An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Month: June 2023

And the Meta Award goes to… – Keep Your Hands off Eizouken! Spoiler Review

Keep Your Hands off Eizouken! (the title is excited) is an odd duck of an anime about, oddly enough, the one thing that any anime studio should know pretty well: the process of creating anime! The basic pitch is that a trio of high-school students with a passion for the art of animation form a film club and use it to produce anime and… that’s about it.

Yeah, this is very much a slice of life show. It is held together by three broad story arcs, around the first three productions by the club, but the “story” isn’t so much the point as it is an exploration of the characters and a window into both the fluffy and technical sides of the creative process. Because of that, I’ll be doing this review a little backwards from how I normally do it, starting with commentary on the show and its structure while saving plot summary largely for the end.

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It’s a Video Game Adaptation and That Explains Everything – God Eater Spoiler Review

When I first watched God Eater, I didn’t know the source. Being left with some constructive questions, I discovered the truth, that it was based on a Video Game, and that honestly changed a good deal of my opinion. So, perhaps it’s best not to look at this as an anime so much as a twelve-episode trailer.

God Eater takes place in a world where humanity has been pushed to the brink of extinction by the arrival of beings known as Aragami. The Aragami are beasts that simply spawn into existence, have no biological needs that would seem to limit them, are pretty much invincible to conventional weapons, and pretty much seem to exist to desolate the world and mess up humans. You know, the full package.

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Imuto Mystery Theater – Nakaimo: My Little Sister Is Among Them! Spoiler Review

So, here’s the pitch for this anime: Shogo Mikadono is the heir to a powerful corporation. With his father’s passing, though, one hurdle stands between him and his inheritance: his father’s wish to secure the line by having Shogo find a bride before he’s done with high school. Thus, Shogo is sent off to a new school with the secret mission of acquiring a partner in his time there. However, he’s contacted by a girl claiming to be his sister (though he sees himself as an only child) who comes off as… potentially dangerous and stalker-ish, as well as infatuated.

It’s a pitch that could go a lot of ways. My Little Sister Is Among Them! (or Nakaimo for short) just had to pick one and attempt to execute that vision.

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