An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

The Cutest Battlebots – Angelic Layer Spoiler Review

I’ll be honest, fighting games have never exactly been my scene. I’ve played a fair bit of Smash Bros., and that’s about it. I can see the appeal, I’m just no good at them. On the other hand, at least as a spectator, I was big into Battlebots at one point, so I can appreciate the idea of sending custom rigs into a sort of competitive combat.

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Summary x Criticism – Spy x Family (Season 1) Spoiler Review

At times I have a… complex relationship with shows that get a lot of hype. On one hand, where there’s smoke there is often fire, and while I don’t find every heavily hyped show to be a winner, they do probably have something to them more often than shows that didn’t get much attention. On the other hand, the hype can also be hard for a show to live up to. Yeah, it’s good, but if it’s been built up as the best thing since sliced bread it’s going to be inevitably somewhat disappointing when it’s… just kind of nice. Back to the first side, though, not every show that gets a lot of attention gets unmetered praise above and beyond what it actually deserves.

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Adventures in Glass – Den-noh Coil Spoiler Review

Den-noh Coil (or Dennou Coil; it’s been inconsistently romanized over the years) is a science fiction (one might even call it cyberpunk) show that features a future deeply influenced by augmented reality technology. It’s a dive into a multi-layered blend of digital and physical realities where our young heroes attempt to work out for themselves what’s real to them and what’s worth saving. If that sounds familiar, don’t worry; the similar pitch to last week’s Fractale review is accurate, but the differences between the shows are more vast than the gulfs between stars, so I don’t expect to mention Fractale again this week.

Instead, Den-noh coil is a kind of show that I have to admit is right up my alley, with similar tone and content to Noein, KagePro, and too many 80’s movies and imitators thereof to count. I have a soft spot for works that take younger characters out on an adventure, because when they’re done well they really capture the feeling of a world that’s big and mysterious and full of wonder. I’ll try to not let this particular weakness get too much in the way of giving the show a properly fair review.

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Fractured Tale – Fractale Spoiler Review

Fractale is a science fiction show that takes place in a future Earth dominated by Augmented Reality technology. It’s a dive into a multi-layered blend of digital and physical realities where our young heroes attempt to work out for themselves what’s real to them and what’s worth saving.

At the risk of starting where I usually end, I’ll summarize some of my feelings. Fractale is a show that almost works. It stands on the cusp of greatness in a lot of ways, but it can never quite measure up to its awesome ambitions. It aspires to be grand and fantastical, combining visionary science fiction with the deeply mythic feeling of the hero’s journey through a strange world. It attempts to be both intensely human and operatic, both philosophical and visceral… but in its pursuit of being all things to all people, it’s a show that can come apart at the seams and doesn’t reach any of its goals, much less all of them.

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Majority Report – Psycho-Pass (Season 1) Spoiler Review

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before – in the not-to-distant future, the government has implemented some new system that has largely eliminated crime, but –

I’m just going to assume most readers would have stopped me by then. As near-future science fiction stories go, the “safe” dystopia is about as classical as they come. Usually, there’s some horrible dark underbelly that’s actually the focus of the story and is the reason for the veneer of peace that people in the setting usually accept. It can be just starting or it can be moderately established, but the general tenor is the same: humanity (at least the portion of it the story is concerned with) traded liberty for security. Generally, we’re supposed to believe that it’s somewhere between a bad deal and an overwhelmingly horrific one.

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Cyber Extinction – Texhnolyze Spoiler Review

Ah, Texhnolyze – a show brought to you by some of the creative forces involved in the legendary Serial Experiments Lain. It has a style somewhat between that of Lain and that of Ergo Proxy, with far less dialogue than either and a tone that’s a fraction as merry. When it comes to early 2000’s philosophically-minded cyberpunk head trips, Texhnolyze is certainly… um… well it’s certainly one of them, and possibly the one that goes the most all-in with its unique elements. That’s for better or for worse, mind you.

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Boogiepop Returns (Except it’s the first time. And not related to the novel of that name. Except where the novel of that name is being adapted.) – Boogiepop and Others (2019) Spoiler Review

Pardon the long title, but this franchise is… difficult at the best of times. Granted, we’re going to be largely looking at those best of times here and making sense of them, but it still has an edge of the inscrutable.

While Boogiepop Phantom created a new story to act as a sequel to the original novel, Boogiepop and Others (also called “Boogiepop Never Laughs” as a direct translation of the Japanese title, but “and Others” is the official western title) is a direct adaptation of the books. Specifically, books 1 (Boogiepop and Others/Boogiepop Never Laughs), books 2&3 (Boogiepop Returns: VS Imaginator parts 1 & 2), book 6 (Boogiepop at Dawn) and book 5 (Boogiepop Overdrive: The King of Distortion). Yeah, in the straightforward version they skip 4 and swap the positions of 5 and 6. I’d say to brace yourselves, but after Phantom last week, a simple arc structure that doesn’t seem out of order to anime viewers is a joy.

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A Strange and Wild World of Darkness – Boogiepop Phantom Spoiler Review

Boogiepop Phantom is a hard one. It starts out with elements of an anthology show, episodes dedicated to strange and seemingly supernatural occurrences that happen to encounter each other at tangent points, but ultimately the show does tie together into a single and larger plot. The show basically never explains anything, but at the same time it gives you the palpable sense that the truth is out there and an explanation exists within reach. It’s named after a particular oft-referenced supernatural entity… which barely appears in the show.

All in all it’s a bizarre sepia-toned dive into a threatening world of deep shadows, down-to-earth character designs, and supernatural occurrences that defy quick and easy labels like “vampires” or “ghosts” yet clearly inhabit a conceptual space that belongs to icons of horror… and we’re going to take a closer look in order to understand its appeal as well as its technical plot.

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All My Friends Are Dead – Re-kan! Spoiler Review

Re-kan! (The title is excited) is a low-key comedy about a girl who is a bit unusual getting to fit in and make friends in her new class. To bring something fresh to this time-worn idea, Re-kan! doesn’t just play the matter straight. Instead of some usual trait, the main character in this one, Hibiki Amami, has an unusually strong sixth sense, allowing her to see and interact with ghosts as well as a more ordinary student would living humans. Thus, quite a few of the eccentric folks who are all set to help Hibiki out in her high school career are, in fact, spectral in nature.

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