Forum: Anime, Manga and Video Game Reviews

Here is an anime which takes place inside a video game. WHAT? AGAIN? Yup, again. But The Rising of the Shield Hero also offers a bit of self-realization on the part of the main character and others. Naofumi is a loner who gets himself downloaded into a video game, and he isn’t even a player. ...

Rutger is a young boy who exists only in the mind of a young girl named Amanda. This is the beginning of The Imaginary, a youthful fantasy with some really dark moments. Through her imagination, Amanda takes Rutger on a series of adventures. But all is not fun and games. The film’s villain,...

In season 1 of Cells at Work, we watched the perky Red Blood Cell cheerfully fulfill her duties of bringing oxygen and nutrients to various parts of the body. Of course there are dangers lurking everywhere in the form of various germs and viruses. Fortunately, White Blood Cell was always there to...

High school anime are so common that they have become cliché. Well here is a high school anime with a different angle – from a teacher’s point of view. But GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka does have some other hurdles to overcome. The main character is an ex-gang leader who now wants to become a...

A while back, I watched and wrote about a series titled Mononoke. It was the tale of a nameless medicine seller who traveled through the land and time to hunt and destroy demons called mononokes. I had forgotten about that series when I began watching Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain....

I’m on the fence for this one. It has the elements of a good “dumb, but fun” anime, but it also has a weak storyline. There are plenty of zany characters, but they don’t always mix well with the darker elements of the series. For example, the season finale has a cliffhanger where the main female...

At first, I did a double take. The first season of World Trigger has 73 episodes? Yes, it’s true! They happen to be spread across a year and a half. So why not break it up into two or three seasons? Actually, there is a season 2 and a season 3, both being considerably shorter. Anyway, I...

How about a nice little furry anime? One with a bunch of animals living in an alternate Earth behaving and acting like humans, while having lots of fun. Well, Beastars is not that anime. You get animals acting like humans, but the fun is limited. Beastars is actually somewhat dark, and...

When I last wrote about The Quintessential Quintuplets, I noted that the season 2 finale left a bit of a gap in the storyline. The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie fills that hole. It’s time for the school festival, and Futaro and the girls are at the end of their high school careers. The...

At first glance, Sakura appears to be a spoiled child. Well, actually she is a spoiled child. But she is also the Goddess of the Harvest, even if she does sleep and drink all day ignoring her duties. So now we begin the adventure anime Sakura: Of Rice and Ruin. It starts off with Sakura...

Season 2 of The Quintessential Quintuplets begins were season 1 left off. The school trip is at an end, and Futaro ends up in the hospital after his cold turns into the flu. When the Nakano quints come to visit, we know that everything has changed. The girls now accept Futaro as at least part of...

What goes around comes around. That is very much the theme of Uzumaki. But what really attracted me to this anime was the unusual artwork. It is all done in black and white, with shades of gray. There are also some well animated parts. Basically, Uzumaki looks different using a unique style...

It’s such a beautiful island. There are lush forests and lovely, multi-colored flowers. If it wasn’t for all those monsters and killer insects it would be a great vacation spot. But the name, Hell’s Paradise, would probably scare off most visitors. The series starts off with Gabimaru the...

I had such high hopes. I even watch through episode 10 – that’s 10 of 24. The series started with a good premise, a dark prospect, and some interesting characters. But along the way, Jujutsu Kaisen just got lost. High school student Yuji ingests the mummified finger of the deadly cursed...

The Quintessential Quintuplets starts off with our hero Futaro Uesugi marrying the girl he loves. The rest of the series is a flashback showing Futaro’s misadventures leading up to his wedded bliss. So who is Futaro? He is a high school student. More than that, he is the best in his school...

When we last left Gawain, he and his teammates from the Japanese Camelot Academy arrived in England to compete against the British and American academies for the Camelot Cup. And Gawain realizes that he may be a bit over his head. Now for season 2 of Rising Impact. Gawain has a lot to prove. ...

So here comes season 2 of Overlord, and so everything falls apart. AInz, for some reason, starts a war with a group of reptilian creatures, and then get involved in a battle with an organization of drug dealers called Eight Fingers. Eventually all is explained so it makes sense, but by that time...

At the end of the first season of TP Bon, Bon became a full-fledged agent of Time Patrol. Now he has his first mission and it strikes close to home. There is a serial killer on the loose in Bon’s town, and he must save the life of the latest victim. The victim turns out to be a schoolmate of...

How about another sports anime? Rising Impact follows the basic premise of a young athlete overcoming obstacles to achieve success. But this time the young athlete is very young – like in the 3rd grade. Gawain lives in a remote mountain village where he and his friends compete on who can hit...

Shades of Sword Art On-Line! Another gamer gets caught in the virtual world. But Overlord does the sub-genre no harm. Momonge, aka Ainz Ooal Gown, looks frightening enough. He’s a living skeleton! Well, actually he is the on-line alter ego of a video game creator. All other players have...

Boy meets girl. Girl is an oni. Boy helps girl search for her mother. They meet people. Snow gods try to eat them. That pretty much sums up My Oni Girl. I really expected a bit more. The film is directed by Tomotaka Shiboyama, who also directed the series Silver Spoon, and the movie A...

The “T P” in T P Bon stands for Time Patrol, not toilet paper. Anyway, here is an anime I am not too sure for who it is made for. The character design is not the typical manga style, but more of a newspaper comic strip character type of design. The stories are pretty simple. Each episode is a...

The first episode of KonoSuba begins with the hero being killed, so you know this is a comedy. And you can assume that for Kasuma, the worst is yet to come. KonoSuba is set in a fantasy world of adventure – or at least that is what it is supposed to be. When offered the change to be...

If you’re like me, you probably grew up with Grimms’ Fairy Tales, or at least the Disneyfied versions. I never read the originals, which I understand were actually written for adults. Well, for a new twist on your favorite childhood stories, comes The Grimm Variations. And yes, this is not for...

Delicious in Dungeon is an action comedy. It starts with the hero’s sister getting eaten alive by a monster. Did I mention this is a comedy? So Laios’ sister gets eaten, and he has to save her before she gets totally digested. Laios is accompanied the remaining members of his monster-hunting...

It’s been a while since I posted a review, but it does take a while for me to get through a 76 episode anime. I’ve wanted to re-watch Monster for quite a while, and now I have done so. Monster won’t win any prizes for artwork or animation, but the story is a classic. Plus the details of the...

Just out of college, Akira scores getting his dream job at a major Tokyo corporation. Three years later, Akira is totally burned out from overwork, and hates nothing more than getting up in the morning to go to work. Thus begins Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead. So things are not going that...

Shakugan No Shana Review Type: TV series - 72 episodes (88 counting specials). Genre: Fantasy, action, romance. Plot Synopsis: Yuji's life is turned upside down when he is dragged into an ancient war between the flame hazes and the crimson lords. It is revealed that the real Yuji has...

How much patience do you have? You may need it to get through Maboroshi. Things do get confusing fast, but all is explained by the end of the film. You just have to wait as the details become clear one at a time. So there is an explosion at the local steel factory. Then cracks begin in the...

Japanese style anime has certainly influenced the art of animation the world over. My Daemon is an example. Though created by Japanese anime writer Hirotaka Adachi, this series was actually produced by Thailand’s Igloo Studios. And they did a good job. A nuclear accident leaves behind...