An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

Anime Film Club: Field Trip to the Digital Land of OZ – Summer Wars Spoiler Review

Well, the weather is hot, the days are long, and most folks just want to do one thing about now: stay inside and play video games! Well, watching movies also tends to come up, so I guess it’s fitting that I’d tackle Summer Wars, a movie about the digital world.

Historically, I’ve been pretty sparse about reviewing movies (rather than series) on the blog, but this summer I’m going to set that aside for a little “film club”, working through a few specific titles with more typical fare between, and there didn’t seem a better place to start than this. True, of director Mamoru Hosoda’s filmography, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time would probably be the first on many folks’ lists, but Summer Wars fits the season and is nearly as well regarded.

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Mirai Bakka – Platinum End Spoiler Review

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: a dozen individuals are placed in a battle royale, with godhood as the prize…

And presumably you’ve stopped me by now, because that’s Mirai Nikki. It’s one of the best-known anime series ever made, and while it’s not exactly as acclaimed as it is watched, neither am I an outlier for considering it to be… pretty good. Yeah, I’ve reviewed Mirai Nikki already. Which is why it’s positively strange that I find myself here, reviewing Mirai Nikki, now apparently calling itself Platinum End in a vain attempt to disguise that it is, in fact, Mirai Nikki.

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Yes, You Are Projecting – Planetarian Spoiler Review

So, this is not my typical fare. Planetarian (also known as Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet) is a short anime, consisting of just five episodes, on average a little short of 20 minutes. It’s more the size of a movie which, while I do hope to take on more in the future, is not what I typically review. Still, some variety once in a while is fine.

Planetarian is also a title that tends to come up if you delve into robot stories in anime, one of a few that I haven’t covered that’s consistently referenced in discussions of others I have perhaps addressed. I’ll avoid naming other names right now but suffice to say, for such a little thing, it seems to have left a big impact on a certain crowd.

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Cute Girls Not Doing Mecha Things – Alice Gear Aegis Expansion Spoiler Review

Alas, poor Mecha Musume. Why must such a fun aesthetic seemingly always lead back to troubled outings? It’s a question both seemingly without answer and tragic in the asking. Cute girls and heavy weaponry seem like they should be a winning combination. I mean, it works when the girls are operating the weapons as in High School Fleet or to a lesser extent Girls Und Panzer, and even when they equip some serious gear in the context of a magical girl outing with a somewhat techist look and/or feel like Yuki Yuna is a Hero or especially Vividred Operation. So there shouldn’t be anything really in the way of getting a proper Mecha Musume outing.

But Busou Shinki happened. It squandered its designs on a living toys angle, and it wasn’t good. Then we get Frame Arms Girl which does the exact same thing as Busou Shinki only… less. Finally there came LBX Girl, which went with actual mecha powers in a good ol’ alien invasion bug war… and it sucked, giving us very few action set pieces and a lame plot dominated by food tourism rather than using said actual mecha powers. And a little bit after that hot mess, we got Alice Gear Aegis Expansion.

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Count to Four – Yozakura Quartet (2008) Spoiler Review

Anime has always had its overused genres or genre clusters. Right now the cluster you hear the most complaints about is the Isekai-Videogame sort of space, consisting of Isekai animes (whether or not they actually use video game interfaces for their powers) and fantasies whether high or urban (and whether isekai or not) that use video game conceits like stats and level as the core of their fantastical system. But, that hasn’t always been the fad. In days gone by, supernatural battlers were king. As attested by 2021’s Kemono Jihen, the genre isn’t dead and will probably never truly die, but no matter what the future holds it’s easy to say that at least a heyday for these kind of things is in the past.

I’ve addressed plenty of these battlers before such as 2013’s Beyond the Boundary, 2005’s Shakugan no Shana with its sequels in 2007 and 2011, and 2008’s Ga-Rei Zero. Well, the very same season as Ga-Rei Zero, in Fall ’08, there was yet another of these Urban Fantasy battle shows. Actually, there were a few of them, including A Certain Magical Index and the target of today’s review, Yozakura Quartet.

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Technically a Video Game Anime – Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Spoiler Review

For those who aren’t aware, in 2020, a company called CD Projekt Red came out with a video game known as Cyberpunk 2077, based on a series of tabletop RPGs that nobody remembers – “Cyberpunk”, usually referred to as either Cyberpunk Red or, ironically given when the video game dropped, Cyberpunk 2020. While most folks seem to like 2077 well enough now, at launch it was something of a buggy mess.

But maybe that’s because CD Projekt Red had other priorities, famously getting Keanu Reeves for a major role in their game and, relevant to this blog, enlisting Studio Trigger to… not exactly adapt the game to anime form, but instead to produce a series in the same setting. That would be Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

Honestly, if the bug fix money went to Keanu and Trigger, I can’t really blame them.

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Benefits Package – Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. Spoiler Review

I enjoy the Magical Girl genre. I really do. But between dubious choices and disappointing outings, that hasn’t shown much in this year’s Magical Girl May, has it? Well, to avoid going out on a sour note, I’ve sourced just the girls for the job. Sure, the service involved is something a little different, but it’s still deeply tied to traditions. A sterling aesthetic that can blend its genres and deliver – it’s time for Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc.!

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Magical Girls Broken – Twin Angels Break Spoiler Review

It’s Magical Girl May, so you know what? Enough of this half-counting nonsense. Arjuna and Magikano may show up on lists of technically magical girl shows, but they’re not in tune with the core of the genre. Twin Angels Break, on the other hand, is about as core a Magical Girl show as you could hope for, with all the tropes of a post-Sailor-Moon action Magical Girl outing on full display. After how the last couple of weeks have treated me, that’s good enough in my book to be worth a watch.

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Which Witch? – Magikano Spoiler Review

Well, once again my duties have brought me a show that’s old enough to vote and it seems like barely anybody cared about the first time around, but heck, what have we got here? Some cute witch girls on brooms, some dated moe, an even more dated poppy love song that could have gone with anything for the opening? You know, against all sane expectations, I’m going to choose to be hopeful. I don’t expect this show to be good, but I will entertain the premise that it could be, and that if it isn’t good per say it may at least decline to hurt me. I know that isn’t much, but it’s still optimism. Show me what you’ve got, Magikano!

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