Posts in Category: Anime Reviews
Review: Persona 4: The Animation
Anime has changed. It’s no longer about creativity, storytelling, or artistic expression. It’s an endless series of adaptations made by Koreans on computers. Anime – and its consumption of time – has become a well-oiled machine. Anime has changed. Adapted characters speak adapted dialogue, in adapted settings. Laziness in the writers dilute and simplify their material. Video game adapations. Light novel adaptations. Manga adaptations. Visual novel adaptations. Everything is adapted and copied from another source. Anime has changed. The age of moeblob has become the age of adaptation… All in the name of flooding the scene with highly marketable properties. And he who cranks out adaptations the fastest… prints money. Anime has changed. When the market is totally filled with adaptations… anime becomes routine.
Review: Children Who Chase Lost Voices
Children Who Chase Lost Voices (Hoshi o Ou Kodomo) is the fifth major film by Makoto Shinkai. It’s a fantasy yarn about Asuna, a young girl living in a rural Japanese village, who visits a certain mountain to listen to signals on an unusual radio. One day she hears a haunting melody, and soon after meets a young man named Shun. This sets off a chain of events leading to Asuna’s discovery of Agartha, a world underneath the earth where the gate between the living and the dead is believed to be.
Review: Trigun: Badlands Rumble
I suppose there’s a certain inevitability when you release a movie tie-in to an anime series that ended almost 12 years prior. Trigun: Badlands Rumble was probably doomed to mediocrity from the outset – I should have just expected that. There was no reason to make this movie. There weren’t so many loose ends from the series that there had to be a follow-up to tie them all together. After 12 years being off-air (and four years being out of print for the manga) you’d think the story has gone as far as it can go.
Review: Black Rock Shooter (OVA)
Black Rock Shooter originated as an animated music video by Supercell. The OVA adaptation features the eponymous character and tells two stories. The first takes place in the normal world, where Mato starts her first day of junior high. There she becomes fast friends with Yomi, although this friendship becomes strained as time goes on. One day, feeling alienated, Yomi mysteriously disappears. The second story takes place in a dark fantasy world, where a young girl does battle against an unnamed nemesis.
Review: Bakemonogatari
Thanks to a chance encounter with a vampire, high school student Koyomi Araragi became aware of ghosts, spirits, and other aberrations. Bakemonogatari tells the story, from Araragi’s viewpoint, of five girls who have been possessed (or cursed) by such spirits. Each story arc has Araragi getting involved with a new protagonist. Out of a sense of duty, he takes it upon himself to rid each girl of her curse.
Review: A Certain Scientific Railgun
As a spinoff of A Certain Magical Index, A Certain Scientific Railgun follows the daily life of Mikoto Misaka in Academy City. Being a self contained environment for the study and advancement of espers, life in Academy City is rarely mundane. The excitement picks up as a string of crimes breaks out, all involving espers abusing their powers for whatever reason. Being the roommate of a Judgment member, Mikoto gets drawn into their investigations and peacekeeping activities.