OK, I was drawn to this series by the title: “The ‘Hentai’ Prince and the Stony Cat”. Well, I jumped on “Panty and Stocking” and “Chu-Bra!” and I found those very entertaining shows, so why not this one?

This revolves around Yokodera Yota, a second-year high school student. He has a reputation on campus as being the biggest pervert around, but he has a problem: he cannot express his emotions well. One day, a good friend of him comes up to him and unloads all of his smut collection on him, as he has been cleaned of his impure thoughts. All he did was make an offering to the stone cat statue at the base of a tree on the high peak in town. What it does it takes what you no longer want and gives it to someone in greater need of it.

As he goes up there to make his offering of a body pillow, wishing to be more open with his emotions, a girl comes up to him, Tsukiko Tsutsukakushi, and makes her wish of being more of an adult and not show her emotions so easily. The cat grants their wish and the next day at school is a total disaster. He cannot tell a lie; she cannot feel anything. They work together to try and find who received their tokens and try to get it back so they can be who they once were, as who they are now is nerve-wracking. (more…)

I have noticed, as of late, a trend in anime shows to have what I call the “Join a Club” movement. These are shows where the person in question is forced or compelled or enticed or blackmailed into joining a club or they will have to face some kind of dire wrath for their failure not to sign up (as you might end up in the Flower Arranging Club instead).

The “Good Job Club” tells the tale of Kyōya Shinomiya (that guy down there), who gets kidnapped by the club, as they are on the verge of losing their accreditation, owing to the problem that they do not have enough members. He makes it five and they can be saved. The sole purpose of the club is to do good deeds (or a ‘good job’) and help others, but it all seems to be observed more in the breach than in reality.

The other members of the club include:

Tamaki Kannazuki, green hair. She usually has a bag of chips with her and says she can eat anything and not get fat.
Megumi Amatsuka, with the tea pot. She is constantly making tea for everyone, but flips out if someone says she is gaining weight. (more…)

This starts out as an entry in the ‘nothing’ show category, as it is nothing more than a series of disconnected stories and tales that sometimes have no point, regaling in the strangeness that life has to offer.

When it was a manga, it was called “Regular Life”, but when it became an anime, it turned into “My Ordinary Life”, and is highly reminiscent of “Daily Life of High School Boys”, in that we see these events and you can watch the show out of order or miss an episode and you do not miss (that) much.

The tales are broken into two portions: school life and laboratory life. The school life segments involve Mai Minikami (Slot 1) who is very intelligent, but very quiet, Yuko Aioi (Slot 2) who is always forgetting to do her homework or forgetting to bring her homework if, by some rare confluence of time and space, she has managed to actually do it and Mio Naganohara (Slot 4) who is a manga artist, but doesn’t want people to know this. We see them go through the paces of being in school. The three of them have a caliber of relationship as was seen in “Kill Me, Baby” (minus the physical mayhem) but it is played for strangeness, as when Yuko is sent into the hall for not doing her homework and sees the vice-principal have a wrestling match with a deer that has come on campus. (more…)

This is a strange show, in the fact that it openly embraces the strangeness and makes no apologies for it. Whether you wish to buy into it is wholly on you.

“Tsuritama” is more than a show about fishing, although that what it may look like initially. But the fishing is more of a means to an end, as we draw these four very different people together.

Yuki Sanada (red hair) has moved to the island of Enoshima to be with his grandmother. She requires frequent relocating, which prevents Yuki from establishing any real friendships, much less the social skills necessary to initiate them. Whenever he becomes anxious, he freezes in place, unable to breathe, and he feels like he is drowning. Donning a markedly demonic expression, his anxiety becomes so pronounced that others become wary of him at his appearance. I mean, this guy looks like the absolute stinkiest smell has been presented to him. Even Freddy Kruger would recoil in fear. (more…)

This is a classic fake-out show, in that you think you are going in one direction, and then get yanked into another, oblique, area.

“The Devil is a Part-Timer” tells the tale of Dark Lord Satan, ruler of Enta Isla. It is not enough that he rules with an iron fist and a steel will; he must have it all, so he basically shoves in all the chips and does a massive four-front war on the neighbouring lands for total and complete world domination! (Enter dramatic music here.)

Initially, he gains the upper hand, as no one was fully prepared for such an onslaught. However, the tides of war turn against him and not only are his armies driven back, his own land gets invaded by all four of the lands he hoped to subdue. Rather than suffer the ignominy of defeat and the humiliation of capture, he takes his trusted general Alciel and jump through a dimensional portal. But be assured, he will return to exact his terrible vengeance and terrible it will be. However, they land in Sazazuka, Japan, to discover that this is a land of little magic and the once towering figure of Dark Lord Satan (massive biceps, eight-pack abs, thighs that could crush your skull) is now a twenty-something guy who looks a bit of a wiener. He is just another citizen of Japan and has to live as a mortal. (more…)

“Hyakka Ryōran: Samurai Bride” is actually the second season of this show, but it really didn’t matter to the telling of things. Sure, I probably should have watched season one, but I thought THIS was season one. Besides, they explain the characters well enough that I didn’t think it was necessary to watch “Samurai Girls” to get up to speed.

The series takes place in an alternate version of Japan called Great Japan, in an alternate timeline where an alternate Tokugawa shogunate remained active and has remained isolated from the rest of the world. The male lead, Muneakira Yagyu, has come back from training to find that the dojo is in such a bad financial state that the only way to save it is to turn it into a maid café. The crew of trainees/maids consists of, from left to right:

Hanzo Hattori, the one who already looks like a maid,
Yukimura Sanada, the one with the fan in her hand,
Mitsuyoshi Jubei Yagyu, red-head with the pan,
Matabei Goto, nearly pantsless,
Sen Tokugawa, brown hair at the end.
One who is missing from this line-up is Kanetsugu Naoe. (more…)

Life in Japan must be tough, as all kinds of weirdness happen to the point where the odd is the norm. We are in the future (same as it ever was) and for the past 30 years, there have been these ‘spacequakes’. The original one claimed the lives of at least 150 million people. Since then, smaller spacequakes plague the world on an irregular basis.

Shido Itsuka, a seemingly ordinary high schooler (the guy with the tie) comes across a mysterious girl at Ground Zero of a spacequake, Tohka Yatogami (purple at the far right) and learns she is one of the “Spirits” who are the real cause of these spacequakes that occur whenever they manifest themselves into the world. He also learns that his sister Kotori (the red demon at the left end) is the captain of the airship Fraxinus, crewed by the organization Ratatoskr, and is recruited to make use of his mysterious ability to seal the Spirits’ powers, thus stopping them from being a threat to mankind. However, there is a catch: to seal a Spirit, he must make her fall in love with him and kiss her. Not just any kiss, but the Kiss of True Love, Ariel….I mean….never mind. (more…)

I usually do not do reviews of shows that have been out there for a while. I am either going to merely join the praising chorus and agree with reviews that have gone before me of how fabulous of a show it is, or I will be a maverick and strike out into territory where I decry the wretched nature of this show and condemn anyone who has the temerity to like it.

Now, this is the kind of show I detest, as it has….wait for it….giant fighting robots! And the first two season of “Full Metal Panic” presents itself as hard, harsh drama as our combat hero, Sousake, has to struggle with balky machinery and his mental limitations to be able to remain in his mercenary force.

I am here to discuss the third season, “FUMOFFU”. Now, this violates every law of anime, in that you have completely changed the pitch and tone of the show, until the only thing it has in common with the previous seasons are the characters. Yet, this works and is the most consistently hilarious, off-center romantic comedy out there. Well, maybe not a real romance.

OK, let’s bring the rest of the people up to speed. (more…)

It is hard to believe that this show is already at the two-year mark with little sign of slowing down. Nor has it encountered the malaise that sometimes beset long-format shows.

Now, we have the Main Story. This is Toriko’s special training, as he is eventually going to search for GOD (no, not the guy with the beard, but the ne plus ultra ingredient that is the cat’s meow). So, he does all this strenuous training that exercises both body and mind and promotes teamwork. And Torkio’s boss, Ichiryū (who looks like a reject from the Village People) has also managed to coerce the other Heavenly Kings (you see two others up there) to also do this specialized training. There is something more going on here than just being able to go into the Lost Forest, so one had best be prepared for it.

Then, there is a sub story that all the great chefs in the world are being kidnapped. For some odd reason, Komatsu (the REALLY wimpy one up there) has not yet cracked the Chef World Top 100 list. Odd; you would think the chef who brought back Century Soup would merit something, as EVERYONE comments about it, but it’s just not good enough and since he also works for a mere Six-Star restaurant, I might as well eat something at Barney’s Beanery. (more…)

Crime has never been so odd and criminals never so odder. “Cuticle Detective Inaba” initially follows the standard crime drama trope. Our hero, Hiroshi Inaba (dead center), used to work for the police department, but got tired of being bossed around and thwarted in what he could accomplish, so he struck out on his own, as he feels he can do more without the restraints of police protocols and his annoying partner. And that’s where the standardness ends.

You have noticed the ears, right? Well, that isn’t some rockin’ hair style, our detective is a genetically-engineered werewolf and he can determine EVERYTHING about a person by tasting their hair. OK, it’s not as bad as licking drool, but still….

He will need all of his skills as a new villain has come to Tokyo, Don Valentino, a Mafia crime boss who is going to bring Japan to her knees with a daring series of bank robberies. He will amass all the money in the land…..so he can eat it. Yes, that guy IS a goat. Aiding Don is his fight is Fernando, that burlap-bagged guy who looks like a refugee from “Resident Evil”, Dr. Noah (the purple-pigtails. Yes, Woody Allen did that joke in 1967 with “Casino Royale”) and Gabriella, that scowling maiden at the far left, who is simultaneously the best and worst assassin ever. Oh, she can hit her mark….but it’s usually Don. Right between the eyes. (more…)