An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Nausicaa in White – Kaina of the Great Snow Sea Spoiler Review

It should come as no surprise, given I’ve put down my thoughts on selected Ghibli films that I’m something of a fan of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, particularly in its true and massive Manga form. So, when I see something like Kaina of the Great Snow Sea, where the apple hardly falls from the tree to say nothing of falling far, I typically come in with some mixed feelings. On the one side, there’s an impulse to see more versions and reflections of something great. If you like a work, it’s only natural to also like things that are similar to it. But if it’s a half-assed attempt that can’t really keep up and bring its own material to the table, well… it’s probably worse than being unrelated and of similar quality.

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Does CG Anime Bug You? – Cagaster of an Insect Cage Spoiler Review

Cagaster of an Insect Cage is another in the long line of shows that take place ambiguously in the future, where the only terrain we see on Earth is a dead desert and some horrible occurrence has pushed humanity to the brink. In this case, our story takes place thirty years (or so it’s told) after a “disease” appears that causes humans to suddenly morph (seriously, over the course of 20 minutes) into nigh-invulnerable giant killer insects called Cagasters.

Well, contesting that point will get us nowhere, so might as well dig into the story.

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More Clever than it Sounds – Rideback Spoiler Review

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… wait, I already used that intro last week? Um… Rideback!

So, yeah, Rideback in extremely reductionist theory is another of those stories where a special group of outcasts with a younger main character among them sparks a revolution against an oppressive totalitarian government. But, this one is a good deal different. It has interesting characters, an odd yet effective structure, and motorcycles with arms that can stand up to become beefy wheel robots with the driver on their back. I assure you this is sold as being cooler than it sounds.

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Everything Zero – Yurei Deco Spoiler Review

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: in the nebulous future, all known civilization is ruled in a very skewed and dystopian way that seems to make the masses happy, but a small group of plucky teens and outcasts… Yeah, I’m just going to assume you’ve stopped me by that point, since it’s the pitch for basically every big name young adult novel, an obligatory episode or five of every “scenario of the week” scifi show, and the occasional piece of well-respected Sci-fi as well. Some of those pieces do it better, some do it worse. I won’t even claim to be immune to the allure of the archetype myself, it’s a damn good backbone.

But when you tell an archetypical story, you need to both bring something of your own to the table that’s new and interesting, and know what makes that archetype powerful and resonant. If you do, joke aside, you can create some good stuff – maybe fun, maybe meaningful, and certainly at least worth a look. If you don’t… well, let’s take a look at Yurei Deco.

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Seeing is Believing – Mieruko-chan Spoiler Review

Well, we’re at the end of October, and as much as I’d love to lead the armies of Halloween to reclaim calendar territory from the Christmas occupation forces no doubt already sighted all over the place, such an effort is quite beyond me. Thus, it’s best to wrap up the spooky season with a few more choice ghouls and ghosts. The ones seen in Mieruko-chan will do just fine.

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Werewolves versus Cirtus Fruit – Okamikakushi: Masque of the Wolf Spoiler Review

It’s still October and the relative low quantity of horror anime be damned, I’m doing all spooky shows for it this year! Well, we’ve seen ghosts, vampires, and… weird Victorian soot faeries, guess we might as well give werewolves a shot as well.

Okamikakushi is a show that kind of looks like a game of Werewolf: you’re in a town, there are wolves, and it seems like somebody gets murdered every night under the perpetually-full and always blood-red moon while by day we try to solve the mystery.

In some ways, though, the traditional pattern is placed in reverse.

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Soot, Shadows, and Secrets – Shadows House Spoiler Review

It’s still spooky time, but this week we’re taking a look at something a little less conventional: a gothic tale not about any familiar ghosts or ghouls yet still, on at least one side, still familiar to its genre.

Shadows House takes place within the confines and grounds of an ambiguously Victorian mansion. The lords and ladies of the House are the Shadows family, who are notable for being absolutely black, such that no features can be discerned upon their surface. Because of this, the Shadows have “living dolls”, attendants with what the viewer would regard as normal human features who, among other things, act as the faces of the Shadows, giving expressions to the otherwise unreadable entities.

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At Least it’s not Collect – Call of the Night Spoiler Review

Well, while we’re in the month of maximum spookiness, what better subject could there be than Vampires? I’ve talked about the notorious nosferatu before, notably in the lamentable A Dark Rabbit Has Seven Lives and the somewhat less awful Lunar Legend Tsukihime. In fact, I even referenced the vampires here in the opening of the former review. So it only seems fitting that now that we’ve come around to everyone’s favorite season for vampires (your mileage may vary), I ought to take a look at Call of the Night.

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