angelsinthewindow's Anime
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Ah My Buddha (TV) Um… This is actually pretty good comparing some of the stuff that I have watched before. This is the idea of harem to a T. Ikkou is pretty much the worthless monk who is actually really perverted. Of course, he ends up in a nun training place. Somehow, that idea becomes the same story as in Love Hina. The girls are all really hard on poor Ikkou, although I can see why. He’s a complete pervert and yet, in the beginning, he doesn’t really look like he is. As the story keeps going, the more perverted he becomes and so some of this seems a bit forced (Although with women like what are around him, it’s hard not to see why). Chitose and Ikkou have a really big love hate relationship (just like Naru and Kentaro) and all the others have a strange out of control roommates. Chitose is also like an airhead so she is a mix of Naru and Mutsumi from Love Hina. The story pretty much turns into a ghost by week sort of story line with each show being resolved by some sort of exorcism. Luckily, it’s not always with Ikkou seeing a naked woman and turning super monk on us but we are not saved from the breasts and panty shots at all. Sadly, the only way we get any info about the powers the girls have is in the 11th episode so don’t look for any real information about them until then. By the way, what the fuck is the little creature with Hinata? She seems to be able to talk to it but we can never understand what he is actually saying. The artwork is actually pretty. Sadly, there is a lot of fan service meaning panty and breast shots abound. Characters are all pretty much the normal Harem style girls, the Lolita, the sporty, the big breasted, the girl next door stuff. There are times when I just wonder where they get some items out of thin air. Characters also change places sometimes especially at the table. The faces have a symptom I call large forehead symptom. It’s when there is way to much of the forehead and very little area for the nose and mouth. The voices sound alright, though some of the girls’ voices sound a bit odd. Sometimes, they just sound a little too high pitched. A lot of the script is forced badly and is pretty badly done too. Characters seem to talk out of no where or when other characters should be talking. Sometimes there are really stupid puns to that I really think make the whole thing just bad in some parts. Music is pretty generic, nothing really special. All in all, the soundtrack is just low grade to average. |
So-so |
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Ai Yori Aoshi (TV) The story line is a rather interesting version of Romeo and Juliet almost. A boy who isn’t liked because he denounced his name and a girl who wishes nothing more then to be with him even against her parents wishes. It’s a rather romantic story, and then they have to add everyone else into the mix and well, we get this. Not to say this show is bad, its just… it gets dull after a while with pretty much every trick in the book being done to keep the two apart from roommates that get in a way to time they have separated from each other and even the family problems. I’m happy it’s not a slice of life in a school (and it’s not… technically…) but it sure feels like one. I most of the time wanted to bash a couple heads together and yell ‘GET TO THE POINT!’ but yet, I have to sit through some of the slowest moving pieces until someone finally gets to a punchline and then I feel myself sitting there sometimes asking ‘how the heck did that happen and where was the fun?’ I do have to mention now that this is one of my favorites of the genre, its just does have a lot of flaws though the good points. Ai is so adorable though her personality is a little two innocent. She seems way to matter of fact and logical. She also sounds like a broken record in that she keeps going on about becoming his wife. She feels much like a Mary Sue character in that with almost everything she does, she does well and the stuff she isn’t good at is done in a way that makes her more Moe (and now I’m thinking about Konata’s saying from Lucky Star ‘Clumsy is sexy…’) to the point where I just want to smack her. Luckily, she doesn’t go into the realm that I would want her to be attacked by one of the girls from When They Cry, but she sometimes gets close to it. Kaoru though seems well put together or else it’s because he is around crazy people. Sometimes I even wonder if they put him in the middle of all these crazies just to show how bland he really was. There are times though that I wish he wasn’t so easily pushed into doing things he didn’t want to do or would hurt Ai if she took it the wrong way. Unfortunately, both main characters are actually less interesting then the characters around them and the story just seemed to become dull just because I wanted to learn more about the characters and it wouldn’t let me. The arrange marriage thing is hard for me to think of in the modem day sense and makes me wonder if it actually happens still. There is a lot of fan service in this and it makes me feel really sad because it really didn’t need it! Now we go into the extras and the reason why I call them extras and not supporting characters is this… they do not support anything. They are there to tear the two main characters apart and bring comedy into what could be even more boring story plot. I think without them, I would never have been able to get into the story. Their fun antics, although annoying at times, made me smile and laugh to break up the tension of a hard core sad areas. I do believe without them, the ending would not be as heart retching as it was because it seemed to have more meaning. The artwork is so beautiful and shows a lot of detail throughout the show. The backgrounds are rich in detail for the most part but there are times that it looks rather low in contrast. The comical points are really odd looking, where most of the artwork during that time pretty much lacks. The opening is rather nice in following the sweet music for that. But seems almost like Ranma’s opening in how they made it. The Voices are interesting, and Ai’s seems way too breathy. The English is a little off, almost like it’s a exact translation and I wish they would change it a bit. Some characters were a little creepy in voice and I was a little disappointed in that. The Japanese is alright even if it’s pretty standard for this type of show. The Japanese and English Ai sound very close to each other. It’s a little nice that way but also somewhat bothersome. The music is so pretty for the opening and closing that I actually looked for the opening music on its own. The other background music is a little to sappy even for the happy moments and sometimes breaks the mood. |
Decent |
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Air (TV) The story line is rather cute and sad, part of the trinity of Key Animation. I am really sad that this show is so short. They don’t seem to take enough time to flesh out the story lines or the characters. There are way too many girls that are really strange and you never really get much story line about them. The only girl you get to know is Misuzu but she doesn’t have much personality except for the whole girl in the sky thing. They also never talk about the girl in the sky much even if she was supposed to be the main focus or even give us an answer about her. The answer we do get comes too late in the story line and it leaves more questions than answers. It’s mostly about what strange effect happens when someone finds one of her feathers but even then I don’t quite understand it. Are the feathers some sort of wish maker and if so, then why does it always end up in sadness? The ark with Minagi Tohno feels very out-of-place in a sense and as though it was rushed. There really was no backbone to the story and the ending, though it made me cry seemed rather out-of-place. All in all, this story is really slow and hard to keep watching; sometimes almost dull in some parts. The animation is rather pretty, bright and colorful. Unfortunately, some of the characters are actually lacking a bit and I’m not really happy that Misuzu’s mom looks more like an older sister instead. All the artwork is pretty much fan based. Potato the dog doesn’t even really look like a dog too which threw me off. The beginning has a lot of aspects of a beginning for a visual Game rather than an actual anime so it means that it looks good and helps set the mood of the show. The music is beautiful, both the beginning and ending made me want to find the actual music. The background music is sometimes not very loud and hard to hear, mostly consisting of silence or sweet gentle feelings. The montages that help make time pass seem to be used way to often with the same sappy song. The voice actors are good but some don’t seem good enough. I have to say, I like the English voice actors better than the Japanese, probably just because I’m more used to English voices. I like this but it is rather slow and I don’t think I will be watching the whole show at once again. I may watch one or two of my favorite episodes though. |
Good |
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Alien Nine (special) The story line seems really odd, not really explaining much. It starts out counting votes and doesn’t tell us what though the girl that seems to be called most often doesn’t want to be. It turns out that she is going to be part of an alien fighting squad. Now something bothers me about this… why are they having elementary school children dealing with aliens and not adults? Not to mention, a girl who seems to be the weakest link is our main character. The whole time I watched it, I was thinking, Our main character everybody, the crybaby in the back row. She’s a very big spaze who seems to just freak out about every little thing. The characters are all over the place. Yuri is pretty useless, Kumi is pretty much the always the leader, and Kasumi is the little miss perfect. Frankly, they just seem like a very miss matched grouping. And they all have to wear aliens on their head’s called Borgs…. Why am I getting a thought of the Star Trek version of Borg in my head now? Oh ya, because they are pretty much assimilated into the damn alien fighter thing. Oh ya, can someone tell me what the Borg is doing with their tongues whenever their licking the girls backs? There is a lot of filler in this show it seems, and a lot of it feels like nothing really happens except one or two little things like seeing the personalities that are actually rather shallow. Really, do we need three episodes dedicated to seeing the girl’s personalities when they are so shallow a 5 minute episode would work fine? This is only 4 episodes long, give us something more! The Animation is alright, though all the characters have a rather round face with no chins or noses when looking at a side profile. The animation sometimes loops a bit. The space ships look a lot like mushrooms instead of actual space ships. Can I ask why everything looks like screws when they show tentacles. The artwork seems a bit like the first Digimon Adventures Movie. It’s just pretty run down. The Music is alright, though it’s not the best. It could use a little more in order to stand out instead of the odd little things. The Voices are somewhat alright, though some of them seem to squeak. This is the English version that I’m talking about. The girls just feel like they are saying there lines half assed, actually, all the characters are. They just don’t seem to be able to do very good voices. When Yuri keeps saying Kumi Kumi all the time, it really sounds like she is saying ‘kill me’. It’s a bit funny in that aspect. |
Weak |
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Angel Tales (TV) The show itself is so cute and I fell in love with some of the characters. Having said this, it’s good to note that this show is pretty much a copy cat of every other harem out there. The story line is not that much different then all the others and it gets hard to keep things in line with 12 girls all over the place. It was hard to keep them all straight though because it seemed that there were more characters coming out of the wood work as the story went on. I don’t want to have to have a list with every girl’s names and animals in front of me when I am trying to watch it. There is a reason why this show isn’t fully well known. Goro is so bland that he just makes it hard to feel for the guy. There really seems to be no personality and is completely shallow and he can’t even feel for the girls feelings at all. Even the girls talk about this in part of the show as his screen time seems to be cut down as more girls come in. The girls… I can pretty much pick out one piece of their personality and use that to give them a name. Seriously, when you’re going to do a harem anime, limit the characters down to at least 6 or 7. Not a whole 12! I mean, it doesn’t even make much sense, it would of made more sense if it was the twelve Japanese Zodiacs instead of us getting the frog, the gold fish, the hamster and so on. Then it would work much better to the story of the 4 gods. The art style is alright, though it felt like the characters have rather flattened heads; especially when they look right at the camera and when they turn, their heads seem oblong too. It’s well… mediocre at best. I’m not sure what the artist was trying to do but it’s not really well done. The music was alright, though a bit tinny and music box-ish. The other music really does not stand out except for one song they play over… and over… and over… and over… again. It’s annoying and I felt like having a drinking game to that song, it happened so much. I mostly only watched if for the story line that seemed a little different then the other shows. |
Decent |
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Battle Angel (OAV) Ok, who is the person that decided to give her a name like ‘Gally’? Someone really didn’t have any idea how to create a name. Gally isn’t like a normal girl, she just laughs when someone says she weighs a ton. It’s interesting how she is extremely strong and yet the only thing that was found was her head and part of her chest. She also seems to sweat which I really don’t think that cyborgs need to do so. There are a lot of inconsistencies that make this feel a bit off. Ido is a freaken jurk. Pretty much when Gally asks to be a Bounty Hunter, he tells her that all she needs to do is stand there and look pretty. It seems that all he really wants her to be is just eye candy at his medical business. And then, he just accepts her as a bounty hunter without any question. The artwork is vintage and actually rather good though I’m not sure about the design of a couple of the characters. There is one rather large squashed man who I can’t see the eyes of. His face is extremely wrinkled and hard to make out. Backgrounds are a bit Ido has a really odd flat head and looks pretty much like Vash from Trigun. Seriously, you look at him and then you look at Vash and they seem similar. Mouths barely open when people talk and sometimes you don’t see their mouths at all. Well, the voices are alright in English, but sadly, this seems rather old. Some don’t seem to be even trying. Gally sounds rather off when she tries to laugh, almost forced and Yugo sounds way to hyper for points that he really should be rather gentle on. When the characters shout, all it sounds like is someone reading lines as they shout. The whole argument between them is full of inconsistent highs and lows. The fight scenes are just screams and shouts with no real reason. Gally is rather vocal were every little jump that she does, she has to say something. A lot of characters, Chiren the worst, sound like they are laughing when they are crying. |
Weak |
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Black Butler (TV) I actually really love this show. In order to talk about it in detail, let’s do as Funimation has done and split it into first and second season. The first season starts out rather one a strange note, only giving us a glimpse of Ciel’s life about 2 years after him and Sebastian meeting. We see how the characters interact as well as who is within the household. We don’t get any info into the small 5 minute clip in front of the opening that shows Ciel naked with a red cloth over his body and talking to what looks like a crow. Even threw the episodes, they don’t really get on with the story until a few episodes in and we only get more info on how the characters act with one another. I do have to say, the second episode does bring in another fun character that does help later on in the series but he feels a bit out of place for showing him here and then waiting for a long time before you can see him again. Now some characters feel like they really don’t have a role besides to be comedy relief. Bardroy is terrible as a cook, Finnian is a really bad gardener and Mey-Rin is so clumsy that she breaks everything around her. Even Tanaka is not able to do pretty much anything, looking super deformed. He never really does anything except laughing until way later. I think the only two that mean really anything are Sebastian and Ciel. Luckily, we don’t see much of the blundering characters. Ciel is rather snobby and childish, even though he is placed in a rather high class placing. He acts sometimes without reason and yet tries to play everything off as logic. His fight seems like every other guilt-ed person trying to get revenge. I can understand some of the thought involved as he wants to save his mother and father’s soul, but I could see a lot of different ways they could have done the story line that wasn’t revenge oriented. But it is what it is and they did rather well for it. To me, the main attraction is Sebastian. Of all the whining that Ciel does, he puts up with him and the other characters very well. People are going to hate me, but I have to say that Sebastian is pretty much a Mary Sue character. Everything he does is right from the first episode. No matter what, he can get out of any jam as long as it’s in his masters wishes. He looks a lot like Ciel’s father though I believe that he is because of Ciel’s wishes. The whole show has almost the same feeling as Spice and Wolf in that a lot of the talks are rather political and somewhat dry because of the Victorian way of talking. Even though it’s like this, it has a lot more action then Spice and Wolf in the beginning which keeps me interested. The animation is pretty spot on, I don’t normally find any faults in it but in this time period that it came out, it feels more close to the style without going outside the box. To me, it’s a little safe and the only real interesting parts is when they have the little bit of CG in it. It mixes well and gives it something to stand out. The colors are mostly dark but don’t end up turning into rather saturated look. The voices are pretty good in the Japanese version, though not really my cup of tea. I fell more for the English dub even with its flaws. I hate May-Rin’s voice. She and Bardroy aren’t really good voices in my mind. They just try to be to much English rather then actually acting. I fell in love with Sebastian’s and Ciel’s voice. The music is beautiful, the opening is rather dark and has a J-pop beat were as the Ending has a more sweet style, taking us out of the dark story line well enough that you don’t really linger to much on the darkness. |
Good (sub), Very good (dub) |
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Bottle Fairy (TV) First off, this is really stinking cute. It really was created for little kids to learn about their culture and in turn, it actually helps us understand a bit. It goes threw the 12 months and what happens in each month in Japan. It has a little bit of comedy in it, more in the sub then the dub because of word plays. The English does still have Japanese words in it and try to help explain them but it’s somewhat hard to understand when some of the pronunciations are off. One thing that I do wish they would have done was explain how they came to be and how they found Sensei. I also wanted to know what Sensei’s real name was. The characters are easy to know who is who in personalities… infact, most of them can be seen in Lucky Star as well. Kururu sort of becomes the leader for most of it, rather athletic and loud. You can see her in Konata Izumi though not so much an otaku. Chiriri is the sweetheart, think Miyuki from Lucky Star if you need to. She is sweet, gentle, and motherly. Sarara is pretty much the Kagami of the group. She is pretty much a harsh character at times similar to a boy. And then there is Hororo… and she is sort of like Tsukasa and yet like all the others together. She is very spacey, always hungry, and extremely quiet. I guess you could say she’s the slow one. Tamachan is really off. That’s the grade schooler next door. She always says things that sound really smart and I guess if you were not really up to par with culture, you might think what she was saying was true some of the time, but she really isn’t right. She says a lot and yet doesn’t seem to say anything at all sometimes. Every once in a while, she will be right in some things. The art style is very moe. Those that don’t like moe will cringe and maybe weep if they had to see this. Colors are pretty much all pastel and gentle, there are three primary colors that are all over and each one goes for a special character, Kururu is blue, Chiriri is yellow, Sarara is red, and Hororo is green. Each in turn, you can sort of tell when someone is the main character on screen from the background. The music is alright, though the opening is a little bit sappy. It really shows that it’s for little kids in that aspect. In the dub, the Sensei sounds a bit dopy and not as good as in the sub. The girls also sound a bit too high pitched as well. They don’t really say the names right and the pronunciations also lack. Things just seem a bit off in that aspect. It wasn’t one of my favorites for the dubbing and I liked the sub better. |
Decent (sub), Good (dub) |
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Chibits (special) Wow, this is actually not as perverted as you thought it was going to be. The story line actually holds back some though not as much as I would hope. This doesn’t really tell you when this is happening, weather it is after the show or in the middle of it but it’s a bit funny none the less. The artwork is the same as in the show, so not much to say on it. It’s bright, childish at times and yet shows a lot of detail. The voices I have to sigh at. I don’t like how high pitched the two little bots voices are, and just couldn’t stand it. I just could not deal with to much of the sound. |
So-so |
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Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic (OAV) The story line is a little different then the actual game and the language is a bit forced. They used old time language which means its heavy in old English. But the voices are perfect and don’t change from what they should be. The worst parts that they changed the facts of who sowed the cross on Dante’s chest. It meant more when Dante was the one that placed it on him self. It showed he was willing to look at his sins where when it was placed on by some supernatural creature, then it shows he is forced to look at what has happened. It is a little bothersome that they had to change the whole reasoning for that. The art style changes a bit threw the show like each circle was drawn by a different person, and I think it’s because there were way too many people working on this one movie. Each director pretty much got a piece of hell to work with and I guess they never shared the design of the main character with one another because Dante and Virgil really do not look the same though out the show. The only style that feels like it belongs is the first one, mostly the reason why I had kept watching. The first one shows a style much like a American Comic Book character. Normally I didn’t like that style, but I like it for this one. It has a rather nice idea of a hero who had to overcome everything for the one he loved. As the story keeps going, sadly, some of the circles seem to be cut short and its sad because some of the areas could of just excluded a bit to give them equal time. How Virgil acts, it seems that he is trying to make Dante destroy Hell. Take it as you will on that but it’s what it feels like to me. For all it’s worth, It is a good one even if the art style changes. |
Decent |
| Dead Leaves (OAV) | Decent |
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Digimon Adventure (TV) When I was really little, I fell in love with the show but I didn’t know how chopped up the English dub was. Now that I’m older and know more anime, have watched shows that come straight from Japan, and have actually noticed when the voices are re-scripted, I can tell I actually missed a lot of the story line because of the re-script. This show was not created for young kids in the American idea. They pretty much did a ‘4 kids’ on it though luckily, they didn’t do it to much. The whole idea of ‘children should be left clueless’ makes me feel a little stupid. If children are clueless about the world, with things like pain or dying, then the will be shocked when it happens around them in the real world. It’s strange that they did this because even as a small child, I knew what was happening to the characters without anyone saying anything, so the change that they did was unneeded. The story was originally going to be 12 episodes and then because of how well it was received, they added more episodes. Now, I am still on the edge about if this was a good thing or not. I liked that they put more depth into the characters and the story lines made sure you could see the characters grow. Unfortunately, as with all shows that have way too many characters in the spotlight, we end up seeing more of one character then the others. Also some grow to a certain point and don’t really grow beyond that. This annoys me because it means that they really don’t seem that important. (Although if you watch Digimon Adventures 02, this one seems better in character development.) I would have loved to see more of the characters backgrounds rather then little bits of three or four characters. Out of all the characters, I have to say my favorite is Matt. I’m not sure exactly why I fell in love with him but maybe it’s because I have a little brother as well. I found it interesting that his name was changed when they took it to English dubs, but I learned after that it is pretty normal. The bad guys are very one dimensional. They are only against the others just because they are programmed too; at least, that’s how it sounds. I wish they could have added a bit more to them but at least they each have a type of personality. The English voices are pretty good and bounce off each other nicely. I really don’t like one or two of the characters though. If I have to listen to Mimi crying again though, someone will end up being hurt. She is so annoying in her voice that I really wish they had changed it a bit. |
Decent |
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Dream Eater Merry (TV) Well, this is I guess a bit like Soul Eater in that there are children in charge of fighting; also the fact that the characters seem rather Moe then frightening, especially Merry who acts much like a child. She whines and cries like a little brat. These characters, normally, I can’t stand but this one didn’t seem as bad. The differences between the human world and the dream world does blur a bit and only looks strange when something odd pops up like a floating fish skeleton. I’m not sure why Merry wants to go back when she seems to be having a wonderful time in the human world. Another strange thing is that right after Merry comes into Yumeji’s life, he actually wants to have the bad dreams to find out things about her. What is up with the name John Doe for an actual villain’s name? It just really feels too generic for one. Lots of the names from the dream world seem like they were just grasping at straws to get a name. The show actually does a 180 near the end; it rather threw me off a bit. It was like they thought the show was going way to slow (and it actually was for a 13 episode show) and speed up the ending so fast that I had no clue which way to look. Not only that, but they added a really strange enemy that really seemed out of place. I have heard that the enemy in this show was actually not in the manga. If that was true, then what was the point of having a character that wasn’t flushed out like that? It just didn’t play out how I thought it would; it could have been nice if it wasn’t for the fact that the ending didn’t fell like an ending at all. It was like a middle of a series or even the end of a season. I really feel that the show should have been longer and more fleshed out rather then the crap ending they did give us. The art style is rather nice and yet, the design of most of the characters seems generic. I’m pretty sure I have seen Yumeji somewhere else before or at least the design of him. Most of his friends in the real world are also rather generic and boring. Simple Moe characters with no real way of standing out. At least Merry stands out with out strange her outfit is and her eyes. Merry’s eyes are actually interesting, very reptile-like or frog-ish. Other then that, she looks much like Karin from Vampire Chibi Karin and an elf had a child, she even has fangs. Most of the character designs for the dream demons actually seem like they came from the new game coming out called ‘Skull Girls.’ It’s a good thing since this is a fighting show, and I would be happy if this became an actual fighting game. I don’t get when they give us some clips that look as though they were just made as roughs for the manga. It just takes the fluid part of the art and throws it at a wall. It does build suspense I guess but I know other ways they could do so. I only watched the Dubbed version for the voices and could not find the sub version. The cats feel way too cartoony and yet one cat’s voice is to macho… I would have thought he would have a squeaky voice like Mickey Mouse. Merry’s voice actually feels pretty good to her character as well as John Does, where as Yumeji’s voice again, like his artwork, is pretty generic. One thing that bothered me was that she had this quote that she seemed to say just to add something for the moving mouth. The music is actually pretty nice for a fighting show and I kind of fell in love with the opening music. The scores for the back ground don’t really stand out much but yet when they are needed, they seem to shine through and set the mood for it. |
Good |
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Excel Saga (TV) Ok… this is fucken nuts… Why would a show with no plot and underlining story exist like this? Actually, maybe I’m being a little too harsh on it. It’s a rather mind numbing show, full of ridicules humor and down right perverted jokes. Almost all of it is rather random cut away gags and many people dieing and the story starting all over again. When I say no plot, it means that it never actually follows what the plot is ‘supposed’ to be! The main character must be drinking to much caffeine and taking speed pills. I would love to have half of her energy just to get through class in the morning. Excel is… I really have no clue exactly how to explain her since she is everywhere. She is the main reason why I dislike this series pretty much consisting of the same strange energy and randomness as Puni Puni Poemy. In fact, I believe that the same voice actor might have even played both characters for crying out loud! How am I actually supposed to pick her apart anyway? We only know she loves her ‘lord’ Palazzo and she graduated. For god sake, she dies almost every 5 minutes of the first episode! Hyatt pretty much only has the base of being a weak little princess character that coughs up blood. That, pretty much is her character. Palazzo some what falls for her, even to playing a dating game that has a character like her as the main. He also does pretty much nothing in the show except sit on his but and play games. He also has the manga creator for Excel Saga killed in the first episode too. The animation is all over the fucken place! Sometimes its ok but most of the time its pretty much stupid. It doesn’t look right with characters getting out of proportion, the backgrounds becoming bland, and the characters writing seems odd. Seriously, I have trouble just talking about all the flaws that this show has most of the time. I did like the few times that they are good, it is pretty good. The voices actually do fit, though I still don’t like them in both English and Japanese. Excel sounds to whinny, half the time I can’t hear Hyatt, and Palazzo seems to be the only one that sounds good but he does pretty much nothing… Ya… this is stupid.I seriously do not like this show although it is not as bad as Puni Puni Poemy. Watch this while drunk or just don’t want to think because even as I try to write this, my mind is going numb. |
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FLCL (OAV) This show is mostly one of the funniest shows that I seen. Alright, so the characters are really out there but what I think is the crazy thing is, the one person that is seen as ‘normal’ is the main character, Naota. Unfortunately, I think he’s a little two bland of a character at least in the beginning. He always says nothing ever happens in the small town he lives in but yet, all around him, strange things that aren’t normal are happening. It makes me want to slap him upside the head! Of course, if I did, then something else may come out of his head then. Haruko is a pretty cool character and as you keep watching, you find that she isn’t just a comedy piece. She actually seems to be rather smart and has some good info. As Naota and her get closer together, I feel that she helps him to except becoming an adult but yet still being a child. Mamimi, I think, is an adult that never grew up. She seems to not be all there and in turn, it does make her a bit creepy to me. I don’t really see what Naota sees in her and even at one point; he seemed to be forcing himself to actually like her. I think she was just a substitute for his brother. The artwork is really out of control, sometimes shown with a runny eggs look and other times almost normal (if you can say anything about this show is normal.) Now someone was a good boy and actually paid attention to their camera angles, sometimes it’s just a simple flip of where they are sitting and sometimes it’s just the angle in the battle scenes. Another little piece that’s interesting is that they used sort of a manga panel style once in a while. It shows off a bit of different styles from super realistic to runny eggs to even American pop culture like South Park. When we go into the thought of English Dub or Sub, Dub I think is the way to go. The voices match the Japanese dub pretty well and they do keep the real intention of the show. Of course, they do change a couple little things but most of them were actually cultural differences and not much else. The music is wonderful and the pillows seem like the perfect band for this show. They are somewhat out of control and crazy but also has a controlled feel. |
Good |
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Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos (movie) This is kind of loosely based off of Fullmetal Alchemist and yet… the addition to Julia seems as though it was a fan character brought into the show. The story brings the Elric brothers far from Central and the areas where they are normally are in both anime. Unfortunately, it is the same story line we almost always have. Apprised people trying to get their land back. The story feels kind of old when you keep making it all about a hunt for the philosopher’s stone. There are a couple inconsistencies that happen within this show like the fact that there is a Chimera that has some human in him but yet it seems that he isn’t having any problems with his body unlike every other Chimera that we have seen. I’m not sure, but Julia seems to be a Mary Sue character in a sense. Everything bad is happening to her and yet she seems to be able to get out of her predicaments. They basically showed her as a girl that has had really bad things happen to her since a young age. She has had no time to have anything good happen and bad things happen to her. Even the story about her brother seems rather sappy. The whole story line seems to be exactly like every other storyline where a group of people are fighting for some ‘holy land’ somewhere. I’m wondering if the people who wrote Fullmetal Alchemist and the ones who wrote this one have something to do with the whole ‘Jews and Israel’ thing. It also gets really gory, lots of blood and guts scenes. When they show the CG, it actually looks pretty well done. They made it look rather close to the animation but it seems to be used unnecessarily in times when the item is still. This shows up in the first few minutes where there is a close up of Edward’s hand. The rest of the animation is actually pretty much the same as the anime, beautiful details and sometimes exceeding the anime. The fighting sometimes seems a bit awkward at times since we get a lot of flashing lights from alchemist. Now a bunch of characters seem to be rehashed versions of old characters. The voices are actually alright, though I’m not sure about Julia Crichton’s voice though. It seems really sweet and innocent. Vic does a perfect job as Edward as always. |
Decent |
| Ghost Hound (TV) | |
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Ghost Hunt (TV) This show is pretty interesting, and has a rather creepy, hunting feeling. It’s like Case Closed was mixed with supernatural horror. It’s really interesting and sometimes the logic out ways supernatural things and the other way around. It keeps you on your toes because they will give you a reason, then fall back from it when something else happens. The characters do seem a bit like the normal stereotypes but yet they do surprise you. You don’t get much from the people early on but as the story keeps going, you learn much more. Mai Taniyama is rather smart, but she has a rather odd personality sometimes. She sometimes gets a bit annoying but always has a good heart. She cares a lot for those that she works with even if she fights with them. Shibuya is a rather interesting character in that he doesn’t normally let people see what he is thinking until the very end. Though he never shows his emotions, he does care for people. John Brown is an interesting priest that is actually rather young. He shows his emotions pretty well but you don’t see much of him in that aspect. Takigawa is the Buddhist monk who is a bit of a smart ass but he does bring up a lot of valuable points. Matsuzaki is the Shinto miko who wasn’t taught in a shrine. Almost all the times she has actually done her things, it seems to not work. Hara is a spirit medium though she never really shows much of anything. All of these characters give very valuable insight on each of the different ways in exercising and figuring out things. It’s also very interesting to see how all of them get along. One of my favorite characters in the show actually showed up near the end of the show sadly, Osamu Yasuhara. I love his unorthodox sense of humor and he is a great counterpart to Shibuya’s quiet demeanor. He even stands in for Shibuya in at least one case and I can tell there is a love triangle is forming with Mai between the two. It’s really hard to talk about the show because a lot of things that I say could be considered spoilers. The show has many different arcs that span about 3 or 4 episodes long revolving a case. Now episode 12 and 13 are a very special heartwarming arc so warning, it may make you cry. Other then that, the show is rather gory and can become intensely horrific in both story line and images. The animation is rather nice, bright when it needs to be and then it turns a bit dark whenever ghosts are around. It’s like the ‘ghosts’ place a filter over the show. Other then that, there isn’t really much difference from all the other animations. It’s pretty good and I didn’t really see anything that really stands out as a mishap in the artwork. I love how the characters clothing does change. The opening feels like we are going into the twilight zone or Doctor Who of anime, giving me a couple chills up my spine. It doesn’t have the pop voice, only the instrumental and a women going ahhhh every once in a while. That’s what sets it apart from any other anime opening. The ending is also rather different, mostly sweet and sad but again with no voices. The English voices are rather good, setting a nice mood between the characters. Shibuya is knowledgeable and has a rather good mono tone to him. Mai on the other hand has a rather good narrator voice and has a lot of emotion when she speaks. It’s not like the high pitch voices most women get in anime but more of a normal tone. |
Very good |
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Gun Frontier (TV) This show reminds me a lot of Trigun. A man on a journey to do something and as he travels, he picks up a bunch of people to be part of his group. Now, unlike Trigun, this is placed on earth and in a time when the west was still young. A man lived with a gun at his side or would end up dead. The story revolves mainly around Tochiro and Franklin Harlock (the guy that looks like a western version of Captain Harlock… put two and two together) as they travel. At first, all you know of these characters is that they are somehow connected and are a bit miss matched. When we do find out when they met, it feels a little forced although ties Harlock’s past as a pirate with the sword duel on a ship. (Ok, can I not spell this out enough? They took the Space Pirate and put him in a western show.) I would have loved to know a bit more about each character’s passed; we barely get anything about the background of any of them. When talking about them separate, it’s just a little hard because they play off each other so well. Tochiro always respectful and talks about finding his people. He is a true samurai of old times and never really faulters in how he acts to women and respectable men both. Harlock always ends up saving Tochiro when a blade didn’t come in handy. He’s rather quiet and is pretty much the silent type who doesn’t really go out of his way to do something for his buddy. The two never let anything come between them including a women which can make them a good candidate for a bunch of fan art… For Simunora, we never learn very much about her and I felt rather confused when she did what she did. The only thing you learn really about Sinunora is that she is French (really… how original… a French woman trying to get into someone’s pants, thanks stereotypes…) and that she might know something about what happen to Tochiro’s people. She tries to get in the middle of them but most of the time they don’t listen. In fact, the time one of them almost got to sleep with her, she pretty much had only teased them and shot them down. It got so bad that I was thinking ‘Just kill her or force her’ just to get her to stop. As the story goes on, the only character that really grows is Tochiro and that’s not saying much. The only way he grows is that he seems to get a bit better at the sword (like he wasn’t a expert already?). The ending is rather stupid and a big cliffhanger. You are just crying out to be able to see more but it gives you a big middle finger and points to a manga that I don’t think has been translated yet. The art style is very vintage even if this show is from the 21st Century. I think it is partly a look to the old show ‘Captian Harlock.’ Though Captain Harlock was set in space, this doesn’t have anything really to do with space and the he was only a sea pirate instead of anything more. This is not for little kids. Many times, Sinunora ends up striping for someone or getting her clothing torn off. They do not show much of her privates but you still see a lot of her and it is implied. Now most of the side characters look like strange morphed creatures including Tochiro sometimes and normally it seems that most men look like pigs while women look so beautiful. The voices, well, they pretty much are good for a low budget film but none of them really stand out to me. It’s sad really but it does happen. The English is a bit better then the Japanese in this case but there isn’t much difference. |
Decent |
| Hametsu No Mars (OAV) | |
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Hand Maid May (TV) It’s rather cute in a way, though full of fan service. They do a lot of panty shots along with dressing scenes. Because of this, I wasn’t able to get fully into the story line like I wanted but it also didn’t seem to know exactly what it wanted to do. I felt the story went all over the place until they finally figured out something to do at the end. The poor guy ends up getting a cute girl that will help him with everything he needs. I have never actually been fond of the story line but at least I could stand this one. It’s a standard harem, where the main character is pretty much a standard nerd that doesn’t stand out and yet all the girls love him. Seriously, the only thing that is different about Saotome is that he’s good with computers and even then, he wasn’t able to figure out that there was a virus on the CD that was given to him. Clearly he isn’t all that smart. The girls are pretty and reminds me of Chi a lot from Chobits although these girls can actually keep a conversation going. The characters are over simplified and generic. Kazuya is a nerd, who pretty much never had a girlfriend, yet all the girls that see him seem to be drawn to him; Kasumi Tani is a bitchy tomboyish girl that seems to not care if her panties are showing or not with how short her skirts are; and I had to sweet drop when Nandara showed up. He is really flamboyant and over the top. It seems whenever a rich guy shows up, they are like that in these shows. Most of this is very stereotypical of these shows. I’m not really sure about Doraemon’s name and look. He looks like a Digimon and the name is like that as well. The voices are somewhat annoying in the English dub. I don’t quite like some of the girl’s voices; they are a little too high pitch sounding. In the Japanese, it seemed better though not by much. I do like Nandara, Doraemon, and Kazuya’s voice, Doraemon’s rather more then anyone else’s. It’s just perfect for an android or robot. The music is way too cutesy for me, and sometimes seems not to fit the show sometimes. I think a little more techno would work better. All in all, not the best show in Japanese, worse in English I feel. |
Decent |
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Humanoid Monster Bem (TV 2) As I have not seen the first version of this show (done in 1968), I have no clue if this is like the original or if it is created off. All I know is that it has a rather good feel to it. I love shows like this because it has an air of mystery and supernatural horror that always captures my attention but then has a superhero addition to it. The story has an interesting feel of old Japanese folklore about demons living among humans with the interesting vibe of trying to combat evil. It’s hard to explain exactly what this is because its somewhat a monster by week storyline, and then it has a few pieces that seem to give it a actual story driven feel of just a couple demons trying to be excepted and do what they think is right. It’s almost laughable because most of the stories are just human stupidity and them paying for it. I don’t really understand why the show is called Humanoid Monster Bem because it seems that the stories revolve around Bero mostly. In my mind, even though the characters are parts of the same person, if one is more the focus, then you would call it after the character that has the most screen time, right? The only problem I have is that he’s rather naïve and a little to trusting, although I understand why Bero is like that. He’s pretty much just a child himself and wants nothing more then to have a friend. When he meets Kira, a girl who despite seeing his monster form still wants to be friends, he tries anything he can to keep that friendship even when Kira’s parents try to pull them apart. Bera is rather harsh and loves showing off at times even though she can’t show her real form. On the other hand, she is rather loving and motherly to the people she meets and to Bero who acts a lot like her child. Bem is a lot like a old guy who knows more then he lets on to the other two. I’m somewhat surprised that they are supposed to be the same age because I would of sworn he was the oldest of the two with how much knowledge he actually has about monsters in this world. I was surprised to find that the more I watched this, the more I actually liked the episodes where they didn’t really have to fight and kill the monsters. There were some monsters that actually were just rather misunderstood like themselves. For example, the little goblin they called Imp from episode 5 only wanted to make friends and so kept the children of the hospital from recovering. When the group actually explained to him the problem with his idea, he changes his plan to actually help the children. There are other stories like this, though not many. The animation is actually pretty clean as to be expected of a show done in 2006. Bero looks a lot like Beast Man from Teen Titans. There are small things that bother me like in the English version, some lip sinking is done rather poorly and characters move a bit stiffly at times. There are times were we get CG images that look a little off. You can tell that they just don’t fit right. Other then that, the animators got a really interesting way of showing terror in the faces. It’s really well detailed. The music is actually rather catching and has a feeling of urgency in it that gets you pumped for the episode. The background music adds a feeling of the occult that I really like, making the skin on the back of my neck get goose bumps. The ending though feels a little out of place since its actually rather sweet and gentle. The Voices are all right, although a lot of them seem just standard. Kira’s voice is a little annoying to me along with a bunch of people who really don’t really show up except for only one episode. |
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Kasimasi - Girl Meets Girl (TV) Um, wow. This is um… something a little different then what I have ever seen before. I give the show props for an idea, but an extremely lousy way of making that idea bare fruit. The story feels shallow, the execution is bland, the English voices are a mess, the animation is just standard fan fair. I would of loved if they got into the physiological aspects of a man turning into a women a bit, but they don’t. They just pussyfoot around like it’s a teenage drama. I know it is one but with a concept this interesting, I wish it could have been better done. Hazumu really freaken sounds and acts like a girl! It doesn’t seem like there is any freaken difference to him being male or female. I do think its somewhat Ironic that when he first sees the ‘star’ coming straight at him, he wishes to be manlier and yet he was turned into a woman. And then after he’s a woman, he accepts it rather fast to the point of saying that nothing really changed. (Kurai: “WHAT THE FUCK!? How can he act like nothing changed at all! When you turn me, I freaken hate it!”) All the characters act really stupid and it’s hard for me to even feel for any of them at all. His parents are the worst to because they just are way to excitable. (Akuma: “Excitable? Her Dad a big fat pervert!” Angel: “Alright, ya, I’m trying to make things better then they are.” ) They look at her as if nothing happened at all and start treating him like a girl the day she gets back home. Everyone around her acts as though she should know exactly how to be a women when she doesn’t know the first thing about it. It pisses me off slightly in that aspect because none of the characters seem to think how she feels. If we really get right down to it, it wouldn’t make any difference weather she turned into a girl on her own with a operation or with space aliens. In fact, it would be better if it was a operation then alien because then it would be more believable. Tomari was doing nothing for him when he was a guy it seems, and treated him like a child that needed protection all the time. It makes me wonder if she is the one that’s the reason that he never became a manlier guy. The whole second episode was pretty much Tomari saying don’t do this, don’t do that and don’t act like a man but she does it rather harshly. We do get into the physiological aspects of her dealing with a friend that changed into a guy but it sometimes feels bland. Yasuna on the other hand is awkward. It’s almost like she can’t see any men at all and only a hazy look to them when she can. I’m not sure what the hell they did that for because they could of just as easy say she was into girls instead and it would be so much better. It would of actually been closer to a real life story. This is more of the story that centers around everyone around Hazumu rather then Hazumu herself. We only learn about everyone else and their feelings, and only a little bit of Hazumu’s thoughts and feelings in the first part. When we do learn about Hazumu’s feelings, it feels a bit to late, as we have to go through a lot of crap to get there. Sadly, every single character falls for Hazumu, which makes the damn thing a harem anime. I have problems when Aliens look exactly like the humans without much difference to them. I also have big problems with the fact that the aliens crash into him, turn him into a woman, and then just leave him to the world. They pretty much do nothing to help him. And when they do show up, they just make things even worse for her. She ends up having a ‘clone’ of herself. (Akuma: “That’s a clone? She doesn’t look like her at all for crying out loud! We look closer then they do and we are just twins!”) Yes… clone… with light pink hair that will not stop hanging on her. The animation is really based for the fan service. We have a lot of naked shots of girls changing and just doing random stuff. It’s pretty standard and just basic. Many times, they seem to cop out and not even draw the background of go for the close up on the faces. They also do the fucken close ups on the breasts and body too which make me smack my head into the wall. I have problems with the English voice. Male Hazumu sounds so much like a girl that I see no difference in him being male or female. Tomari sounds more like a boy then he does as a guy! Everyone else sounds so much like a whiny little girl that it just bothers me a lot. The script is so cheesy that I just want to smack the writer. No really, its really really bad! The words sound so much like the person is just reading lines without any feeling what so ever. Even when they do have emotion, it sounds forced. It’s also done rather close to the translation so it feels really choppy. People keep saying ‘it is’ instead of ‘it’s’ and all this other problems. I just want it to end! Though the voices do get a little better (more on the lines that I had to get used to it for necessity rather then it being good) like around the 5th episode, it feels a little late. |
Weak |
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Kasimasi - Girl Meets Girl (OAV) Well, it’s hard to talk about a OVA with one episode. I’m lumping it in with the rest of the show as it seriously makes no sense for me to go back to this show after I’m done with it. And since I know some trolls out there… *looks at Kai and Kurai* that would want me to do the OVA, I’m doing this. The characters are not as stupid as the TV part but they don’t have the right personalities. Everyone is really just pissing me off because they go against what the TV version of them was saying and doing. And it felt as if they were forcing characters do get together which the main story line was all about Hazumu deciding. And in the end, they fucken do a marriage thing which went to fast! Animation and English Voices are really bad still like the first. In the end, there was no reason for it, just as we didn’t need the OVA of Green Green and the whole thing of Eiken. It just meant that no matter what you choose, you will be forced to be with someone weather you like it or not. |
Bad |
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Kiss in the Dark (OAV) This is a very beautiful story, even if it’s a little sappy sometimes. I feel for the characters a lot and want them both to be happy but once in a while, I feel like the incest just makes me fall shy of wanting to keep watching it. At the end, I was torn between happy that it was over to wanting more. I still feel dirty for the incest part, I just can’t get over it. Some of the context just seems like they went a little too far on the story for it to be somewhat real. I wouldn’t call this a hentai since you never see the lower half of the characters but there are some scenes not for the children. I say, if you are old enough to watch hentai, then you can watch this but if not, I would be a little reluctant to say go for it. Mira normally ends up being a rather whiny little bitch at times, and can’t seem to do much for himself, always going to his father for most of it and yet when the drama starts, he is at a loss of what to do. The animation is beautifully done, clean and clear so you can get every little detail of the characters. Sometimes it does fall short but I don’t think I have seen very many shows that don’t fall short at some point. I have to say most of this show is rather well done which is normally the first thing I look at. The music hides in the background most of the time but does help break up the scenes so it’s not too overboard in their storyline. Now we get into the characters and boy, are they strange. Most of them seem to be one hit wonders in the show, one dimension and not really diving into their backgrounds. The only two we get a history from is Mika and Kyousuke and even then, sometimes, their background seems to jump around a bit. |
Decent |
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Kite Liberator (OAV) This one started extremely strangely as they start out in space. Sadly, it only explains where The main character’s father has been. It doesn’t follow the original story much in that the girl they call Sawa is actually a girl named Monaka Noguchi and is not the main character from the other show. They could have fooled me though since she looks exactly like the original Sawa. When we finally get to the main character, it’s about 9 minutes into it. She works at a small dinner and acts extremely clumsy even though she could kill someone rather fast. To me, this changes the story line drastically because it’s like she wants to kill rather then being forced to kill. As for the new piece that they placed into it, the monsters just feel like they tried to make something more then it already was. It didn’t work out at all and made things feel choppy. Even more bothersome is the fact that her father wasn’t dead. The ending leaves us guessing what the hell happens next and gives us no closure to the story line. The whole show was jumping all over the place and only at the end did it even show what it was trying to do. The artwork is way different then Kite before it, being much newer and more fluid then the first. The voice doesn’t always sink up with the English voices though there was an attempt at least to do it right. The English voice is really not that good for Monoka, making him sound way too cutesy. It’s really bothersome and high pitched making it hard to listen to. Most voices are actually really good but Sawa is not. |
Bad |
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Last War of Heavenloids and Akutoloids (movie) So… this is actually the third OVA pretty much of Munto. Is it any good? Well… It’s really hard to say. I like how they try to explain everything that is going on with flashbacks to the other episodes and that it tells more of the reason why Yumemi is so special to the world in the sky, although it feels like they tried to make it up from the last two. It all sounds like they just figured it out about why she is special so tried hard to put it in. Sadly, it feels like they changed the characters personalities so that we would get more of a romance between Munto and Yumemi even though they had a good thing going on before. Munto speaks a bit more and she seems to be spacey even though they had already taken care of that in the second. It’s even surprising that they actually show Munto’s emotions and don’t have him hiding them all the time. To me, that made this show worth watching just for that. It annoyed the hell out of me that he wasn’t showing the emotions threw anything and now out of no where, he is showing so much more. He also seems older then he was before. I actually like this a lot more then the others. I have always wanted to see Munto and Yumemi together and this has a lot more of that. The story isn’t separated like the others and feels a lot more integrated. Now, a couple problems I see is that they put so much pressure on Yumemi and even show her the dark side of the world she is to save, but really, why the hell would you do that if you want her to save the world…. It will make her want to end it is my thought. The only problem I have is when it gets to a really heavy part, they start making some light hearted jokes while you just think ‘GO HELP MUNTO YOU DAMN BITCH!’ It’s like this show has problems with its attention span. The art style really changed from the OVA, as though they tried to make it better then they could off and it just feels flat. Characters have way to long of legs; making them look as though they have no body at all sometimes. Yet, the artwork is slightly better then the second OVA, even if the CG is not as good still. I feel that it has actually been placed at the same level as the first OVA when it comes to the detail work. Sadly, action scenes look like they are full of runny egg artwork an don’t give a good feeling to the action. The music sounds like we are going into a Studio Ghibli film, at least when it first starts up. There are a lot of silent parts, making it feel slow. This thing is full of music and really has no silence to it at all, they ether have talking or music and it bothers me a bit. Some times, it would have had a bigger impact when there wasn’t any sound at all. Of all its ups and downs, I actually liked this one better then the other OVAs. It wraps it up nicely I think. |
Decent |
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Lucky Star (TV) This is going to be hard. Lucky Stay is one of those comical shows that can go in every direction. Sometimes it’s a sit down and talk show and sometimes it’s an otaku love show. Let’s see, if you like random shit in your moe pie then you would really like this. Now that I have said this, I do have to say that I am one of those people… I actually like this show a lot. It doesn’t try to be something its not, so many shows try to be something else. This show, well… it just is. Here is an example, the very first show, they spend 7 minutes talking about different food and how they like to eat it. They don’t even explain the main characters, they just thrust you in. The characters are mostly 2 dimensional, though sometimes they do show little 3D characteristics. I think the best way to explain why there is no story if I talk about the characters and the manga. First off, the manga is actually all about a 4 panel joke base much like our own comics in the newspaper. Because of this, they have a limited time to get a point across. Even then, most of the Japanese jokes may go straight over people’s heads if they don’t know any of the otaku life. Now, the characters… Konata Izumi is the bona-fide otaku. She loves anything anime and even plays a couple dating sims along side her father. She may be good at sports but she would rather watch anime then be in a club. Kagami Hiirragi is a rather interesting character, acting rather tomboyish and crude but in the end, has a sweet side to her especially for her twin sister. Tsukasa Hiiragi is the younger twin that is rather clumsy and ditsy. The last one I will talk about is Miyuki Takara who is pretty much a moe girl with big breasts and cute glasses. She is clumsy but rather smart. When the other characters come on, it just seemed like they rushed to add more characters. You see some more then others like Kanata’s little cousin. The others just seem to be pushed off to the side, and don’t get much screen time. The artwork is very childish and bright. Although it’s like that, it’s very clean with characters going into chibi faces and sometimes they miss shape the face but its normal for comic shows. For something done by Kyoto Animation, the creators of Air and Clannad, this is way lacking but yet, I feel if it was anything like those shows that it would probably be off a bit. The endings both seem a little out of place, the live action a lot more then the other. The voices are pretty fun, the English and Japanese actually sound very similar and that can be good and bad. Some characters sound really high pitched and really harsh on the ears. I like how the characters are mostly voiced by seasoned veterians which adds to the Otaku fandom even more as if you watch anime at all in the English dub, you have at least heard one of the many star voice actors here. The only voice I didn’t like was Patty’s. She just sounds like she’s forcing her voice. All in all, this is much like Azumanga Daioh. |
Good |
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Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi (TV) This is one tripped out show. I think Gainax just loves to create some tripped out shows. The first part is like a slice of life show, the second part is really created like a video game like a RPG, the third is a Star Wars Parody… the list goes on and on of what this show seems to do. I watched it mostly to see what the hell they would come up with next. It wasn’t boring at all to me because the story line just went a bit crazy for these two children. A lot of this stuff is odd and like Puni Puni Poemi or Excel Saga. It’s just pure insanity and that’s what makes it funny I think. Now, just like in FLCL, this show seems to have an underlining story line behind it all… but most of the time, I think it’s lost in translation. Where FLCL had an underlining meaning about growing up, this one seems to be about dealing with change. At least… I think it is. The idea is hard to figure out and really makes me feel a bit stupid but as I was watching this in the early morning, I didn’t really care. Part of the fun was that I had no sleep and had a moment of what I call ‘ask me if I’m a stone’ moment. (The reason for this is a very long story. Long story short, it’s when things that don’t make sense become funny when you’re running on very little sleep.) The character designs are rather generic mostly. I can see a lot of similar things between Eutus of this show and Kaze from Final Fantasy Unlimited making feel that they went for stereotypes. A mysterious man with a cape and long hair, chiseled face. Not sure about Mune’s character. When they show the history, she was pretty sweet and seemed rather... well, covered up. Now she seems to be rather slutty and show off a lot of skin. Threw the show, I have not seen any reason why that happened although it explains just a little about who Mune and Eutus are in the real world. I’m at least happy they don’t give me the middle finger and tell me to read the manga like how FFU does. The artwork is pretty vintage, but you can see signs of today’s crisp looking art. Unfortunately from the start, I could see many things in the artwork that makes me think Gonzo or Gainax right off the bat. I didn’t find out till later that Gainax did have a hand in it but I don’t understand how Madhouse has a hand in it. Most of Madhouses stuff looks so much better then this stuff. In fact, I could say that this is a lot like Final Fantasy Unlimited and FLCL more. Lots of times, they had a runny eggs approach and I was grasping at straws trying to figure out what I was even seeing. Colors just blend into each other, characters become miss-shapened, and a lot of odd things pop up from the blobs. The opening is very disappointing; looking pretty much like it was just clips from the first episode. The ending is odd as well with old still images. Both of these made it really odd. The voices… I’m not so sure why the English voices seem to have a southern Texan accent. I guess it would be something to show that it’s Osaka like but I don’t know about this. But then how the heck is Arumi’s dad able to speak so strong French when he is daughter sounds Texan still? I also don’t get why every 5 seconds, Arumi has to say her cheesy line. It’s annoying. It’s not just the English with the saying and the French voice. They say it in the Japanese dub two (Although it is really freaken funny hearing a French accent with Japanese language). This is one of the shows that they seem to of tried to keep it as original to the script as possible but sadly, it makes the characters sound odd. |
Very good |
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Malice@Doll (OAV) Malice@Doll is a strange CG anime that takes place in the world of Dolls that were made for prostitution. This was a rather interesting show that brought up a lot of questions about what it meant to be human and what might happen if one loses their identity. It was created by the same person that did Serial Experiments Lain and Ghost Town. Malice seems a bit more thought out then the rest of the characters, except maybe Joe who seems to be almost a voice of wisdom to the dolls, a father figure. I don’t really understand the relationship between the two but from what it looked like, it seemed that Malice and Joe were very close although you don’t normally see him around the other sex bolls. I wish I could have seen a bit more of the other characters because they really seemed one dimensional throughout the whole show. The storyline is really slow for most of it and hard to figure out. It took me a very long time to get a feel of what the story was even trying to say let alone what was going on. They never really tell anyone the history about the area or what actually did happen to the humans, pretty much leaving it open to speculation. Because you never actually see the top world in a sense, you are left to imagine your own answer for why human’s aren’t there. My thought was that the human’s wiped themselves out but others might think that they died off from an illness, they were using sex dolls for their means and never repopulated, or other such things. The show to me really is open to your own ideas and what you get from this show is pretty much all you get. The only thing I couldn’t get was the ending with how it happened but I won’t spoil it for you. During this time, CG was just starting out and nothing looked real at all. Characters were all looking plastic and shiny and yet, this show pretty much works pretty well for that. It’s a bit like Reboot if you ever saw that. The characters are odd looking, some looking humanoid and others looking like strange mixtures of man and machine. The animation part is rather stiff and movements are a bit… well, robotic. It works well with the idea of the show but even when they become something more natural, they still are stiff and robotic making it hard to tell if they even changed. The colors are rather dark and steam punk-ish making it sometimes hard to see what is going on. The voice acting is pretty well done for the most part. The English dub is a bit off though as most sound rather static even when turned humanish. Some points that should have had really dramatic scenes with loud voices sounded more tin like. The Japanese was a little better and had the better feel for the characters personality including Malice. |
Not really good |
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Monster Rancher (TV) This is so a rip off of Digimon! I remember when I was younger, I liked it but seriously… now that I have watched so many anime shows and found out just how badly ripped off the other shows are, I feel a little like crying. Now please don’t take this the wrong way, it is a good show to a point but it takes so long to get to where it’s getting good that most people would probably conk out of it. It’s good for what it is, a children’s show, nothing more and nothing less. We start out with the main character, Genki who is pretty much Ash Ketchum in school. He is overactive, over annoying, and most of all, over stereotypical of these types of shows. He gets sucked into the video game (like Digimon) and has to help collect monster discs (like Pokemon) to unlock the power that is inside (like Yugioh). He fights monsters (like all three) and makes friends with the monsters he meets (like Digimon and Pokemon). They end up getting lost on their travels (Like Pokemon), sometimes wondering aimlessly around the world (like Digimon) and… WHAT THE FUCK? Did the creators have no imagination for this series or is this plot so generic that we can’t make a decent show like this without ripping off another? The storyline of Alan, in the episode ‘Eternal Worm’ (Ep 4), was actually rather sweet at the end and made me feel something briefly for the show. It was one of the most intense sad scenes in this show. Another character that I actually really like and feel emotion to is the wolf-like tiger called ‘Tiger of the Wind’. I guess I’m just a sucker for anything like a wolf. He seems very spiritual and has wonderful philosophy. His story line is sad and yet seems the most logical of the group. When Genki does end up making his own character, all he seems to make is something that looks like a pink little thing and actually called itself Mochi when it first appeared, becomes called Sweet Cake by him in the first episode. Then after, they call him Mochi like they should have done in the first place! So… is the bad guy a cow or something? Because calling the bad guy Moo really doesn’t make him sound any scarier then the little pink squash ball Mochi. Seriously, are we supposed to get milk from this thing? And if so, then I want none of that milk! So, I’m sort of going to spoil something for you since this is two seasons lumped together (Because Fox kids is a dick like that), Genki does get back home (Shocker… really? *Sarcastic*) and they use the same stupid little storyline as Digimon where only a couple hours passed when he was in the Monster world for months to about years. But it comes at the end of the first season. So my question is, why did they decide to have a second season where he goes back? They could have left it wonderfully when Genki got back and gave us that heart felt ending to the whole series. Something tells me that they just used it to sell more items and that’s exactly what it feels like. And that’s not the only problem because this one ends with a big hole in the plot. It doesn’t let it end like the first season. The artwork is alright, pretty standard for the time period it came out in. Some of the monsters feel like they were stolen from other anime series. Faces don’t seem to keep their shape, sometimes showing big cheeks once in a while and then no cheeks at all. Bodies don’t stay the same sometimes as all, making it a little mediocre. The opening English song is really stupid and is like a rap mixed up of Yugioh, Digimon, and Pokemon. They also seem to have something similar to the poke-rap. Then we have the English script… now I have not been able to see the Japanese version but please tell me they do not use this stupid line ‘…then he can turn all the baddies into goodies…’ Please tell me they aren’t so stupid as to do that? Genki is one annoying boy, to the point of me shouting ‘SHUT THE FUCK UP!’ He also calls out ‘IN THE ZONE!’ which feels like they were trying to just make a saying. It sounds as annoying as Naruto’s ‘BELIEVE IT!’ saying. Alan’s voice sounds better then almost all of the characters and that says a hell of a lot. He isn’t the best but he’s the better of them. |
So-so |
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Munto (OAV) This is one of those interesting looking shows from Kyoto animation. This story seems a bit forced in the beginning. The story actually revolves around Yumemi Hidaka instead of Munto so I’m not really all that sure why the show is named after Munto. It should have been called magical girl or destiny girl, which would be closer to it I think. I don’t really understand why there is a storyline within a story line. It seems like it confuses it. Fortunately, it makes up for it by the same feeling of Air and Clannad. This has the same feeling as them where if revolves around the world of a young girl who doesn’t know where her place is. She tries to find out, but turns out there are powers she has that can save the world. Kyoto has this way of having a rather dreamy and other worldly show. Now this show feels only like a beginning of a chapter, and it doesn’t seem to end really. The artwork is not as good as the big three, it feels a bit hazy. I guess the hazy is supposed to make it dreamlike, but it just feels a little odd. The 3D animation actually look rather good with this show for however little is in this. Munto looks like Yugi with his spiky hair and lengthy body. Some of the bodies are really small waist. The voices sound pretty good actually in the English, They did a rather good job. Unfortunately, the magical king Munto sounds like Yugi to in his dueling form. It doesn’t help because of his looks too. |
Decent |
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Munto 2: Beyond the Walls of Time (OAV) Munto seems to have a bigger roll to play and so does the Magical Kingdom. We see more of what is going on above the clouds and it’s actually rather action packed. I do have to say that if we are not confused from one world, we are confused of another. I was a little confused as to how Yumemi was still able to have power after she gave the power to the magical kingdom or how her memories were given to Munto when the power was unlocked and visa versa. You would think all that magic would of gone by now. Some things are explained that was not before in the first one but yet, it feels like they just made it up on the fly in order to make a second. It may have explained a little but it opened much more questions like who all these kings are that they talk about and why one wants to overpower the others. The question also remands on who the real enemy is because they seemed to of come out of no where. Half way threw the show; it had only shown one glimpse of Yumemi really and tried to show a back-story to the whole conflict up in the magical kingdom. When they do show her next, its strange clips of her life and they seem rather boring. It just feels jumbled and messy. I really don’t get why her friend keeps trying to force Yumemi away from the Magical Kingdom and Munto, even when she herself was able to see it herself. The story doesn’t get into the actual story until like 3/4ths of the way in. It frustrates me that they waited so long for it to actually start up. The animation stepped pretty far down from the original. Many of the wonderful character designs seem lack luster and bland. The 3D animation also doesn’t seem to fit and feels forced within it. It’s like they rushed to get this OVA out after the other. It’s really sad to because it had the potential to be pretty good. Many times, characters start to look rather runny egged. Munto still looks like a Yugioh reject and then half of the other characters look like they could be on the cards. The only time it actually feels pretty is when its slow and down in the ‘Earth’ world and even then, its very rare. The voices are pretty much the old cast with a couple extra people. Nothing much to talk about in this. The script is pretty pushed and bothers me a lot because of it. The music is rather beautiful and sweet when it comes to the slow parts though in the action scenes, it’s thrown into the background and not really able to stand out with all the other sounds going on. In the end, there really was no ending to it and I have not heard of another one being made to fix it. They should of stuck with the first one and left it at that. |
So-so |
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Murder Princess (OAV) Um, this show is a bit awkward in that it’s about a princess and a swords woman switching bodies. It’s somewhat funny seeing a sweet and loveable princess is turned into a warrior maniac though. The true princess is actually rather strong in some aspects, as she had to see her father and her best friend die. Throughout the show, I had a great feeling of Yuri coming from the relationship of Alita and Falis. It’s really a strong feeling because Alita’s always looks up to Falis a lot for her strength and power. Though one big question I have is that how can Falis have enough strength and agility within Alita’s body. Alita’s body isn’t made for fighting but it was able to not get a broken bone in her body when smashed into the wall. I do have a little problem with the ‘kawaii’ little characters being the bad guy robots. Dr. Akamashi must have had some sort of fetish for little girls because I have no idea what other reason he would do that to them. It doesn’t help that his head looks like an onion but he seems to have the brains of one for a moment. And not to mention that one girl is the cute innocent personality and the other is a rather dark and mean spirited personality. There is a strange base to the time period in time where rockets are old technology. It’s strange because most of this is set within a more medieval period with the addition to magic. To have technology over all makes things a bit odd. I’m a fan of some of these shows but not when the technology is so far advanced that it feels out of wack. They do give us a strange reason for it, but I still don’t get why we need the kawaii kids though. Animation is nicely done though it seems that some of Pete Armstrong, the purple person, his scar seems to move around a bit around his mouth. The demons seem a bit interesting in their design but I seriously think that they don’t ALL need horns. Almost every demon I saw had horns of some kind on there body. I’m not really bothered by the fact that Dominikov doesn’t really move his mouth when he talks, because he doesn’t seem to hinder the anime in any way. Oh my god the English voices! The little robot girl’s voices sound like they had been smoking a million packs a day! For crying out loud, why does there voice have to be so gravel-ly? Some others are a little high pitched but overall it seems alright. I don’t think we really need the stupid narrator though. It tries to make it more epic then it actually is. In the end, I guess it was pretty good and I have to say I give it props for a anime that you will not guess how it ends. Seriously, you would probably not be able to guess. |
Decent |
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Mushi-Shi (TV) This story is quite lovely. Each episode is pretty much closed off. You can start watching anywhere in the actual show and never really miss anything. The story doesn’t really overlap and the only real character that you need to know is Ginko. It helps keep the story straight and you don’t have to remember every little detail like when it’s a show like Durarara!!! that has a number of different main characters and secondary characters in it. The stories themselves are so cute and yet most of them have a rather sad ending or beginning that really makes you feel depressed and doesn’t help you feel better though. The only times I did feel better is the tiny bit of comedy that happens with Ginko and some of his friends. Ginko is sadly not explained much except for one episode in which they talk about his past but I really would like to know much more about that past. The whole art style is a feast for the eyes and animation almost never falters. This is a show that you would watch if you want something slow and calming as there aren’t ever fighting or hard core battle scenes. Most of the time it’s more talking and careful thinking within the story. Each background is carefully detailed, even when the show is clouded in mist, you can still see a lot of details within it. Characters seem a bit lacking at times though, some of the side profiles look a little dull and skulls seem deformed. It is just the art style though and not laziness. You can tell that they put a lot of heart into the product. The music is very pretty, gentle and sweet. The Background music never ever breaks the show and each story has one main song although it is hard picking out that one song out of the many. I fell in love with the Opening as it really sets a mood. I believe it is in English in both the Japanese Dub and English Dub. The dubs are also good in both English and Japanese, though I lean to the English in this. That does mean that there are a lot of voices that are reused but as I never really notice that stuff, I didn’t really care. This is a must see for anyone that likes slow shows but don’t touch it if you are really into fast pace Mechas. |
Excellent |
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Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective (TV) Alright, first off, this show is not one for those that want an answer right away. It doesn’t even have a rather good ending in my mind because it leaves as a cliff hanger. Some things in the story feel left out and just thrown in at the last minute as though they tried to stay to the game storyline but also change it for a monster by week style show. Tatsuhiko Shido is the perfect vampire in my mind. He is hunted by his past and looks to set things right though he can’t stop who he is. He drinks blood and can’t go into the sunlight most of the time it seems (Sometimes it seems they forget that as we see him in the sun once in a while). Almost everything about a traditional vampire is in this and they add a few extra things. I love the idea that he can create a sword with his blood though he doesn’t do it all that much. Yayoi is a rather sexual little thing, and she and Shido have an interesting relationship. She gives him blood in exchange for help on nightbreed cases. Again, we don’t get much from her. His little fairy girl, Guni, is just a bit to much like Navi in how annoying she is. Most of the time, I just wish she was silent because she just doesn’t do anything for the story. She sits in his hair and barely comes out except to say something annoying. Riho is an interesting little girl. We really don’t get much of a story line except that she lost her parents in a nightbreed fight. She is turned into a vampire by Shido in one episode and then almost whenever we see her after, she is just trying to cope with the change. We rarely see her but when we do, we get a sad sort of loneliness about her. She loves Shido a lot and has a pretty big jealous streak when it comes to Yayoi. There isn’t much known about Cain except he seems to have a very sexual obsession with Shido. I guess it might be my yaoi fan girl thing, but it they do not hold back on the sexual lust this guy has for him. I really want to know why he changed Shido into a Vampire but they never really explain much about it. As you can see, we don’t get much about the characters and so sometimes it is hard to feel for them when they are hurt but I feel even more for Shido. He’s more the only character I connect to. Even the story doesn’t help much. We don’t get a lot about this ‘Golden Dawn’ or about the backgrounds of characters. It seems deep but then it is actually a bit shallow. The animation is pretty good, though the first 4 episodes are much better and not TV friendly because it was made to be an OVA. At some point, they decided to have a whole TV show of it and the quality dropped. I can somewhat understand since the first 4 don’t really don’t work as just a story, I just wish the animation didn’t suffer for it. The English voices are pretty good. Shido has this gentle gruff of his voice that’s perfect for a detective and yet also has an air about someone mysterious. It’s pretty much the same with Cain who is voiced with Lex Lang though he does not hand many lines. I really love the music in the opening. It is rather a hunting tune. The ending song is alright, though not the best. It just feels like a sappy love song when there isn’t really all that much love in the show. The background music works well and has a rather detective feel to it both in English and Japanese. |
Good |
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Oruchuban Ebichu (TV) This sort of feels like a mix between Shin-chan and Chi’s Sweet Home. It’s cute and talks of a cute little hamster’s life and how her owner is to her. In fact, the very first episode shows exactly how her master is… a useless bum. All this women seems to do is whine about her boyfriend and have sex with him. Yes, this shows them having sex a lot. The owner’s boyfriend seems useless to me. I don’t know why the owner hangs around him at all. The owner isn’t really that good herself. Now that I have talked about all the bad things about the story, I have to say, this feels pretty realistic and I actually like it to a point. They have there bad sides, but you can actually feel for the characters even though I still don’t understand why the owner keeps smashing Ebichu into the wall and making her bleed. I think if the little hamster was real, it would have been dead by now. The artwork reminds me a lot of Shin-chan and it’s really hard to actually watch because of this. The artwork just makes me feel sick with moving colors that don’t even fill in the lines. It’s like a child drew it. Whenever you look at the front of the hamster, the tail sometimes makes it look like Ebichu has a male part and even has the normal little black dot to show a butt hole. It could have been placed behind her and not looked that bad. Ebichu also looks a lot like Hamtaro which messes me up since Hamtaro is a little kids show. A lot of the script is made for Japanese so I can understand why they haven’t dubbed it yet. The first episode has Ebichu playing a word game and I guess the words for Chestnuts and Squirrels in Japanese is the same for a women’s… well… down below. The music is alright, nothing to put on a ipod though. It just doesn’t stick out well. |
Good |
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Ouran High School Host Club (TV) This is a beautiful piece of art, storyline, and voice acting. Haruhi is calm, cool, collected; smart, and sometimes so much so that she seems almost dull at times when the host club is at their most crazy. She almost seems like she wouldn’t be the center of a reverse harem (those not understanding this, its when there are a group of guys for one girl instead of a bunch of girls for the guy… easy enough to get, right?) and pretty much not the type to be swooning over the boys. Well, your pretty much right but that’s what makes Ouran High pop out more then any other that came before. As for the men, well they are as shallow and van as rich, handsome boys can be with a whole matter of stereotypes. A fun thing with this is that they don’t really have every single male going after her, luckily, its more of the ones closer to her age and three get touched on while the forth really hides in the bushes to make way for the other. Yes, I am talking about Tamaki, Kyouya, and the Hitachiin twins Hikaru and Kaoru. Let’s touch the first three and then I will get down to my favorite and most logical choice after. Hikaru is the most headstrong of the bunch, the prankster and pretty much the one that gets Kaoru into trouble every once in a while. Kaoru is the one that’s more… well kind in all aspects. When he’s not with his brother, he seems sweet and good natured which might be why most of the girls swoon over the two when they go into their whole boy love thing… among other things… Kaoru always steps back and pushes Hikaru to go after Haruhi so that his brother can find love even though he does make it somewhat clear that he wants a bit of the action as well. Kyouya is the brains and mostly profiteer of the host club, looking for the money instead of having the girls have fun, although he is able to pull a fast one when it comes to getting what he wants out of pretty much anyone around him, including Tamaki. Yes, the relationship between Kyouya and Tamaki every once in a while does tend to swing in the ‘we are hot for each other’ way, not that the author isn’t quick to pick up on this fact and uses it to its advantage. There is a good reason why Kyouya is called ‘Mother’ in the host club although if it was for sexual reasons, he would probably be top. Nope, the reason is that I can tell that if he was a woman, he would be one of those girls that will flaunt it just to get anything out of someone. And last but not least, my all time favorite, Tamaki. Yes, he is an airhead… yes, he is quite clueless… yes, I know he sees himself as a father for Haruhi… uggg… now that freaked me out. No, I will not bring up that joke, he actually figures it out later why it’s strange for him to be calling himself that but no, the reason why I like him to be with Haruhi is simple and it’s one reason on top of many. It’s because he is just like her Father. I know that is crazy but think of it this way, she knows how to take care of someone like that, she knows he has a good heart under all that blond hair, and she knows how pure his intentions were form the start. From the vary start, The Hitachiins would tease her and sometimes even go beyond to harass her, Kyouya really was mostly in it for the money, it seems that the only reason why Tamaki put his heart in soul into making her come with them was mostly, because he liked spending time with her and no matter if he tried to make her into a fully fledged girl, he in the end always went about saying that she needed to be true to herself. (If you can’t tell, I can get into a lot of detail when it’s an anime I really freaken enjoy!) Now, on to technical merits. The artwork is so beautiful and bright that when they start going comedy, they seem to lost a lot of detail and turn somewhat chibi-fide creatures. And yet, to me it works. I am happy most of the story line doesn’t focus on all the customers that come in, letting the characters shine in their stereotypical designs although… how the hell is Hunny a martial artist? Ya, he looks nothing like it and the blond hair kind of pushes me off there as well. When the story starts to get dark is when most of the details start shining in a aposing danger is on its way, and the shadows mix well in to the details, making them stand out much more. Thoughout the show, there are a lot of roses and I do wish they wouldn’t have so many. Ok… so we know the rose is a symbol of love… we get it… you don’t have to flaunt it every freaken second that they are there for love. The voice acting is also well done for both Dub and Sub. They pulled out all the stops with Caitlin Glass having solid voice acting next to Maaya Sakamoto for Haruhi. They both gave her more of a cool hearted not caring attitude that made up her character. Even better when she was playing against Vic Mignogna’s rather overly fun character Tamaki. At first, I could not get away from how he sounded just like Edward from Fullmedal Achimest but I can see how the characters fit perfectly. Tamaki has the same style freak outs as Ed whenever someone calls him on something stupid he did or said that I couldn’t help from smile. Other Characters got voices like J. Michael Tatum as Kyouya, Todd Haberkorn and Greg Ayres did a unbelievable job keeping the harmony between Kaoru and Hikaru even when the two were speaking ‘with one voice’ as it was. They used Luci Christian as Honey and it worked rather well, pretty much perfectly for the cuteness, Monica Rial as the over Otaku girl Renge, and I could not stop laughing at Patrick Seitz’s depiction of Umehito Nekozawa. |
Excellent (dub & sub) |
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Pale Cocoon (OAV) The story is slow but it feels like it could happen in our time. They talk of how the world has lost its history because of something devastating and they have to piece threw the small ruminates of the archives in order to learn of the past. In the first part, we are introduced to the man male character and what his job is slowly, though it is still a lot of mystery. It made me want to know more. The artwork is actually pretty nice, mixing 3D with the drawings well. Sometimes you can’t even tell that there is 3D. The artwork is dark, gray, and rather cold feeling. There really isn’t much to talk about other then that. The music keeps its strange, slow, sad feeling al the way threw. There is one song that I would so want to have on my player. I won’t tell you what one but you will know once you hear it. There really isn’t much to say about it as well. It’s one of those shows that you have to watch to talk about. I would actually that anyone should watch this. |
Good |
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Panda! Go, Panda! (movie) This is such a cute little story like My Neighbor Totoro. It’s pretty much about a young girl who ends up getting a father in a Panda and his little child. The whole thing feels a bit odd though, and Papa Panda feels rather awkward to the point that I feel like crying out ‘RAPE!’ since he feels a lot like pedo bear. The little panda is alright though, since he is way too cute and doesn’t really do anything wrong. I’m not sure about the cute little girl, Mimiko. She for some reason likes to stand on her hands and show her panties all the time. Everyone around her gets weird-d out by the panda’s but even when they first show up, she was alright with them. I really wonder what her Grandmother is thinking when she gets all the letters from her granddaughter talking about being with pandas and tigers. I would be scared to death for her. The animation is really playful and not that detailed. Perfect for a child’s show from 1972. Everything does this odd squash and stretch thing and sometimes don’t keep their shape all to well. The backgrounds are much more detailed then the characters. Some artwork is looped a bit as well and consistency is broken many times. The English voices are ok though again, Papa Panda feels awkward to the point I want to call out rape. Other voices are so-so. I really do like Mimiko’s voice though; it is pretty perfect for this odd girl. |
So-so |
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Panda! Go, Panda!: Rainy Day Circus (movie) This is such a cute little story like My Neighbor Totoro. It’s pretty much about a young girl who ends up getting a father in a Panda and his little child. The whole thing feels a bit odd though, and Papa Panda feels rather awkward to the point that I feel like crying out ‘RAPE!’ since he feels a lot like pedo bear. The little panda is alright though, since he is way too cute and doesn’t really do anything wrong. I’m not sure about the cute little girl, Mimiko. She for some reason likes to stand on her hands and show her panties all the time. Everyone around her gets weird-d out by the panda’s but even when they first show up, she was alright with them. I really wonder what her Grandmother is thinking when she gets all the letters from her granddaughter talking about being with pandas and tigers. I would be scared to death for her. The animation is really playful and not that detailed. Perfect for a child’s show from 1972. Everything does this odd squash and stretch thing and sometimes don’t keep their shape all to well. The backgrounds are much more detailed then the characters. Some artwork is looped a bit as well and consistency is broken many times. The English voices are ok though again, Papa Panda feels awkward to the point I want to call out rape. Other voices are so-so. I really do like Mimiko’s voice though; it is pretty perfect for this odd girl. |
So-so |
|
Pani Poni Dash! (TV) This is actually really odd piece of work. It revolves around a small girl that is a child prodigy that is being watched by aliens. The show feels a lot like School Rumble, Lucky Star, and Azumanga Daioh. It’s all over the place and hard to understand and yet it is fun and energetic. The story really doesn’t have much of a plot and even makes itself seem like a low budget TV show. The only thing that really keeps the show interesting is the characters. Many things don’t seem to actually blend in together. Rebecca is a really odd girl, supposed to be smart but they never show that she is. She may seem smarter then most of the characters there but that isn’t much to be proud of. She’s a loudmouth, smart ass little girl that really cares more about herself then most of her students feelings. She is pretty much like a whiny little brat though she does she have a little bit of good traits and yet she might be the only lovable character in the show. I’m really not all that sure about the other characters because they seem to all blend into each other. I don’t even get how the cat is considered God too. It just seems really strange. My favorite character is Rebecca’s rabbit actually. It’s a really strange mutant bunny that walks around is almost always depressed. To me, that’s the best character in this moe induced world. The opening reminds me of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and some of the old spy shows in how the whole thing seems to be old colorations and somewhat grainy sometimes. The artwork in the actual show is down right crazy sometimes. It’s very bright and sometimes even too bright. It’s somewhat hard to watch because the style jumps from rather good to somewhat decent quality especially when the characters squash and stretch. The music is alright, mostly the sappy slice of life stuff we normally get and has a feeling of Azumanga almost while still being its own. I’m not sure why every character seems to have a ‘hair-lo’ as some people call it, like its stage lighting. Another thing that feels strange is times when the whole show becomes a video game or stage in itself, and the characters talk about it, breaking the 4th wall to bring the watcher in more. |
Good |
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Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt (TV) Well, this is sort of interesting. Pretty discusting but interesting none the less. If you want a little taste of this show, the first episode is about people getting sucked down tolets and having to fight a large poo monster. It’s that random dirty humor. The characters are odd. The strange dog type thing looks like a rip off of Gir in both how he looks and acts. Panty is always having sex and Stocking is always eating sugar. Both are reather shallow and don’t really care about Brief, there once in a while Geek boy side kick who sometimes shows up. They even run on the stereotype that Reverends are into little boys. The strange thing is, no matter how shallow all these characters are, it seems to work well in this show. The show itself is pretty shallow so it doesn’t give you false hope for the show. This show really is heavy on parodies as well as the strange characters. It becomes a game of figure out where the parody is from and I had to laugh. The artwork reminds me of Powerpuff Girls (The American Version) in how the lines are but yet, the characters never keep there shape.They are pretty angular and I never really see any character who is rounded. The only time that it rounds anything is when the character moves around. In fact, everything doesn’t have an actual keep its shape and the only time that it looks like normal anime is when they do the strip tease transformations. The only time they look at least close to normal is there transformation and even then, they are pretty much poll dancing. I love the English voices. Again, this seems to be like Hetalia in that both Japanese and English are good though English is a lot easier to get the joke most of the time. The opening is nothing special but I actually like the ending in the American version. It’s something I would listen to a lot. I also think there transforming song is also one I would listen to. The voices are pretty good and I have to say, hearing Vic Mignogna as the boogie ghost Oscar H. Genius is pretty funny. By the way, the ending pretty much throws the whole show into a 180 and actually has a really awesome story at the end. Warning, watch all the way to the end of the last episode and after the credits, there is something special that you may miss if you don’t! It hints of a new season to come but you have to see how they did this! |
Good |
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Paranoia Agent (TV) It’s pretty interesting. The first thing you see is a lot of people lieing about something and it seems that there is a lot of it going on. It starts out with off with stories that seem not to go together except for the slugger. First it was Taukiko Sagi, then the reporter bothering her, and then two high school students, and then a woman with a dual personality. Strangly, each character seems to be better after being attacked. I am not quite sure how it’s supposed to help but it seems to. There are a lot of things about how the mind can play tricks on you, especially when you’re stressed. You can never tell is Lil’ Slugger is real or just within the mind of someone and yet, if he was in the mind of someone, then why is he able to hit so many people? It’s very complex and makes you think hard about the story line. There is also the thought that he only attacks those that are under emotional stress and psychological problems. It’s like a panic attack, something I’m used to since I get them often. Another thing that seems to happen is that they will start on a consept and then snatch the idea giving you a dead end to only go back to the start, and then suddenly find that there was something at that dead end they had to look at. Now even though this was a horror, there are some episodes that I really think have no reason being, episode 5 for one, when we supposedly get info on the mind of a game crazy person and have the detectives running all around in his mind. I can understand that it’s supposed to somehow move the plot but to me, it felt pointless. It pretty much went into a dead end and threw the whole thing off. 8 also kind of had no point in that we followed three suicide pact people who just play around, trying to kill themselves. The opening artwork is a bit trippy; showing so many people laughing there heads off without any reason. It freaked me out slightly. The artwork is somewhat off, but yet it works for how the story line is. Characters seem a little bland and makes them look like characters from BECK rather then any other. There really isn’t much that makes them stand out other then Maromi. That little dog is the only thing. The music is actually pretty good for the opening. It’s very catchy. The ending music just feels childish and odd. The voices aren’t really all that special in the England dub, just pretty much normal voices. In the end, it’s really hard to actually write about this since it’s not exactly what it really is. |
Good |
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Persona 4: The Animation (TV) Here is a bit of a disclaimer, I have never played any of the Persona games or even seen walkthroughs. I never looked anything up about the game and storyline before watching this so I have had a clean slate. The only thing I ever knew about it was that it was an anime and game franchise that was out there and that some people liked it. Meaning, if I seem stupid to the show or to anything about the show, NO FANMAIL SAYING I SUCK! Thank you. Sorry but I had to put this in here because people have been bugging me about getting things wrong in shows that branch out into other medias. Anyway, onto the review, lets see how this show pans out. It surprises me that when I first started watching it, I got a really heavy feeling that I watched a show similar to this before, then I noticed it felt like D. Gray Man. That’s not to say that this whole show is just like it, oh no, but the opening had that slightly creepy feeling to it that I got with D. Gray Man. It wasn’t bad, in fact, the opening made me a little more intrigued as to what this was all about since the ‘old man’ Egor in the beginning had the same feeling as the Millennium Earl. The sad part though was that it was such a short introduction to him that I didn’t understand what he was talking about. Yu Narukami seems to be the main character in this show, and seems to be a rather quiet and thoughtful person. The nephew of a detective, he seems a little out of it, which is normal for someone moving from a big town to a smaller one. Oh come on now! I know this is a Japanese name but… Yu?… I guess the fact that if you place his name as Narukami Yu, you get what translates roughly into ‘You become God.’ (Special thanks to Professor Otaku for helping me out with that.) Yu has trouble at school with the really stupid and over dramatic home room teacher he has, but does tend to get friends a bit easy despite being quiet. Sadly, after the first half of the episodes, Yu ended up becoming a rather strange individual. I’m not sure what it is, but he just acted serious for everything he did and even showed a rather perverted side to him that really changed his personality. It was a change I rather didn’t like and threw me off a bit to much (not that I didn’t stop watching). I kept wanting him to go back to the way he was before. Yu’s Uncle really isn’t a family type of guy, which I have noticed is typical for detectives in anime. His little girl is much more grown up it seems. All the characters are actually interesting and even though they seem to be standard characters with rather predictable personalities but because of their persona, they learn that everything is not all that it seems. They have another self and I think that’s what’s wonderful about this show. It gets into the whole aspect of an inner self, fighting to break free. I guess this is the time that I will get into a little bit of my own philosophy. Same as this anime, I believe we all have a mask we hid behind because we are scared of showing what we truly are. Some of us even do it out of habit, never really knowing there is a person within crying out for attention. That might be why the show actually felt close to me, it was because it spoke to what I believe in. That though, does not mean that something like this would really happen but in a small way, it could. I mean that the feelings that you have deep inside can burst out. The artwork is mostly basic though I have to ask what is up with the stitching on their clothing! It’s way to big to be normal and just makes them look a bit tacky. Also, why do most of the main character girls have different uniforms then the others around them? I guess part of it makes them stand out as saying ‘hey! I’m a main character’ but I would think they would of already been called on not using the right dress code by now. For example, Chie wears a green jacket over her uniform and Yukiko has a red sailor shirt on when the dress code clearly shows a black sailor uniform. Sometimes the scenes seem to jump rather fast as though they were cut scenes from the video game and only used to pin point small things about the characters around Yu. The action scenes were actually rather good, not using a lot of just speed lines. I watched the dubbed version, meaning I was able to hear the English version of the opening song (Though I have no clue if there is a Japanese version) and I think it was done pretty well in fact. It was actually surprising to me that they worked a new opening and song into episode 9 because it was about a teen idol. Not many studios would actually pay that much attention to that. Some of the background ‘noises’ and music sounds a bit like they came from the video game. The other background music is actually rather ‘rocking’ and has a bit of a fun beat to it. My favorite is some of the battle music. I wonder sometimes about the English dubbing. There was one little nit-pick that I have to say from the first episode, why does Yu’s Uncle say that he picked up his nephew at the airport when we just saw him seconds on a damn TRAIN! It’s Train Station you picked him up at stupid! Also, why did the person at the gas station ask someone who just moved there to think about working with him? He has no idea what this guy it like. I have problems with the tarot cards that they have as well. While I am happy that they have a show based around persona’s and the fact of showing ones fate in cards that tell fortunes but the names that they keep calling the cards aren’t right sometimes. The first card is not called ‘wild card.’ It’s the card of the Fool. Now with all the odd things about this show, I have to say I really loved the strange fact that not only does Johnny Young Bosh play Yu Narukami, but he also plays Tohru Adachi, and it really was quite interesting seeing him interact with himself in a way. Also noted is Sam Riegel who played Teddie. I give him props for making a character that started out rather annoying, but yet grew on me so much more and turned into one of my favorite characters (Not my all time favorite, but still a favorite). My favorite still goes to Naoto Shirogane who is voiced by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn who does a perfect cool and collected voice. And I give big props on the fact they only used Vic Mignogna for a character that only showed up for a brief time. UPDATE: I watched a couple ‘Let’s Plays’ of Persona 4 the game and I have to say, the anime seems extremely close to the game. In fact, almost all the dub seems to be taken from the game itself. Now, I have not been able to see all of that, but it is rather close. |
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Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ (TV) Well, this is an interesting little ‘James Bond’ style opening they have. Strangely, we follow a man who doesn’t remember anything about his background, not even his own name. I feel as though they kind have coped out with using amnesia as their background. The only little look we get into his past is his ‘master’ who I see as a stupid slime ball. That’s only the first act though, and the others get even crazier. Unfortunately, the first episode lost me. They started talking about science and animal instants to a point I had no clue what they were talking about. I was still confused as I kept watching and got pretty much no answer, and to top it all off, there are three arcs that seem to mess me up a bit. There were many times they kept hinting at a love between some of the characters and yet it was pretty much all a tease. As I kept watching, it did get slightly better on the character scale but the story line fell apart. Yuko turned into a slut and though the two main characters turned into more interesting characters but it was little too late. Not only that, but the basterd ‘master’ was even creepier more then before. Spy also turned rather creepy, bent on killing the master as though he was brainwashed again. You see his true self, which isn’t different then when he was a phantom. And it doesn’t help that the main character should have been dead at episode 10, but somehow, he ends up surviving. It poses the question, how the hell did he end up surviving being drowned and shot three times in the chest. MAK put it best when I was speaking with him outside the podcast as putting it ‘Logic: “Um… what happened?” Phantom: “Well, Fuck you! HAHAHA!!”’ There is no logic in the show at all and this makes it worse. And now we go into the second arc, which makes no fucken sense. And its only 6 fucken months when Spy ‘died’ and when he pretty much does what he wants by going back to being a stool pigeon for Inferno. Logic also doesn’t have a hand in how he looks so much older then he was before. And they brought a strange lolita girl into the mix and he takes her down like what happen to him. Then near the end of that arc, they made a really strange story up about mistrust in Inferno and had a bunch of the characters killed off. These little storylines behind the characters were a little heart wrenching… if it didn’t feel like they were pulled out of someones ass. There was no hints what so ever that there was something odd going on or about Claudia’s brother or nothing, noda zip-ditalie do da day bit of info that any of this was ever going to come up. Now, the third arc should never of existed. Again in the words of MAK ‘Consistency: Hey guys, what the hell is going on?Phantom: Well, you see here is that...*slaps consistency* Fuck you, that what's going on.’ I mean, Spy and Ein go to school… and are acting as brother and sister. Not only that, but Cal who was the youngest character is now pretty much an adult. What I see is somehow, Cal grew up rather fast in two years and Ein and Spy have actually somehow de-aged. I also love how when Spy sees Cal, the first thing he thinks is why she’s here, then she’s alive… but we don’t get the question on everyone’s mind of how she grew up as fast as she did. The Animation is actually rather good looking. Backgrounds have a lot of interesting detail to them and yet it doesn’t push the characters into feeling out of place or blend them to into the background. When they bring in the CG, it wasn’t all that off putting though they should of probably stuck to normal animation. The beginning of episode 12 starts out with some very realistic images of a city which actually looked a little ok. We could really do without the sexual images of little girls being rubbed down by older sick men. It annoys the hell of me that all of these shows have that. One other thing that really bugs me is the idea of the recoil on the guns in this show. There is no real physics in it like the fact that in real life, you cannot shoot an AK47 with one hand because of how bad the recoil is. I have seen this done many times in real shows. It is just not possible. The music and opening is actually rather sad, using surreal images and somewhat sexual looking backgrounds to the point it feels very James Bond like. Sadly, the ending song seems more like something from Rozen Maiden in both style and imagery. I guess it does work slightly but just makes me feel a bit sad because the opening and ending feels like it should have been switched. The voices are… let’s just say don’t fit well. One or two actually sound alright to the characters but the main characters feel a bit off. Ein feels like Yuki from Haruhi Suzumiya in that she never seems to actually speak without a dull monotone that wants to lull me to sleep. As for Zwei, he feels a bit disinterested in anything around him and rather boring as well. I did like Raymond McGuire, who is voiced by J.Michael Tatum, who is one of the main executives of Inferno. Claudia is also done rather interesting with a voice that is pretty much Yuko from xxxHolic. She seems as a voice of reason and actually has rather good intentions to the characters. As such, I guess it was reasonable to give her Yuko’s voice. |
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Please Rape Me! (OAV) I never thought I was going to get a review request from a friend… although I should have seen it coming from an ex-troll of a guy. When I first heard about the story line, my thoughts were to throw my computer out the window and call my reviewing quits because of how stupid this sounded. Really, the idea of a guy actually having a long term goal to rape a girl is a pretty stupid goal in my mind. Now this ‘friend’ of mine (should I call him ex-friend now?) kept telling me the anime had a deep story, a rather good one; and for some reason I thought I would give it a chance. Now keep in mind, I am a girl here with this review and so even just the concept of being raped myself makes me want to kill something. In all confession, when a storyline is done right and it has rape in it, it doesn’t bother me a lot since I have role played (in text format, get your mind out of the gutter) it a bit with people I know, but still… when you go into something wanting to review it, you try to push preferences out the door. So let’s get on with the main part of this review, shall we? The main concept of this show is that this guy just wants to rape girls and he ends up trying to pick between two girls to rape, one being his high school sweetheart. Then we also have the cute little Lolita who he wants to fuck as well though I think that’s more along the lines of spite rather then any actual reason for it. I keep calling her Lolita but really she is just a woman with the face of a kid and a body that is much more mature with normal shaped breasts. The artwork is rather alright, actually a bit higher on the chart of hentai then some of the others I have seen. The art is crisp, the movements are fluid, and the character designs are actually interesting and very proportional for the most part. The problem I had was if it was a hantai, why are they pixelating a lot of the stuff? I mean, you would think that they wouldn’t do that when they are actually trying to show sex, right? And even while they are pixelating that ‘item’, they will add little faces and arms to it that weren’t pixilated. There are also times that they pixelate something that isn’t anything sexual, just looks a little phallic. In fact, they pixelate a treat that is meant for kids. The ending music was not that bad actually, sounding rather low key and nice but it was the only music I could actually hear. The rest was rather good sounding voices when they talked but the sexual parts were bland. I watched the sub and so when reading it, it was pretty much what you would expect, a lot of sexual lingo and perverted speaking. The script sounds deep when the characters talk but the words they are saying are anything but deep. It’s a good one for getting off and but if your looking for story, good luck with that. This one is just another normal hentai with no story. I still hope to find a rather sweet story that does not involve the guy fucking the girl every 5 seconds. |
Weak |
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Please Teacher! (TV) Well… This was an interesting storyline and yet it felt much like every other harem style love stories out there. It was a bit unimpressive if you break it down into the small composites. We have a rather bland guy in which all the girls love, falls for a girl who is not a normal women but other people get in the middle of their love and so the never-ending cock block commences. The whole show is a big school-life-awkward story. And its really funny that I have started reading the manga and it starts out a bit more exciting then the anime. Kei is the most boring character I have to say. If he didn’t have the standstill, he wouldn’t have anything interesting about him. Let me describe him for you and lets see how many characters have the same description. He’s a weakling with glasses and a rather bland hairstyle. He’s kind hearted and seems like he likes everything to be normal. He lives in a town where he says nothing really ever changes and likes it. Marie is the only character that I really like but yet he gets such little screen time that I have to frown about it. He is what most of the mishaps and comedy is supposed to be around in that he is basically the master control program for Mizuho’s ship but the very first episode, he ends up getting scrambled and so most of the time (When things actually do happen with Marie), Kei and Mizuho end up getting teleported in strange places or not getting teleported at all when they should have been. This happens rarely to the point of almost not happening. The opening pretty much looks like it should have been the opening for a Dating Sim but as far as I know; this wasn’t based on a game. It really should be with how somewhat boring the whole show is made out to be. The ending is basically all still images and a very slow music. The music is rather uninspiring, feeling very dull much like the whole anime. It’s like they tried to make it like Air but fell flat. The animation is bland and though its rather well done, the beauty doesn’t really change how bad it can be at times. I consider it much like a somewhat bland form of Key Animation artwork. Sometimes faces are a bit squashed or seem to be drawn rather fast making them feel unnatural even by anime standards and most characters are almost like copycat characters from other series. I have no clue why they felt the need to block out some things that really aren’t supposed to be blocked out like some of the Technological stuff. The English voices are what you would expect for a half assed production. Some come out a bit too forceful, others not forceful enough, and many of them rather annoying. Hyosuke is way to energetic and always seeming like he’s trying to get attention all the time but in the end, he sounds like a complete idiot. All of the characters, he’s the most annoying. All in all, this is a rather bland show with bland story and bland music that makes this not stand out among the other shows. |
Weak |
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Please Twins! (TV) Ah, the ugly child of Please Teacher. People give it crap because it doesn’t base itself off the main characters of Please Teacher but a separate story all together with characters from the main series showing up every once in a while. The show is about two twins trying to find each other and one person that is a stranger to them. All three children were drawn together by a picture of two children near a house – one a boy and the other is a girl. The only identifying feature of the two children is their beautiful deep blue eyes. Unfortunately, all three of them have that same unusual color and are drawn to the house when they see it on the news after an ‘alien UFO sighting’ that happened during Please Teacher. As the three live together, they feel romantic to the others but are pledged with the burning question of if they are related. This pretty much means you have a lot of rather ‘incest’ going on. Lets talk about the characters, Mike is well, an asshole. He’s harsh but that’s to be expected when he’s lived alone and was abandoned by his parents. He works hard to try and keep food on the table and the home he lives in. Also, all the damn girls swoon over him. I don’t know why because he’s an unlikable person. He’s mature in certain areas but when it comes to people, he’s a real jack ass most of the time. He seems to be the only one that actually thinks Marie is weird. Miina is a really energetic and athletic type of character who doesn’t care much for people trying to hurt others. On the other side though, she’s pushy to the point of even pushing Mike to let her stay at his place. She jumps to conclusions really fast and it’s easy to tick her off without trying to. Karen is a rather sweet young girl. She is very polite but has a bad habit of fainting whenever she gets to excited. It makes things really awkward and worse is the idea that she might be related to him just as Miina might be. She is normally dazed and confused most of the time too. Also, it never helped that in episode 3, there is a big misunderstanding with the group. You will see when you get to it. The other characters really don’t stand out that well, they all pretty much fall into basic stereotypes. We have Kousei who is are ‘gay’ friend, Tsubaki who is are vice-president of the student body and second love interest (first for how long they know each other and third if you count the relative), the clueless teacher Mizuho, Ichigo who pretty much is the rather pervi and troublemaker type of girl. The show is standard and just all feels bland. The jokes sometimes come off unfunny or just plain pervi. At least in Please Teacher, it had a bit more class and was a bit more mature but this comes off as just immature. It’s like we are given a fart joke where someone farts and we laugh about it. Actually, the only thing that was actually really fun is when Kousei gets hit before actually being warned. The animation is really lack luster, feeling even worse then Please Teacher. It’s lack luster and just doesn’t stand out at all making me want to score it even lower. The English voices are pretty much a miss. All the characters really feel forced and sadly, even some veterans in the dubbing business, like Crispin Freeman, feel as though they are just bland. I would say it’s pretty much a mistake that this was created because I don’t even think there was a manga created before it so they pulled the show out of their ass. |
Bad |
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(Le) Portrait de Petite Cossette (OAV) Well, this is another fine show done by the perverted old man Shinbo. He is pretty much known for his little girls and for anything that had to deal with mind games. Some of the shows he has done like this include Dance in the Vampire Bund, Negima, Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, and Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase. This is a mindgame with a young girl. If we want to talk about characters, the only ones that mean anything are Eiri Kurahashi and Cossette. There really isn’t much in the story that shows just who these people are actually and so the characters seem bland. We do get story line from Cossette but nothing that actually shows her personality. She is just a little girl but she is nothing innocent at all. It’s like she’s a demon the way she acts around Eiri and by the second episode, I stopped feeling sorry for her because she became like the no name Elfen Lied girls. All she really did was torture porn. Even though she is rather young, has the heart of a jaded lover inside her. She is rather manipulative and a strange trickster. Eiri isn’t much better, in fact, he’s worse. We get no info on his back story or personality, nothing about his friends that he was around in the beginning (we only see them once) and the girls that he’s around are bland and again, we hear nothing about how they are together. It’s just boring. There wasn’t something for me to grasp onto so I was sitting there laughing about how stupid he was for throwing his life away for someone he barely knew. The storyline would have been better if it was either longer with more detail in the story, or a movie. I would choose the first since a movie like this may be a little two hard to do. It’s sad you can’t feel for any of the characters at all. The artwork is rather pretty, the details striking. Cossette seems to feel more like a doll in some parts though, much too pretty and porcelain like with her pale skin and sweet eyes. Unfortunately, it becomes a bit to oil paint-ish in a lot of parts. When that happens, they look like still shots. The only thing that really awesome is the shots. It’s a lot of surreal angles and out of control beauty where we don’t see the stupid looking characters in the back room. Mostly, I think this was done with the idea that they wouldn’t have to animate much. The music is hunting and playful, almost like a music box. The English voice acting sounds rather well done. Maybe a bit too well then it has any business being, although it does start to sound cheesy when they start talking in poetics. There are a lot of questions that keep being said throughout the show and sometimes I thought it was much better when I didn’t try to think too much. |
Good |
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Princess Jellyfish (TV) I actually really like this, its way different than anything I really saw. A lot of people do a lot of otaku outcasts but this one has a little different vibe to it. The characters, though their names are hard to remember, are remember-able for how out there and crazy they are. Each one is a otaku in their own way and have different ways of showing it whether it is being crazy about kimonos, to posting old men’s pictures into a scrap-book. A little creepy, but it’s not as bad as it seems. The guy is really cool even if he cross-dresses but he seems normal otherwise. The underlining story is pretty much being true to yourself and never give up on your dreams. The animation is wonderful even if it lacks in some places. It mostly does this when you look between the two ‘worlds’ and depicts Tsukimi’s world and Kuranosuke’s world. It’s not all that bad, but once in a while when the two worlds meet, it’s sometimes a bit harsh of an art style. I really love the designs of the jellyfish and how they actually have a few facts about jellyfish that are supposedly real. I don’t care much too actually look them up but they sound real so its ether true or the actor is rather good at making it sound true. The voice acting for the most part is well done. The English is a little bothersome though I really like the cute voice of Tsukimi and Kuranosuke. I’m not so fond of one or two of the characters in the apartments and it made me cringe the first few times I heard them. Now along the way, I ether got used to it, it got better, or I just didn’t even care about what they sounded like because the story was just so good! All together, it was funny and sweet. Really, if you want funny, This is it! Sadly, it has a very bad cliff hanger right now and I really want to see more! It does make me want to read the manga now but something really tells me that this is better as an Anime then the manga. |
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Pumpkin Scissors (TV) The storyline was pretty cool, and is mostly a conspiracy theory in itself. It’s about secrets within the military that during peaceful times come to hunt the people of the world they live in. It’s pretty much about what happens after the war and what we normally don’t see living in the United States since we haven’t had a battle happen on our land in such a long time. It can open the eyes on just how senseless some people can get and how crazy war veterans can be without medical help after being trained to be killers. It also cautions against genetic manipulation of people to become what we call super soldiers because they can turn against us or have no reason for being after the war. The show starts out pretty light hearted and then gets darker but still keeps its comedy throughout. There are some fillers, but nothing to big. The characters are fun and enjoyable, even the ones that only have a small role to play. I love Randel’s character and all the small jokes they do about his size. And I mean they play on everything, even a couple fun pieces in the hospital ward. I’m still not sure why he sleeps under a bridge though. The Lieutenant is crazy, I don’t know exactly where she came from but she is really off. Her sense of justice is really creepy and doesn’t really go exactly her way most of the time. Can’t anyone tell her to calm down? There is not much too actually talk about with the others because they are more or less comedy. The artwork is rather nice. It’s not to out of date or odd looking which makes it feel really cool. The only real time it bugs me is when the lantern is opened and things go off into that blue glow. Sometimes the glow is not that bright and sometimes it’s so bright that it covers the character. The opening is rather simple but just doesn’t feel like it fits exactly. There are things within it that are not talked about in the show and made me a little confused. The ending is a simple run animation with a dog almost like Wolf’s Rain. The music is pretty good; the ending actually is fun loving and cool. I would listen to that one mostly for the fun of it though I don’t know if it stands alone at the end. I actually didn’t want to watch the Japanese dub because the English dub was actually really good. The only problem I had was some side characters that seemed to have strange accents though it didn’t actually say where they were from. |
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Puni Puni Poemy (OAV) Um… This is so stupid! There is no easy way to say this, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? I can’t talk about story because there really isn’t a story. There is a idea, a concept, but it will never be flushed out and no matter how much they load the show, it would have been better if they lay off a bit. But of course, the creator couldn’t do that it seems... If it wasn’t 2 episodes, I wouldn’t have watched it to the end and even then, I could barley get there. From the baby that predicted danger by pooping, to the S&M Dominatrix, there is so much bad acting and messed up animation that I feel sick just watching it. The artwork is as creepy as it can get, the characters always look out of proportion and wonky. It is really creepy! The only thing nice about it is the crisp lines. The English voices are rather terrible and are ether two high, to energetic, or to out of control that I can barely understand them. It’s over done so much that I feel they were making it a big joke. After hearing the Japanese versions, I was deeply disappointed in the fact that they were pretty much the same as the English. It was the worst, (and the reason I am comparing to the English is because I watched it first in English). I don’t think anyone should watch it but if you really like this stuff, be my guest. It’s just not something for me, even if I like some of Nabeshin’s work; this is one of the worst. |
Worst ever |
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Requiem from the Darkness (TV) I loved the stories, each show being almost stand alone as a storyline, very rarely going over 2 or more episodes and yet as you keep watching, it does lead up to something bigger. They take a lot of Japanese folklore and old stories and depict them in a rather interesting way. It does get a little hard to understand in the surreal look. You never know what is real and what is spiritual because of how some of the characters look (More on that in artwork). If you watch it in the dark, be scared. But yet the show almost asks you to watch it in the dark because it is so dark that it’s hard to see some of the detail. The artwork is rather flat, getting its shading mostly with line drawing like it was done in pen and once in a while giving an almost three dimensional feeling almost CG-ish. It’s hard to depict though, since the CG blends well with the rest of the artwork. It has a certain feel that makes it look vintage though it’s a newer show. The background characters make it hard to know what’s real and what’s not because they all look a bit off. They most of the time look like monsters themselves and sometimes it shows who will be affected because the people that actually look normal turn out to be either killed off or the main character of the show. I fell in love with the English actors, there voices working perfectly with the characters they portray. I especially love Mataichi’s heavy voice, almost a dark monotone though with an air of mystery. He is able to keep the monotone that doesn’t feel boring. Momosuke has a fine voice for the wimpy little boy he seems to be. The music is very hunting and dark, never overpowering but always there to give you a chill up your spine. There isn’t anything to laugh about in this, no comic relief to tone down the story. |
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Riding Bean (OAV) As a person outside of having to review the show, this show is pretty awesome for vintage anime and I truly enjoyed it. As a reviewer… I have to nit pick. The problem with that is that the story is really very good and I believe it has the workings of becoming a whole series is the Manga-ka Kenichi Sonoda had not had a falling out with the studio. After the OVA was created, Kenichi created the manga and the manga ‘Gunsmith Cats’ where Rally Vincent was the star though her design was altered. Anyway, going back to the story, it’s pretty awesome in how it shows the action scenes and everything. It feels like an American made movie more then just an anime with how many guns and violence is in the show. It starts out with Bean being the get away driver for a bunch of thieves and then ends him being the hero of the show. It’s not making him an anti hero and has him as a regular guy getting money. He actually is rather strong, almost like Superman strong as he had picked up the front end of a car and also rammed his fingers into the metal door of the car to rip the door right off its hinges. Rally on the other hand doesn’t really do much in the show although she is a quick shot. The only thing I really noticed her doing when she didn’t have a gun in her hand was tell Bean to keep cool or try and take care of the little girl. Going onto the cops side, the cops are damn idiots and Detective Percy should be placed into a mental hospital. Seriously, Percy is infatuated with trying to catch Bean at all cost and goes crazy when he thinks he can. He is the definition of a bumbling detective who gets into a hell of a lot of trouble but I guess I have to give him being smart enough to actually not get fired from his job. The cops don’t help the matter, always crashing into things or sounding like complete idiots or children as in the the small chant they do close to the end of ‘Bean, come out and play’ thing. And yet, in that all that’s said and done, it seemed to sort of fit to me. The animation becomes really sloppy at some points, using many speed lines and odd movements that feel a bit stiff. The times that it doesn’t have these problems though, they are ether still shots or some very detailed action scenes. The eating habits are rather laughable though. It’s very exaggerated as though the animators had no clue how to show them eating so they slowed them down and made rather huge mouths. It becomes almost disgusting at how they did it. Bean was designed rather interestingly with a little to large of canines making him look rather beastly. The English voices are laughable at most, feeling mostly stale at the most intense times. It’s as though they were reading a script rather then playing the part. The words really don’t feel like they fit the mouth movements and sometimes the characters move their mouths when no one is talking. The only one that seems alright is Percy and he shouts almost every other sentence. The little children also seem to shout as though they can’t be heard any other way. Dispite that, the people that were picked to play the parts were actually what I would see for the type of voices coming from the characters. If they acted a bit more then shouted, it would have been even better. I think everyone should at least watch this one once. Even with the flaws, the show is rather action pact and won’t leave you bored. Because of the flaws, the times that it does go into a slow pace, they feel a bit comedic and the script can be rather tongue and cheek at points. |
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(The) Sacred Blacksmith (TV) When you think of blacksmiths, you think of large, strong men who make swords, horseshoes and other appliances for a medieval world. What you normally don’t see is a kid doing all this with a smaller kid as an apprentice. That’s what happens when you watch this one. The characters seem not fleshed out enough, and we barely see a back story to any of them except Luke and even that happens a little to late in the game. By that time, the characters felt a bit stale, and hard to relate to. In a 12 episode show, they shouldn’t be dinking around like they do, mostly bringing up jokes about Cecily’s breasts and her strange breastplate that seems to be way to close to her to not of been molded on her breasts. And what’s with her mother even bugging her about it? Really? It’s not enough that the whole town talks about her breasts but her mother too? I’m not fond of how this show seems to move a bit too slow this show gets, but once it gets to the point, it is pretty good, and then it ends... Really, they spend more time talking then fighting and nothing really gets said. It seems that everything leans up to the climax but many of the things are lost in the first part. For instance, the only time I find out that that Luke has a fake eye is to the second to the last episode. If it was a big thing with the story then it should be said earlier in the story along with Luke’s story. I feel like I only got half the story through the show and I wish there was much more to help me see the lines. It just screams second season to and from what I know of, there isn’t one. The artwork is pretty nice though some of the characters look familiar to other shows. Little Luke reminds me of Sora from Kingdom Hearts and I can pick out little things hear and there that felt like rip offs. And don’t get me started on the creepy monsters that attack. It plays out mostly like a monster of the week style though the story makes it hard to watch them out of order. The comical parts in the art seem forced in whenever we have a serious point and trust me, that happen way to much for this show. I wish they chose a side, ether comical artwork with comical plot, or serious artwork with serious plot. The voice acting is pretty good but I am a little put off by one or two of them. Lisa isn’t that great a voice, making me sigh at the high pitched sound from her mouth. Some side characters really need deferent voices because sometime it makes them feel way too important then they should be. |
Good |
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Saiyuki (TV) Well, I have to say that this is one of my favorite shows even if it does have some flaws. We open with one of the most epic narrations by Sanzo and then get into the bad ass additude as he attacks Goku. The why the show introduces the characters is actually one of the reasons why I really like this show. We see each character in their ‘element’ so to speak and not all at once. It also doesn’t give us a whole lot of narration about these characters because they don’t really need it this early in the show. We get small tastes of the personalities, then bring them all together. I do wish that they had a little more information on how the group did meet earlier in the series then they do though. The series seems to believe that we have all seen the manga and since I have not, it makes me feel a bit out of the loop. It is a double edged sword because for me, I want to know more but for others, it can throw them off. We see that Sanzo is not like many monks around the temple, but we never really see his past until later in the series though we do get a one second glimse of someone who died in front of him as a child. It seems that the only person he really listens to is the goddess but when he is hanging around the other characters, I can sort of understand. Goku is actually rather annoying in the first part, acting like a little child and yet the little things he does make him seem even more like a monkey then a little boy. He is rather innocent, and As the series goes on, he grows more and more. He is the only one that we get a little piece of the past right up front but they don’t explain much more then a 5 minute clip. Gojyo is pretty much a womanizer and gambler. He seems to always start fighting with Goku as though they are brothers and its fun to watch seeing as how I have a brother myself and we used to fight a lot. Although he is like that, he actually has a good heart he shows every once in a while. He doesn’t really show it to the others but there are some places where this good heart shows. Hakkai is rather sweet at least when it comes to children and always willing to help others even if they aren’t rather nice at first. He is more level headed then any of the other characters. Although he is level headed, he tends to get scary in certent situations. He shows a rather masicistic side in a way. The goddess is rather odd, sometimes sounding really wise and sometimes she sounds like she just wants to have a little fun with the characters. She actually really interesting I love the fact that this show not only makes us feel for the main characters, but for some of the enemies as well. Not all of them are bad for bad sake. Now sadly, I really wish they did have a bad ass girl in their group. Without the girl, the group makes me think of yoai like a lot of other people I know. There are a lot of interesting groupings that I like and I’m sorry I’m getting into my fan girl love again. Sadly, there is no ending to this really. It seems to go in arks like Pokemon or Inuyasha but doesn’t get to the ending of the story. There are times where is does become boring because they keep walking and riding with some of the same old jokes that they normally do where Goku fights with Gojyo and Sanzo threatens to kill them. Fighting scenes do get bad once in a while but yet are still interesting in some places. I really wonder some of the choices that they do for the artwork like the very first part when Sanzo is saying the only one he can trust is himself, why do they show him naked when he does this? Now, there are many times that the characters have long limbs or long necks and it changes once in a while but because of how the story is, I was able to over look it for the most part. The tiny waists though and sometimes broken eyes area bothers me a bit. The music is pretty bad ass. The first opening is highly addictive to listen to and actually fits the series rather good. I’m not so sure about the ending song though, it’s alright but not something I would listen over and over again. I skipped it most of the time. Sadly, some of the voices aren’t that great or the prononciations are bad but at least the main cast is pretty decent so I don’t have much problem with them. This is not the show for little kids as they don’t hold back on the language. It works for the personalities but it’s a lot. |
Good |
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Samurai Champloo (TV) Well hey all gangsta’s!…. that was completely and utterly messed up. I will try not to do that again. But anyway, I actually loved the mixture of Edo style imagery and the hip hop rap even though a bunch of people would probably say it doesn’t fit. Unfortunately, some of the characters don’t work for me since they seem very out of place. Characters that start raping out of nowhere and those that start talking like gansta’s sometimes make me want to bang my head into the wall. It may fit really damn well with the show but I still want to smack my head into the wall. I did like the main characters though… some a lot more then others. Mugen was actually my favorite character. He was pretty bad ass and could take down almost any foe that stood against him. His style of fighting isn’t the normal samurai style but more of just a way of living. To a samurai, the sword is something to live and die with, so he does have a little of the samurai spirit but a samurai also has honor and tact for the most part. He has none of that. He will do as he pleases without any regard to those around him, even starting fights just for the sake of showing how bad ass he is. He loves the spotlight and sometimes I can picture him similar to Black Star from Soul Eater where he would yell out ‘I’ll kill you’ even if he’s supposed to sneak up on them. That personality I would consider childish in some cases but in this, I actually see reasoning behind it. He want’s to be the best he can be and to fight someone when their back is turned may be a disgrace for what little honor he has. On the other hand, Jin has much more class to him as a samurai. He was trained professionally and you can see that when the two fight. The styles actually look extremely different as Jin has more of a stiffer pose to him. His background is a pretty tragic one but seems much more common in samurai movies then Mugen’s story line. I can see where Mugen and Jin get onto each other’s nerves. It does make for a very interesting story line when the two need to work together to get out of a bad situation. Most of the time its purely luck based. The last main character is sadly the one I like the least. Fuu is a bit, well, I don’t exactly understand why she’s there in the first place. She’s childish, annoying, and whines a hell of a lot. She gets kidnapped almost every single time by the guys that just want to rip Jin’s and Mugen’s heads off. Only a couple times she actually has some marret to the story as she’s most likely the person who can trust others. She is the reason the other two are stuck together but her reason for going on this journey, namely finding a samurai smelling of sunflowers, really has no real fruit to it. You would understand once you watch the ending. The animation is rather good, though sometimes can be a little… bla. Manglobe has a thing where they will have really good animation for most of the anime but in some parts, it lacks the beauty the other scenes have. Characters sometimes feel like they are also way to detailed as if the artist was trying to make the show look extremely detailed but it makes the characters look off when it doesn’t happen all the time. The English voices are actually really well done and I think that’s partly because of the rap and pop culture references. Jin is silent and Mugen is a badass gangster. The voices work so well that I have to say its one of the best I’ve seen in a while. Even Fuu who is pretty annoying actually has an ok voice. I give the main music props for being one of the most memorable to me. I can’t not think about that fun style of music. |
Very good |
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Sherlock Hound (TV) I love this anime ever since I got it from my local Library. I found it by accident while looking for a different video (which seemed to not actually be there) and so picked it up. At first, I thought this was going to be serious like all the other Sherlock Homes creations out there but this is like a children’s version of the story. It feels strange to see Professor Moriarty actually taking part in the crimes instead of just having his henchmen doing it. It pulls away a lot from the normal story line with the difference that each show can pretty much be standing on its own and you don’t need much to understand them. It’s like a crime of the week and I don’t remember if there was any that actually went 2 shows long. I like how whimsical they make the story and it has some of the feel as the real Sherlock Homes, although they don’t really let you try to piece together the crime yourself which makes me rather sad. I never really liked the music to it but I love the animals being portrayed as humans. Though sometimes the dogs look like cats such as a very small boy in one of the episodes. I wasn’t surprised when I found out that Miyazaki actually helped create this show even if some of it wasn’t the greatest. |
Very good |
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Sister Princess (TV) This was an ok show, though I did rather enjoy it. (But even then, it has major problems that have to be addressed.) It reminded me a lot of Angel Tales in how the characters act around him. The only problem is that it’s his sisters and not guardian angels but even then, I can’t take these characters as sisters. None of them really look like him at all and there seems to be a little girl that he keeps seeing in a yellow outfit that keeps talking to him in his strange dream world. They never explain who it is, they just show her. The story line pretty much goes back and forward and most end up with Wataru and his sister of the week doing something on the island. It doesn’t even explain much about how he got his sisters, what the charm that keeps being shown is, or even why the hell we should even care. Every once in a while, it seemed to go into a rather fantasy look and then back to a slice of life. Once in a while, it hinted that it was going to be a romance with him having to pick one of the sisters as a love interest but then snaps back away from it. I actually had a feeling it might turn yaoi because Wataru was always writing to Akio the whole entire time and he sounded like he was gay when he read the letter out loud. Now to talk about the characters, and oh god… how do I do this? Maybe I should group them into age categories. Aria, Hinako, and Shirayuki are the younger sisters. Let’s see, I can pick out what there one personality trait is. Aria is a Victorian gentle women, Hinako is the carefree child, and Shirayuki is the wanna be chef. Again, it’s really really sad that I can pick out one trait that explains them. Kaho, Mamoru, Rinrin, and Yotsuba are the middle sisters. Yotsuba is the detective, Mamoru is the tomboy, Kaho is the gardener and clumsy, and Rinrin is the inventor. Karen is the girl Wataru’s age, and the only one that seems to be seen more often. She acts like a mother to the others. Sakuya, Marie, Haruka, and Chikage are the older sisters. Sakuya is the flirty one, Haruka is a traditional Japanese girl, Marie is the slickly sister, and Chikage is the fortune teller. Again, that’s all we understand from them because we don’t see enough of them to tell us anything else. The animation is pretty much the same as every other show, nothing special and the onlything that shows is the crazy hair the sisters have. The girls all have different colored hair with no reason as to why, only some having brown hair which is close to Wataru’s. I’m glad that Wataru lost the stupid glasses that he wore in the first episode because he looked like a geek. He even says they are just glass so why the hell wear them in the first place? The voices are the bad part mostly (I’m talking English Dub here…. Haven’t seen Sub yet). Most of the girls have high pitched whines and even Wataru sounds whiny and a push over. Braden Hunt does his voice and I really think this guy really doesn’t have a good voice for a lead role like this. He sounded way more out of character and off. I am not going to get into all the voices because really now, its way to many to and the fact that they all have to high of a voice bugs me, plus how Mami has the voice of a smoker too. |
Decent |
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Spirited Away (movie) Wow, this is a wonderful show. They really did a nice job. The story line is wonderful, a story about pretty much growing up and facing your fears. I guess you could also call it a way of showing how to become independent. Here we see a young girl, scared of change and pretty much sheltered by her parents, thrust into a place where she has to work hard and become self aware of just how she acts. The whole show is wonderful for children and adults alike. Another idea that was brought up in JesuOtaku’s review and now that I think about it, it’s something I picked up on vagily as well was the idea of a the value of ones name showing who they really are. It’s shown with how hard Chihiro tries to remember her name. If someone tries to take away your name, it means they seem to take away who you really are. It’s a story line that has been brought up many times before. xxxHOLiC has spoken of this a lot and it’s in a lot of spiritual stories within Japan. The artwork is astounding and you can really feel the love and attention that was given to this show. Even the detail of Chihiro putting her shoe on is done down to the small taps to make sure its on well enough. When people say how beautiful this movie is, they don’t exaggerate. I actually couldn’t find any problems with it in consistencies or loops. It is what it is and its nothing more or less then what you would expect in a well made film. The voices are wonderful except for Chihiro, she just sounds a bit too whiny even when she grows up a little. She yells a lot and it pretty much throws me off when she is supposed to be gentler and thought full. I actually love how Haku sounds pretty young and gentle instead of harsh. Again, all the voices are Dubbed since I have not seen the sub. |
Excellent (dub & sub) |
| This Boy Caught a Merman (OAV) | |
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Vandread (TV) I think that this show was well put together. It had its bit with comedy but also had a couple good lessons inside such as life can’t be token for granted and how man and women can balance each other out despite differences. Sadly, we don’t get much of the characters back stories like I would really like and I really wanted to know why Hibiki was so special though part of me feels like I can tell just by watching it. The strange idea of men and women being on separate planets leaves a lot of fan girls thinking of Yaoi and Yuri and it does happen just a little bit in the show. The yuri comes out much more though because most of the women in the show have other women they like but it seems a lot of the girls seem to fall for the men as well. It’s strange since they are not supposed to think that way when In our day and age, it is not normal to be thinking about the same gender, and when I say this, I mean as a whole and not as the individuals. I’m fine with the Gay and Lez love scene as I am a bi myself. There is a lot of sexual things within the show and lot of hinting including the ‘Power Rangers Combined’ way they did the VanGuard and Dread combining. The animation was pretty smooth and the colors worked nicely together. The fight scenes are ok though they kind of do more speedlines in the background sadly or go for a somewhat cheep looking CG animation. I was not very fond of that or the fact that everyone’s hair seemed rather blocky and stuck in place with a lot of hair gel. The ending is just a lot of fan service slapped together with a running sequence. I really feel this was part of the low points for this anime and kept skipping it over and over because of how completely stupid it looked. The English voice actors have a pretty good just of what I would see for a voice but the voice of Dita in the Japanese dub is rather bothersome to me. Some of the other nameless girls don’t have good voices in the English which makes me happy I don’t have to hear them all too often. |
So-so (sub), Very good (dub) |
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Voices of a Distant Star (OAV) I couldn’t really get the story line much, it didn’t really explain much and I think it just points the the novel and manga for more information though I have no clue if they actually say more. It feels like a pilot to something that could have been rather then a real show. Sadly, it’s hard to get a real feel for this. It’s a lot about romance which doesn’t seem to work with mechas. There isn’t much excitement om this because of how slow passed it is. For a show that is only 25 minutes long, the excitement only happens about 10 minutes in. Mikako doesn’t seem like a good character to be piloting a mecha but then again, I think this is the part where they use Gundam logic. She crys a lot, whines a lot about how she wants to be with her friend, and all together just seems off a bit. Way to emotional for a battle I think and why they decided to have her pilot a mecha like that. The artwork is a bit odd, looking sort of like sketches in some areas that have been filled in. Other areas, its high detailed. The characters are as angled as mecha’s, making them look more robotic. Most of the time, it feels like I’m watching pieces of a game since the characters don’t seem to move much. Most images though actually focus more on the scenery especially during the monolog in the beginning of Mikako and her friend. This show is much like 5 Centimeters per Second in background and amature in characters. Mikako also never changes her clothing. I don’t think a middle school uniform is good for fighting in a mecha. The 3D aspect is alright though I don’t feel it fits with the artwork. The voices don’t even feel like they are trying in the dub, sounding like they are just reading lines. It doesn’t feel like they have any actual feeling what so ever for there lines. Mikako is a little better but still, she sounds like again, only reading. Now, the writing is actually reather poetic and gentle. It was interesting to see this, but didn’t grab me in really. |
So-so |
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(The) Wallflower (TV) What do you get when you have a romantic comedy with a girl that is gothic? Well, you may get a lot of things but you might not get something as wonderful as this. The show has a lot of things that make it fun and memorable. I was surprised that Watanabe (The one that made Excel Saga) actually had a hand in this one. We get to the characters and I think in all fairness, we just have to start with Sanako. Sanako is a sad girl but it wasn’t her fault really. I know a couple people that sank like this when someone they liked said they did not like them, maybe not as bad but still. I feel close to her because I have almost the same problem sometimes in where my confidence goes out the window and I feel like locking myself in my room. You can sometimes even feel her pain when you have been threw the same thing she does. Noi is almost the exact opposite of Sanako. She’s always caring about her looks to hopefully have Takenaga love her even more. The anime doesn’t show that they are going out but it does show that they are close. The boys are all archie types of the type of guys girls like in anime. Takenaga is the traditional Japanese man who is quiet and gentle. He is smart and pretty much considered more ‘normal’ then the others. He’s very calm and never was bothered by Sanako’s crazy stuff. He grew up in a rather respected high class rich family but it doesn’t seem to affect him much. Ranmaru is another rich boy but on the other side of the spectrum of Takenaga. He’s a ladies man and loves older women. He’s not tied down to one women and doesn’t want to be told what to do really. The thought of someone like Sanako made his skin crawl but after seeing how she looks dressed up, he thought twice. Not much is talked about for Yuki. In the anime sadly, he doesn’t have much story line except for knowing that he comes from a normal family that isn’t rich. He’s the cutesy girlish face and most of the time, he is dressed up in girl clothing even though he just wants to be like the other boys. Unfortunately, he acts like a child most of the time and whines a lot making me unable to like his voice sometimes. Lastly is Kyohei. He is the relative bad boy, always getting into fights and trouble. He can never keep a job because his bosses weather male or female sexually harass him leaving him with a short-temper. He is a real pretty boy even if he doesn’t try to take care of himself and his hair is always messy. Out of all the men in this show, I think he is the best to be with Sanako because he has gone threw the opposite of her and that they both work so well together. The style of art looks much like a version of gothic Bishonen or beautiful men design. The eyes are highly eye-lashed and makes them look almost more like girls. The style is really clean and crisp and they don’t normally cut the design budget without adding a little bit to the show. Most of the time, it’s just to add more to a joke that is happening though they have a strange style for getting out of drawing millions of people in a mob scene. The Vocals are elegant mostly, both Japanese and English have the right idea’s in how the voices should sound to me though I believe the English voice of Takenaga tried a little to hard to make his voice a few too many octaves higher then it should when his character got to emotional. It’s sort of funny because this is the voice of Tamaki from Ouran High and Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist. Yes, I’m talking Vic Mignogna and sadly, this was not one of his best performances. Some of the jokes didn’t translate right when they did the dub and so they tried to force the English words to work and it seemed out of it. |
Very good (sub), Excellent (dub) |
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Witch Hunter Robin (TV) I love the darkness that is in this. I first got into it by accident and it has had me hooked for a while now. The story line feels a lot like the idea of almost every business is corrupt and has some mystery aspects that almost make it go into a genre of its own. I would have liked to have more answers though, since some things were not explained well. In the end, I felt more like I had more questions then answers and made things a little bothersome. The ending flew me for a loop though, and I have no clue what to think of it. I don’t think it was a really good note to leave us on. Another problem is we do not get really any background story about anyone. Sure we get very tiny hints about Robin’s but that’s it. The animation is really well done though some of is a tad to dark to see what was going on without lightening your screen. The whole feeling of the show is dark and most of the scenes happen at night or in dimly lit rooms. The design of Robin really makes her stand out with the ‘handle bar’ pig tails she has. I have never seen a character like her before so I knew right away that she was special even outside the anime. Unfortunately, the rest of the characters seemed way too simple and in the background then I would have liked, making characters that should have stood out just not feel interesting. The English voices are somewhat to be desired, though I think they picked almost the right tone for Robin, Amon, and one or two others. Some of the other characters I would of liked a little deeper voice or a different vocalize. I really wish Robin would have a little more emotion though, but that wasn’t the fault of the dub, the sub has that as well. The music is well done, perfect for the darkness and I loved both the opening and ending though the opening animation didn’t fit the story line at all it seemed. |
Good |
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Witchblade (TV) The story line is alright for a Japanese version of an American story. It’s not a something you would show a child though, it has a lot of sexual lingos and when Masane turns into Witchblade… well, she doesn’t leave much to the imagination. Most of the story is confusing, especially the fact that I don’t know the actual comic from America. In fact, it took me a little bit of research to figure that there was the comic in America. I feel like I was missing something all the time in the show, and I wasn’t really fond of the interaction between Masane and Rihoko. It was touching but something seemed a bit off. The animation is nicely put together, very clean cut and loveable designs though the background is a little lacking in detail although better for Gonzo. Gonzo is a strange studio, they either win or don’t. This one… well for the animation, it might be one of his better ones in there pocket. Another thing I hate is the large amount of fan service in the act of large breasted women that their breasts go everywhere. The fighting scenes which seem to make up most of the shows is not all that well done, I almost have to say it is a bit like any fighting show where clothing is torn off. Even though her clothing doesn’t fly off, it’s really more of a fan service to show her butt and breasts. The voices now are a little odd. I’m not fond of Rihoko’s voice, being a bit whinny in my mind. Most of the voices do match the characters but even though they do, I wanted to cringe when I heard them. I think that the music was really good, perfect for the fight scenes though any other background sounded like a day in the life of the characters, just not that well done. The beginning and ended aren’t really very memorable though the opening is a little better then the ending. It’s an ok show to watch but I’m not sure why. The underlining plot is well done and the fan service is ok but other then that, well… I guess I’m fine with one time watching. |
Not really good |
| Wolf's Rain (TV) | |
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(The) World God Only Knows (TV) This is a really fun show. I actually really like it even if it’s about something I’m not very interested in, dating sims... Now, I understand the leer that people have to them, guy gets girl with simple questions and answers. Unfortunately, that isn’t real life, and so I can never understand those that are stuck within the gaming world. That’s why this show is so hilarious to me and makes me want to keep watching this. Keima is rather strange and interesting character, only interested in video game girls instead of real ones. The strange thing is, when he actually goes for getting the heart of real girls, he actually gets them. I guess it helps that he lives in the anime world anyway because most of what he pulls actually wouldn’t work. It’s funny because of all the cheesy lines that he uses and stocking the girls around to see their lives. I don’t know about you but if a guy dressed like a young Austin Powers reject was following me around, I would call the cops. Elsie is… I don’t know how to explain her really. She is childish and crazy; most of the time she messes things up when she tries to do anything. The only thing she is really good at is cleaning. It’s like his world itself is a dating sim because no girl in our world would ever go for the cheesy things he does from banners to strange stockings that he does. All the girls are pretty unrealistic stereotypes but it actually works for the story plot. The only episode that felt really bothersome was episode 4 with the loop. It only felt like it was there to show Keima’s personality a bit more. The artwork seems rather good although it is really bright and ‘chubby.’ A lot of times, they seem like chibi’s or plastic doll. The ghosts look like strange blobs and seem odd. There’s not much I can say about the artwork since its pretty much like any other slice of life that has come out this around this time. The voices are really interesting, and its fun hearing the English Sosuke Sagara from Full Metal Panic talking about dating sims! That’s right; Chris Patton is the voice of Keima Katsuragi. And his supporting character is Luci Christian’s voice, which also is the voice of Kaname Chidori from Full Metal Panic as well. She plays the Spirit Hunter by the name of Elucia de Rux Ima. Its strange hearing there voices in here because they the characters here are almost complete opposite the characters they did play in Full Metal Panic. Another opposite is Hilary Haag who not only plays Tessa from Full Metal Panic, but Mio Aoyama, the rather short and prideful rich girl in this, and the shy Shiori Shiomiya who is more like Tessa in a sense. Basically, if you love the English voices of Full Metal Panic, you’re probably going to like the English voices here. I actually really like the opening song; it has a rather nice beat. The ending is alright, though not as good as the beginning. |
Very good |
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xxxHOLiC (TV) I do love this show a lot but there are some problems in it too. Inconsistencies between the manga and the anime make me cringe just a tad. Now I have not actually read the manga, but I have seen enough to find that some of the artwork is not right, but we will get to that in a moment. This is pretty much Pet Shop of Horrors with wishes and spirits; sometimes their good, and sometimes they will try to rip you apart. The story follows a fail of a boy named Watanuki. Pretty much everything he does, he messes up with and is always hunted down by spirits. He is the only one who can see them which makes him look like a fool most of the time when he runs around the town from spirits that seem to not exist. Now here is where some of the inconsistencies that I found. Almost every picture I have seen of him has two different eye colors but yet, the anime has given him both blue eyes. I am not sure exactly which is true but it’s what I’ve seen from the manga, it’s supposed to be the later. Yuuko is an interesting character and from what I’ve seen, they are actually alike between the manga and anime at least in looks. She has a way of getting what she wants with no worry as to what will happen to the other person although I believe she always knows it will work out. I never once saw her worried that something may happen. If Watanuki wears his emotions on his sleeve, Domeki is the exact opposite. Maybe that’s why they make a great pair. Domeki cancels all of Watanuki’s crazy antics, giving mostly a base monotone as he speaks. I wish he was actually in the show more often and given a bigger role because it was really fun to see the conversation between him and Watanuki (and the idea of them being a yaoi pair makes my fan girl in me scream for joy...) In fact, all the characters are pretty memorable as main characters except for one. Himawari is a little two plain and cheerful all the time. Sometimes I want to smack her hard because she just gets so annoying. There are many times that Yuko gives cryptic statements about her but it is never explained what is going on with her. I somewhat understood all that was being said but then some of what they talked about, I felt would only make sense to a Japanese person such as the game ‘Angel’ which seems to be a Japanese version of Ouija Board or Wigi Board. When they first talked about it, I thought that it was something else. Another thing that is bothersome to me is that no one takes her advice, which I understand, some of the reasons for it but then they get into problems and suffer for it and I just have to roll my eyes at it. The animation is alright but all the characters are much too thin and long limbed which makes it hard to watch sometimes. Even fluid movements would never make the shows good to me. There are many times when the artwork pretty much sucks for an anime, and really makes me wonder. It surprises me that such a low design could come from Clamp. In fact, the fact that there are references to other Clamp manga’s in the show is interesting if you take the time to pick them out. Sadly, the only details with this seem to be in the background except one or two things the characters end up wearing and the characters themselves are poorly lacking in detail and actual proportions with arms and legs going everywhere during freak outs. I also don’t like how their eyes are all blank. They have no high lights what so ever so it makes them look dead. I really like the English Voice acting, which to me, it’s much better then the Japanese. The English has more fluid movement in fact then the Animation and feels like a cloud of smoke to the ears. At least for most of the things Yoko says. The other actors are pretty good for them going with Shizuka’s monotone to the crazy way Watanuki’s voice gets with some of the things he gets in to. Really I do feel sorry for the boy. The music is also really well done, giving it a really nice mystic feel to it and the opening is rather fun. I would watch this for the story line but pretty much not much else. |
Very good |