An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

Your Princess Is In Another Video Game – Circlet Princess Spoiler Review

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before – there’s this fancy fictional sport that seems to be played primarily or solely by girls…

And you’ve stopped me. And probably rolled your eyes at me for using that tired intro that I think I’ve used at least annually on this blog. But if the intro is predictable, overused, and passionless, then perhaps it’s fit for the material on offer this week.

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The Butterfly in the Skull – Beautiful Bones -Sakurako’s Investigation- Spoiler Review

Oh boy here I go watching detective fiction again.

There’s something that I’ve said or at least alluded to in previous reviews that I feel like I need to make clear for new viewers each time I take on a series that treads within the genre: this stuff is hard. I don’t mean on the viewer, I mean for the writer. Done well, mysteries are some of the most engaging media to approach, but they’re also incredibly challenging, whether you try to follow the famous rules of fair play or not.

Beautiful Bones is not, by in large, a “fair play” mystery, but it has a lot in common with the genre, featuring a brilliant detective (whether or not the character actually holds that job title), a more common but more down to earth assistant, and an improbable lot of dead people turning up to be investigated.

The twist this time is that we’re taking from CSI as well as Holmes, and when you know enough about the human body (or at least skeletons), dead men do tell tales.

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From the Apocalypse with Love – Zaion: I Wish You Were Here Spoiler Review

Zaion (or I: Wish You Were Here. Easy to see why it was localized with a proper noun added in there.) is a 2001 mini-series put out by then-relative-newcomer Gonzo, a studio with something of a checkered record, particularly when it comes to things I’ve reviewed. Their arguably most famous outing, Hellsing, debuted a week after this had its first outing.

Of course, they have pretty much nothing in common, so what’s the pitch for Zaion? The series takes place in a world where humanity is getting owned by an alien virus, we have a sci-fi mystery centered around a nanotech cyborg soldier who fights the problem, and a mysterious esper girl who might be the key to actually solving it.

Promising stuff. Let’s dig in before we think about that too deeply.

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It’s International Politics Time! – Gasaraki Spoiler Review

Sit back, relax, and prepare your senses, because we are cracking into some vintage anime!

Vintage mecha shows, in particular, kind of hit differently a lot of the time. I have some theories as to why that is, but the most obvious is that mechs were some of the first things to be commonly animated with CG technology. Classically hand drawn mechas tend to have more weight to their movements than the smooth flow afforded by CG, which especially when you’re dealing with a real robot affair rather than a magical super robot one, can actually accentuate the experience.

This brings us to Gasaraki, a mecha show with real robots (in some senses), strange mysticism, and an extremely dense cloak-and-dagger political plot. Let’s watch it!

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Super Space Squid Battles – Ancient Girls Frame Spoiler Review

This show is a weird one. Ancient Girls Frame is absolutely a mecha show, but it’s only really arguably an anime: it was produced by a Chinese studio. But it gets listed on MAL and other anime sources, and it’s not like I haven’t reviewed more dubious entries on my blog, so while I don’t intend to make a habit of it, I’m going to let this one go.

So, what is Ancient Girls Frame about? Well, to avoid drowning you in technical terms the way the ad copy does, it’s the sort of story where humanity is under siege from unreasonable space monsters, and fends them off with super mechas we found under various rocks. In this setting, we follow a girl who wants to become a pilot of some of that ancient lostech in part to search for her sister, a former pilot, who went missing in action.

Sounds fair enough, but a concept only gets you so far.

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Red Strings of Fate – Tying the Knot with an Amagami Sister Spoiler Review

So the theme of this February seems to be questionable wedding bells, so here we have another variant. In it, atheistic aspiring doctor Uryuu Kamihate needs a place to live, due to being an orphan who wants in to a big time university. He finds accommodation at the Amagami household, but it comes with strings attached: cohabiting with the current youngest generation, a trio of shrine maidens, and a task to ultimately romance and marry one of them to ensure the shrine carries on for another generation. Given the religious differences at the very minimum, this is something of a tall order.

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I’m Reviewing a Show I Hate on My Blog – I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class Spoiler Review

Remember Nisekoi? Now there was a show that I ultimately had a lot of complaints with and deeply disliked… but it wasn’t the fault of the title-founding premise? No, that, like many elements of said former show, seemed extremely promising, and it took a lot of effort for Nisekoi to squander all the good will it did generate and kick itself out of the passing grades.

So, when the pitch for this show could be rendered as “It’s just like Nisekoi, but…”, I’m all ears. Can forcing a pair of natural enemies to make nice (and possibly make out) win this time, or is this going to be strike two? Well the title is suggestive of the answer, so let’s break it down.

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