An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

DESTINY! – Mawaru Penguindrum Spoiler Review

IMAGINE!

Imagine a setting where nothing makes sense. Something that blends the irreverent bombast of an early Trigger production like Kill la Kill with the philosophizing fakery of an “important talks” heavy show like RahXephon or Aquarion and the extreme visual coding and glaring technique of a Shaft production like Bakemonogatari. And there are penguins.

You don’t have to imagine it. Mawaru Penguindrum exists, in all its stunningly pretentious glory. Well, for a definition of glory, at least.

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Let’s Ghost! – Dark Gathering Spoiler Review

Let’s finish the spooky season strong with some ghosts and ghouls ripped from the rumor mills and brought to horrible, horrible life upon the screen. Let’s talk about Dark Gathering.

At its heart, Dark Gathering is a show about a little girl, Yayoi, who is determined to make a ghost buster of herself in order to hunt down the spook that took her mother’s soul. Her methodology is pretty unique, though, as she captures lesser ghosts, stuffs them in mystic substitute dolls so that anything spooky that tries to hurt her will damage the dolls instead, and ultimately trains them up to fight for her, making Yayoi basically the ultimate Ghost-type Pokemon Master.

However, Yayoi is not the main character.

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Respect for the Classics – Ayakashi: Japanese Classic Horror Spoiler Review

Ayakashi is an anthology of, as the title would suggest, classic Japanese horror tales. So strap yourselves in and get ready for a slice of period spookiness.

Specifically, across its 11 episode run, Ayakashi covers three stories: “Tenshu Monogatari”, “Yotsuya Kaidan”, and “Bakeneko”. The last of these is notable because it gives Ayakashi its dubious claim to fame: technically being the predecessor to the show Mononoke, which is often regarded as one of the all-time greats, but is beyond the scope of this review.

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7 Minute Monsters – Kagewani (& Shou) Spoiler Review

Kagewani is a story about monsters. It wants to be something new and refreshing: neither the tale nor the monsters seem to be derived from any other source material, providing a wholly original matter. The tale is spun across two seasons, Kagewani and Kagewani: Shou, with a grand total of twenty six episodes.

Each of those episodes averages about seven minutes of running time, though. Bold choice, let’s see if that pays off for them.

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Inner Scars, Outer Junk – Mayoiga/The Lost Village Spoiler Review

Take a cast of colorful and engaging characters, and then put them somewhere you can have a creepy atmosphere of suspicion and fear. This is a pretty basic recipe that often turns out a fairly good story.

A cup of sugar, half a cup of butter, one egg, scant two cups of flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, a couple teaspoons of cinnamon, and bake at 350 F for about ten minutes. This is a pretty basic recipe that usually turns out a fairly good cinnamon cookie.

But if you double the flour, turn the butter into sesame oil, skip the baking powder, and season the mix with crab innards rather than cinnamon I don’t think you’re going to get a good result. The analogy: Mayoiga, aka The Lost Village

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Cry Me a River – True Tears Spoiler Review

We’ve had a lot of craziness in this Back to School month, haven’t we? Insane clubs, ninjas, time travel, and giant warships aside, it’s time for something relatable in the school experience, curses! I’m sure everyone either cast or endured a curse or two back in… um… just me then?

Anyway, True Tears. Technically, this is another School Love Polygon Visual Novel based anime, except if literally any source on the matter is correct, True Tears the anime has absolutely nothing to do with True Tears the VN beyond licensing the name, so there are no excuses. Does it manage to soar with the freedom of being an original property masquerading as a tie-in, or does it fall into one of those two pits you’re supposed to dig when messing with black magic? Let’s find out!

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Hello, Sailor – High School Fleet Spoiler Review

The Sailor Uniform is easily one of the most recognizable variants of Japanese schoolgirl uniform. Though it has many variants and of course only superficially resembles actual naval dress, it certainly is iconic. There are entire anime shows dedicated to the relative prop, and its appearance easily marks a character as what she is supposed to be. I guess it was only a matter of time until somebody decided the schoolgirls should earn their outfits.

Enter High School Fleet, a show that takes cute girls in sailor uniforms and has them… actually sail.

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Back to School, and Back Again – Sakurada Reset Spoiler Review

Time Travel anime. Much like Video Game Anime (aside from the Visual Novel set) have a bad habit of coming out mediocre at best, Time Travel shows have an odd habit of turning out really well. That isn’t to say there aren’t exceptions: RErideD was a notable flop, and not everything else is uniformly great, so despite the topic garnering at least a little interest on its own, the piece does still have to deliver.

This is especially true when you start to get into the genre soup category. Time travel show? Sounds fun, let’s see if that’s right. Schoolkids, mysteries, superpowers for everyone and time regression is involved? It sounds like Sakurada Reset.

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Yer a Ninja, Ittoki – Shinobi no Ittoki Spoiler Review

Ninjas are cool. School settings are cool. Therefore, school ninjas should be perfectly doable! Sure, Senran Kagura made a poor anime, but the game was fine. Surely this concept can be used elsewhere.

Enter Shinobi no Ittoki, the story of a normal overworked schoolboy who finds out he’s a ninja about as abruptly as Harry Potter learns he’s a wizard. And like Potter, he’s got to go to school to live up to that powerful proclamation.

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