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Hayao Miyazaki scares me. Back in the late seventies, when anime wasn’t even twenty years old, it was really starting to evolve and mature, resulting in quite a few early masterpieces. There was one thing however that all of them had notable difficulties with, though: the inbetween and cleanup animation. And here Hayao comes and animates Conan with such a consistent crispness that was completely unheard of at the time. It would take the rest of anime five to seven year to come that kind of refinement. How the heck did this guy accomplish all of that?

I mean, this guy knows like no other how to make something mainstream with his innocent yet exciting storylines. Mirai Shounen Conan is pretty much the base of what every children’s adventure should be: a lead couple, exciting, yet varied action scenes, villains who actually know what they’re doing and aren’t complete pushovers (plus, they use actual gunpowder guns, not those phony laser-guns), a solid story without any plot-holes or cheesy deus ex machina, a balance between action scenes and build-up that can both be playfully childish and able to take itself seriously, never taking itself too far to become unbelievable, yet putting constant tension on the characters. This series is so incredibly solid, it must have made a HUGE impact on 1978, and the way that its formula is still being used today, it must have had an immense influence as it played a major part in Miyazaki’s role in revolutionizing anime.

And yet, I do feel a bit disappointed: I expected more from this. Part of this has to do with the premise being used so often now that it hardly held any surprises. Heck, even Miyazaki himself revisited the general premise here with Castle in the Sky. Out of all of the works I’ve seen from him, this probably is the one that aged the least well.

But even beyond that, I kept feeling like this series was missing something. This show has an incredibly solid base, but beyond that I feel like it did very little to spice itself up. There is surprisingly little character-development, and Conan and Lana as a main couple don’t seem to develop at all, and weren’t really interesting enough to really keep my attention. Conan also has this huge amount of strength in him. I can understand why this was done for the action and to keep the plot going, but it also rather makes this series a bit too predictable for its own good when his only weakness is not being able to be at two places at the same time. When the once smart villains also get completely stupid and arrogant near the end of this series, I do feel like this series could have been much more in terms of its plot and characters.

I am a big fan of both Miyazaki and children’s adventures, but I have to be honest and say that I didn’t enjoy it as some other anime of those genre. If I watched it as a child I have no doubt that I would have loved it, but when you look at the same year in which this series was made: 1978, I just have to admit that I liked Captain Hardlock and Perrine Monogatari’s stories and characters a lot better. Technically speaking, it’s one of the most solid tv-series of its decade though, make no mistake about that.

Suggestions:
– The Mysterious Cities of Gold
– Laputa: Castle in the Sky
– Romeo’s Blue Skies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suggestions:
– Kaiji
– One Outs
– Yugo the Negotiator

The Twelve Kingdoms: world building at its finest.

After sitting down to watch this series, I can really understand why it still stands high as a classic: I’ve seen a lot of fantasy series at this point, but out of all of them, the setting of the Twelve Kingdoms stands amongst the most detailed, original and imaginative. It comes up with a completely new world; a carefully balanced one by a mysterious deity who randomly selects people to be the king of one of the twelve countries it consists of. Far away from your typical fantasy series, this is a series that tries to portray its setting realistically. And it works out really well!

Everyone in the series has his or her own story to tell. The Twelve Kingdoms is a series that puts a ton of emphasis on character development: there are a ton of characters who go through immense changes, and who overcome huge flaws in their characters. Usually, this is a recipe for cheese, but this show actually pulls it off. It spends long strings of episodes to outline these characters, show their progression and details some of the major events in their lives, showing exactly how they mature and warrant such drastic changes in their personalities.

It’s a series that is wonderfully told, and constantly evolving, Most of its problems come from the fact that it was most likely cancelled before it could get fully completed (do correct me if I’m wrong, but the series was supposed to have gotten 63 episodes, and only ended up with 45 of them). The final five episodes are significantly less impressive than the rest of the series, they’re rather shallow and end the series with a whimper, rather than a bang. It’s a bit of a nasty aftertaste for otherwise such a great series.

Still, the final arc is more of a minor annoyance than a reason not to watch this series. The thing I really loved about this series is how much it speaks to you imagination: through its 45 episodes, this series only tells about a tiny percent of all the stories that it could have told. There is so much more that this series could have shown us, but it doesn’t really matter that the show didn’t have time for that, because it all just speaks to your imagination. There are almost an infinite amount of possibilities here.

Of course, comparisons with the other major politics series are inevitable in such a review: Saiunkoku Monogatari. About that, I’ll say the following: they’re both very good at politics, both in their own ways. The Twelve Kingdoms’s setting definitely beats the one from Saiunkoku Monogatari, however I do feel that Saiunkoku Monogatari has a better cast: it also has great character development, but on top of that it was much better at fleshing its characters out. Saiunkoku Monogatari has a cast that felt alive, The Twelve Kingdoms has a setting that feels alive.

Suggestions:
– Saiunkoku Monogatari
– Guin Saga

I apologize for the lateness of this review. The biggest reason for that is pretty much a lack of motivation, and that’s pretty much my biggest issue with Break Blade: yes, it’s solid. Yes, it’s got good and realistic battles, and yet it just failed to catch my attention. I do realize that these issues are very subjective, but I still want to try and explain what’s bugging me about this series. And really, it’s not like Break Blade is bad, it’s just… not as good as I expected it to be and that’s what’s getting my goat a bit.

Xebec (or… Zí bek…) clearly got help from Production IG, because the one thing that I do appreciate of Break Blade is how well the action scenes are coordinated. They’re far from your usual mecha bash-fest, and are instead kept on a believable scale. There are a few details that could have been more thought out (like why the mechas don’t have wheels for long-distance travel), but details like those dwarf by the details and movements that a lot of other mecha anime lack. Another thing I really liked was the array of beautifully drawn landscapes.

I’m a lot less enthusiastic about the characters, though. Especially the lead character. Of course I do appreciate that he has his background, and how he’s an actual adult, but the latter is also the only thing that really sets him apart from your average male lead. I had hoped that this second movie of Break Blade would define his character a bit more, but instead it felt like the creators were still running down the “generic male lead checklist”: he learns how to pilot a mecha from out of nowhere, he’s still the only one who is able to pilot what seems like the strongest mecha in the world, he tries not to kill anyone, and let’s not forget at how he formally enlists in the army after considering for a few days to leave everything and not get involved: this guy is just so standard and there’s nothing that sets him apart. He doesn’t feel fleshed out enough, and after two hours of airtime, he still feels pretty flat and shallow as a character. That’s not good for a male lead.

In terms of politics, this episode was solid, but here’s the thing: most of the politics in the second episode were just meant to build up. We know a bit more about the different countries, and why the people are at war with each other, but most of the build up wasn’t really used in this episode, other than turning the lead character’s queen love interest into a bit of a damsel in distress. If the upcoming movies are able to use this build-up, then I’m really willing to hand out high marks for them, but here I have to be honest: this second movie was like the first tedious to watch for me.

Suggestions:
– Guin Saga
– Visions of Excaflowne
– Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu