OK, aside from a weakness for romantic comedies, I have another one for mermaids. This series is certainly going all out for it, as I cover both genres. Calloo Callay!

“Namiuchigiwa No Muromi-san” (Muromi-san on the Shore”) begins with our male hero, Takurō Mukōjima, who sits on a jetty all day and fishes. One day, he lands a ningyo (a Japanese mermaid, which helps, as they ARE in Japan), Muromi (to his immediate right) and has a chat with her and her strange friends. Now, this show also goes by the title “Muromi-San and the Legendary Beasts”, and Takuro (or Takkun, as Muromi calls him) gets an excellent chance to meet the lot of them. Whether he wanted to or not. Maybe you should find another place to fish.

The rest of the cast, this time going right to left, are: (more…)

I debated whether to consider this a short-run series. It comes in at 11 shows, but that last one is a kind of recap, clip show, overview of things and seems more like a send-off than a real episode, although I do consider series runs of 11 or less a short-run. We’ll let you decide.

This is a very odd show. Odd in the sense that every character in this show is quite intelligent, learned, educated and knowledgeable on a variety of issues. Because of that, the show can get a little prolix and overly scholastic, as you learn the history of cocktails, the stories behind many famous drinks and what it is a bartender really does.

We are in the Ginza, a very popular area of Tokyo, where all sorts of bars and watering holes exist. But there is a very hard to find one, Eden Hall, where you go to for more than a mere libation, but a chance to reflect upon your life and where you want it to go. The man behind the bar, Ryū Sasakura, is a bartending prodigy who is said to mix the best concoctions anyone has ever tasted. But that is because he knows what it is you really need before you do and it isn’t merely booze, but both a tonic to revive and a statement to bring your life into focus.

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…)

When an outsider, aka those “normal” people who don’t watch anime because they’re “too old for cartoons”, thinks of anime a few things come to mind. Things like well-endowed women, giant robots, and obnoxious teenage boy protagonists. And, well, they’re probably right to an extent. Those of us who are well adapted into the anime world know that there’s much more to it. Yet, it seems that no matter what we’re looking at, be it anime, movies, television, or video games, we are obsessed with grouping everything into categories. For video games we have fighting games, RPGs, puzzles. For movies or television there’s action, fantasy, comedy, etc. Within those groups, we have tropes that are associated with them. The wise old wizard belongs to fantasy, the funny roommate who’s kind of a womanizer belongs to comedy. With anime this need to categorize is certainly evident, but I have found that Usagi Drop is in a category of its own.

If you’ve seen this short but loveable series, try to think of one trope that it really fits into. The main character is a bachelor, but he’s not a skirt chaser, or the chosen hero. He’s just a typical thirty – something man. Usagi Drop is considered a slice of life anime, but the setting isn’t a school filled with peppy teenagers. It also can fall into the very rare josei genre, but doesn’t focus on romantic relationships like they so often do. I would argue that Usagi Drop would fall into the “other” genre if there was one in anime. This is what makes the show so special. It doesn’t have any of the clichés that anime are always associated with. It’s a breath of fresh air, really. (more…)

A kind of sister show to “AKB0048” (although more like a distant cousin) is “Love Live! School Idol Project”. This tells the story of nine girls who are trying to save their school from shuttering its doors. Otonokizaka Academy has had declining enrollment for years and will not accept new students after this year, allowing those who remain behind to complete their education there, then turning into a Senior Center or a giant fighting robot assembly plant or a Pokemon hospital. Honoka Kōsaka (far left) will do whatever it takes to save the school. But what? What can be done to increase enrollment enough?

She notices that other schools have Idol Clubs and they are both very popular and very successful, the biggest being UTX Academy with A-Rise. WE could do this! She petitions the Student Council to start this club. Alas, the president of the Council, Eri Ayase (the person next to Honoka) is dead set against such a debasement of the school and its standards and will not allow it, even if it could save everything. However, there is a tiny, tiny loophole: Niko Yazawa (number three position; red ribbons in her hair) has an Idol Fan Club on campus and that one is established. It is decided to join her club and slightly change the charter for it, thus allowing them to rehearse. The initial members of the group are Honoka, Umi Sonoda (dead center) and Kotori Minami (gray hair, white ribbon) and they call themselves “μ’s” (pronounced ‘muse’, so you can see why it has to be a nontet), but initially it is a trio. They give a great performance in front of practically no one, but the word gets out and others want to join the group and help the cause. (more…)

Usually I get kind of coy in giving reviews, making you read through my whole marvelous article before I finally let you know whether you should watch something or not. I also do not do movie reviews either, so this is a double departure for me. I’ll get straight to the point…..

You should watch “Wolf Children”.

Now, it will be coming out in the theaters, but it is going to be a limited release, which means you will have to do some hunting for it, but it will be in English Dub (although the subtitles were not a problem at all). The only thing wrong with the film is the title, which gives away everything far too soon. It would have been nice to be able to be surprised as to what events were unfolding. I even chose this image over the wallpaper release, as that really spills the beans regarding key plot points. Even something like “Different Children” would have been better as a title. (more…)

On the surface, “Senran Kagura” is like any other kind of fighting girl show. Akin to “Maken-Ki” or “Freezing” or even “My-HiME”, it follows the tale of girls with special abilities and the training they need to go through to learn how to use their powers best to defeat the forces of darkness and evil and cruelty and icky things.

Now, the big question is “Are they Shinobi or Kunoichi?” Shinobi is a term used for a covert agent or spy ninja who engages in unorthodox warfare. Kunoichi is a term for a female ninja. Well, to be honest, it really doesn’t matter, as whatever ninja skills they might be learning is completely inundated by unrelenting fan service.

Let us run down the cast of characters. From left to right we have:

Asuka, the leader and a second year, she barely passed the promotion exam and is carrying on the ninja tradition from her grandfather
Ikaruga, a third year, very serious about being a ninja as her brother was bypassed to give leadership of the clan to her
Katsuragi, a third year and a touch of a pervert.
Yagyuu (but that spelling changes on who’s doing the subbing). A first year, she is a prodigy and uses an umbrella as her main weapon. Very protective of Hibari.
Hibari, also a first year and new to the group, she is both child-like and cutely clumsy. (more…)

One of the hardest things is to find a good entrance anime, to get people interested in the genre, without scaring them off. I mean, you don’t open with “Elfin Lied” or “Baccano!” or “Gantz” and then be surprised when they run screaming into the sunset (or sunrise, depending on the time of day).

“Squid Girl” (or also known as “Invade! Squid Girl”) tells the story of Squid Girl (Whew! What a relief. If she had some other name…..) who is the forward force of an invasion. She is bound and determined to conquer humanity, who have polluted her waters and made life miserable for her and her kind. To this end, she comes ashore in some part of Tokyo, (I assume, no name is ever given, so I have to make a guess it is) and decides to take over the Lemon House, a yakisoba snack bar at the beach, to use as her base of operation. (more…)