Ai Yori Aoshi - Enishi / Bluer Than Indigo

Yet another romantic drama - I don't know what it is with me and these things, but I really dig watching these. I didn't start this one at the first episode, however, I just grabbed one from the middle of the series and started watching. For some reason there's one young man who lives in an apartment or household of some sort with several women of varying ages, and he's developing a relationship with the landlady. Moreover, the Enishi series is the one after the original Ai Yori Aoshi, so I'm even more lost in the storyline without knowing that convoluted history behind the main characters. Maybe I'll come back to this sweet melodrama in a while and grab all the episodes...

Airmaster

Wow, this is an intense little series. Main character is Maki, a very tall redheaded chick who transferred to a new high school. She meets a group of fellow students, the most annoying of which is this shrill imp named Renge. She's supposed to be a freshman in high school but she looks like a Max Fleischer nightmare. Plus she screams and cries at everything - completely lacking in charm. Maki, however, not only is an attractive amazonian specimen, she has a remarkable and unique fighting style that permits her to do whatever she wants through air. The first episode hints that at one point she may have taken gymnastics, but in the middle of combat this blue mist trails from her eyes, and one of her opponents (schooled in the Mexican aerial form of combat known as Lucha) remarks with some alarm that she can change direction in mid-air. The fight sequences here are spectacular, I hope they carry on throughout the series. I really could do without Renge, and there are quite a lot of panty shots, but that can't be helped when the warrior wears a short skirt and moves through the air like an olympic swimmer would through water.

Avenger

A long, long time into the future (first episode closes on a ruined city and a sign that reads "Welcome to Mars"), a city hosts its champion warrior, Leila Ashley, a skilled Barbaroi who hates the common automatons known as Dolls. Yet one day, after a conflict with another Barbaroi challenger, Leila befriends an unregistered, advanced-model Doll named Nei and goes off wandering for reasons yet unapparent...

Immediately the astute viewer is reminded of .hack/SIGN, which is because they come from the same studio, Bee Train. The artwork is skilled and the animation is smooth and satisfying. The storyline launches from the gate with intrigue, introducing some of the main characters very quickly to get the ball rolling. Short-lived at only 13 episodes, this excellent specimen of post-apocalyptic fantasy is a pretty good story, if you can handle accepting yet another contrived new culture throwing itself in your face.

Bakuretsu Tenshi

In futuristic Japan, gun laws have been abolished and a tidal wave of high-powered firearms rapidly evolves and spins out of control. In the middle of the fracas a humble high school student desires to find a part-time job. He follows a notice and is hired by a group of skilled vigilantes, all female and badass...

Ugh, I really have little tolerance for this crap. The main character, the boy, is good-natured and helpful, and he's just taken a part-time job with a group of four women who can barely keep their clothes on and feel absolutely no compunction against physical abuse. Hilarity ensues, as you might well imagine. This "guns and robots" anime is put out by Gonzo Digimation, who apparently has been the bellwether for integrating CG animation with anime. It didn't work so well with their Blue Submarine No. 6, but they demonstrated they've refined the science with Last Exile. So if you like seeing women of various ages in various states of undress being sociopathic, antagonistic, unlikeable badasses, this is definitely the show for you. Why is it in my "good list"? Because of the opening sequence with this zombie-powered junkyard robot... I hope that's some really cool foreshadowing.

Battle Programmer Shirase

Salient facts: there are only five episodes; each episode occurs in three parts, and each part is 12 minutes long (12 minutes - intro, closing theme = action). Aside from that, the artwork is cute and very interesting-looking; the animation relies on long pauses and stuff, but sometimes it's very fluid. The storyline promotes many interesting ideas, the whole magical world of what a hacker can do when everything, everything is run by computers. If you can overlook the strange relationship between Shirase and Misao, it's a fun little series.

Blue Submarine No. 6

Blue Submarine No. 6 is highly philosophical all the way through. There's some action and some interpersonal conflict, but mainly the focus is upon alienation versus acceptance of diversity. A mad scientist has set machinations for the world's potential destruction in motion, but it's up to the humans to demonstrate they can live in harmony with nature to forestall this doomsday. Sure, and that's what's going on right now in the real world, yes, but it's just sped up due to one man's idealism and an entire race's unreasoning hatred. What's unique about this series is that the action sequences with the ships are rendered entirely in CG and meshed with the regular animation. Sometimes it's hard to completely accept, since the two contrast with each other pretty soundly, but the artwork is excellent regardless. I would love this series except I have to hate the late-teen female officer, Kino Mayumi, who recruits the rogue hot-shot pilot, Hayami Tetsu, to please come back out of hiding and pilot the incredible Blue Submarine No. 6. She is nothing but whiny and shrill throughout the entire series, a complete obstacle to anything useful that could transpire. I'm assuming something was lost in the translation, here.

Boys Be...

Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040

I've seen pieces of the original BGC series and I didn't really care for it, just because of the style of animation. I recognize that I should watch it all, though, to better appreciate where this sequel picks up. This is an extensive series that I enjoy tremendously, I love the animation, the cyber theme, the Blade Runner subreferences, the philosophy, everything. I just enjoy the hell out of this kind of storytelling. You know how you find something, a movie or a song or other media, that just resonates with you? You can't seem to get enough of it just because it strikes a chord with you? That's what BGC: Tokyo 2040 does for me, I just love the aesthetic, exposition, and substance.

Chrno Crusade

Kinda gothygoth, a romanticized American 1920s setting, and a world where demons and exorcism take a much more prominent role in society: Rosette Christopher and her companion, the devil Chrno, race to the scene wherever baleful, malefic entities have manifested and eradicate the menace with holy ammunition. But Rosette gets a little gung-ho sometimes and resents the conservative advice from Chrno... hilarity ensues. The main conflicts have to do with reeling in the loose cannon that Rosette represents, as well as her church learning to tolerate and accept Chrno - while he's helpful and seems harmless now, what could push him over the edge and make him become a threat to be dealt with? And what has become of Rosette's brother, Joshua? This elaborate and fun series will doubtlessly play itself out for a long time, and the conclusion is going to be huge, if foreshadowing tells us anything at all. Nice production values, though the artwork is standard for the genre and the character archetypes are not new...

Colorful

Cooking Master Boy

1997 saw the premiere of this old-school-looking anime! How bizarre, I would've thought the technology had progressed by this time... Anyway, this is the lively, action-packed tale of a young man with exceptional culinary ability, learned from his mom (who herself had something like legendary status throughout China). After soundly defeating a power-hungry rival, he is sent off to southern China to train in earnest and rise through the ranks in order to reign supreme over all the Emperor's chefs!

I'm pretty sure Iron Chef got a few stylistic points from this series, honestly, not the least of which would be the music played over particular moments of tension, waiting for the verdict of a new recipe presented to an authority figure, etc. Being old-school the artwork is kinda rough and represents what outsiders bear in mind, when they think about what they don't like in anime. The animation is likewise choppy and not smooth. However, the story is so charming and the details of cooking are so intriguing that nearly anyone would find themselves anxious for the next episode. An interesting feature is that the spoken dialogue is in Chinese, not Japanese! The fansubbers have written it all out in English, but there are no Japanese subtitles to be found, so I wonder how Japanese audiences were expected to understand this series?

Cosprayers

Following along the lines of .hack/SIGN, Cosprayers (short for "Cosmopolitan Prayers", though I think this is a dose of Engrish and they meant "Players") is about a team of girls in an environmental virtual videogame. The main character, Koto, thought she was just "cosplaying" (short for "costume play": dressing up as one's favorite anime, manga, or videogame characters for sci-fi/anime conventions) but picked up a "charm" bracelet that assisted her being gated from the real world into this virtual dimension. Now she has to quickly learn her skills and abilities to hold her own against increasingly difficult monsters and enemies.

The animation and art are fine - standard, not exceptional but not poor. The storyline seems erratic: it's definitely headed somewhere but it's getting there by leaps and bounds but not getting very far. While it's a Japanese convention to leave a portion of a sentence unsaid because the nuances will be understood, the whole exposition here is employing this too frequently and pervasively: flashbacks leave the viewer even more confused, scenes skip between locations without continuity, character development is about nil. However, it's not as bad as some that I've seen and the episodes only last about 20 minutes. The only other drawback is that all copies of this I've downloaded are for crap with terrible video distortion, regularly causing my media players to crash. That's nothing against the show, though.

Oh yeah, there's lots of up-skirt and tit shots, too. Gratuitous and irrelevant, and nigh-ubiquitous, it trivializes the story...

Cowboy Bebop

I'd heard about this series long before I'd ever seen it. I thougt it had a goofy title so I never pursued exploring it - this was long before I was into anime of any sort, I didn't understand the aesthetics behind Japanese titles. Eventually a couple friends sat me down and made me watch a few of their DVDs of this series, and I was astounded: not only had I been missing out on a very interesting, engaging series, but I was missing out on all these tremendous cool-points! I absorbed everything they showed me as if I were starving! I was completely floored. The characters were all solid, well-grounded, and believable. The action was intense and engaging. The style was just hyper-cool... Most of the other anime I watch have this series to thank for my interest and curiosity, I'll explore any title I haven't heard of, in the vain and distant hope of making another astounding discovery like I did with this one.

The animation is very smooth, the creators really cared about this show. They wanted it to be really good! The artwork isn't quite oldschool, but it doesn't deviate too wildly so it looks like a natural evolution, very sophisticated. The stories really are engaging, it's hard to not to care about what's going on because the pace is so stable and there are just enough allusoins to keep the viewer arrested and wondering what will happen next. More often than not there's a surprise twist near the end, and very intelligent humor throughout. You have to see this show.

Da Capo

My copy of this was really crappy so I lost certain moments of the text, but that's not much. This seems to be a fun little series - again, about teenagers in high school (who seem to live in households without parents, for whatever reason - is this legal in Japan?), reuniting after summer break. Asakura is a young man with the ability to perceive others' dreams; he iterates that while this might sound cool, there's nothing in the world more boring than other people's dreams. And then there's a bizarre love triangle between the "sister" he lives with (who's not related to him) and this short spazzy little chick who he initially perceived in her own dream and then she shows up for school as an exchange student from America. Hilarity ensues.

Detective Academy Q / Tantei Gakuen Q

"Q" refers to the main character's name, Kyuu. He's a highschool student with an advanced capacity for observation and deduction: he can solve mysteries like nobody's business. He's loathe to do his real schoolwork but he's a big fan of detective shows on TV. In the first episode he hooks up with two other people, a girl with photographic memory and a guy who's a martial arts expert. What do they have in common? They all want to go to the same detective agency!

The artwork was average, it wasn't groundbreaking, it was just standard stuff. The soundtrack is likewise standard, so the weight of the interest has to fall upon the story. The storyline was pretty interesting, to me - If you like Agatha Christie or Monk, or even Encyclopedia Brown, you can probably appreciate this series. The plot moves fairly quickly, as they have to establish the characters and set up a murder mystery within thirty minutes. You're even given sufficient clues throughout the story that you could conceivably piece together a plausible theory of your own before the criminal is given away.

E's Otherwise

Coming Soon...

Escaflowne

I never intended to get into Escaflowne. Several VHS copies were given to me and I watched them with a friend for a week, and the story hooked us. We had to know what would happen to this exiled king, pursued across a slowly ravaged and wasted countryside by a psychopathic military revolt. There were quite a few things that didn't meet to my taste in watching it, but they were insignificant against everything this series had going for it. That's a good story, you know, when you're compelled to tune into the next episode despite a couple things you wish you could change or get rid of. I enjoyed it, and I want to see the rest of the series someday.

FLCL (a.k.a. Fooly Cooly; Furikuri)

Another six-episode OAV, this is everything you like and hate about anime. All the sexual jokes, all the surreal activity, all the action and violence, all the exaggerated facial expressions, all the hip music and fashionable clothes, all the turgid melodrama and heart-wrenching sincerity, all the bizarre-ass humor and self-reference and cultural statement you can stand. A lot of people like to act freaked-out by it but actually the storyline is tight and complete, though it does help go to back and watch it all over again so you can pick up on the subreferences they make early on. While I'd want everyone to see this, I realize it's only for the most open-minded and experienced otaku to fully appreciate (and to not be a spaz about).

Full Metal Alchemist / Hagaren no Renkinjutsushi

Relatively new to the scene, Full Metal Alchemist combines old-school anime with new-skool aesthetics and rendering of characters, mixes it with a fascinating concept of magic/science and interesting cultures, and frosts it over with grand production values. The viewer is plunged into tragedy within the first two minutes of watching the first episode, and then the plotline is laden with spiritual analogy and intriguing double-speak where humility and guilt are disguised as imperious pride. I look forward to following this fascinating series - as of this writing (01DEC03) there are only eight fansubbed episodes available.

Full Metal Panic

This is the continuing drama of giant fighting robots and psychic teenage girls, and the man torn between both worlds. The giant robots were okay, but there was no special leap for me to accept that they also had psychic attack/defense abilities. The main character is a sergeant in a paramilitary group who's great with fighting in mecha but terrible at interacting with people; the main female is a controlling, emotionally manipulative high school teen he's sent to bodyguard since she seems to contain some secrets to this new psychic-robot technology.

Yeah-yeah-yeah. What it boils down to is her jerking his clueless ass around and he doesn't know better than to endure it all faithfully. I can't stand this interpersonal dynamic, so after the 9th episode I deleted my collection of this series. The animation's fine, and the story arc is fine, but I only watched this because someone told me that was the only way to appreciate Full Metal Panic Fumoffu...