An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Magical Girl Goes Action – Sailor Moon Crystal Spoiler Review

It’s impossible to talk about the history of the Magical Girl genre without talking about two shows in particular. One of those two (we’ll get to the other later) is Sailor Moon. The original series is notorious for two things. One is, allegedly, having a truly awe-inspiring sum of filler, both in terms of filler episodes and repeated battle and of course Transformation animations. The other is for transforming the nature of the Magical Girl genre by taking it from a branch of Adventure or even Slice of Life to one of action, blending the preexisting magical girl themes with those of transforming heroes and fighting hero teams. While Cardcaptor Sakura doesn’t show those influences, at least too much, every other Magical Girl show I’ll be reviewing this month has clearly felt, however distantly, the impact that Sailor Moon had.

The astute reader may note, though, that the title of this review does not simply say “Sailor Moon”. There’s a reason for that. I didn’t watch Sailor Moon when it was first coming out in the states, and hadn’t sought it out as part of my early years as an invested anime viewer. Rather, I knew it by reputation and knew that I had to look into it to really understand the Magical Girl genre. The thing is, the classic Sailor Moon had a five-year run and a grand total of two hundred episodes. I could have tried to cover the first season or arc, I suppose, but instead my research into the genre directed me towards a remake called Sailor Moon Crystal.

Read More…Read More…

Magical Girl Raising Project Audio Commentary, Part 1

Magical Girl Raising Project is… a show. It’s a show that blends elements of the Death Game genre (most notably represented by Mirai Nikki) with elements of the Magical Girl genre (Most notably Madoka Magica). It’s… not entirely effective. Starting out, it doesn’t look too bad, but I promise some viewer pain as we go onward!

Read More…Read More…

Seasonal Selection – Tower of God Episode 6

I actually found this episode to be one of the more interesting lately, since it wasn’t focused primarily on the action, and featured (in addition to some mechanical exposition) some good growth and exploration of our characters. Not Bam, but I’m coming around to the idea that this is one of those stories where our lead is more or less supposed to be a window into the cool and creative things we’re going to see while personally staying on the more bland end in order to not throw the audience out of their element or upstage the actual feature.

Read More…Read More…

“Release!” – Cardcaptor Sakura Spoiler Review


Welcome to another theme month – it’s May, so it’s time to take a look at Magical Girl anime! Specifically, I’d like to examine a few shows with an eye towards the history or evolution of the genre, including game-changers and reactions to them. To start that, though, I was put into a fairly awkward place: It’s quite hard to find a way to view most of the Magical Girl anime that were legitimately big before the debut of the original Sailor Moon, limiting my knowledge of what the early days of the genre were like to secondary sources. However, those secondary sources led me to one anime that, while it was technically a later release, is very much emblematic of what an entry in the genre would have looked like before Sailor Moon. That show is Cardcaptor Sakura.

Read More…Read More…

Seasonal Selection – Tower of God Episode 5

So, this week we get the conclusion of the Crown game and… not all that much else. Tower of God is kind of progressing in webcomic time, where each individual episode is decently paced internally, but it’s going to be a long, long road to get much of anywhere.

Read More…Read More…

Awkward Inheritance – Aria the Scarlet Ammo Spoiler Review

The basic idea of Aria the Scarlet Ammo is simple: Our main character is Kinji Tooyama, who is enrolled in an academy for heavily-armed supercops called Butei. He’s not doing very well (not that he cares, he’s planning to drop out) but secretly possesses a special power: when he gets turned on, he enters a state called Hysteria Mode where he’s a chivalrous uber James Bond – Suave, hypercapable, and liable to say or do something that will embarrass Kinji later. He ends up paired up with the titular Aria, a Rie Kugimiya Tsundere who takes quick note of his moments of extreme ability but less so their trigger – typically her.

If this setup sounds like it’s going to provide a constant running awkward moment… it does. Depending on how you feel about that it could probably be the best thing since sliced bread or the 12th Circle of Hell. For me, it’s somewhere in between. I don’t enjoy awkward situations for their own sake, and typically think my tolerance is moderately low, but Aria mostly stayed within it, letting me have a good look at what’s going on underneath that.

Read More…Read More…

Seasonal Selection – Tower of God Episode 4

Once again we have an episode in which Bam doesn’t do a whole lot, and once again I find that surprisingly okay.

As Tower of God goes on, I am largely conditioning myself to accept Bam as the audience surrogate observer. Like us, he’s basically watching the fight this time around.

Read More…Read More…

The Cooler Elfen Lied – Brynhildr in the Darkness Spoiler Review

Last week, I took a long look at Elfen Lied. Long story short… I didn’t particularly care for it. But there’s another show based on a manga by the author of Elfen Lied, one that I hear most people refer to as a knockoff of Elfen Lied, like it’s doing the same thing the way a lazy and uninventive sequel does: repackaged, reprocessed, and not as good as the first time around. So, since I was, to put it mildly, not a fan of Elfen Lied, you might think I’d have a bone to pick with Brynhildr as well.

Read More…Read More…

Seasonal Selection – Tower of God Episode 3

Another episode, another test. I guess simply qualifying for the Tower is going to be a meaty arc – there’s some promise that we might move on shortly, but all the same it’s been a good deal more than I would have expected from the pitch.

This, in turn, gives a good deal of artificiality to the Tower. Unlike The Abyss in Made in Abyss or many other mega-dungeons, even ones that have something like a man-made structure, there’s clearly an order and formality to the tower. Someone is clearly in charge, and the challenge is one set not by uncaring nature or divine providence but by human or human-like authority… which ties in to Khun’s previously stated interest to go full malicious compliance on the Tower, passing it (which means playing to win) but refusing to play the way the Tower intends.

Read More…Read More…

I Don’t Get It – Elfen Lied Spoiler Review.

Elfen Lied is a classic. By that, I mean that if you were a nerdy 90’s kid going to high school in the first half of the following decade or so, you were probably aware of a few anime shows by name even if you didn’t watch: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Beebop, Fullmetal Alchemist, and in all likelihood Elfen Lied would be among them.

Though I didn’t really get into anime until far later, at least in terms of shows rather than films like Princess Mononoke, that was basically my youth interface. I didn’t watch them owing to trouble finding copies or catching the right time slot in the days before streaming (with the exception of FMA –I watched it and in those days, we really believed its greatness was the world’s one and only truth) but I knew them by reputation, and their reputations were all more or less sterling… but to be taken with a grain of salt seeing as they were generated largely by other youths. Since really becoming a full fan of the art form as an adult, I’ve gone back now and then and watched the big names of the past with fresh eyes, as though to frighten away the ghost of so many years ago with a little understanding.

Some titles, such as Evangelion, have largely held up. They were praised then and they deserve praise now. Others, well… Others are Elfen Lied.

I try to not cuss in these reviews, but this time I make no promises.

Read More…Read More…