An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

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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Semicolon Scramble – Occultic;Nine Spoiler Review

“There is no such thing as the Occult” says the tagline on the show explicitly about investigation of occult (or seemingly occult) phenomena. If that doesn’t let you know you’re in for at least a strange time, I don’t know what would.

In the honorable line of the Science Adventure series (Semicolon series as some prefer, owing their particular stylized titles), Occultic;Nine strikes me as… unique. That is, I will admit, putting it somewhat gently. Occultic;Nine doesn’t quite fit either together or into the anime format the way that even the weaker among its fellows fit. Does that mean it’s the weakest of the series? Not necessarily.

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Flubbed Fanservice High – Rosario + Vampire Spoiler Review (Season 1 & 2)

Rosario + Vampire is a show with a fun pitch: an ordinary boy ends up accepted to a boarding school for all manner of monstrous supernatural entities. With no easy way home, he has to do his best to blend in, at least until he can make his way back to the human world. To his advantage, the monsters are expected to stay in human guises as part of their training to live in a world normally dominated by humans. Against his interest, if he’s found out he’s both powerless and subject to a death sentence.

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No, Senpai, This is Our Review – Strike the Blood Spoiler Review

There are some shows that I find somewhat difficult to talk about, and oddly enough it tends to be the ones that I would generally regard as more standard that are difficult to review. This is because there are only so many times you can trot out the same formula and show how it is applied before it gets repetitive. Strike the Blood is all about that.

It’s not as though this is a carbon copy of another show. It does have its own characters (stock though many of them may be) and its own plots (predictable though they may be) and its own world (thinly sketched though it may be). But it sticks very close to the formula for arc-driven Urban Fantasy with Harem elements. It’s the same formula that underlines shows like A Certain Magical Index or to a lesser extent Trinity Seven, but Strike the Blood wears it more openly. I’ll try to give it a fair shake anyway, but there’s only so far generosity can be allowed.

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Not Making Sense Is Its Thing – Kill la Kill Spoiler Review

Kill la Kill is one of those shows where I think I would be hard pressed to find someone interested enough in Anime to seek and read reviews of shows who had not at least heard of Kill la Kill. This was the first work that really got Studio Trigger (who I have talked about several times before) on the map, and helped to set the expectation for what their shows would be like. It’s very important and more than a little crazy, so I’ll try to relate the summary as clearly as I can.

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A Double Major in Pest Control and Lameness – Sky Wizards Academy Spoiler Review

Sky Wizards Academy is yet another of the seemingly endless ream of Battle School shows – anime series where somebody is at a school for wielders of combat-applicable super powers, learning to kick ass. I’ve reviewed many of these shows before, will no doubt review many more in the future, and often find their formula to be something of a guilty pleasure.

That said, for something to be a guilty pleasure you must actually be able to derive pleasure from it. For a show like Sky Wizards Academy, this can be a tall order.

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