One of the things that I was introduced to while watching the 2023 Desert Bus for Hope was the British game show “Only Connect” – with several fan-made games submitted over the course of the week. So, I created my own anime-themed one – and as of this writing I don’t know if it will get picked. Whether or not it does, I figure I’d post the link to my slide deck here! If it does get picked, I’ll also post the video as soon as the Desert Bus Video Strike team posts the video on the Desert Bus YouTube Channel.
Continue readingCategory Archives: Anime
Anime Review: Spy Classroom Season 2
Spy Classroom Season 2 is one that is a lot more serious than the first season. It’s not to say that there isn’t a large quantity of slapstick, some comedy around the members of Team Lamplight’s personality foibles, and more development for some of the other members of the group – that’s definitely there. However, it does make an attempt to be more dramatic than last season, with varying degrees of success.
Continue readingAnime Review: Oddtaxi
Oddtaxi is one of those truly unique series – on paper it’s the sort of hyperlink-cinema noir story that fits right in with series like Baccano and Durarara (or, for that matter, films like Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, and Pulp Fiction). However, how the presentation of the story helps make it truly distinct from the other stylistic works that came before. There will be some spoilers below the cut.
Continue readingAnime Review: Ayakashi Triangle
So, this anime is a little less “spooky” and a little more “fanservice-heavy”, but it’s a series that also involves the Yokai, which are used in both spooky and silly contexts, so I feel okay including this more recent series, Ayakashi Triangle, into my Halloween reviews.
Continue readingAnime Review: Synduality Noir
Of the Summer 2023 anime series, Synduality Noir is the other of the series that I’d almost describe as “horror adjacent” – in this case not because of the inclusion of traditional gothic horror monsters (Werewolves, Vampires, etc.), but rather because of a few of the elements introduced later in the series.
Continue readingAnime Review: Undead Murder Farce
I’m starting off my October horror reviews with a mystery horror anime – Undead Murder Farce.
Continue readingIt’s time to get further into the weeds when it comes to how anime gets made.
Continue readingAnime Review: Aura Battler Dunbine
It feels weird to call Byston Well, the setting Yoshiyuki Tomino created for Aura Battler Dunbine – a series that many Isekai novels draw their lineage from – as a “joke”. However, arguably no creator has so desperately tried to “make fetch happen” with a setting that Tomino has done with Dunbine – not only with New Aura Battler Dunbine, but also Wings of Rean and Garzey’s Wing. Yet, with the degree of traction the original work obtained, there has to be something there – right?
Continue readingAnime Review: TONIKAWA: High School Days
Tonikawa: High School Days is a short 4 episode miniseries that basically makes up one miniature arc. I don’t know where the manga is at by comparison, so I don’t know if this is a case where the studio is waiting on the next arc to wrap before continuing with the story, or what. But what I do know is that this is a nice, warm and cozy little morsel to tide us over until we get the next arc.
Continue readingAnime Review: Memories
There’s sort of a Big Three list of anime anthology films that are frequently recommended, all of which have Katsuhiro Otomo involved to some degree or another – Robot Carnival, Neo-Tokyo/Labyrinth Tales, and Memories. I’ve seen Robot Carnival a couple times in the past (and should probably give it a review here), and I got to see Neo-Tokyo as part of the OVA film festival at the Hollywood Theater in Portland. After that screening, they announced their next event would be a screening of Memories – so I had to finish up the hat trick.
Continue readingThis month we talk about the Record of Lodoss War OVA – with some tangents to the novels, the Actual Play, and the Chronicles of the Heroic Knight OVA (and also Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth).
Continue readingAnime Explorations Episode 10: JoJo Part 3 – Stardust Crusaders (Battle in Egypt Arc)
It’s time for the final showdown with Dio!
Continue readingAnime Review: Mobile Suit Gundam: Witch From Mercury Season 2
This season had the second halves of not one, but two very LGBT-ish anime from Bandai/Sunrise, and a lot of worry about whether these would be able to stick the landing. Let’s start with the mecha series: Mobile Suit Gundam: Witch from Mercury, Season 2. There will be some spoilers.
Continue readingAnime Review: Sorcerous Stabber Orphen – Final 2 Seasons
The last two cours of Sorcerous Stabber Orphen went back-to-back, feeding directly into the other, at a total of 24 episodes (which was the same length as the previous seasons of the show) but with two different subtitles – Chaos in Urbanrama and Doom of Dragon’s Sanctuary. The two series are somewhat mixed in quality, but they go one into the other to such a degree that it’s hard to talk about them in isolation.
Continue readingAnime Review: Oshi No Ko
If you have followed the anime industry in Japan, and with it have paid attention to Japanese voice actors and the pop singers who do the opening and closing songs of the shows you like, you may have come to the realization that the Japanese music industry kinda sucks, and maltreats people (something that was also previously covered in Key The Metal Idol and Perfect Blue). This past season we got Oshi No Ko, an adaptation of a manga from the writer of Kaguya-Sama: Love is War and also the artist of Flowers of Evil, which gives its own take on this, which I think gives a different spin on some of those beats.
There will be spoilers below the cut. There is some real benefit of going into the show – at least the first episode – completely unspoiled, but if you’d rather not, that’s perfectly okay.
Continue readingAnime Review: My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999
My Love Story With Yamada-Kun at Lv999 was a tremendously fun little romantic comedy shojo anime. After the last Shojo series I watched, Fruits Basket, went kinda hog on the melodrama, I was rather pleased to find that this series was a lot more pleasant and chill.
Continue readingAnime Review: The Cafe Terrace and Its Goddesses
As per usual, a couple times a year I like to watch a fanservice series or so to just sort of gauge the state of the genre. For the Spring 2023 season, I went with the Cafe Terrace and Its Goddesses, to see if it fares a little better than the last fanservice series I watched with Goddess in the title. The answer is very much “Yes”.
Continue readingAnime Review: Heavenly Delusion
Of the heavier anime series from the Spring 2023 season that I watched, probably the heaviest of them all was Heavenly Delusion (released on Hulu in the US and Disney+ abroad under its untranslated Japanese title of Tengoku Daimakyo). The series was one of the two from this past season that sought to build a couple of mysteries over the course of the season, with a varying degree of success. Also, a content warning for this series – it contains imagery of sexual assault.
Continue readingAnime Review: Tonikawa Over The Moon For You Season 2
The first season of Tonikawa was a light, refreshing slice-of-life sitcom series that answered the question – can you have a funny sitcom when everyone in the relationship has already said “I Will”, and also they don’t have kids? The answer, it turned out, was yes. The question for season 2 is, “Can this story continue to maintain this momentum?” The answer, it turns out, is also yes.
Continue readingAnime Review: Magical Destroyers
I’ve reviewed several anime series in the past about Otaku getting dumped on by society – Rumble Garandoll & Akiba’s Trip both put their focus on the social stigmatization of Otaku by larger Japanese society. Rumble Garandoll put its emphasis on more conservative elements of culture attacking Otaku based on ablism some of the more progressive themes in some Otaku-targeted works (which is not certainly monolithic – I’ve covered some more conservative works here). Akiba’s Trip’s climax called out the hypocrisy of the Japanese government touting anime and other media targeted toward Otaku as part of the government’s soft-power initiative on one hand, while often the same political party (and same politicians) who champion that initiative demonize otaku (either directly or indirectly) through their policies and their public speeches (like the whole “Herbavore Male” thing that was going on for a while). Magical Destroyers takes a different tack and focuses on otaku self-loathing.
Continue readingAnime Review: Tokyo Mew Mew New – Season 2
First off, hey! That title rhymes! Also, the second season of Tokyo Mew Mew New is a straight continuation of the plot, with the focus shifting with the Aliens no longer shooting for a slower, more gradual monster-of-the-week plan, and instead going for more spectacular plots, threatening Tokyo as a whole. On the mundane side of the plot, Ichigo’s relationship with Aoyama is now getting considerably more serious. And then there’s the whole matter of this new Blue Knight who keeps (Tuxedo-Mask-esque) coming to Ichigo’s aid. There will be some spoilers.
Continue readingEpisode 9: JoJo Part 2 – Stardust Crusaders (Road to Egypt Arc)
The Summer of JoJo continues with the first half of Stardust Crusaders – the Road to Egypt arc.
Continue readingAnime Review: Vinland Saga Season 2
The first season of Vinland Saga, which I watched when it was streaming on Amazon Prime, was a very fast-paced and dark period action series with some serious political undertones to it. The second season, which aired in the Spring 2023 season, maintains the dark tone, but with a shift in the focus of the story. There will be spoilers in this review.
Continue readingAnime Review: The Hollywood Theater OVA Film Festival (2023)
This past weekend, the Hollywood theater did a film festival of OVAs, featuring Neo-Tokyo, Baoh: The Visitor, Dragon’s Heaven, and Project A-Ko. As I haven’t seen the first three, I’ll give my thoughts on those (and I’ll be doing a podcast episode on A-Ko later for the Anime Explorations Podcast).
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