This has been one weird series, in how they approach the overall stories. The first two seasons of “Full Metal Panic” were rather grim and unrelenting tales of world terrorism and the steps that the ultra-secret organization, Mithral, engaged in to keep the world safe from peoples and organizations bent on a dictatorial regime or just basically a lot of dead bodies. (more…)

I have remarked that when you see an uptick in OVAs or short runs of a series that completed its first season, it is a prelude to the release of the next season, but they want to let you know it’s coming with more than a notice on the internet going “The second season is coming!” It’s just there was a two-run OVA about a year or so ago and now “Nanatsu no Taizai: Seisen no Shirushi” (“The Seven Deadly Sins: Signs of the Holy War”) came out with what they refer to as a TV Special that acts as a prelude to the new season. (more…)

This portion of the series “Food Wars” for the third year generated a lot of controversy, as there was no agreement as to what it was. In the same field as “Is the dress blue or gold?”, “Did they say ‘Yanni’ or ‘Laurel’?” and “Is ‘Die Hard’ a Christmas movie?”, a lot of people felt the Totsuki Arc was actually a fourth season, while others felt it was an extension of the third season. (more…)

I have frequently remarked about my 40-year flirtation with anime before I finally settled down back in 2004 to accept it. It was during my Third Permutation that I ran into (what it was called then) “Star Blazers”. I had two problems with the show. The first was trying to wrap my head around the concept of a sea-worthy battleship in space (I would later discover that the Japanese flung all kinds of things into space for their animes). The second was the battleship seemed to fire its main weapon, have it break down and take two or three episodes to repair it, fire it again and repeat the cycle. Since I felt the show was going nowhere (and this was at a time when it showed once a week), I abandoned it and thus ended that trial. (more…)

Science Fiction is always a tough genre to work within. You are, in a sense, looking at things that have no real basis in science, but are not completely dismissed out of hand for being improbable or even impossible. But there still has to be a grounding of some caliber so you can project your story from that. I bring up this lengthy explanation as “Kokkoku: Moment by Moment” asks us to look at time in a different manner. (more…)