It doesn’t matter what kind of organization you are in, whether is it something as simple as an office setting, where you may have a dozen or so employees, to something more complex like running the First Order, where you have billions of employees, you are going to get gummed up by the bureaucracy. It’s always the same complaints: not enough money, not enough manpower, not enough creative thinking, not enough money, lamebrains messing up your projects, diffident co-workers and not enough money. And if you ARE trying to take over the world, the logistics can get out of control. Such is the world we visit when we come to the enormously-titled “Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department” (“Kaijin Kaihatsubu no Kuroitsu-san”, “Kuroitsu-san in the Superhuman Research & Development Department”).
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I often wonder why you would want to reboot a series, especially one that still has life in it. Perhaps you want to offer it to a new generation, who doesn’t have the time to see the original (kind of a weak argument). Perhaps you want to take it in another direction and free yourself from the past that YOU created (another weak argument). Perhaps you just want to make a profit from all this (another weak argument, but this one makes better sense). And so, we have “RBWY: Ice Queendom”. (more…)

You know, a hot male fantasy and a hot anime fantasy is for a guy to have a harem of beautiful women, all catering to his every whim and desire. What if you could actually have one? What if you discovered it was a lot more work than you realized? What if your humanity was reduced to a mere cypher? This is kind of the plot for “World’s End Harem” (“Shūmatsu no Hāremu”), where, like Transformers, there’s more than meets the eye. (more…)

We use the term ‘Frankenstein’ to indicate a soulless monster, cobbled together from the parts of other corpses. It’s even used in reality TV, to indicate that things have been cut and pasted together to give a different impression than what happened originally. But for this show, “Frankenstein Family”, (also known as “Creatures Family Days”, “Shiyan Pin Jiating, Jikken-hin Kazoku”), it’s more to indicate they are a caliber of monster or mutant, but I guess “Mutant Family” might have a bigger connotation problem than merely being called ‘Frankenstein’. (more…)

Every year, an anime comes out that towers over the competition and leaves even strong competitors in the dust. Some previous entries include “Attack on Titan”, “Erased” and “One-Punch Man”. For this season, it falls to “The Promised Neverland” (“Yakusoku no Nebārando”), a series that initially sucks you in with sunshine and light. (more…)

I have frequently remarked about my 40-year flirtation with anime before I finally settled down back in 2004 to accept it. It was during my Third Permutation that I ran into (what it was called then) “Star Blazers”. I had two problems with the show. The first was trying to wrap my head around the concept of a sea-worthy battleship in space (I would later discover that the Japanese flung all kinds of things into space for their animes). The second was the battleship seemed to fire its main weapon, have it break down and take two or three episodes to repair it, fire it again and repeat the cycle. Since I felt the show was going nowhere (and this was at a time when it showed once a week), I abandoned it and thus ended that trial. (more…)

Science Fiction is always a tough genre to work within. You are, in a sense, looking at things that have no real basis in science, but are not completely dismissed out of hand for being improbable or even impossible. But there still has to be a grounding of some caliber so you can project your story from that. I bring up this lengthy explanation as “Kokkoku: Moment by Moment” asks us to look at time in a different manner. (more…)

The Japanese really love their robots, whether it is the standard mechanical type, their Gundams or the AI versions. They all have a place in their society and “Beatless” takes a look at a world where everyone seems to have this caliber of assistant or compatriot or bodyguard. Well, almost everyone. (more…)

What is Japanese Culture enamored with? Certainly robots. Certainly figurines. Certainly flirty girls in flirty outfits. Well, what if you could combine all three into a trifecta of perfection? They have, with the release of “Frame Arms Girl” (“Frēmu Āmuzu Gāru”), a series based on a model kit line. Don’t laugh. “Mars Attacks!” was based on trading cards, so it’s not all that weird…..ish. (more…)

Sometimes, you do not honestly know what you are getting into when you dial up any given anime. For many, the capsule description is either intentionally vague or underwhelmingly written, so you could miss something. So, when I ran into “Killing Bites” (“Kiringu Baitsu”), I really got a genre-busting show. (more…)