Now, I was not drawn to this anime by the cover of the first manga, which is rather provocative, but by a line I saw when they were advertising it: “Do you remember your first love? She remembers you!” “Ai Yori Aoshi” (“Bluer than Indigo”) tells the story of Kaoru Hanabishi (can you find him up there. I’ll wait a moment.)

He appears to be an average university student, but in reality, he’s the eldest son of Yūji Hanabishi, the head of the Hanabishi Zaibatsu, and was set to take over the zaibatsu (family-controlled business conglomerates) after his father retired. His mother, Kumi Honjō, and his father never married, making life difficult for both him and his mother. Kaoru’s father died when he was five years old. Since then, Yūji’s grandfather, Gen’ichiro Hanabishi, took Kaoru under his wing and began educating him for the eventual succession. Yet Kaoru never felt at home in the Hanabishi family and left to live alone in self-imposed exile after his mother died. Day by day he felt alone, thinking that he was living life with no reason pushing him on.

One day, he espies a young maiden in the Ikebukuro subway station (and, funny, we do not bump into any of the Durarara!! characters). She is very out of place, dressed in a kimono when there is no celebration afoot (and I am sure you can track HER down easily). She has broken the strap on her zori and Kaoru repairs it. She has come to Tokyo, looking for a long-lost love and he agrees to help her find him. Quel dommage, the address she has is a vacant lot and it starts to rain. Feeling for her, he takes her to his crappy student apartment and learns that she is Aoi Sakuraba. Not only does he know her, they were betrothed to be married, until he walked away from it all. (more…)

If Kyo is the cat who is Tohru holding? 0__0

I hate this…no wait, actually this is the greatest thing ever.

Seriously why couldn’t I stand this the first time around?

Ever go from hating to loving something? It happens to me a lot when I hear a song I dislike too many times and it grows on me, but rarely do I find this happening with television. However, Fruits Basket is an exception to this rule. It was one of the first anime I watched after my initial induction into anime. I’d decided that I wanted to watch something light hearted after watching a lot of shows with dark storylines. So I did a little research and Fruits Basket was a good choice. It was comedic and had romance, but there was also a really unique and fascinating story I could get into. People turning into animals when they hug the opposite sex? That’s so interesting!
So I started up good ol’ Netflix…and was really turned off by the show by the time I’d hit episode 3 or 4. By the end I was hating it. It was just THAT bad. Initially I gave the show a 3/10.

Now I give the show a 7/10.

In case you don’t know, recently orphaned Tohru Honda is living on her own in the woods until she finds herself in the house of the Sohma family. This family possesses an ancient curse- whenever they hug a member of the opposite sex they turn into a member of the Chinese zodiac. Tohru is given the opportunity to live with the Sohma family as their housekeeper. Soon she befriends the two handsome students who live there. (more…)

Now, when you get into supernatural, paranormal, other-worldly shows, you tend to run into the same folks. Much like going to the local anime convention year after year, it’s more or less the usual suspects. So, it’s always zombies, werewolves, vampires and ghosts. When this show came around, I treated this with a bit of scorn. I mean, a Neko Guy? Or are you trying to save a few yen using a cut-your-hair-at-home system? And she’s a zombie? Well, how……original.

OK, back to the front.

Chihiro Furuya is the cat guy with a keen interest in zombies, collecting zombie-related videogames, film and manga, and even to the point of desiring to “kiss a zombie girl”. Did I say “keen”? This guy is an otaku when it comes to this passion. Following the death of his pet cat, Bābu, he attempts to revive it using an old manuscript, which describes the process of creating a potion for resurrection. Now, his grandfather, who suffers from terrible dementia, seems to have some knowledge of this, but getting him in rare lucid moments is, well, rare to have him really explain things, as he may have written this back in his youth.

At this time, Furuya encounters a girl named Rea Sanka, who has run away from home. Now, Daddy Dearest is like the 8^th richest man in all of the Far East and has a major fetish about Sanka. No one is allowed to get close to her, so, no friends, no folks over, no parties, no nothing. In fact, on her birthday, daddy takes nude shots of her, as he has for all these years. They aren’t pervy per se, not like some Playboy photo shoot, but it’s creepy nonetheless, as Sanka has grown into a fine woman.

Wanting to die and leave her miserable world all behind, she attempts to commit suicide and drinks a sample of the “resurrection” potion which is created from the poisonous Hydrangea macrophylla flower, although this fails to kill her. Following an argument with her father, she falls from a cliff by accident and dies; a terrible chest wound the cause of her demise (as you can see by her scar). (more…)

I had planned on doing this review some time back, when this show reached 52 episodes, but it is now another three months beyond that, but better late than never…although I bet all the tasty hors d’oeuvres have been devoured, as I came late. Again.

The only thing that I am not a big fan of, aside from giant fighting robot shows, is long-run shows. Rare is the show that can keep up both interest and plot over the course of a year, especially since you lurch from arc to arc. This show does not succeed all the time (there is a major lag in the middle) but it has kept my interest better than most.

Toriko is that criminal in the center (well, I call him that, as he wears that orange jumpsuit all the time; like Naruto, but with a far better personality). He is one of the four Gourmet Kings in this world that they live (the other two are shown up there: Coco is in black and Sunny has the rainbow hair). They specialize in the acquisition of rare ingredients and animals. Toriko’s dream: to find the most precious foods in the world and create the Ultimate Dinner Menu. As one of the most skilled hunters in the world, he is regularly hired by restaurants and the rich to seek out new ingredients and rare animals. A man with inhuman ability, he utilizes his incredible strength and knowledge of the animal kingdom to capture ferocious, evasive, and rare beasts to further his ultimate goal.

He is paired with a pretty decent chef, Komatsu, that weak looking guy under Sunny’s hair. Everything Toriko is, Komatsu is not. Komatsu is weak, timid, uncertain of himself and lacking confidence. But, in the kitchen, he is really good. Together, they go on a series of quests to make this world a better place for food and eating. (more…)

Now, I have a problem with gender-bender shows. I sometimes feel it is a way to do some kind of psycho-sexual profiling to determine that you would much prefer the company of goats because I happen to like this or that or the other thing. (Don’t laugh; I allowed myself to get one of these profiles in a class and the examiner felt I had the potential to be a molester or rapist. I certainly didn’t get a lot of dates after that!)

I was drawn to this show (which translates out to “The Maidens Are Falling for Me”; also known as “Otoboku”) because I really liked the initial idea:

Mizuho Miyanokouji is your typical male anime dweeb: nothing too flashy, but nothing too interesting. His grandfather passed away and made both a stipulation and provisions in his will for our young charge to attend and graduate from Seio Academy, as Mizuho’s own mother graduated from this very institution. This is great, as this guy would have problems getting back into grade school.

However, complications arise (and you ALL saw this coming). In the intervening years, the academy has now become a girls-only school. Determined to get an education, he decides to cross-dress. Now, he has a natural disposition to looking androgynous, so it makes the transitions a bit easier, although one of his female friends, Mariya Mikado, who also attends the academy, assists in these matters. (Mizuho is the perplexed one in the center; Mariya is winking at us).

Sion Jujo, another classmate, tumbles pretty quick to the fact as to what is going on, but decides to remain silent (she is just off Mizuho’s right shoulder). Now, there is nothing prurient in all of this. It’s not like they are engaging in illicit activities in hiding the truth. I think it is done more to put one over on the teachers. (more…)

The Japanese title for this is…(take a deep breath…) “Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai”, which means “I Have Few Friends”, but we know it better as “Haganai”. Look, it’s another school-based anime! How original! And we have a new transfer student! Doubly original! And he’s having troulbes fitting it! We hit the trifecta!

OK, let’s put the snarkiness aside. Kodaka Hasegawa (the guy in the middle) is a recent transfer student to St. Chronica’s Academy, a Catholic high school. As with every other school he has ever attended, he finds it difficult to make friends there because of his naturally-blond hair (inherited from his deceased English mother) and fierce-looking eyes, which make him look threatening.

While doing something on campus, Kodaka comes across the equally solitary and highly abrasive Yozora Mikazuki (the one to his right) while she converses with her imaginary friend, Tomo. Realizing that neither of them have any friends or social skills, they decide that the best way to improve their situation is to form a club, The Neighbor’s Club, intended to make friends and learn social skills.

They slowly start to acquire members, as these folks are also social misfits for one reason or another:

Sena Kashiwazaki, that busty blonde up there. She has a double whammy: she is rich and her mother is the school’s head teacher, so there is a seething arrogance about her and no one wants to be her friend.
(more…)

Animes have been known for pushing the envelope, and this one is no exception, except that it is so thoroughly honest about one man’s perversion. But when you dress like that, well, what did you REALLY expect? I mean, did you really expect that outfit to contain all your feminine charms? Did you honestly expect that a man who wears panties on his head is not going to blow a gasket or two? Adding to this is the Naïve Factor and this show serves it up with two hot, heaping scoops.

Oh, for those who don’t know, the Naïve Factor is that the woman in question has absolutely NO IDEA that they are sexy. For guys, you have read the comments that accompany the photos in any girly magazine or see the picture and she is totally amazed that she possesses the prodigious protuberances, as if she had never noticed them before! Yeah, it’s kinda like that in the show.

Tomoki Sakurai (that Chibi, panty-on-head wearing guy in the center) is a teenage guy whose motto is “Peace and quiet is the best”, but he finds it difficult when he has to put up with Sohara Mitsuki, his next door neighbor with a killer karate chop (not seen up there); Eishiro Sugata, an eccentric pseudo-scientist bent on discovering the “New World” (not seen either); and Mikako Satsukitane, a sadistic Student Council President (also not seen).

One day, while he was witnessing a strange anomaly in the sky, an UMA (Unidentified Mysterious Animal) crash-lands nearby. Tomoki discovers what fell from the sky is a winged female humanoid named Ikaros, (white wings to the right) who soon declares herself to be Tomoki’s servant. From then on, more creatures known as “Angeloids” arrive, and with this, he finds himself losing his peace and quiet, but at the same time finds pleasant things the Angeloids bring him. (more…)

Seldom do you see a character who is so totally amoralistic and every time he gets his butt handed to him (which is like, oh, every episode), you know that he fully earned his come-uppance, but you also find yourself cheering him on. Kanta Mizuno (our garbed hero in the center) is easily one of the three greatest perverts in anime history, and that is saying a lot. He is a mercenary, a ‘hero for hire’ and his ability to complete his job, in the face of insurmountable obstacles, has earned him the reputation of being good at what he does. But he’s still a loathsome punk and nobody likes him. If they found him face down in the desert, they would go through his pockets for loose change, then roll him over so the sun could bake his butt but good!

Japan has been reduced to a vast wasteland (referred to as “The Great Kanto Desert”), where people scratch out a meager living. Some cataclysmic event has triggered this ‘nuclear summer’ (for want of a better term), as ruined cities and relics from another time can be found. Kanta tries to do his job in this cauldron of hopelessness, but he has two distractions.

The first is Junko Asagiri (the vixen on the left). Now, you can’t see it here, but she has enormous breasts that Desert Punk is always making lewd and crude reference to and drifting into his salacious fantasies about them. Junko is no fool and uses those sand dunes of hers to manipulate the Punk to do her bidding during missions, then absconds with the rewards, leaving him high and dry. (more…)

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…)

“Ano Natsu de Matteru” (or “Waiting in the Summer”) is a different approach to the ‘fish out of water’ tale. It almost succeeds, but the last two episodes get hard to take.

Kaito Kirishima (number 4 from left) is a movie maniac, constantly lugging around an 8mm camera from his grandfather (Film? We are talking actual film?). One night, while filming something, he sees a blue light and thinks he was injured. The next day,  Ichika Takatsuki (the redhead), shows up in his class. He discovers that she has no place to live and offers her room at his house, as Kaito’s sister will be gone for three months (like, all summer?)

We learn that Ichika is a space alien, bent on trying to find something on this planet, aided by Rinon (that odd creature at the far right).

The others in the entourage are, left to right:

Mio Kitahara. She has feelings for Tetsuro, but wants to help him along in his quest.

Tetsuro Ishigaki. He has feelings for Kanna, but knows how she feels about Kaito, so he keeps it all hidden

Kanna Tanigawa.  She has had a crush on Kaito for some time, but, despite being outgoing, has never really confessed it to him.

Remon Yamano. This one is generally cold towards people, but harbors a secret that is revealed in the last two episodes. (more…)