MADOX-01 is a short, straightforward, wish-fulfillment mecha anime that lasts just long enough to not overstay its welcome.
Read moreMetal Skin Panic: MADOX-01 Anime Review
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! (HameFura) Anime Review
This past season of anime started with me having about 6-7 different series I was planning to watch… and then COVID-19 hit and with postponements, that number dropped down to two. One of those was Fruits Basket Season 2, which is still ongoing, but the other was a new Isekai series based on a Light Novel, and one with a premise that really caught my interest – My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! (or HameFura for short).
Read moreThe Big O: Anime Review
I have some significant gaps in the classics of Toonami. I watched most (though not quite all) of Gundam Wing when it first aired. Same with Outlaw Star, and a fair amount of Dragon Ball Z (at least through the end of the Namek arc). However, I never really watched much of Yu-Yu Hakusho, and I never got around to watching any of The Big O. Maybe it was the title of the show – it certainly wasn’t the aesthetic – the retro-futuristic style grabbed my interest. However, it wasn’t until recently that I finally got the opportunity to watch The Big O in its entirety – and it’s an interesting show to unpack.
Read moreMy Hero Academia Season 4: Anime Review
The gravity of pro hero work has always been kind of been in the background throughout the past few seasons of My Hero Academia. However, Season 4 of the show puts the situation the members of Class 1-A are going to be getting into once they graduate into much sharper relief.
Read moreSpace Battleship Yamato 2199: Anime Review
After completing Super Robot Wars V a year or so ago, I decided I wanted to watch some of the anime series from that show, particularly before moving on to X (along with wanting to watch a couple of the shows from X as well to set up the story for comparison). That, combined with the fact that I’d been watching various anime series on weekends with my parents, and that my mother had watched the original first season of Space Battleship Yamato while growing up in Hawaii, lead me to bump the reboot of that series up on my list.
Read moreScorching Ping-Pong Girls: Anime Review
This time I’ve got a review of an anime series from a few years ago that kind of slipped under the radar – probably for a good reason.
Read moreNegadon The Monster From Mars: Anime Review
This week I’m reviewing a short anime film made as a tribute to Kaiju movies from the ’60 and ’70s.
Read moreNegadon: The Monster From Mars – Film Review
There’s something to be said about a short film that gets in, does what it sets out to do, and gets out. Negadon: The Monster From Mars does exactly that.
Read moreRoyal Space Force – Wings of Honneamise: Anime Review
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken: Anime Video Review
It’s been a while since I did a review of a show that just finished airing, so it’s time to give my thoughts on Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken.
Read moreSorcerous Stabber Orphen (2019): Anime Review
By all rights, Sorcerous Stabber Orphen, at least this year’s show, should not exist. It’s an adaptation of a heroic fantasy light novel that not only isn’t an isekai, but is celebrating it’s 25th anniversary. That said, I’m glad it does.
Read moreIn/Spectre: Anime Review
In/Spectre is an urban fantasy mystery anime with something of a novel concept. It’s not based around finding justice or solving the crime, but instead on finding a solution that hurts the least number of people. It’s a take that manages to be both pragmatic while also being upbeat.
Read more07-Ghost: Anime Review
07-Ghost is a josei battle anime that I dropped years ago, but decided to revisit for a challenge for AniList. It is, for a variety of reasons, not great. As a disclaimer, I am unfamiliar with the manga that it’s based on, which has been licensed for the US release.
Read moreBlade of the Immortal (2019): Anime Review
Blade of the Immortal has had a mixed adaptation history. The last anime adaptation came out while the manga was still ongoing. This past year, we finally got a new anime adaptation thanks to Amazon – who produced and distributed it.
Read moreAzur Lane: Anime Review
Azur Lane is, basically, Ship Girl Tohou. World War II Warships from various navies are personified as cute girls, and they generally hang out at the bases of their respective factions and do cute things until the plot decides that they have to do combat in battles along the lines of shoot-em-up video games. It’s not quite at a danmaku level – but only because the game series is designed to be played on a cell phone, and you don’t have that level of control with a touchscreen.
Read moreID: Invaded – Anime Review
If I was going to describe ID: Invaded to someone in an elevator, it would be Inception crossed with Criminal Minds. It’s probably the closest I’ve come to a more standard procedural in a genre anime for quite some time, in a very imaginative way.
Read moreFate/Grand Order – Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia – Anime Review
Considering that Fate/Grand Order is widely considered to be one of the most successful mobile games of all time, one would think that more of the game’s chapters had been previously adapted to the screen. You would be wrong – previously only the game’s prologue has received an adaptation. At long last, though, one of the game’s final chapters (at least before the current sequence), the Babylonia chapter, has finally been adapted to the screen.
Read moreKeep Your Hands Off Eizouken: Anime Review
Science Fell In Love, So I Tried To Prove It: Anime Review
Each anime season, however heavy everything else gets, in terms of what I’m watching, I do try to go with at least one romantic comedy anime. For the Winter 2020 season, the rom-com I went with was Science Fell In Love, so I Tried to Prove It.
Read moreMy Hero Academia: Heroes Rising – Anime Review
The latest My Hero Academia movie hit theaters here in the US, and I have my spoiler-free thoughts on the movie in the wake of its release and in advance of any physical release.
Read moreOdin: Starlight Mutiny – Anime Review
Anime, often, cribs from works of western science fiction – particularly films. Star Wars, Star Trek, the Starship Troopers novel, and Lensmen have all been borrowed from or in some cases adapted outright. However, there are some instances where the level of cribbing doesn’t quite pan out, and Odin: Starlight Mutiny is one of those.
Read moreSpecial 7: Anime Review
Special 7 is the last of the big anime series I’d watched in the Fall 2019 season that finished that season – Azur Lane was delayed, Blade of the Immortal, Fate/Grand Order, and My Hero Academia were two-cour series, and I dropped Babylon. It’s an interesting anime series that takes the concept of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and applies it in an urban fantasy context, but doesn’t quite have as much to say.
Read moreWe Never Learn Season 2: Anime Review
The first season of We Never Learn ended with an announcement for a second season. With the manga being based around college preparation and studying for that, I did definitely have a sense that whether or not the manga was actually done at this point, whatever the second season ended on was going to have some degree of finality – with how the anime was paced, I couldn’t really see a way to wrap here without getting into graduation. Without too many spoilers before the cut, it does get to graduation, and in hindsight, I think the ending kind of works well.
Read moreVinland Saga: Anime Review
2019 wrapped up with an anime series that put itself on my list of anime to recommend to non-anime fans. That anime was Vinland Saga – and even better, it was on Amazon Prime, a streaming service that generally a lot of non-anime fans subscribe to.
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