As a bother-in-arms companion piece to “Denkigai no Hon’ya-san”, we have “Gekkan Shōjo Nozaki-kun” (“Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun”), which tells the tale of a manga artist who is somewhat successful in his endeavor.

High school student Chiyo Sakura (red head up there) has a crush on schoolmate Umetaro Nozaki (the one off her left). When she confesses her love to him, he mistakes her for a fan and gives her an autograph. When she says that she always wants to be with him, he invites her to his house and has her help on some drawings. Chiyo discovers that Nozaki is actually the renowned manga artist Sakiko Yumeno. She then agrees to be his assistant in order to get closer to him. As they work on his manga Let’s Fall in Love, they encounter other schoolmates who assist them or serve as inspirations for characters in the stories. (more…)

I’m not really certain how to take Le Fruit de la Grisaia (“Gurizaia no Kajitsu” or “The Fruit of the Grisaia”), as it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, as much is kept hidden from you and you must take a kind of voyage of discovery to understand it all.

Yūji Kazami (the only guy) transfers to Mihama Academy, a school with only five female students and prison-like features. Every student in the school have their own “circumstances” for being there, but Yūji is not required to do anything about their situation, as he asked for a normal student life. This is funny, as there is nothing ‘normal’ about him or the school. He has a questionable and/or unsavory past, which he tries to forget, but not even a zebra can change its stripes.

The five ladies, whom he shares an almost empty classroom with, are (left to right):

Sachi Komine. The maid. She always wears the maid outfit as a sense of duty.
Amane Suou. She is kind of the house mother and wants to seduce Yuji
Makina Irisu. Although innocent and carefree, she suffered a deep emotional shock
Michiru Matsushima. She is standing atop that thing and has a split personality, so you never know who you are talking to.
Yumiko Sakaki (far right). Don’t mess with her, as she wields a box cutter with devastating results. (more…)

As we know, theme and amusement parks can give you the time of your life. But what if the enjoyment you have actually saves another person’s life? Thus is the idea behind “Amagi Brilliant Park”.

Seiya Kanie is a good looking, perfectionist boy (that guy dead center) who is forced by the mysterious Isuzu Sento (the red coat to his left) to visit an amusement park named Amagi Brilliant Park, which is in serious difficulties and about to be closed forever. Forced is right. Seldom do you start a romantic comedy anime with having a blunderbuss shoved in your face and ‘asked’ to come along on a date. Are things really that tough in schools in getting a guy?

The park is actually staffed by refugees from a magical realm called Maple Land, and the park is a facility for harvesting magical energy from visitors while they’re having fun. As such, the park is the only way the refugees can maintain their existence in the human realm. Yup, those characters that look like they are in costumes are not costumes, but real magical creatures. Even the Elementarios (those fairies to the left and back three rows) are, well, real fairies as we imagine them to be.

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This is another show that started off with a good idea and then did nothing with it. It suffered from the first problem, in what is the name of the crfapping show? The search has it come up as “When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace” (“Inō-Batoru wa Nichijō-kei no Naka de”), but it is also known in Japan as “Inou Battle Within Everyday Life” and “Inou-Battle in the Usually Daze.”

We are in Senkō High School’s Literature Club, who is reading “Hunger Game” or “Divergent” or “Fifty Shades of Gray”. The story focuses on its five members (from right to left) who are: Tomoyo Kanzaki, Hatoko Kushikawa, Jurai Andō, Chifuyu Himeki and Sayumi Takanashi. They have all developed superpowers from a strange and bizarre incident. These superpowers (such as they are) have now become a part of their everyday lives, as they battle against others wielding similar powers.

The sixth person, Mirei Kudō, is not part of the club, but the Student Council president, who also has obtained these powers. It’s just that the powers seem a bit limited. Slow down time or manipulate the basic elements or create matter or space. Then, once they figure out how to use these powers, they…………do nothing with them. They have a hard time understanding these powers anyway, but what do you do with them? There was an old “Saturday Night Live” sketch, “The Interesting Four”, superheroes with marginal powers, like Weather Woman, who can raise or lower the temperature in a room by 17 degrees. These folks are kind of like that. (more…)

Now, when “Chaika – The Coffin Princess” came to its conclusion, I knew a second season was in the offing, as the main plot wasn’t resolved. Well, the second season “Chaika – The Coffin Princess; Avenging Battle” does just that, but this is the third series I have encountered this year with a 10-episode second season. Oh, and a revelation uncovered from the first season is completely buried under for this run.

Well, our heroes (left to right) Toru Acura, Chaika Trabant and Akari Acura are still hunting for the remains of the Emperor Gaz, who ruled the land with an iron cudgel and people were glad he was turned into shish kabobs, as he was really, really evil, worse than an IRS auditor. Adding to their consternation, Red Chaika is ALSO hunting for body parts as well and can seemingly get to them faster than White Chaika is able to. Their goals are still the same: a decent burial for Daddy-san.

Plus, we still have the Kliemann Agency, the government-sponsored group, also in active pursuit of them, with the intent to capture and stop this foolishness. Remember, the body parts still carry strong and dangerous magical powers and if we bring them all together, it’s Armageddon, or at least Fresno in the fall. A new sojourn, added to the rather capacious list of Things To Do, is to find Gaz’s Fortune, which is on a mysterious island that no one knows about, as it is hidden and mysterious (although we can find it; it’s just takes two episodes to do that). The show heads to a conclusion that I had not predicted, as we were all unaware of the Black Chaika (and we learn the full history about that as well). (more…)

This is another of those ‘move-in’ animes, but done with a lot more interest and characters. “Invaders of the Rokujyōma!?” (“Rokujōma no Shinryakusha!?”, “Invaders of the Six-Tatami Mat Room!?”) starts off with Kōtarō Satomi (can you find the studly stud?). He decided that he wanted to live on his own when he began high school, and chose Room 106 of Corona House because it was cheap. (Dude, beware of room rents that are way too low. He’s paying 5000 yen a month! Look what happened!) Unfortunately, Kōtarō soon discovers that numerous otherworldly and supernatural girls also want his room for various reasons of their own. Well, he isn’t going to give it up ($50 a month? You can’t even get a storage shed for that!), and the ladies equally aren’t about to back down. As a result, Kōtarō and the girls find themselves forced to live together as they try to settle just who ends up with the room.

Let us meet all of the players, eh? From left to right:

Theiamillis Gre Fortorthe. Called Theia or Tulip, she is an intergalactic alien princess from planet Fortorthe. She must capture the room and subdue Kōtarō to prove her worthiness as a successor to the throne.
Shizuka Kasagi. She is the landlady of Corona house and had all the participants sign a contract regarding the room competition.
Yurika Nijino. She is a genuine magical girl, but a bit clumsy. The room contains high levels of magical power that she needs.
Kotaro. (more…)

Art is funny, in that you look at something and have absolutely no idea what it means or is supposed to say. Sure, it may look cute or beautiful or intriguing, but, eventually, it does nothing for you and you walk away from the whole thing. “Glasslip” is an anime like that for me. It purported to be something else, but dissolved into a rather convoluted mess and I gave up on the story.

Let us go back to the beginning, as you start at the start. Although, for this show, you could start at the end and it would make the same caliber of sense.

Tōko Fukami‘s family runs a glass-working business in a small seaside town named Hinodehama (that’s in the Fukui Prefecture, if you are keeping notes). She (that’s her in the seven o’clock position) hangs out with her four best friends:

Yukinari Imi (one o’clock)
Yanagi Takayama (two o’clock)
Sachi Nagamiya (five o’clock)
Hiro Shirosaki (six o’clock) (more…)

This is an entry in the ever-increasing popularity of the school-magic show. You have seen it with “The Familiar of Zero”, “Blade Dance”, Magic Craft Works” and “A Certain Magical Index”. So, what makes “The Irregular at Magic High School” that different? Well in one aspect, it isn’t that different, as we cannot decide on the title (Mahōka Kōkō no Rettōsei, “The Poor Performing Student of a Magic High School”), but ‘poor’ is a very poor choice of words, but this is revealed during the run of the show. Also, rather than being a magic show with a school setting, it is a school show with a magic background.

It is the future (almost the end of this century). Magic is an established fact, has been for about 100 years and many countries train those with magical ability to, eventually, become soldiers to defend the country. In Japan, there are nine Magic High Schools. I do not know if the numbers mean anything, but we focus on First High School. Ah, but we use magic differently, in that we don’t going around, proclaiming “Accio!” or “Deletrius” or “Hakuna Matata!” Rather than casting spells with chants or other traditional forms of spell casting, mages use a Casting Assistant Device, better known as a CAD. The bad thing is the device looks like an iPhone6. (more…)

School and friendship animes seem to go together like corned beef and mustard (and I find horseradish mustard works best for that). This offering, “Ao Haru Ride” (“Blue Spring Ride”), treads familiar ground, but in a different way.

Futaba Yoshioka (second stamp from left) wants to change up her life, leaving behind her previous school and reputation. You see, in junior high, the girls ostracized Futaba because too many junior high boys liked her. That was only half the problem, as the only boy Futaba liked (and I mean REALLY liked), Kou Tanaka, moved away before she could tell him how she felt.

That was then. Now in high school, Futaba is determined to be unladylike (well, more tomboyish) so her new friends will not become jealous of her. While living her new life contentedly, she meets Kou again, but he now uses the name Kou Mabuchi (and he is the far left stamp) and has a cold attitude, not only towards her, but to a lot of people. He tells her that he liked her as well in junior high, but feels differently now. That was then. (more…)

This is one of those shows that drop you into the action without much to go on, although the show might have been better to be called “Red Gender” than “Blue Gender”. Disclosure Time: I bailed out on this show after three episodes, as it did violate Rule Three of Anime (“If you feel the show is not going to get better, leave it. It is NOT going to get better.”). In my opinion, this is one of the worst animes I have seen this year (fighting for that title with “Terra Formars”) and the worst anime I have seen since “Peach Girl”. Now, this differs from one I don’t like. There are some shows that just miss for me or aren’t worth my time from the capsule description. This one I at least watched to draw my conclusion (and my repeated open).

In the year 2009, Yuji Kaido (that mullet-head up there. What is that hair style? Was it ever popular?) is an average young adult male diagnosed with a serious disease (the “B-cells”) and is put into cryogenic stasis until a cure is found. Twenty-two years later, he is awakened in the midst of a raging battle between armored soldiers and insectoid beings called the “Blue” which have overrun the Earth.

This group of soldiers is from an orbiting space colony, collectively called Second Earth. They had orders to recover “sleepers” around the Earth. Among them is the soldier Marlene Angel, (can you find the girl?) who at first appears to be heartless toward others. On the journey to the space colony, Second Earth, Yuji meets many of the humans that were left behind during the evacuation due to limited resources. Standing orders for Marlene and the other troops are to consider any human survivors on the surface to be already dead, which greatly troubles Yuji.

The problem with this is that it is terrible science fiction, terrible war and terrible horror. It seems these insectoids, which look like giant spiders, when they capture you, ball you up and will eat you later. Well, as you have seen, most people do not roll up well, so there is a lot of physical compaction. Adding to this is that Yuji has zero idea what is going on, except that he is the only one from his facility to survive, as the others are lost. His tube broke open and he was awakened; the rest were still in their tubes and sank to the bottom of the sea. (more…)