portrayal of its characters.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Nice and detailed animation. Classical music for the background works, but is a bit cheap though.
Setting: 8/10 – Potential to become really interesting in the OVA.

Suggestions:
– Armored Trooper Votoms
– Seikai no Monshou, Senki and Senki II
– Mobile Police Patlabor’s First Movie
(Note: I’ve decided not to put Tytania on this list of recommendations. Not because it’s so much worse, but because it has one vital difference with LoGH that really forces you to watch it with a different mindset: Tytania is very theatrical, while this movie had far more restrained actors.)

You Are Delicious Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



You might be wondering why I’m giving such a high rating to kiddie movie about a bunch of cartoonishly drawn dinosaurs. Believe me, I’m just as surprised as you are. For those of you who don’t know: Omae wa Umasou da (or You are Delicious!) is a project consisting out of a TV-series and a Movie, based on a picture book about a Tyrannosaurus who takes care of a baby Ankylosaurus. The TV-series was just… bad. Incredibly childish and ludicrously poorly animated. It really was aimed at children of two or three years old. Because of this, I also was just planning to only check out a few minutes of this movie before giving it a pass.

Now, the reason why I liked this movie so much is riddled with spoilers, so I’ll try as much as possible to avoid them. There is one thing however that I do want to warn about, considering the circumstances currently in Japan, and that is the huge amount of dead bodies that are shown in this movie. The creators really don’t shy away from the fact that dinosaurs eat each other and even innocent children aren’t except to this rule (au contraire, in fact). On top of that, a volcano also erupts during the airtime. Be aware of this when watching this movie, because the disasters that happen in this movie are in no way meant to be compared to what happened in Japan with the Tsunami. Regardless of whatever stories anime tried to tell, what happened in Japan is truly horrifying, and let’s hope for a steady recovery for everyone involved.

You are Delicious isn’t really a kids’ movie. It’s more like something for the whole family: it’s got cute dinosaurs for the younger viewers, but it also really doesn’t shy away from serious themes as prejudice, killing for a living, and parenting. It really can get quite mature when it wants to and unlike most other movies of its kind, it doesn’t dumb itself down. It has its silly moments, but by far the biggest purpose of this movie is telling a serious story, and taking itself and its audience seriously in the process.

Now, let me try to explain this in the least spoilerific way: the amount of character development in this movie is huge for movie standards. The premise of this movie is about a Tyrannosaurus Rex taking care of a baby Ankylosaurus, but there is much more to the story than just that. It even puts in effort to make its downright impossible scenario actually plausible. I’m not going to spoil the way in which it does that, you’ll have to watch the movie, though. Let me just say that the cast of characters ends up with a ton of depth and wonderfully fleshed out with especially the lead character being a joy to watch.

Obviously it doesn’t aim to be the most realistic movie: heck, it has giant dinosaurs doing somersaults and other kinds of battle moves. At the same time though it has a ton of these nice details that make it surprisingly down to earth, like those long neck dinosaurs getting dizzy when they they lift their heads too high. Plus, the fancy attack moves make for some really sweet choreography in the action scenes.

There have been more of those “Wolf and Sheep” stories before, but these all had their share of flaws. The amazing thing about You are Delicious is that I have almost nothing I can criticize it for. I mean, by comparison, Chirin no Suzu was very melodramatic; this movie instead manages to keep its balance between hard-hitting drama and subtle characterizations. Arashi no Yoru ni had a simple message that it was a little too keen on portraying. This movie has multiple strong messages that are all more than they seem and that it doesn’t try to shove down the viewer’s throat.

This movie really took me by complete surprise. I’t quite possibly the biggest surprise I’ve seen in years. Being based on a picture book of all things, I can only imagine how much extra the creators put into the story of this movie.

Storytelling: 9/10 – The proof that you can make anything awesome with the right direction. Well balanced and knows exactly when to be silly and when to take itself seriously.
Characters: 9/10 – Wonderful character development on adorable characters.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Nice animation, unique art style and great action scenes..
Setting: 9/10 – Paints its own original and imaginative picture of the time of the dinosaurs with just the right parts taken under the loop.

Suggestions:
– Chirin no Suzu
– Heartcatch Precure – Hana no Miyako de Fashion Show… desu ka?
– Kappa to Coo to Natsuyasumi