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Showing posts with label anime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anime. Show all posts
This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation. This will also be my last anime micro review for the anime I watched when I was really sick a few months ago.
This is a sci-fi anime adaptation of the classic novel The
Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas. This anime impressed me a lot.
The art and writing both seem exceptional. The art style is very unique. It’s
not the character designs that are unusual, but the way they use textures to
color everything instead of solid colors, that makes this anime so eye-catching.
The writing for this anime is very suspenseful. Right from the first episode
we’re presented with mystery and peril. This anime was intriguing, and I would
like to watch more. Being rather dark and so intense, I feel it is an anime I
would have to absorb in small doses, rather than watching it all of the way
through.
Content Advisory: Some sexually suggestive content
(the story begins at a Mardi Gras-type celebration). Some PG13 language. The
first two episodes of this anime had no blood or graphic violence of any kind
(I mention this because the first episode does have a public execution, which I
was worried would get graphic, but it didn’t.)
This anime was ridiculous, in a boring kind of way. In the
far future two girls in absurd outfits fight interstellar crime for the
galactic equivalent of the United Nations. One of them gains super strength and
invulnerability from her lipstick, and the other one can control computers with
her mind. In the first episode it’s like they run a bulldozer over every
obstacle in their path, even taking out an entire space armada single-handedly.
The second episode was a bit more interesting because it did focus more on a
side character who is a bit of an enigma. It also had a couple of twists and
turns in the plot. Overall, though, it was not much more interesting than the
first. I wouldn’t bother watching a third episode of this.
Content Advisory: Only minor language and fan service
(from what I can recall).
This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation.
A sci-fi western, this anime follows a master swordsman
named Van and a young girl named Wendy as they search for a man with a claw on
his left hand. This villain murdered Van’s bride on their wedding day and
kidnapped Wendy’s brother. The art is very crisp and colorful. The character
designs are very distinctive, and Van’s sword is awesome. Its long blade can go
limp and act like a whip. Van has a kind of neat personality. He doesn’t really
want to get involved in anything except his personal revenge, but he gets upset
when people mistreat women and kids and ends up kicking somebody’s butt. Also,
he has a giant mecha that falls from the sky when he really needs some heavy
firepower. Altogether, this was a fairly entertaining anime. It had a lot of
action, a good bit of plot, some likable characters, and a smattering of humor.
Content Advisory: Some PG13 language. Some blood in
the action scenes, but nothing more graphic than that.
This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation.
This anime is a sci-fi western, and it tells the story of
Vash the Stampede. Vash has a huge bounty on his head for destroying an entire
city. He leaves a trail of destruction wherever he goes, but as it turns out
most of this chaos is the result of the bounty hunters that come after him. In
truth, Vash is a rather comical character, and the other two main characters –
two women from the insurance agency that’s had to pay for all the destruction
being attributed to Vash – don’t even believe he’s the real Vash. This anime
has quite a bit of action in it, but it’s really rather lighthearted and
comical. It is an older anime, so the animation isn’t great, but it’s adequate.
Vash is a super likable guy.
Content Advisory: Some PG13 language. Some blood in
the action scenes, but nothing more graphic than that. Even the action scenes
are mostly cartoon slapstick, really.
This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation.
In this Asian fantasy story, a brave warrior woman becomes
the bodyguard to a young prince whose father is intent on having him killed.
The woman’s history is a bit mysterious, but apparently she’s become a bodyguard
to atone for having wrongfully killed some people in the past. The boy’s
situation is a mystery as well. He seems to have gained some kind of water
magic that protects him. The king’s advisers believe him to be possessed, so it
has been decided he must be killed to protect the sanctity of the royal family.
The boy is a bit of a whiner, but he’s not too bad. The woman seems very smart
and down to earth. The animation in this series is very well done. Everything
is very crisp and vibrant looking.
Content Advisory: There may be some language. (Can’t
quite recall now. It was definitely less than in other series I’ve seen
recently.) There was no blood or gore of any kind in the first two episodes,
but it hadn’t really gotten into any serious action, so I don’t know how
representative this is of the series as a whole.
The premise for this series sounded very cool. Apparently, a
group of alchemists unlocked the secret of immortality hundreds of years ago,
but this story focuses on their involvement in the American mafia in the 1930s.
I like the idea of stories about immortals, and there aren’t too many anime
based in 1930s America.
The animation in this series also looked pretty good from the images I’d seen.
Unfortunately, this anime is extremely gory, I guess to emphasize that the main
characters are immortal. They can be dismembered or even decapitated, and they
just come right back together and keep going. I only watched about ten minutes
of the first episode before I decided I couldn’t watch any more. I’ll post the
intro here, since that was clean and kind of neat.
Content Advisory: Some PG13 language. Lots of blood
and gore. Definitely not recommended.
This is an interesting little fairy tale. It is about a duck
that falls in love with a prince and is transformed into a magical girl called
Princess Tutu. The setting for the story is a dance school, but a brave prince
and an evil crow have escaped from a story book and broke the barrier between
reality and fantasy in this town. Princess Tutu has to battle sort-of-villains
that aren’t really evil in order to help the prince. The anime seems like it
would be a very nice story for young girls. That isn’t an insult either, it’s just
the audience I think this anime is aimed at. I found some aspects of the story
interesting, but when your heroine is using moves based on ballet to fight/save
her enemies it feels a little silly. The art was nothing groundbreaking, but I
thought it was very nice.
Content Advisory: Can’t really say anything here.
Very G-rated content. There is magic, if you find that offensive, but the fact
that it’s a fairy tale should make that obvious.
This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation.
The newest extreme sports gear is Air Treks – two-wheeled,
motorized, inline roller skates. The main character in this story is a 13
year-old boy who thinks he’s a street tough until he gets beat up by a gang of
teens who use Air Treks in their street fighting. Afterwards, the boy decides
to get some Air Treks himself and becomes immersed in the world of Air
Trek-using street gangs and their battle/racing
sub-culture. This is another variation on the typical
boy-is-introduce-to-some-new-competitive-activity-and-turns-out-to-be-a-prodigy-but-must-prove-he’s-the-best
plotline that is popular in many shonen anime. The Air-Treks are actually a
pretty cool idea, but story-wise this anime doesn’t seem to really offer
anything new. There was this one creepy girl who made these creepy dolls and
recited this creepy rhyme while she sewed them. I’ll post a clip of that
because I loved it.
Content Advisory: PG13 language. I was surprised that
there was some very brief partial nudity. I wish I had known that ahead of
time. Not recommended.
This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation.
The world is full of Mushi – strange life forms that defy
definition. In the anime they are described as the purest form of life –
creatures that can’t be categorized as plant, animal, or any other off-shoot of
life. They seem a bit like spirits, but they aren’t actually called spirits in
the anime. They are invisible to most people, but when they can be seen they
take a variety of forms. Some look like strange bugs and some look like humans.
If fact, apparently, on rare occasions, humans can become Mushi. This anime
follows the travels of a mysterious man who is studying Mushi. He has somehow
learned to master Mushi and harness their powers. In each of the two episodes I
saw, he comes to the aid of an individual who is suffering some problem due to
the activity of a Mushi. The stories are a bit on the “strange” side. They’re
even a tad creepy at times, but not what I would call horror. You never get the
impression that the Mushi are inherently evil or malicious. Also, just to
clarify, this anime has a very personal/investigative feel to it. Even though
the main character sometimes uses Mushi he’s mastered in order to solve
problems, this isn’t a “gotta’ catch ‘em all” kind of show. Overall, I found it
interesting. The main character seems very kind, but he’s a bit mysterious, and
it is hinted that he’s made some considerable sacrifices in his quest to master
these Mushi. I’d like to watch more episodes so that I can learn more about the
main character and the Mushi.
Content Advisory: There are some scenes with the
Mushi that are a little bit creepy. If strange and mysterious
creatures/scenarios scare you easily you might want to skip this one.
This is a gag anime. Meaning: this anime has absolutely zero
plot or character development. It is strictly a series of jokes and visual
gags. It starts out with, what I thought was, a pretty funny gag. The main
character comes skipping out of her high school and skips blindly into the
street, in front of a speeding truck. Brakes squeal, but she ends up getting
hit. The crowd that gathers around are saying stuff like “Oh my! She’s really
dead!”, “That totally ruins the plot!”, and “What were the writers thinking!?”
I found that kind of funny. Of course, they arbitrarily resurrect the character
and the story continues. In fact, her getting killed doing stupid stuff becomes
a running gag in the first episode. I only watched the first episode because
this anime became very stupid very fast. Perhaps I just can’t appreciate this
brand of humor. It was all I could do to sit through the first episode.
Content Advisory: Some PG13 language. The main
character gets killed multiple times, but I wouldn’t really call this anime
“violent”. It’s really just absurd slapstick comedy.
Anime Micro Review: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
2 comments Posted by Catalyst at 8:00 AM
This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation.
This anime takes place in the not-too-distant future and
focuses on an elite police squad that uses the latest technology to deal with
crimes committed using the latest technology. Ghost in the Shell was a movie
first, and if I understand things correctly, this series is a prequel to the
movie. The show seems very episodic in the first two episodes. Each episode had
the team dealing with a different crime, which did not seem to be connected in
any way. Both situations were interesting. The first was more of a mystery,
while the second was more straightforward but had more action. One of the cool
things about this anime is the technology portrayed in it. Several of the main
characters are cyborgs, and it seems like in this world it isn’t unusual for
your average person to have at least one or two cybernetic enhancements. Of
course, there are also anti-cyborg activists, but that was only alluded to in
these episodes. The animation was pretty good, and the plots were interesting.
In the first two episodes the characters weren’t developed very much, but they
might get more attention as the show progresses. Overall, I’d say this show is
more mentally engaging than emotionally engaging.
Content Advisory: Some PG13 language. The first
episode had one scene with some brief gore when the main character shoots off a
guy’s foot as he’s trying to escape. It also had a scene where the police blow
off the heads of three androids. It wasn’t exactly “gory”, but the heads (which
looked rather human on the surface) do explode with some sort of black fluid
spraying up from the necks. Again, not exactly “gory”, since they were machines, but still kind of disturbing looking. Interestingly, the second episode
had nothing like either of those scenes, so I don’t know how I would rate the
series as a whole, content-wise.
This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation.
 |
| From left to right: Kamina, Yoko and Simon - the three main characters. Kamina is awesome. |
This anime was pretty awesome. It is a bit hard to describe.
Or, at least, it is hard to describe why it is so awesome. The story is about
two guys, Simon and Kamina. Simon is about 12 or 13, and lacking in
self-confidence. Kamina is older - maybe late teens - and is very boisterous
and self-assured. They both grew up in this isolated underground village. Simon
works with some other villagers to dig tunnels and expand the village. Kamina
is a delinquent who dreams of traveling to the surface, a place he saw as a
very young child. Their lives change when Simon discovers a robot while
digging. Shortly thereafter, a big robot comes crashing through the roof of the
underground village. A girl from the surface, named Yoko, is trying to fight it
with only a giant laser rifle, and things aren’t going well. Kamina urges Simon
to take up the fight, piloting the robot he found earlier while digging, and he
quickly defeats the attacking robot. Together, they go to the surface where
they discover that some evil people called the beastmen have been keeping
humans oppressed for centuries. Kamina decides to take the fight to the
beastmen using the robot Simon dug up, and another one that Kamina commandeers
from the bad guys.
This anime seems like a simple enough action series at first
glance, but there are some very personal dramatic moments in it. The characters
are very likeable. Simon seems a little pathetic, but it’s obvious that he has
untapped potential. Kamina is a hot head, but he’s got courage in spades.
Yoko’s character isn’t really explored much in the first two episodes, but she
seems OK. The action in this show is waaaaay over the top, which is so very fun
in a juvenile male kind of way. And there are just so many great lines – most
of them coming from Kamina. ^_^
Content Advisory: Some language. I think there may
have been a little bit of blood in some of the action scenes, but it wasn’t
much. Most of the action is robot vs. robot. There was a certain amount of
so-called “fan service” (Yoko wears a pretty skimpy outfit) but I didn’t find
it as annoying as in most anime that has it. Perhaps because the rest of the
anime is so cool, it doesn’t feel like a desperate attempt to draw in viewers.
This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation.
This anime takes place in a universe that resembles the
modern day world, but where magic is practiced openly, and there are families
of magic-users who have gained notoriety for their mastery of different types
of magic. The two main characters are a teenage girl and a slightly older guy
who both come from the most accomplished family of fire magic-users (they’re
cousins, if I remember correctly). The girl is an accomplished fire magic-user
herself, and the heir to the family head. The guy never could pick up on fire
magic, so he was ostracized at a young age. The story begins when he returns to
town and demonstrates a mastery of wind magic. In fact, it seems as though he
may have become the most powerful wind magic-user in the world. When members of
the fire magic family start getting killed off by means of wind magic, people
assume that he’s looking for vengeance against the family that ostracized him,
but in reality there is someone else behind it. This whole situation pits the
two main characters against each other. The first two episodes didn’t reveal
what was really going on. I would be curious to watch more and find out. The
two main characters were both pretty interesting. The guy, especially, seemed
like an interesting person with a variety of motivations.
Content Advisory: Some minor language. (Maybe? Can’t
remember for sure.) There is some fighting, and people die, but there is
nothing graphic. You might object to the basic premise of a story about magic
users, though honestly it felt more like superpowers here.
This is another anime micro review. Read here for an explanation.
In the world of Last Exile people live life above the
clouds. It is a little unclear if people are living on floating islands, or
just on the tops of mountains, but airplanes and airships are the primary means
of traveling the vast oceans of sky between settlements. Nations command vast
fleets of massive airships and carryout so-called “honorable” warfare, sticking
to some kind of code of chivalry that isn’t quite explained in the first two
episodes. Meanwhile, the two main characters – a young pilot/navigator duo
named Claus and Lavie – work as sky carriers. In the first two episodes they
are hired to deliver a letter to an admiral of their nation’s sky navy. The
mission puts them in the middle of a battle, where it becomes obvious that the
enemy isn’t using honorable tactics. What’s more, the organization that’s
supposed to police battlefield etiquette refuses to interfere. So, obviously
there is some kind of conspiracy going on. Honestly, the story and characters
weren’t especially engaging in the first two episodes, but the artwork was
pretty high quality, and the world had a very interesting look. There was
enough there to make me slightly curious to see more.
Content Advisory: Some blood in the action scenes.
Some mild language.
A little over a month ago, I got so sick I was pretty much house-bound for a little over a week. During that time I decided to use my sickbed time to enjoy a massive anime simpler via the streaming service from Netflix.com. I watched fourteen different anime, but only two episodes (at most) of each. The idea was to get just a sample of a bunch of different shows that had been sitting in my Netflix queue for a while. Afterwards, I would know which ones might be worth seeing more of, and which ones I could forget about. So, after watching these I decided to write what I'm calling a "micro review" for each anime. It's "micro" because the reviews themselves are only going to be a couple of paragraphs each, and they're based on only a small portion of the anime. I'll be posting one of these each Saturday until I've posted all fourteen. So, here is the first one. I hope you enjoy!
Sengoku Basara
Hot-headed samurai guys are fighting over… I’m not really
sure. If there is a story here it doesn’t seem to be very important. I only
watched the first episode of this. The art was pretty decent, but nothing
exceptional. For an action anime, this was very boring.
Content Advisory: Some blood in the action scenes.
Maybe some PG13 language. I don’t really remember because I wasn’t paying that
much attention.
OK, so that first one is very brief and a little disappointing. There will be some better ones, though. I promise! ^_^
Playing with my webcam again. Enjoy!
Leave a comment if it made you laugh!
I wanted to write a post about the quirks of the way the Japanese
language is presented in anime, but a written article just couldn't
convey what I wanted to share. So, I made a quick video instead. Enjoy!
I was feeling kind of silly, and I was about to wash my hair anyway, so I did the unthinkable and put hairspray in it (*Shock!* *Horror!*) so that I could attempt a crazy anime hair style. Then, being as vain as I am, I snapped some pictures in the mirror. And now, I'm posting a couple of those pictures to my blog. (Ugh... I'm so vain I should be shot. -_-; ) The photos don't quite do it justice. The hair do was EPIC. ^_^
So, I haven't posted anything here in quite a while and now I post something this silly. Boo... I'll post something far more serious in the next couple of weeks. (I think... Or, I probably won't. ^_^)
Anime Music Videos (AMVs) are a cool fusion of two things I like - anime and music. AMVs are quite popular among anime enthusiasts. You can find a lot of them on YouTube and similar sites. AMV contests are rather popular at anime conventions, and my cousin even won a prize last year at a convention for an AMV she made. For no particular reason, I want to share some of the AMVs that have really touched me.
WARNING: These are very sad, at least to me. If you're not in the mood to cry I suggest you skip this video feature.
The first one is an AMV done with the anime 5 Centimeters per Second and the song From Where You Are by Lifehouse. I think it really captures very well the theme of the movie. This is a great joining of a beautiful song with a beautiful anime (one of my favorites, in fact).
This next one is done with the anime The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (another favorite) and the song She is the Sunlight by Trading Yesterday.
This last one uses an anime called Rumbling Hearts and the song Goodbye to You by Michelle Branch. I've never seen this anime, but the AMV makes me curious to watch it. This video also made me realize just how much more dramatic impact the word "sayonara" has than "goodbye". The Japanese language is awesome. ^_^
I hope you enjoyed them, even if they did make you a little sad. Personally, I think they're beautifully done. If you've got an AMV you really enjoy, post a link in a comment to this article. Thanks!
My most recent obsession has been cleaning my room. It is a monumental task. When I moved back in with my parents a few years ago, I moved all of the contents of a small apartment into a single bedroom. What's more, I really didn't bother to settle in. Many things have stayed in boxes, and a lot of stuff has ended up being stashed wherever it was convenient at the moment. The result vaguely resembles the apartment of Yomiko Readman from the anime Read or Die, as seen in this video.
One thing I've discovered as I've been going through my stuff is that I have piles of old Watchtowers and Awakes that I didn't place. This really impressed on me the wisdom of the society's new arrangement for distributing the magazines. I'm looking forward to getting these issues placed and not acquiring another backlog of magazines in the future.
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