Posted on by Alexander Case

The 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.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Space 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.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

In/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.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Azur 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.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Fate/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.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Odin: 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.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Special 7: Anime Review

The members of Special 7

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.

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