Archive for the English Anime Category


Hyakko Complete TV Series Anime, Disk 1 (English)

August 29th, 2013

When I was asked if I’d like a copy of Hyakko, Complete TV SeriesHyakkoCTS I believe I replied something to the effect of, “Yeah, I vaguely remember it being Yuri-sh, but I don’t remember what or why.”

Now I have watched the first disk and I remember what, but there may be no answer for “why?”.

Hyakko, an anime that is obviously based upon a 4-koma gag manga, is set at an absurdly large school. The apparent protagonist is Ayumu, who is immediately soppy enough not to threaten the audience for whom this comic is presumably intended.

Ayumu runs into snooty Itsuki, who is also lost in the preposterously large school. They then encounter Torako who is the hyper-energetic, slightly cool until she speaks, force of chaos type and her nearly-silent, always eating friend, Saotome.

The themes of each segment are the typical for school life gag comics; school clubs, uniform checks, school life stuff, etc., with   bwa-wa-waahhhh~~~  humor predominant.

Yuri comes in the form of class representative Andou Nene, a flamboyantly odd girl who leers and drools over the other girls in the class. Underneath her general perviness, she might possibly even have an actual interest in Torako, but that is well beside the point.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 3
Characters – 3
Yuri – 3
Service – 5

Overall – 5

As I watched Disk 1, I had the image of the staff on this being told about it and all reaching for cigarettes, sucking them down in one breath and sighing.

Sometimes Hyakko is marginally amusing, but not usually during the punchlines.

Here’s the funny part of this review – after damning this series with faint praise, I have an extra copy to give away! If you promise to write a review of Disk 2, I promise to send it to you! Name and country in the comments to win. Entering is a commitment to write  a review of Disk 2, ‘kay?  ^_^

Thanks to TRSI for this review copy – and for the give away copy!





Crowdfunding begins for Riyoko Ikeda’s ‘Dear Brother’ Anime on Animesols

August 12th, 2013

AnimeSols announced the beginning of Round 2 of crowdfunding for classic anime DVD sets yesterday, Japan time. With several sets already funded (Creamy Mami,  Black Jack) they started round 2 off with a bang that’s sure to please classic Yuri fans – Riyoko Ikeda’s  melodrama Oniisama E, Dear Brother.

AnimeSols is streaming the anime (which is also available legally on Viki.com), Episode 1 is up already (region limitations may apply.)

Crowdfunding is open until November and it’s off to a strong start already, with a very decent chance of being 1/4 funded by end of the first day. (Of course I have already pledged. I love this series for all its crazy. Here’s my first review of the series and my most review of it. I make no apologies about my feelings about Saint-Juste. ^_^

I feel completely confident that all the Yuri and Shoujo fans out there will make this happen. We already have Rose of Versailles. I can’t think of anything better than sitting Dear Brother right next to those. ^_^

Please share the news with your mailing lists, Tumblrs, Blogs, Groups and the like. This is one of the oldest classic Yuri anime we’ll ever get a chance to own. ^_^





Rose of Versailles Anime, Part 1, Disk 4 (English)

August 8th, 2013

The final disk of part 1 of  Rose of Versailles is SO. FULL. OF. MELODRAMA.

The thing about Rose of Versailles is – we know going into it, there really can’t be too many happy endings. If we know anything about the French Revolution, we know that most of the people we are following on the screen will be dead or exiled by the end of the story. But knowing that there will be one happy ending and one alone does not make it any nicer as we watch the universe kick Rosalie around a bit for no reason. Even obnoxious little spoiled Charlotte goes from oppressor to oppressed.

Honestly, I would wonder how the leaders of the country could have been so blind, but then articles like this one pop across my desk and I shake my head and stop wondering.

The art remains as hyperbolic as the plot, but every time I think it’s all just too much to handle, I check Wikipedia, to find that that bit was actually more true than not.

Oscar faces her own conflicting desires and puts them aside for duty…again. And we watch, wishing we had an Oscar we could call on to explain their duty to our nobles. She’s too wonderful. Far too wonderful to be real.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters 9
Yuri – 1
Service – 3 (Oscar in formal whites!)

Overall – 8

Next up, Part 2 and the Affair of the Necklace. I don’t know if I can do it….





A Certain Scientific Railgun S Anime (English) Guest Review by Mara

August 7th, 2013

ACSRSWoo-hoo! It’s Guest Review Wednesday! Please welcome back serial Guest Reviewer Mara!

A Certain Scientific Railgun S (streaming for free, legally with applicable region limitations from Funimation) is a direct sequel to the anime A Certain Scientific Railgun… which doesn’t have ‘S’ at the end. Picking right up where its predecessor left off, it adapts the manga of the same name. If you are one of the lucky ones who only watched the anime of either Railgun or its mother series A Certain Magical Index, you should give this new season a go right now as it will be more of the same – i.e. an incredibly entertaining esper action story.

However if you are as voracious a consumer of the ‘A Certain Blank’ franchise as myself, you may be hesitant. Understandably so as this new series of Railgun is forced by existing cannon to now tackle the story arc that pushed Railgun into the so called ‘dark side’ of Railgun’s setting: Academy City. A story that focused on illegal cloning and perhaps the most gruesome form of level grinding in fiction. Known as the “Sisters” story arc – in the original novels it was responsible for introducing a lot of important characters; such as Kuroko, the Misaka clones and Accelerator. When it came time for the Sisters arc to appear in the Railgun manga the story focused almost entirely on Mikoto’s point of view leaving fan favourite characters out of the spotlight for an extended period of time; pretty much assuming you had already seen the Index version of the story in some way.

Not so for the anime adaptation. The anime gives you a complete story to enjoy and while Mikoto and the Sisters arc cast take centre stage we are not allowed to forget the rest of the cast, including characters that were introduced in the first Railgun anime:

By that I mean that Haruue is still around as is Banri, both characters from the first season. It is a treat to see that the anime staff did not just ignore them and assume that no-one would care if these characters appeared or not. In a show that had less effort put into it Haruue would have been put off stage now she has been reunited with Banri, instead we see their story continue alongside everyone else’s.

But it is Kuroko Shirai who receives a good portion of episode seven all to herself with her own sub-story that includes Saten, Uiharu and Haruue too. It keeps Mikoto’s story from becoming the dense all-encompassing mass it was in the manga buy piding up other events that would otherwise be entirely sequential. It also gives us an important glimpse of Kuroko’s view of Mikoto during this period, how concerned she is and the frustration that comes with trying to help someone who does not wish to be helped.

New to the Railgun story are quite a few scenes from Touma’s point of view as a digest version of the events he experienced in Index to add context for those who may have not seen or not remember the Index anime (way back in 2009). The manga assumes that we have seen Touma’s point of view before and thus gives us little to explain his appearance or motivation.  The anime however does show us how Touma finds out about Mikoto’s situation, including his interaction with Kuroko which involves a fun bit of perv to perv verbal combat that I really enjoy.

So if you have read the manga like myself and are wondering if you should bother with the first half of Railgun S, rest assured. The first season improved and expanded upon the story and the second season does the same with its source material far better than expected.

Score so far (Episodes 1-16):

Art – 7
Character – 10 (The A Certain Blank series is a fantastic example of Erica’s thesis that every character should have a unique ‘voice’. You would not mistake one character for another based on their lines… apart from the clones.)
Story – 6
Yuri – 5
Service – 9
Overall – 9

E here: Well, you’ve convinced me to watch it! I was dithering, since the manga had been so gloomy, but okay, I’ll give it  a try. ^_^ Thanks so much for the review and the prompt to reenter Academy City once again. ^_^





Serial Experiments Lain Anime, Disk 2 (English)

August 6th, 2013

lain coverI posited that there was more than one Lain at the end of  disk one, and here, on disk two of Serial Experiments Lain, we learn that that there are an almost infinite number of Lains, as every memory of Lain in every individual’s mind, exists as an artifact in the Wired.

This causes Lain no end of grief as various artifacts act in ways that she could not have anticipated, nor can approve of. Eventually, the Lain who we have been following and who we were supposed to believe to be Lain Prime, turns out to be merely another artifact. It wasn’t terribly hard to tease that from the narrative, though, so  it has less power as a big reveal than the creator hoped, I think.

Nonetheless, there are some interesting elements of the narrative – primarily, the idea that memories of us linger as different versions of us. Anyone who has had an opinion on the Internet  has probably encountered this phenomenon. (Things I wrote 10 years or go or more are thrown back at me by random people who have just discovered them, as if they are fixed, inviolable and I must feel a pressing need to defend them.  In my reality, I’m perfectly comfortable pointing out that my opinions change and I’m okay with being “wrong” all the time. ^_^)

Also interesting  – and very accurate – was the representation of  the Wired as a series of bodies, with no faces, but mouths yapping, yammering away endlessly. All I can say to that is, yup. ^_^

Ultimately, Lain finds a way to “fix” the narrative, tie-up the loose ends and repair the broken connections, by removing herself  from the story completely. Which she does.

In that moment it dawned on me that Serial Experiments Lain is  much less a child of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and much more of Herman Hesse’s Siddartha.*

Ratings:

Art – 4 The focus on sound and color/light is more developed than the line work
Character – 7
Story – In the end, 8
Yuri – 3  I have always been ambivalent about “Arisu x Lain”. There is genuine affection…perhaps there is love. YMMV
Service – 4

Overall – 8

* Both these books are excellent. You should read them. Go, do that and come back and tell me what you thought.