Oh, like you didn’t even comprehend that “Kamisama Kiss” (“Kamisama Hajimemashita”) would have a second season? Really? Let’s look at the closing line from my review of the first season: “And with the coupler end (and a pair of OVAs out there), this show is far from being over.” I win! I win! I….*ahem* Let us proceed.

It’s been about a year since Nanami has taken over the shrine and there is to be a Gathering of the Gods, the Divine Assembly. Think of it like a giant anime convention, but without the vendor’s room. Well, she is the Earth God and needs to go, but there are all kinds of troubles with that. Who is going to ‘mind the store’, as it were? (And that opens the door for some delicious humiliation of Tomoe). Once there, Nanami makes a huge discovery about the Gods: they are a lot of preening prats. There is not a whole lot of god-like behavior from these folks, more like shore leave for a bunch of sailors. It is an amazing arc, as Nanami really grows as a God and her understanding of those around her. Also, that they are not any different than regular people: shirking work, sleeping in late, pigging out, inappropriate actions. Maybe it’s more a political convention, eh? Anyway, this series of adventures (including an excursion into the underworld) takes up half of the season, but it doesn’t feel forced or imposed. (more…)

I saw this show at the same time I was watching “Atasuka no Yona”, but “Cross Ange: Rondo of Angels and Dragons” (“Kurosu Anju Tenshi to Ryū no Rondo”) takes it in a different direction.

We start off in the Empire of Misurugi. We are approaching the 16th birthday of Angelise Ikaruga “Ange” Misurugi (she is scowly blue up there), at which time, she will be coronated and become the official next in line to the throne. She is loved by all, despite living the cloistered life that usually accompanies royalty. However, her brother, Julio, engineers a coup, exposing the fact that she is a Norma! Are you kidding me? What a betrayal! Burn the witch!

In this world, everyone uses mana for everything. Some folks cannot do so (those are the Normas, NOT Normals, but it skates close, right?) and are ‘removed’ from society, as they pose a threat to the ‘peace’ they live in. They are trucked off to the military base-prison island of Arzenal. Since Ange is now a danger to one and all, she heads there as well, where she has to fight DRAGONs. Now, what bothers me is that they are fighting real dragons, so why the emphasis on making it an acronym? Also, here’s the funny thing: all Normas are ladies. For some odd reason, all guys can use mana; only the gals can come up short. (Let’s hear it for the Y chromosome!) (more…)

Certainly one of the more intriguing ‘school’ shows I have seen, “Assassination Classroom” (“Ansatsu Kyōshitsu”) is an odd duck of an offering in anyone’s book.

One day, the world wakes up to find that 70% of the moon is gone, completely vaporized and now is in a permanent crescent shape. The alien who did it states to the Japanese government (good, YOU losers deal with it!) that within a school year, Earth will also be destroyed by him, but he offers mankind a chance to avert this fate. In the 3-E Class at Kunugigaoka Junior High School (where all the slackers, dummies and other losers end up), he starts working as a homeroom teacher, where he instructs his students not only in regular subjects, but also in the ways of assassination. The Japanese government promises a reward of ¥10 billion ($100 million) to whomever among the students succeeds in killing the teacher, whom they have named “Koro-sensei”, as for some reason, he (we assume it’s a he; it’s the tie) doesn’t have a name. However, offing him has proven to be an almost impossible task, as not only does he have several superpowers at his disposal, including the capacity of moving at Mach 20, but he is also the best teacher they’ve ever had.

There are about 30 students in the class, leading with (around the clock, starting at upper left) Nagisa Shiota. Now, this person is a guy (a joke later played out in the show). Not particularly strong, he is blessed with keen insight, as he tries to figure out the best way to exploit Koro’s weaknesses (and he has a load of them).

Next is Karma Akabane, a slacker in every sense of the word, he is also thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis close to being a homicidal maniac. Class is now interesting enough for him to attend; otherwise, he’s probably downtown, mugging folks and causing numerous degrees of mayhem. (more…)

I used to complain (and still do) that anime was always about the future, but this one, “Junketsu No Maria” (“Maria the Virgin Witch”) takes place in the past, the far past, like the Hundred Years War past (1337 to 1453). I think this one takes place during the Caroline War segment of it, so we can put it between 1369 and 1389. Above us is Maria the Witch (and her two familiars in their owl form, left to right, Priapos and Artemus). She helps the people of the nearby village with medicines and other kind of support.

For the most part, the church tolerates her (barely), but when war comes to this part of the world, she gets on her broom and conjures up spirits to send the English packing. Well, this does not bode well for her, either with the Church or with God. No, He doesn’t make an appearance. Besides, who would do the voice? Chris Ayres? Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Seriously, Archangel Michael comes down to threaten Maria not to use her magic in public, as it is an affront against God. He sends a minion of his to watch over her, Ezekiel, a rather slight girl, to do what she has to do to stop Maria, up to and including dispatching her, if necessary. (more…)

This isn’t necessarily a ‘girl who saves the world’ anime, but “Akatsuki no Yona” (“Yona of the Dawn”, also known as “The girl standing in the blush of dawn”) certainly embraces a woman who goes from wallflower to being front and center (that’s her, front and center).

We start off in the kingdom of Kouka, with Yona as your typical pampered princess, whose biggest concern might be chipping a nail (actually, it’s her flaming red hair; she hates it). Along with her bodyguard Son Hak (off her left shoulder) and childhood friend Soo-won, they live a happy, sheltered life….until on her 16th birthday celebration, she sees Soo-won kill her father, King Il, and engineer a coup. The reason behind it, the king was weak and deserved to die. Well, that’s been a pretty good reason to kill rulers since we’ve had rulers. Yona and Hak escape, as Hak is the Thunder Beast and can use that blade of his to devastating results. Sadly, both of them fall to their deaths from a high precipice while being pursued by the palace forces.

That puts a major crimp in things, as Soo-won was going to marry Yona, to give legitimacy to what he wanted to do as king. He can (and will) still proceed, but it just makes things a whole lot tougher. However, our demoralized duo is not dead, but has taken refuge with an oracle of some ilk, Ik-su. Offering his young apprentice, Yun (far right), as a guide, they have been instructed to hunt down the Four Dragons, as they have pledged their fealty to the King of Hiryuu castle. Wait, but she’s a girl, so she’d be queen, right? Shhh, it’s the emotional import. As the rightful heir and eventual ruler, she gets their support. Oh, and they aren’t real dragons, with scales and a forked tail and breathing fire, but they have the attributes of a dragon. In my picture up there, you see all four of them (I’ll break down that cast a bit later). (more…)

The OVA for “Assassination Classroom” is, quite simply, the worst OVA I have ever seen, as there is no real reason for it. Now, a full review will follow when the show actually concludes, but, for the nonce, the plot revolves around Koro Sensei (that smiley face up there). He is a space alien and has personally blown away 70% of the moon. He gives the earth nine months (until March, in the anime) to have this classroom of slackers and losers try and assassinate him or it’s bye-bye big blue marble. It’s a lot harder that you think.

The series just dropped us into things with a rather thin background in regards to the initial events, and I was hoping the OVA would be a kind of Episode #0 or #0.5, to pre-explain things better, but no such luck. It is, in fact, a compilation of Episodes # 7 and #8, but with no real rhyme or reason. I mean, I can WATCH Episodes #7 and #8 in full and get what I need and not have this Cliff Notes version trotted out. OK, the art is a little different and the version I saw used an alternate font for the subtitles, and there is a slightly new take on things, but, overall, it’s those two episodes done again. And since this OVA came out just after #8 was released, it’s even more perplexing. And if you just decided to grab the OVA, then you are tremendously behind the curve, as you are, in effect, coming in about mid-season and no amount of catch-up is going to help. (more…)

Part of the problem with any art form (movies, music, anime, painting, books, graffiti at the bus stop) is that there is so much already out there and so much more coming through, it is very easy to miss or overlook or just be oblivious to whatever else is out there and you cruise right on past things. There are a lot of really good shows out there, but you may not have heard of them or the capsule description doesn’t really capture the flavor of the show.

As part of an on-going series, I want to draw your attention to these overlooked gems and suggest that you take some time out of your busy day (there is no need to see a replay on the NFL Network of a game between the Patriots and the Falcons played in Week 13 of 1992) and check them out, which brings me to my first offering, “Gunslinger Girl”.

It is interesting in that it is fully set it Italy, something that you rarely see in anime. We begin with the Social Welfare Agency (or “the Agency”), ostensibly a charitable institution sponsored by the Italian Government. While the Agency professes to aid the rehabilitation of the physically injured, it is actually a military organization. It is composed of two independent branches: Public Safety, its surveillance and intelligence-gathering division, and Special Ops, the anti-terrorist division. (more…)

The big problem that I have with anime movies is that I never get a real chance to see them in the theaters. With the exception of a lot (but not all) of Studio Ghibli, I would assume the bulk of these offerings never leave the Land of the Rising Sun. On those rare occasions that they do, it is a really limited release over the course of one weekend, in a movie theater that the bus lines don’t get to, at an outrageous ticket price (I had a chance to see “The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya” like this, but the tickets were $20 each!) and with a grand total of five showings.

Thus, when I do encounter a movie, I give it a look-see, and I will potentially not get another shot at a look-see. This means it is pot luck at best. Like the Mystery Bag, whatever is whatever. I had a chance to see “Rakuen Tsuihou” (“Expelled from Paradise”), a film I heard nothing about at all, even though it has been out in the US for theoretically five months.

It is the future. Most anime is about the future. Angela Balzac is an agent at the space station DEVA, whose inhabitants have no physical bodies, their minds digitized and processed into a virtual reality environment. She has a day off and is ‘lounging’ at the ‘beach’ on a ‘wonderful day’. Seriously, if this is all VR, it’s not much different than the Matrix, right? Anyway, after some Village People clone tries to hit on her, the beach scene deteriorates, as they have been hacked by some initially unknown entity. (more…)

I wonder what it takes for an anime film to get decent distribution in the US. I did see “Ponyo” and “The Wind Rises” in the theaters, but how many others have slid below the radar? I’m not even seeing ads taken out in the papers or things getting mentioned, so I have to wait for alternate distribution to find out about them at all and then get a chance to see the latest film releases. “When Marnie was There” (or “Marnie of the Memories”) came out last July and could, potentially, be the last film from Studio Ghibli, as they are ‘on hiatus’, but with the retirement of Miyazaki, their future is vague.

On to the film. I am uncertain when the film takes place, but it could be the late 60s or early 70s. Anna Sasaki (left) is a 12-year-old girl who lives in Sapporo with foster parents, Yoriko and her husband. Anna’s mom and dad died in a car accident and Grandma passed away a couple of years earlier, so there is no one for her. One day at school, she collapses from an asthma attack, so her parents send her to spend the summer with Setsu and Kiyomasa Oiwa, relatives of Yoriko, in Kushino, a rural seaside town, where the air is clear. (OK, we will ignore the fact that asthma isn’t tuberculosis). (more…)

Now, I really liked “Amagi Brilliant Park”, a series about characters from another world who need to generate positive energy to live here in our dimension (go check the review). What I enjoyed about the three-run OVA is the scratch style that they used, as evidenced by that piece of junk up there. As if it was slapped together in record time, the shows are depending more on the stories they tell and the predicaments everyone gets into than the actual art approach, but it works quite well for them. I feel if they used the original artwork, it would actually hurt these throw-away bits. (more…)