This is a show that got me major league ticked off as well. Looks, it’s barely the start of the new year and I don’t think anything is going to match the lever of outrage I feel about this series “Alice in Borderland”, because I feel cheated, cheated, cheated!

I mean, I had not seen a show with such an interesting plot and development since “Btooom!”, as it has the same caliber of idea, but since the dang thing only goes three episodes, what a total rip! I wanted a whole run, not a mere glancing at the menu and then asked to leave.

OK, the story, as it is, begins with these three slacker friends (left to right):

Daikichi Karube
Chōuta Segawa
Ryōhei Arisu

For some odd reason, they appear to be hanging around a deserted subway stop about 2 am. They have no place to go and all day to get there, so they are just chewing the fat. Arisu makes the comment that he’d like to go somewhere far away and not have to do anything and his pals agree. He has problems with his intolerable everyday life and yearns for something more, potentially something more interesting and daring. Suddenly, there is a fireworks show, which is quite strange. The explosions appear to be coming closer and closer and then……. (more…)

When I started doing these Short Run reviews, I asked myself “When is an OVA not an OVA?” After a couple of years, I came up with an answer that I can work with. It is an OVA if there is a full show that it can be tethered to. So, when “Attack on Titan” or “Sword Art Online” have their little things, those are OVAs, as there is a show that it can be tied to. If it is something like “Eiken” or “Jungre de Ikou”, it is a short run series, as there was no show for it to be based from and is a stand-alone short run.

Now, with all that being said, I comment about this short-run item, “Holy Knight”. It comes in at a mere two episodes but leaves a lot on the table, kind of like going to an All-you-can-eat smorgasbord and then, after getting all of it to your table, you get up and get out after one bite. What? You’re leaving that all behind? What gives? What gives, indeed.

The tale starts out simple enough. An entire village is killed off, save for the child, Lilith Kishimoto. There is something odd or special about these farm folk, thus triggering their massacre. Here’s where the first problem occurs. The raid appears to have taken place during mediaeval times, as we are wielding swords and wearing armor. When Lilith grows up, in what appears to be a span of 10 years, it is certainly the modern times, with cell phones and airplanes and Justin Bieber posters. Lilith has grown into the fine woman you see before you, but she has a task. This is a three part task. I can only tell you the first part, as the other parts are major plot points. (more…)

When the first season of “Psycho-Pass” came out, I enjoyed it, as it was a crime drama with a hinting of horror. When the second season came out, it was now a horror show, with a hinting of a crime drama. That changed the pitch of the show…..and badly.

I think it’s been about two years since the incidents of the last season (can’t tell for certain) and the cast has changed and been added to. The new line up, from left to right, consists of:
Nobuchika Ginoza (was an Inspector, now an Enforcer), Sho Hinakawa (new this year, Enforcer), Joji Saiga (seen last year, now being ‘rehabilitated’), Akane Tsunemori (now head of Division One), Shion Karanomori (another holdover, she is Data Analysis), Mika Shimotsuki (was a student last season, now an Inspector), Yayoi Kunizuka (another Enforcer holdover from last season) and Sakuya Togane (new Enforcer and very cloistered).

The show came in with a great premise: What if you could keep you hue clear? You see, the Sibyl System rates a person by the color of their hue (or stress level). If it goes over 100, you are to be taken in to custody for ‘rehabilitation’. If it goes over 200, the only cure for that is death, as you are a real latent criminal. The Dominator, that gun they possess, can rate a person’s hue and will allow you to shoot it. If the hue is below 100, it will not let you fire it. But you, as an Inspector, can override the gun’s setting and allow you to stun the person, not kill them. For some odd reason, that aspect is absent, so we are treated to a lot of people being killed. (more…)

Being a demon is tough and when you are a territory boss in the East Demon World, it’s even tougher. In “Blood Lad”, Staz Charlie Blood is the descendant of a noble vampire, and his father would go to the human world to suck blood. Not Staz. If he went to the human world, it’s off to Akihabara for the latest in video games, animes and figures. However, one day, he meets Fuyumi Yanagi, a regular old-fashioned girl who wandered into Demon World through a portal that opened in her bedroom.

His staff wants to suck her blood; he wants to impress her with his ‘knowledge’ of human things (thus the bizarre get-up he has on). Sadly, this little tryst is broken up when a neighboring demon boss is set on taking Staz’ territory and unleashes some hideous beasts. Staz manages to defeat all of them….but one, who manages to get to his apartment and devour Yanagi, turning her into a ghost. Since this is the first girl Staz has ever met and seen really close up, he vows to do whatever it takes to make her human once again. (more…)

Although ostensibly a school romantic comedy, it is the setting that makes it a bit different from your regular school animes.

“Silver Spoon” tells the story of Yugo Hachiken (the guy in glasses). He comes from Sapporo, but had no real idea what he wants to become. He also wanted to get away from a demanding father and a slacker brother, so he enrolls in Ezo Agricultural High School. He is the only one there without a goal, a purpose or a reason to be at this school, as everyone else is involved in some aspect of agriculture (dairy, livestock, horse racing, cheese making and the like).

He becomes tops in the class overall, as he excels in the regular stuff (math, history, writing), but he bites mightily when it comes to the other aspects of the school, like the agricultural part. I hope he didn’t miss that ‘agricultural’ is part of the school’s name. His other classmates are: (more…)

Confession time! I bailed on this show after three episodes. Yes, horror is not a genre I go chasing after and the title of the show, “Corpse Party: Tortured Souls”, certainly should have been enough of a tip-off, but I decided to try it out anyway. It was a dismal failure for me. Then I learned it was four shows and an OVA so I went back in to tough it out.

Now, this entire crew is not in the full run of the show, but it offered a picture of the nine players in it for the anime, and that is the grouping in the middle. We are talking about the girl in the red dress lying down, the two atop her, then we move to the right another seven. Shorty and to the left, Red Book and to the right might be in the manga or the video game, but I didn’t research that far.

We are at Kisaragi Academy and it has been a very successful school festival. The seven students are, left to right: Ayumi Shinozaki, Sekio Shinohara, Satoshi Mochida, Satoshi’s younger sister, Yuki, Naomi Nakashima, Yoshiki Kishinuma, Mayu Suzumoto, Sakutaro Morishigem and class assistant homeroom teacher Ms. Yui Shishido. We also have to include that one in the red dress, Sachiko Shinozaki, as well (note that she doesn’t cast a reflection. Shhhhh!) (more…)

I debated whether to consider this a short-run series. It comes in at 11 shows, but that last one is a kind of recap, clip show, overview of things and seems more like a send-off than a real episode, although I do consider series runs of 11 or less a short-run. We’ll let you decide.

This is a very odd show. Odd in the sense that every character in this show is quite intelligent, learned, educated and knowledgeable on a variety of issues. Because of that, the show can get a little prolix and overly scholastic, as you learn the history of cocktails, the stories behind many famous drinks and what it is a bartender really does.

We are in the Ginza, a very popular area of Tokyo, where all sorts of bars and watering holes exist. But there is a very hard to find one, Eden Hall, where you go to for more than a mere libation, but a chance to reflect upon your life and where you want it to go. The man behind the bar, Ryū Sasakura, is a bartending prodigy who is said to mix the best concoctions anyone has ever tasted. But that is because he knows what it is you really need before you do and it isn’t merely booze, but both a tonic to revive and a statement to bring your life into focus.

In the 1980s, Tommy Shaw released a popular song called “Girls with Guns”. Does anyone remember the song? Does anyone remember Tommy Shaw? Does anyone remember the 80s? Am I that old?

Anyway, “Upotte!” takes place at a school known as Seishou Academy. Unlike your average school, all the students are actually anthropomorphized guns, training to one day become a useful weapon, and is divided up into submachine guns (elementary school), assault rifles (middle school) and battle rifles (high school) classes. All students in Seishou train to shoot their target (literally) using live ammunition.

Our four middle-school heroines (Riflettes? Assaultines? Armamentrix? Can you be sexist towards a weapon?) are, from left to right, starting with the bun head, Sig, who is a Swiss SG 550. She is an excellent shot, but can be a bit diffident. The blonde is Ichiroku, a kind of leader, as the rest look up to her, but she would say otherwise. She is the American M16A4 assault rifle and is highly photogenic, appearing on the covers on numerous magazines.

The taupe-haired beauty, brandishing the weapon is Eru and is the lemon of the lot, despite her determined attitude. She is a British L85A1 assault rifle. Shy and clumsy, she has an unreliable nature and the habit of breaking a lot just like her namesake gun. (The brown-tressed girl with the blue ribbons is just a classmate or ‘background people’. Pay her no heed). The last is Funco, the main lead of this show. She is a BelgianFN FNC, who is often displeased to be nicknamed Funco. As the real FNC has a skeleton stock, she wears a thong instead of panties, much to her embarrassment and occasional anger. (more…)

One feature of animes is that they sometimes drop you right into a show, so you may spend the first episode or two playing catch-up to figure out what is REALLY going on here. “Black Rock Shooter” is that kind of show, as it takes you a bit of time to realize that we are dealing with the reality of two alternate, but connected, lands, but it focuses around Black Rock Shooter, a mysterious black haired girl who possesses a burning blue eye and a powerful cannon that can shoot rocks at high speed.

Mato Kuroi is starting school and tries to befriend Yomi Takanashi, who is also new to the school. However, there is a problem and that is Kagari Izuriha, a friend of Yomi who is using an accident to make Yomi her emotional slave, preventing her from having friends and being cruel to anyone Yomi brings into the house.

They are connected by this very strange and depressing book “The Little Bird of Many Colors”, which acts as a metaphor for things that happen and occur, but it’s very obvious. What you learn is that the land of Black Rock Shooter is where the black persona and dark emotions of the people in the normal world go to fight it out. (more…)

I have an assumption that with a short-run show, since you are not really coming back to anything and you are going to crash and burn somewhere on the journey, you can go all out and leave only destruction in your wake. It’s just that the opportunity to see these kinds of shows are limited and if you do not know what to look for (or where to find it) a lot of stuff gets passed over. And since many channels are not going to take on a four- or six-segment show, it behooves you to find it. Oh, and this one is only two episodes, so you are really on your own to try and get to it.

“Puni Puni Poemy” is brought to you by the same maniacs that delivered “Excel Saga”. (In fact, in one Excel episode, they make reference to this show). It has all the hallmarks one sees in a short run: perversity, insanity, pointlessness, massive fan service and a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude. In this show, it works, but you will be scratching your head a lot. And it is an intentional two episodes. Think of one of those inverted roller coaster, but with no safety equipment. It’s all up to you to hang on. (more…)