This is one seriously deranged offering. This is a very binary show: either you like it a lot or you hate it a lot. You also need to understand how it works BEFORE you go in (Wait! How can I understand what I am seeing before I see it? That’s what I’m here for!) Greeting from “Pop Team Epic” (“Poputepipikku”). (more…)

“Outbreak Company” has the strangest idea for an anime I have seen in some time: what if you could import your culture to another race?

Shin’ichi Kanōu (right on the midfield line) is a young otaku, almost a hikikimori, who is offered a job by Jinzaburō Matoba (not pictured; he’s a stiff, anyway) because of his vast knowledge of anime, manga and video games. Just after meeting his new employer, he is kidnapped, awakening in an alternate world with a fantasy setup. Shin’ichi then is informed that he was in fact selected by the Japanese government to help improve his country’s relations with this new world by establishing a company to spread the unique products of the Japanese culture to this raw, unexplored market.

Ah, but in a show like this, there are always dark motive and hidden agendas. A portal of some ilk has been discovered by the Japanese, which takes them to the Holy Eldant Empire. There, he is going to teach everyone about the glories of anime and manga and gal games and figurines and body pillows and whatever Akihabara has to offer….but at a stiff price. (more…)

“Binbo-gami Ga” (“God of Poverty”) is a goofy show about goofy people in goofy situations. Everyone is missing a few necessary enzymes, so all bets are off and anything goes.

We follow the life of Ichiko Sakura. She has everything: piles of money, fabulous looks, great brains, nice headlights and good fortune beyond compare. And that is her problem. She is a kind of Good Luck sponge, so she slowly siphons it off from everyone else. If your fortune was a house, she is the Empire State Building. This puts the universe out of whack, as the imbalance prevents thousands of other people from being happy.

To this end, Yamabuki, the Head Honchess in the Gods Realm, sends down Momiji (the ragged-looking one) along with her familiar (whom you don’t see. It’s Teddy and he looks like a ragged Teddy bear) to take away some of her fortune and give it to those who need it…but not without a fight. Each has met their match in the other, as both are tough customers that will not give up in what they want.

The series follows the personal growth of both of them. For Ichiko, what it means to have a friend and to be a friend. For Momiji, it’s the same thing, but her path is slightly different.

Adding to the confusion and mayhem are:

Momoo Inugami. He is a dog in human form, but is a bit S&M. If, in his dog form, you beat him too hard, he transforms. He is rather useless. (more…)

I was looking for something festive for the new year. I’d hoped the banner said Happy New Year. It says Welcome to the Student Council

First off, Happy New Year fellow anime lovers! This message will be delivered late but shoot I’m writing this on the morning of January 1st. Hope you all managed to go out, party, and have a great time because I’ve been sick with mono all week. Besides really sucking this means that I’ve gotten to dig through a ton of Soul Eater episodes.

But this article isn’t about Soul Eater. It’s about a lesser known anime, Seitokai no Ichizon Lv. 2. I happened to stumble upon the original series, Seitokai no Ichizon, a while back. Keep in mind I’ve only seen 8 episodes of Lv. 2 thus far, but at 10 episodes to conclude the series I think I pretty much know where this is going.

The synopsis I’ve written goes for both shows since they are both pretty much plot-less: Four attractive girls are on the student council. There’s the president, Aka-chan. Despite being one of the older ones and in charge of the student council, she is the most childish: insecure about her extremely small stature and possessing a wild sweet tooth. She also happens to be my favorite ^__^ Then we have Chizuru. She is very womanly, somewhat seductive, and loves to baby Aka-chan, who she finds to be adorable. Minatsu is the bold tomboy with athletic skills. Her little sister, Mafuyu is the adorable one who loves BL and video games and often refers to herself in the first person. She’s also scared of boys.

The fifth spot is open to whichever student gets the highest grades in the class. Ken decides to work as hard as he can to become top student not because he wants a promising future (because really what sixteen year old actually cares about that?) but because he wants to spend his afternoons hanging out with all the girls. Ding! Ding! Ding! You got it. It’s a harem! (more…)

Sigh….

A few days ago, as usual I woke up and headed over to my favorite anime streaming site. First thing I did when I arrived there was to check for the recent anime updates (for the newest Naruto, Fairy Tail, One Piece etc) and saw something very… unexpected. Premiering on June 30th (subbed) was Code Geass: Nunnally in Wonderland. Seeing as the original Code Geass series is easily in my top 5 anime of all time I was obviously very excited. So there I went and clicked play…. and they could NOT possibly have destroyed my love for Lelouch (no homo) any more completely.

The plot is basically a spin-off of Alice in Wonderland with a comical and ecchi twist. Lelouch plays the role of Mad Hatter while Nunnally, C.C and Suzaku plays the roles of Alice, Chesire cat and the Knight of White respectively. All the other supporting characters have other mundane, sometimes even ironic roles (like Charles being the softspoken King of hearts).

To be honest after episode 1 I won’t even be giving the other episodes a second thought (update: its actually an ova so there aren’t any more episodes. Thanks to Son Gohan for pointing that out). Code Geass used to be a pleasant memory, it was always attributed in my mind with the tags ‘Kickass Story’, ‘Badass Main Charaters’, ‘Strategy worthy of praise by Light Yagami himself (Death Note) ‘ and ‘Huge robots kicking butt’. I now have to add ‘sappy characters’, ‘Fanservice’ and ‘Tries to hard to be funny’ to that list and believe me I want someone to pay!!! *HULK SMASH*. (more…)

This is one wild and crazy show that needs multiple viewings to make certain that you can figure out what it all means. You may fail, but this is a show that keeps you on your toes.

The basic plot is about Naota Nandaba (he’s the one in blue at the bottom). He lives in Mabase, a suburb ofTokyo. The city scenery is dominated by the Medical Mechanica building, which looks like a giant flatiron and I mean GIANT. While standing on a bridge, talking with Mamimi Samejima (ex-girl friend of Naota’s older brother, the smoker at the far left), Haruko Haruhara bursts onto the scene,  running Naota over with her Vespa scooter, then giving him CPR and finally hitting him on the head with a blue vintage Rickenbacher 4001 left-handed electric bass guitar (that dead-center maniac).

This creates a horn on his head, from which later on, a robot emerges from it. Now, if that wasn’t bad enough, Haruhara turns up to be a live-in maid at his house, making an already bad situation even worse for him. And from there, things get progressively stranger. Yes, it DOES get progressively stranger.

Can one really codify the show and not give away huge chunks of the plotting?  I mean, it is only six episodes and it a show that requires a real intensity of watching, because if you miss something, you really miss something. And since it moves at this breakneck pacing, playing catch-up is something you really don’t want to do. (more…)

Ever had an experience where you decided to try something new and well after all said and done you think to yourself, “sigh, that was a waste of the last 23.5 minutes of my life”. Well that was exactly how I felt after episode 1 of this thing, true I not the biggest chibi fan out there but having chibi animation doesn’t give a show the leeway to create something completly ridiculous. Okay… maybe it does (  😯 ‘LEEway’ … rock-‘LEE’ )

To those who are familiar with the original Naruto (and I’m sure all of us are) you will notice that they tried to keep the personalities of each character intact (key word here ‘tried’) and while the entire show seems like it’s going to be a spin-off of the very worst filler episodes, I will give them that because of the extremely lighthearted feel it radiates they have the potential to actually be…. funny. For example medium awareness seems to be a very prominent factor in these episodes “he is also the main character of the main Naruto TV show”, “Do we even have electricity and gas in this world?”. There is also bad guys who, well apart from the part that its practically impossible to make a chibi look evil we have them on the level where they can say in response to Rock lee pulling down the leader’s pants “if we’re just gonna get embarassed like this, we’re never comming to this house again”.

One last thing I can’t figure about this show though, where in the main series does its timeline take place, because while Naruto has abilities like multi-rasengan and Tsunade’s face is already engraved on the Hokage’s mountainside memorial thing, both which imply Shippuden. Rock lee seems to have regressed back to early Naruto days when it comes to his abilities. Maybe this was done to boost the entertainment factor but we’ll just have to wait till episode 2 to see.

To be honest while the concept of this show is great (ninja comedy, thats new… right?) I feel it’s going to make the average fan of Naruto a tad bit disappointed but hey, I feel that i’m somewhat biased against this as light comical shows are hardly ever my thing and chibi’s well… lets just say i’ve had one or two scrubs with my die-hard chibi friends.

Overall, I suppose I should be unbiased and give it a 6.8/10. Don’t think I’m being fair? well bearing in mind that I gave naruto 6.5/10 and Naruto Shippuden 7/10 and I still call myself a Naruto Fan, I’d say its score is pretty good.