Anime Review: May I Ask For One Final Thing?

I’ve been generally keeping clear of Isekai anime the last few years, also with a lot of fantasy series based on light novels. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t because those series were frequently crap. When I saw May I Ask For One Final Thing come up on the list of upcoming anime, along with one other show I’ll get to later, it seemed like a good time to put my toe back in. I’d say this was something of a pleasant surprise.

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2026 Anime New Year’s Resolutions

My 2025 Anime New Year’s Resolutions didn’t quite work out according to plan. Some of this was on me in terms of scheduling – I could probably have slipped Golden Boy in pretty much anywhere (and I’m writing this in 2025, so I still might slip it in). Others less so, as for example, I’d put the first season of Mushi-shi on my list, only for the license to have expired by the time October came around, or for A Silent Voice only to be available on HBO Max. So, I’ve learned my lesson and will be dialing back my resolutions this year to 6, which I’ll try to do across podcasting and personal viewing.

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Anime Review: Short Peace

This month, indeed tomorrow, if this goes up as scheduled, the Anime Explorations Podcast episode where we’ll be discussing Robot Carnival will go live. Appropriately enough, among the options I received for this year’s Anime Secret Santa was Short Peace, the fourth, and as of today, final anime anthology film that Katsuhiro Otomo has been involved in, coming after Memories. So, it felt right to choose that film as my pick for this year.

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Film Review: Conan the Destroyer

Until recently, I’d seen most of the Conan films. I’d rented Arnold’s first film on disc, and the same with the film with Jason Momoa taking the role. However, while I’d seen bits and pieces of Conan the Destroyer on cable, I’d never really seen the film. I figured now was as good a time as any to get to Arnold’s final outing as the sword-swinging Comparison.

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Film Review: Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind

The Hong Kong movie industry of the 80s and 90s was one that was willing to create a bunch of action comedy horror films, with Sammo Hung serving as almost the martial arts film equivalent to Dan Ackroyd on Ghostbusters. I’ve covered one of the films of this era in the past with Mr. Vampire. Now it’s time for another, one starring Mr. Hung himself, with Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind.

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Film (Video) Review: City on Fire

This week I’m taking a look at Ringo Lam’s undercover-cops-and-robbers crime thriller, City on Fire.

City on Fire is available from Amazon.com (Affiliate Link): https://amzn.to/4oGSqt2

‘Solecism’ by Scott Buckley – released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

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Film Review: Way of the Dragon

When I was in Middle School, I discovered Hong Kong martial arts films through researching the wuxia genre on the Internet after watching Big Trouble in Little China, and the first I sought out was Bruce Lee’s The Big Boss. So, I’ve always known that Bruce was one of cinema’s greatest film performers, and I’d assumed he could do no wrong. That there was no such thing as a mediocre Bruce Lee film. It turns out there is, and it’s called Way of the Dragon.

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Film Review: Trog

Trog, as a film, is probably one of the more lazy and derivative horror films I’ve seen. However, it accomplishes this not by knocking off one genre of horror films, but several all at once, in an effort to turn it into some kind of horror cinema Dagwood. It doesn’t succeed, but it does manage to be entertaining in the attempt, but not in the ways they intended.

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Anime Review: Ruri Rocks

Still from Ruri Rocks showing characters looking at a very large gemstone deposit.

I’ve talked before on blog posts and on podcasts that I do the unspeakable act of watching anime with my parents. Now, I don’t watch everything – we get together a couple times a week, and I carefully pick the shows we watch, but sometimes we watch things that are fanservice adjacent. My Dress Up Darling was one of them. As my dad majored in Geology, I figured Ruri Rocks would be a good fit as well. I was correct.

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Anime Review: Anne Shirley

Anne of Green Gables was a part of my life for a significant chunk of my childhood without having read the book. The Anne of Green Gables TV series and its sequel, Avonlea, was ever present when I was growing up. So, when we got a new anime adaptation of some of the early novels, titled Anne Shirley, I had a real “Why not?” moment, and added the series to my watchlist.

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Anime Review: Nukitashi

Something which has a history in Japan that we don’t get as much in the US is political satire through adult film. We get some stuff in the US occasionally, but in post war Japan, it almost became an art form – when the film censors looking at adult films are more worried about whether you are properly hiding penises and vagina than whether you’re slipping messages about Japan signing on to the US mutual defense treaty puts them on the road to increased militarization and puts the country in Soviet nuclear crosshairs (or criticisms of the lack of equity in post-war reconstruction Japan, or just straight up Marxist themes) then you have the makings of a way to deliver political messages with a shovelful of smut to help the medicine go down. (Did the Right also know about this tactic and use it themselves? Absolutely!) So, when I read the premise of Nukitashi, I recognized pretty quickly what it was here for – like Shimoneta it’s doing social satire, in this case aimed squarely at the political messaging of Shinzo Abe (though the game it was based on was released before his assassination). Unlike Shimoneta, though, there’s fuckin’!

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Anime Review: DanDaDan Season 2

Season 2 of DanDaDan starts on a messy cliffhanger that, I will admit, makes for a rough start, with Momo Ayase facing assault (with sexual overtones, but not actually sexual) in a Hot Springs, while Okarun and Jin are facing physical assault from a bunch of incredibly powerful old grannies in the home that Jin and his parents are renting. The question because, how well does it handle the payoff?

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