What is it like to be a real temple maiden? What it is like to really be able to see the holy messengers? What is it like to be different? What is it like to not open a review with a series of questions?

“Gingitsune” tells the tale of Makoto Saeki (the one with the broom). She is a temple maiden and can see these heralds from the gods on high. Dad Tatsuo (carefree schlub at the far right) does not have this ability, so he has to rely on Saeki to help him out. There used to be two heralds at the temple (and there seems to be a rule that there are to be two), but Gingitsume (or ‘Gin’, as he is known, that really, REALLY big fox herald) is all there is. His partner left (or died or was recalled or went sightseeing) and he spends his days sleeping and eating tangerines.

He is a grumpy number, but if you had been around for 800 years or something like that, you’d be cranky as well. And I can’t imagine how his underwear rides up on him. That would make me very cross, especially if it was that way through the whole Meiji restoration! (more…)

“Miss Monochrome” is another short-pull series. At four minutes, it’s short enough, but one of those minutes is taken up with the ending credits, so it runs even shorter than that.

Miss Monochrome is a caliber of robot, her best friend being that Roomba. She somehow was worth 19.2 Billion yen, but her rapacious private secretary took everything and left her destitute. She has a dream of being the best pop idol in Japan, but has no method or manner to do this. She gets a manager, who happens to be the shift manager at the convenience store she works at, to try and get her all kinds of gigs and public meetings to get her face and talent out there. A manager is a manager, right? Get the gigs.

But she is an absolute klutz when it comes to things and the episodes end where they started: with her no closer to her dream of being a pop idol. (more…)

“Super Seishun Brothers” is a series about two sets of twins and their amusing life together.

This is a short-pull series, as the episodes run about five minutes each, and it details the lives of (left to right):
Chika and Chiko Shinmoto
Mako and Mao Saito

We are going to assume the guys and girls are the same age, as the boys are second-year high school students and the girls are second year college students (except Mako does not go to college, but it helps with the reference).

We see their lives together as they fuddle through things. The episodes are pretty close to blackout sketches or run on one theme (the middle episodes contend themselves with adventures at the big Japanese anime/manga event), but are almost too brief to really build characters. They seem more like figures to say dialogue and hang stories from than any real people, and the problems are not really problems, more like observations on how a particular set of lives run. (more…)

I was drawn to this sports anime, as I had not seen one with swimming as its core. For this show, “Free!” is both a noun and an adjective, but first, some background for the plot.

Some years earlier, our four friends used to swim for the Iwatobi Swim Club and participated in the Medley Relay, which they won readily. However, one of their entourage was moving to Australia and this would be the last of it. Flash forward to the future. Three of them attend the same school and learn that the swim club they spent their youth at is being torn down. They go to look at it and bump into their old friend, who has enrolled in a different school, one that is a swimming powerhouse (Samezuka Academy), while these guys go to a school that no longer has a swim club. This is a show about revival and what it means to be free. (more…)

Again, another long-format show, this one has managed to keep the interest high, as there is just so much that goes on behind the scenes that we do not know of.

Now, they are calling it Season Four, as each ‘season’ is 25 episodes, but I call it Year Two, as we are at 100 episodes.

The year opens up with two flashback/recap episodes, one for Mutta and one for Hibito and then we proceed. The two massive arcs are Hibito’s Panic Attacks (which take up right to the end of the year) and how Mutta overcomes all the obstacles placed before him in order to discourage him from being an astronaut. The stories were told with a great deal of involvement and there was hardly an off-note for the year, although the Olga side-story for Hibito went on a bit long. (more…)

It is rare, in my opinion, to see an anime about ordinary people. School animes are not all that ‘ordinary’ and some push it into the realm of supernatural or fantasy or fan service gone berserk. (I remember when I was in high school and I NEVER saw ladies that….uh….hefty. Yeah, that’s a good term).

“Servant x Service” takes us into the exciting world of…..public service, revolving around the daily lives of employees in a government office building in the fictional city of Mitsuba in Hokkaido.

The story starts off with the three newest members of the team, and they are, from left to right, Lucy Yamagami (more on that later), Yutaka Hasebe and Saya Miyoshi. They want to fit in and be part of the team, but it gets difficult with shenanigans both in front of and behind the counter.

Miyoshi gets teamed with Mrs. Tanaka (she is the old-fashioned lady in the center. No, she is nowhere that tall and robust, but this was the best picture I could find of all the players. She is more like four-foot-nothing, OK?). Mrs. Tanaka comes in practically every day and drones on and on and on about her life and her son-in-law and that Saya needs a good husband and that she could find one for her. (more…)

“My Little Monster” (“Tonari No Kaibutsu-kun”, also translated out to “The Monster Sitting Next to Me”) could potentially be described as a nothing show, as it starts off that way. It takes a little while for the plot to get moving, as we have a rather wide-ranging cast, but it is a good entry into the romantic comedy genre. Shizuku Mizutani (pencil near mouth, holding book) is focused on one thing only: studies. She studies morning, noon and night, all weekend long, around the clock and through the seasons. She has no time for frivolities if she wants to get into a prestigious university. One day, she is asked by the teacher to deliver handouts to a slacker student, Haru Yoshida, (dude with the rooster) to his house, as he has been absent a huge amount of time. Because no one has ever been this nice to him, especially a girl, he starts to come to school, much to the consternation of others. (more…)

When is a movie not a movie? When is a series not a series? Why can’t you ever get a good answer to questions? How often will I reuse this introduction?

I bring this up, for when I saw this, it was billed as a movie, but it isn’t even seven minutes long. It’s not an OVA or a short or a segment, so I am confused. You’ll probably spend more time reading this review than seeing the film. “Dareka No Manazashi” (“Someone’s Gaze”) is the name of this little offering.

We are in the ‘slight future’, potentially 2016 or thereabouts. We are telling the story of Aya Okamure. She is the young one in the snapshot up there, but we are a few years beyond that point. She is living on her own and trying for a job. This is a typical Japanese family, in that mom is overseas working somewhere. As a doctor, her abilities are in high demand, but she has been overseas for about 10 years or so. Dad lives alone with the family cat, Mii-san. (more…)

Although ostensibly a school romantic comedy, it is the setting that makes it a bit different from your regular school animes.

“Silver Spoon” tells the story of Yugo Hachiken (the guy in glasses). He comes from Sapporo, but had no real idea what he wants to become. He also wanted to get away from a demanding father and a slacker brother, so he enrolls in Ezo Agricultural High School. He is the only one there without a goal, a purpose or a reason to be at this school, as everyone else is involved in some aspect of agriculture (dairy, livestock, horse racing, cheese making and the like).

He becomes tops in the class overall, as he excels in the regular stuff (math, history, writing), but he bites mightily when it comes to the other aspects of the school, like the agricultural part. I hope he didn’t miss that ‘agricultural’ is part of the school’s name. His other classmates are: (more…)

Another show with a monstrapatious title, this is “Watashi ga Motenai no wa dō Kangaetemo Omaera ga Warui!”, also known as “WataMote” and for those of you not fluent in Japanese, we’ll call it “No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys’ Fault I’m Not Popular!”

It revolves around Tomoko Kuroki, as she is going to be a first-year in high school. Having conquered dating Sims games, she believes, to the very fiber of her being, that she will be fiercely popular. She painfully discovers this is far from the truth as she winds up being an unsociable loner and is forced to take a long hard look at herself for the first time in years.

I had a very difficult time with this show, as I was never really certain if it was a comedy (as she makes all these horrible mistakes and missteps in trying to break out of the jail she has put herself in) or a tragedy (as we kind of see a slide into insanity, as she is unable to cope or understand what is going wrong with her life). All of her attempts meet with failure and there is honestly no one she can turn to for guidance, help, a shoulder to cry on, or perhaps something from the local WacDonald’s to nosh upon. (more…)