An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

School of Corporate Knocks – Classroom☆Crisis Spoiler Review

Ah, school anime: a topic so prolific that even though I typically run September as Back to School Month, I’ve got to look into it during the rest of the year as well if I’m to have any hope of addressing the sheer quantity of its offerings.

Classroom Crisis (I will be omitting the star at my discretion) at least tries to keep its academic scenario somewhat fresh by placing it on a future Mars colony. It’s also an anime original property, rather than one that initially came from its manga or light novel outings. But with bigger ambitions come bigger expectations, and a show needs to take care to not let its pitch write checks that its content can’t cash. How does Classroom Crisis hold up?

Read More…Read More…

Asimov Coffee Shop – Time of Eve Spoiler Review

Robots certainly are a hot topic. And when talking about near-future robots, the kind of thing you might believe we could actually see, there are some interesting takes. Take the “maid robot” idea for instance. On the surface, this is pretty appealing since it would amount to taking modern robot vacuum cleaners and making them way more capable and aesthetically pleasing. I would love a robot to do actually dusting and tidying up and if it looks nice, that’s a perk.

But when you start to question what a robot, especially an advanced robot, is, things get a little fuzzier. Sure your robot vacuum is a pretty simple unintelligent automaton, but something that’s made in the image of a human and intended to interact like a human? At what point does a being like that have an existence that deserves respect as an equal, rather than continuing on as a machine? As AI models get ever better scores on their Turing tests, we have to wonder.

Read More…Read More…

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.

Read More…Read More…

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.

Read More…Read More…