This is one strange fish of a show, in the fact I think it is intentionally designed not to make any sense. “World Conquest Zvezda Plot” (“Sekai Seifuku: Bōryaku no Zvezda”) confuses you right from the start, as the entire series is told as a giant flashback.
We are greeted with a scene of absolute destruction and devastation. Is anyone left alive? Is the Starbucks razed? A lone figure wanders the shattered landscape, pondering the nature of world conquest and the people who do it. We are then transported back in time, to when things were sunny and clean and colorful and it all worked (sort of). Oh, and there IS a Starbucks.
Asuta Jimon (he’s that S&M looking type, second from left) has run away or been thrown out of his house by his father. As he walks the streets, he is told to get inside fast, as marshal law is being declared. He flees the police and ducks into an alley, where he meets Kate Hoshimiya, (dead center) who is looking for her doll (yeah, that hideous pink bunny. Those are pointed teeth). She also calls herself Lady Venera, the leader of Zvezda, an organization with its eyes on world conquest. Asuta is eventually cornered by the military, but is rescued by Kate, who welcomes him to her group. (more…)
The title for this show is a tad misleading, in that “Blue Exorcist” does not approach exorcism as you think it should. Sure, these folks get rid of demons, but they do not necessarily possess people as much as they are free-form rovers that cross over and need to be sent off to the afterlife.
We start off the show with Rin and Yukio Okumura (second from left and far right, both in front row) and their overseer Father Shiro Fujimoto (the guy with the cross eyeglass danglers). They learn that they are both the son of Satan, but it appears that Rin inherited all the power. Father is an exorcist and has been taking care of them since they were born. Well, since they are both now teens, they get those yearnings and itches…..to be on their own! What did you think I meant, pervert? However, Rin rebels against Father at a bad time and Father gets possessed by Satan, who is looking for an earthly vessel. Father takes care of that matter, but not in the best way for everyone involved.
It is determined that Rin and Yukio should go to True Cross Academy, to learn how to become a real exorcist. The school is taken care of by Chairman Mephisto Pheles (that really happy dude in the back row), but he’s a bit of a jerk. That’s the biggest problem with the series: everyone is a caliber of jerk. In any case, he takes a special exorcist course, where he meets other people who want to become exorcists. The rest of the classmates, from left to right are (more…)
“Black Lagoon” is really a fine series, but understand that it is grim and gritty and violent and unrelenting, reminding me of series like “Gantz” and “Deadman Wonderland”, only not as graphic with the violence or destruction, but still with disturbing concepts and approaches.
Our ‘hero’ (for lack of a better term; this anime is like “Payback”, where everyone is horrible, just varying degrees of it) is Rokuro Okajima, the decent-looking one up there. He works for the Asahi Company, who sent him out on a ‘project’. The ship he was on got hijacked and he was taken hostage, but the company wrote him off, not willing to do anything to save him. Since his options were to either sleep with the fishes or boat over them, he chose the latter and made “Black Lagoon” a quartet.
Yes, they are all mercenary pirates who will do anything for a buck and they prove their mettle. The rest of the company consists of (left to right) Benny (Lagoon Company’s mechanic, computer specialist, and researcher. He also functions as the Lagoon’s driver), Revy (Rebecca Lee, chief killer and trigger girl) and Dutch (CEO, for want of a better term and ex-Marine). They operate out of the Asian city of Roanapur, a completely lawless and corrupt city, where anything can be obtained for a price and the cops appear to act more as clean-up than clean-out. (more…)
It seems to be some kind of unwritten law that if you have a fan-service heavy romantic comedy, you need to follow it up with a fan-service heavy OVA.
When “Maken-Ki” completed its first season, they had these rather silly ‘exercise’ videos as their OVA, which were nothing more than a thin excuse to look up skirts, down blouses and notice cleavage.
The second season of “Maken-Ki” abandoned everything from the first season to let us drool over the very athletic and toned ladies. The OVA discards anything like ‘plot’ and ‘story’ and ‘character development’ to let us now gaze upon their toplessness.
Yes, dude, I am talking NO errant clouds of steam, NO bizarre shafts of light. NO black bars of despair. You get to see their mighty mounds as if you are nose to nose with them. One shot of them looked like a view of the Grant Teton (that’s a French term; go look it up and see what I mean). And it’s RIGHT THERE! And the ladies don’t seem to mind at all, as they coo and purr and make other odd sounds. (more…)
This is one odd fish series, and not just because it is estrogen heavy, but how we embrace that girl assassins are cute and charming….right up until they kill you dead
Welcome to Myojo Academy, one of those massive educational edifices, where you can attend here from pre-school to high school graduation. “Riddle Story of Devil” (“Akuma no Riddle”) looks at the infamous Black Class, where thirteen girls are enrolled in it. Twelve of them are assassins; the 13th is the intended victim, Ichinose Haru (second from left, for a quick reference). Certain protocols have to be adhered to in regards to the job, but, if any one of them succeeds, they will be granted any wish they desire. However, if they fail, they are expelled from the class. One of the assassins, Azuma Tokaku (far left), develops feelings for Haru and defects to her side, resolving to protect her from the other assassins.
Now, if you are going to be an assassin, it helps not to have morals or scruples or regrets and these ladies are the most amoralistic bunch of psychotic killers to ever populate a classroom. Ahh, but don’t think that Haru is all sunshine and light, either. As the series progresses, we learn all of their dark secrets and it makes one wonder if any of them deserve to live. And here is where the oddity comes in: do they actually die? (more…)
This is a rather odd series for me, on a variety of levels, in that it could be seen as a giant fighting robot show that I like. Yeah, call “60 Minutes” on this.
“Knights of Sidonia” is set in the future. It has been one millennia since the Earth was destroyed by these massive space slugs called The Gauna (and please, do NOT mispronounce it as the Guano, OK? Already been there). Maybe they are more like squid, with their tentacles and such. People fled in these enormous space ships, which look like a derringer barrel shoved though a piece of pumice. Look, when you are in a hurry to leave, niceties like beauty get in the way of things. Well, quite a lot happens in 1000 years, so the population is maintained via cloning. Aside from getting rid of having boring sex, it allows one to tinker with the genetic structure, so a lot of these folks have human photosynthesis (oh, and immortality, but that’s not for you to worry about).
Into this mix comes Nagate Tanikaze (smack in the middle), who has lived in the underground layer of Sidonia since birth, raised by his grandfather. Since he is all by himself, for amusement he trains himself in an old Guardian pilot simulator every day, eventually mastering it. His grandfather’s death forces him to the surface to steal food and whatnot, but he is eventually caught. He is a genuine throwback and no one knows what to do with him. (more…)
“Chaika, the Coffin Princess” is one of the odder journey shows I have encountered. Sure, it just drops you into the action and you have to figure things out on the fly, but the initial idea is strange indeed.
Chaika Trabant’s father was once the ruler of the Gaz Empire. OK, more of a tyrant, who exuded great and dangerous powers. When he was killed (as is the fate of all despots), his body was hacked apart and relics given to the Eight Great Heroes who overthrew him. Yeah, what a nice souvenir: the eyeballs of a dreaded ruler. Try to make the rest of the castle decorating work with a trinket along those lines.
Chaika has one wish: to gather up all the pieces and give Daddy a proper burial. Lots of luck with that! You see, even in death, these relics (do you really want me to call them body parts?) still retain that great power and those who now rule the land do not want this to occur, as a new and greater evil can arise from this Corpse of Evil (which is a great name for a rock band). (more…)
Part of the problem with magic shows is that everything is eventually going to link back to ‘Harry Potter’, and “Witch Craft Works” does have some touch-and-go moments to Harry, but it can’t fully commit to what it wants to be.
Takamiya Honoka is a regular student at Tōgetsu High School. He is a standard, typical anime male, in the fact that not only is he clueless, he pines on endlessly for the Most Popular Girl in the School. He also lacks the spunk or the desire or the lead in his pencil to speak with her. The person in question is Kagari Ayaka, the school’s “Princess”. She is everything you want your girlfriend to be: she’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s adored, she’s tall and (although you can’t see it in this shot), build like a brick chicken house. They have never spoken to each other and any small interaction between them immediately results in her fan club beating him for his insolence.
One day he is attacked by a quintet of oddly-dressed girls called the Tower Witches, who had been covertly making attempts on him. However, the attack is thwarted by Ayaka, who turns out to be a Workshop Witch and has been protecting Honoka for quite some time. No longer having to hide her mission, Ayaka decides to become friendlier with him, though their relationship earns Honoka the ire of a lot of his class mates. She also decides that he needs to become her apprentice so he can at least learn how to defend himself from these almost daily assaults. (more…)
Now, let’s drop the pretense. “I Wanna Be the Strongest in the World” is just a really thin excuse to show off female wrestlers and their body parts. The plot of the original story was practically transparent but the OVA drops everything.
There may be more than three shorts I ran across (about five minutes each), but you get to see all that you want to see.
Somewhere in the bowels of the Berserk Gym is a special room, a room filled with mud, so the ladies can learn all there is to know about mud wrestling. Is this an Olympic event or is Hooters hiring? So the ladies learn that mud is slippery and, in trying to acclimate themselves as to what to do, costume tops gets pulled down and the boobies come out, unfettered and uncensored. There is squealing and not caring that one is topless amid other topless ladies as we slop about and slide through and roll hither and thither. (more…)
“Maken-Ki Two” is another series that completely abandoned its first season to put out a second season that bears almost no resemblance to its first season.
It was bad enough that the ladies in Maken-Ki are, for the most part, very bounteous and that the boobs got in the way of things. The plot was, in some form, Takeru Ohyama’s arrival at Tenbi Academy to learn how to hone his special powers. At the end of the first season, they defeated a shadow group, but there was the threat that they would be back, so Takeru has to learn to get stronger and refine his abilities.
The second season has thrown that all aside. I will absolutely kill off the first episode, but the rest of the tales that follow aren’t much better or different.
Tenbi is an educational institution that people with these ‘maken’ powers go to, so they can how to properly control them. It’s like Hogwarts, but without dragons. However, some of the students decide to use their powers for mischief and mayhem. To combat this, the Disciplinary Committee is formed. It consists of nine students; two guys and seven ladies and six of the ladies are ‘out there’ Look at the artwork above. ALL of those ladies are in the series. (more…)
