An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

In The End – Girls’ Last Tour Spoiler Review

The world is dead, but two girls are still living, making their way through the ruins of a civilization they don’t understand out of an almost childish will to keep going.  It’s the slow, introspective, and yet somehow cute Girls’ Last Tour.

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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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