Anime are popular today – very much so, so it of no real surprise that quite so many of them have been acquiring live action movie adaptations over the years. Japanese manga are not only adapted into the form of Japanese drama and movies, but Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese too. Some are, as you would expect, better than others, but there are many that are famous for their poor quality.

While there are some that I would personally love to see we do have to admit that some pretty outrageous things happen in anime that would be difficult to replicate into a drama or movie without having a particularly extensive budget, so the ones that work best tend to be the ones that do not include anything too high-tech; hence shoujo tends to be one of the more frequent options. There are also a lot of drama and movies based on manga that never became an anime, such as Hana Kimi, which never became an anime but has at least three drama adaptations that I have seen. (more…)

As a major shonen fan there are not a lot of cute romance type anime, however in my pursuit to give fair chance to everything there are some that I have watched all the way through without becoming bored of the mushy storylines and love triangles. Generally those with comedic value are the ones that keep me interested the best, and to this effect I find myself increasingly drawn to the cuter side of the romantic comedy anime.

Let’s start with Kuragehime (Princess Jellyfish) which was reviewed in much more depth already, but which I feel deserves as much mention as any other, even if it means mentioning it multiple times. This is actually an anime that was recommended to me, had it not been I probably would have never sat down and watched it as the synopsis was not something which overly appealed to me. I’m glad I watched it in the end; the story starts with Tsukimi Kurashita, a girl who loves jellyfish but in typical shy nerd style is uncomfortable with just about everything else. This character lives in a house full of other, similarly bizarre characters such as a talking afro with a love of trains.

Things change drastically for everyone involved when a beautiful, stylish young woman suddenly makes friends with the jellyfish obsessed nerd, accept that this woman is actually Kuranosuke Koibuchi; a male cross-dresser. It shouldn’t take long to understand the comedic value here (nerds that struggle around men and beautiful people, a gorgeous cross-dressing man – it just about writes itself). (more…)

2013 was a pretty good year for anime lovers around the world; so many new series released, so many getting started and some new releases from series’ we all loved in the past. One thing that I have particularly enjoyed this year is the number of special Christmas releases; which have been an enjoyable return to shows that I was certain were over for the year.

Other than those I happened to notice on Crunchyroll I have not watched that many of the new series, which I am a little disappointed about, having spent much of the year catching up on some of the older classics I missed, so I will instead be offering reviews on some of the few I have seen, as well as reviews of other anime I happen to have completed this year.

One Piece:

One Piece is one of the biggest shonen anime there is, the three big names in this genre are of course One Piece, Naruto and Bleach. While I have seen the others in the past One Piece had never really appealed to me in the same way, but in spring this year I decided I would start it. To be honest it took me a little while to really get in to it, the beginning didn’t go as quickly and energetically as I was expecting but it didn’t take long and soon enough I was hooked. (more…)