An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

Deus est Machina – Kamisama Dolls Spoiler Review

“Hidden Gems” are an interesting topic. On one side, it’s always exciting to find – or think you’ve found – something really great and entertaining that not a lot of people have noticed. On the other hand, the breadth of media consumers are often pretty good at picking up on works that are top notch in all regards, meaning that if there really was little to no buzz, rather than the “finder” just happening to miss the circles that got excited, the material is usually a diamond in the rough at best. Sure, it’s possible that meta problems like a lack of marketing or troubled release could hide something really grand, but more often there’s this impetus to call “hidden gem!” on something that’s either not as hidden as you think it is or only a gem compared to having zero expectations.

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Foxy Lady – Kanokon Spoiler Review

Well, here’s a little show you probably won’t find unless you’re looking for it. Kanokon is a very ecchi romance featuring, at its core, first-year high school student (who looks like he’s ten. Awkward.) Kota, who is pursued by his beautiful upperclasswoman Chizuru… who is actually a kitsune. The perils of interspecies dating and the hesitance of a lead drawn and written younger than he canonically is are made all the more complicated by the arrival of other more or less horny Yokai into the situation.

Maybe you got here looking for the “Also ran” to Rosario + Vampire or Actually, I Am. Maybe you were seeking Omamori Himari without that bothersome Urban Fantasy Action plot. Me? I’m a reviewer, I have to go dredging through lesser known titles of ill repute now and again. Well, let’s not waste any more time and dig into this one.

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Radioactive Rescue – Coppelion Spoiler Review

Coppelion is the story of a trio of genetically engineered schoolgirls performing search and rescue in the post-apocalyptic wreckage of Tokyo.  That should already be at least a little intriguing, but Haruhi knows there are countless ways it could go and only a finite number of those are good.

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Here we go time looping again… and again… and again – Summertime Render Spoiler Review

If you’re interested in Summertime Render and haven’t read or watched it yet, you should probably go before the cut. I know you probably won’t, because you’re here on a spoiler review site to read a spoiler review, but consider this a starting endorsement of the material: I think it’s worthwhile to experience. I think it will still be worthwhile to experience if you do go ahead and spoil yourself here, but I know some people are of different opinions when it comes to how much damage this sort of thing does or doesn’t do to their enjoyment.

For the uninitiated, who are wondering what the hell I’m even talking about, the basic pitch is this: a boy, Shinpei, returns to the island where he grew up to attend the funeral of his adoptive sister/big-time crush, Ushio. As tragic as that may be, once back home Shinpei discovers a much darker plot, and ends up going through several time loop iterations while attempting to solve the crisis, as told in either twenty-five episodes of anime or six big thick volumes of manga.

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How we got to more card games – Z/X Ignition Spoiler Review

Here I go with the Card Game anime again. Don’t worry, though: unlike last week’s entry, this isn’t one that’s about playing card games, but rather an entry that takes the same route as Luck & Logic and tries to present what I guess is the story behind the card game.

To that… I know basically nothing about Z/X. I know it’s a game, and that its branded merch like sleeves and deck boxes have often been on clearance, but I don’t know the first thing about how it plays or what its cards are like. Instead, I’m going into this anime basically sight unseen.

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Diagnosis: Terminal Edginess – Redo of Healer Spoiler Review

WARNING – This is an angry review of a naughty show. Some things cannot be said without foul language.

The revenge plot is one of the oldest and most famed stories in fiction. The Count of Monte Cristo, written in 1844, is considered a great work of western literature, and is one of the most pure examples of the revenge fantasy, which has had perhaps countless imitators over the years. Of course, one could cite the Euripides play Medea, first performed in 431BCE, as being the true antecedent of the genre, depicting as it does how the former princess of Colchis took her revenge on the unfaithful husband who abandoned her, with the gods on her side even as she goes through many a terrible movement in ruining Jason.

But despite that legendary pedigree, the revenge story is also one of the easiest sorts of tales to get wrong. It is easy, perilously easy, for revenge stories to degenerate utterly into morasses of edge and skewed priorities that, rather than entertaining, leave a body baffled and often a bit upset.

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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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