Off the “Record”

May 5th, 2022 in Anime, General Reviews by

This ended up being a more interesting show than I was willing to give it credit for. I have reched (reached! Reached! Or maybe I have reched a tad) a saturation point; both are equally plausible. It comes to shows like this and the mediæval approach to things. Is there some reason this cannot take place in the American Old West, or France in the 1920s or Russia when Napoleon was a foot? I mean afoot! Or maybe he is only a foot tall (well, they measured things differently.) Anyway, here we are at “Grancrest Senki” (also known as Record of Grancrest War” or “Gurankuresuto Senki”). (more…)

Boys Will be “Boys”

April 28th, 2022 in Anime, General Reviews by

This show is just naked consumerism. It would be akin if Disney had a show about guys who were in love with the Princesses and each one of them followed their personal kink, although the Arielholic and the Bellelunatic would have run-ins all the time:

Arielholic: Belle talks to sheep!
Bellelunatic: Ariel talks to fish!
Arielholic: Yeah, but they answer back!

You won’t get that here, but you will get a lot of passion and fervor with “Sanrio Boys”. (more…)

“Citrus” Punch

April 21st, 2022 in Anime, General Reviews by

Yeah, these reviews are a one-two punch, as I found myself in the world of yaoi and yuri. The thing is I have a hard time determining if it is yaoi from the outset, as it can be couched just enough. Yuri, however, if pretty blatant, even if I don’t see two girls kissing, like above. Part of it is in the title, as a lot of yuri love shows seem to hover around fruit of flowers, whether it’s “Strawberry Panic” or “Sweet Blue Flowers” or, in this case, “Citrus”. (more…)

“Man of the Year”

April 14th, 2022 in Anime, General Reviews by

I have misread shows before. Even the capsule for this series was a tad on the vague side, so I thought it was going to be a ridiculous comedy about two men who try to out-sexy one another for the love and attention of all the women in Japan. I didn’t realize that they would try and out-sexy one another for the love and attention OF one another, Yup, it’s yaoi. And what is the name of this show? Well, it has a lot of alternative titles: “Dakaretai Otoko 1-i ni Odosarete Imasu”, “Dakaretai Otoko Ichii ni Odosarete Imasu”, “Dakaretai Otoko No.1 ni Odosareteimasu”, but I’ll stick with “Dakachi – I’m Being Harrassed by the Sexiest Man of the Year.” (more…)

“Tale” as Old as Time

April 7th, 2022 in Anime, General Reviews by

It is always nice to know that what you personally thought about a show, everyone else personally thought about the show and you aren’t going crazy, at least on that aspect of it. I bring all this up as this turned out to be one of the most frustrating show for me since “Jungre de Ikou” and that was a goodly amount of years ago. We are talking about Märchen Mädchen”,, (“Meruhen Medohen”, “Fairy Tale Girls“). (more…)

“Invisible” Touch

March 31st, 2022 in Anime, General Reviews by

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…)

Attack of the OVA #21: “Signs” of the Times

March 24th, 2022 in Anime, General Reviews, Short Run Series by

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…)

“Food” is Fuel

March 17th, 2022 in Anime, General Reviews by

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…)

We’re Gonna Party Like It’s “2199”

March 10th, 2022 in Anime, General Reviews by

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…)

Just a “Moment”

March 3rd, 2022 in Anime, General Reviews by

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…)