Forum: Anime, Manga and Video Game Reviews

The first thing you have to know about The Law of Ueki is that there are dozens of plot points. I can’t list them all, but to summarize: The Celestrials are giving powers to junior high students so they can battle, with Ueki having the power to turn trash into trees, although this does make it...

The first rule of time travel is don’t change anything. Anyone who has ever watched Star Trek, Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, or any one of a number of sci-fi shows will tell you that. Young Makoto had to learn that lesson the hard way in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. It looks like Makoto’s life is...

As far as I am concerned, Drifting Dragons gets off on the wrong foot. This anime series is about an airship manned by dragon hunters, known as Drakers. They hunt and kill dragons for food an oil, but in the most inhuman way. Hearing the huge beasts cry out in agony is a bit much, especially...

If Franz Kafka wrote an anime, would he have more than one bug? OK, let’s skip the highbrow literary references and go straight to the world of Cagaster of an Insect Cage. In the future, a disease with ravish the world by turning people into giant insects who devour people who have not turned...

Legoshi (named after Bela Lugosi?) is a typical 17-year-old. Tall and lanky, but awkward physically and socially, Legoshi is trying to figure out who he is and what his place in the world will be. And he has to fight his primeval urge to kill and devour. After all Legoshi is a wolf. I mean...

From what I have gathered, Iria: Zeiram is a prequel to an earlier live action series. Iria is a deputy bounty hunter working for her older brother. They are brought along on a hostage rescue, only to face an unkillable monster named Zeiram. Iria is the only survivor of the battle -- maybe. ...

Exactly what is anime? Is it simply any animation from Japan, or is it a distinctive style regardless of where the series or movie were made? Seis Manos is an American production with the art and animation done in South Korea, judging by the names in the credits. The art style is not what one...

Finally we get what we all have been waiting for – an anime series which opens with the sound of bagpipes. That is the series Master Keaton. Taichi Keaton-Hiraga, the son of a British mother and Japanese father, is a former SAS agent, ex-college professor and lecturer, and a trained...

Do you really know your cat? A Whisker Away will make you wonder. Miyu aka Muge is a young teen with problems. Still not recovered from her mother walking out on the family, she must now deal with her father’s fiance who has just moved in. To make matters worse, Kento, the boy she has a...

A short time back, I did a write up on the movie No Game, No Life: Zero, a prequel to the series No Game, No Life. You would think this would clue me in as to the nature of the original series. Nope. Based on the movie, I expected something a bit dark. Instead I find a light hearted action...

Okko’s Inn opens with a happy moment. Okko and her parents are at a festival, and clearly they are one happy family. But that does not last long. On their way home, they are involved in a horrific traffic accident which kills Okko’s parents. Okko somehow escapes alive. Okko’s Inn is a...

Growing up can be such a pain for a four-year-old boy, especially when you are no longer the only child. This is the premise of Mirai, directed by Mamoru Hosoda, who also gave us Summer Wars and The Boy and the Beast. Kun is having a hard time adjusting to being a big brother to baby Mirai,...

OK, then. Where did we leave off? In season one of Hi Score Girl, Yaguchi Haruo, a grade school student, cares for nothing but video games. One day he sees his rich classmate Akira Ono in an arcade pretty much cleaning up all challenges. To Yaguchi, she’s a rival. But Akira is a girl with a...

It’s not from Studio Ghibli, though it certainly looks like a Ghibli film. Actually, Modest Heroes, Vol. 1 is from Studio Ponco, formed by various former Ghibli artists and animators. They aren’t shy about utilizing the Ghibli look. But then again, why should they be? It’s a good look. ...

Can they still call this series 7 Seeds if some of the teams lose members, or gain members, or if teams combine? Let’s not think too much about it. Rather let’s talk about season two. Season two of 7 Seeds deals with fewer characters, which make things easier to follow. Would be rapist and...

The seasons keep getting longer, but that’s OK. There are more plots, stories, and complexities in season three of Castlevania than the earlier seasons. Season one was only four episodes. Season two had eight, and now with season three we have ten. So when season three starts, we see Alucard,...

And now for some bloodletting action and a bit of comedy, with a dash of darkness. It’s called Pumpkin Scissors. We start off in the Empire, which has never fully recovered from a destructive war. Or at least the peasantry has never recovered. There is joblessness, homelessness, and hunger...

Once upon a time, there was this schoolboy named Kai. That’s about as good a way to start off as anything. Because essentially Lu Over the Wall is a fairy tale. In a small fishing village struggling to survive, Kai is going through life without direction, except for a slight interest in music....

As you can see from my earlier posting, I gave K-On my recommendation, despite it being a chick anime. No, really. It was pretty entertaining – although the final season got to be a teeny bit redundant. Would it hold up for a follow-up movie? Yes, it does. K-On: The Movie picks up one of the...

So here we have yet another high school anime with all the clichés. There are the trips to the beach, the school festival, a wacky teacher, and no parents. It certainly has been done before. But K-On still does it so well. Ritsu, Mio, and Tsumugi hope to reincarnate the Light Music Club, only...

Maid-Sama tells of the comic misadventures of Misaki, the tough president of her high school’s student body. The school was formerly all male, and now is 80% male, making Misaki the first female to hold that office. She is tough on the boys trying to make them act more mature while among the...

Go forward a few pages, and you will find a review of the anime series Violet Evergarden. It’s the bitter-sweet story of an orphan trained to be a killing machine in a war. But when the war was over, alone in the world with no purpose, Violet gets a job as an Auto-Memory Doll, that is someone who...

So as a guy who loves fighting games I figured that I would take about one of my favorites in the genera. Dead or Alive was release in 1996 by Tecmo and became a huge success. This was mainly due to graphical upgrades done at the time as well as the feature of attractive female fighters. Over time,...

Veteran Studio Ghibli animator Yoshiyuki Homose set out on his own with this directorial debut. Ninokuni is a fantasy adventure about two friends trying to save the life of the girl they both love. High school kids Haru and Kotona are a couple, with Haru’s best friend, the wheelchair bound Yuu,...

I was wondering what to expect from a movie titled Girls und Panzer der Film. It is based on an anime series I have never seen. A panzer is a German tank used in World War II, right? So is this about a group of young, female Nazis? Naw, couldn’t be. Although in the interest of bad taste, one...

So in the future, our consciousness will become digitalized and can be repeatedly downloaded into new bodies called “Stacks.” Got that? Altered Carbon: Restacked is available on Netflix Streaming. It is based on a live action series, also on Netflix Streaming. I haven’t heard of the series...

I am not sure if Domain of Murder is meant to be a stand-alone work, or if it is part of a series. Whatever. It’s still a pretty good story. When a woman thinks a wanted murderer is her missing husband, private detective Goro Nanase takes the case. Eventually teaming up with a cop, who is an...

Is it Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? We may never know the answer. We certainly don’t get the answer in season one. So here’s the premise. The gods have come down to Earth, and after forming groups called Familias, they empower human Adventurers with the skills and abilities to go down...

All of a sudden, a new continent appears on Earth. Named Magmel, it is a land of riches and deadly monsters. Fortune seekers, adventurers, scientists, and others are drawn to this strange new world, but mostly badly prepared for what awaits them. This leads to the development of a new profession...

I missed this one when it was in the theaters a few years back. Now I finally get to see what I missed. The Boy and The Beast is an adventure story, an action anime, a coming of age story, a story of the bonds of family and friends, and a few other things thrown in. Ren is a nine-year-old...