tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48900126485471291692012-03-02T17:33:50.433-08:00A site about anime, manga and animation from around the worldAdziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.comBlogger3911100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-72836961428925267952012-02-27T11:43:00.005-08:002012-02-27T21:24:49.074-08:00

When Negima! got a question mark after its exclamation point for a new anime season (well, and strictly speaking also had its ‘Mahou Sensei’ cut away), it signified big changes: a new production studio, a reboot, new characters and a very different style. The added question mark here has no such effect: Ika Musume season 2 is very much more of the same. It continues right where the first season

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-78744979791305122902012-02-26T07:01:00.003-08:002012-02-26T07:05:23.813-08:00

I saw Mulan when it came out in 1998, and for the second time yesterday. It’s a familiar story anyway, and things like the songs getting played in various places and the world being used in Kingdom Hearts meant it still felt familiar overall. Oh, that and silly videos on Youtube of Jackie Chan taking a funny video for ‘I’ll Make a Man Out of You’ very seriously. The story has the same loose

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-29361670271921724392012-02-24T17:06:00.005-08:002012-02-24T17:23:31.912-08:00

Really, the gap between the Disney Golden Age and the ‘Renaissance’ was rather short. Where the Golden Age ends is a matter of debate – some say it was with Walt’s death in 1966. Some extend that to include 1967’s The Jungle Book, as he had been involved in the early stages and it’s a well-loved film. A few say that it was until Hanna-Barbera’s limited animation techniques took the audience from

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-80013947619978853192012-02-19T17:19:00.012-08:002012-02-29T19:47:39.701-08:00

Ahhh, Ika Musume. Another sign, along with the likes of Nichijou, that moé anime is once again swinging towards the surreal, silly and more original after K-On burst the bubble. Not that this sort of cuteness ever went away, but now it’s back in pole position, and I’m perfectly happy with that situation – I like ordinary slice-of-life, but the spice of surrealism makes things tastier. The

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-81702842238926446872012-02-16T17:20:00.006-08:002012-02-16T17:31:13.991-08:00

Another dated-looking CGI video game tie-in from Digital Frontier (who also made the similarly-flawed Resident Evil: Degeneration), 2011’s Tekken: Blood Vengeance is likely to disappoint fans of the game and bore non-fans. It has its moments, mostly when it comes to impressive action sequences, but as a film it’s severely lacking. The film opens with that welcome staple of Tekken media – Anna

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-56193927606044119502012-02-15T17:12:00.004-08:002012-02-15T17:57:21.854-08:00

That this was so, so much better than Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke in just about every way – except perhaps consistency of action and coherence of narrative – at first made me quite annoyed I’d seen that film first. Why did Toei follow up a very impressive first feature film (also Japan’s first feature-length anime in colour and as far as I can discern only their second feature-length anime ever) with

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-43798709146677365002012-02-13T16:47:00.001-08:002012-02-24T17:12:46.792-08:00

As with FernGully, this was not a film I watched in my childhood, so the nostalgia goggles couldn’t help this 1993 film to win my affection. Nor was I at all impressed with this, the last hoorah of its studio’s animation department and its final animated feature film. A few years before Once Upon a Forest, Hanna-Barbera had been bought by TBS, owners of Cartoon Network, which at first did little

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-33487246374966133372012-02-12T16:31:00.000-08:002012-02-12T16:37:13.649-08:00

Like Claymore and Tegami Bachi, Rosario + Vampire was one of the series that crossed over when Monthly Shonen Jump ceased publication and then reappeared a few months later as Jump SQ, short for Jump Square. Like the others, it’s a supernatural-themed story with lots of action scenes. Unlike them, though, it is not an adventure narrative but a pretty brainless harem story chock-full of pantie

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-9489801303596249442012-02-11T17:57:00.000-08:002012-02-12T06:08:52.877-08:00

This, the third Bleach movie, satisfied me in a typical Jump movie sort of way, though not nearly as much as its sequel Hell Verse did. After watching on 14.10.09, after the DVD release was subtitled by fans, I wrote ‘After disappointing One Piece and Naruto movies, I was very pleased to see a big Jump franchise movie doing it right. Nice eye candy, an emotional, sincere side-story that worked in

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-41757072805250898502012-02-09T18:10:00.000-08:002012-02-12T06:11:20.816-08:00

Despite being an animation fan, I actually hadn’t heard of The Secret of Kells until about two months ago. I missed any news of its release in Ireland at the beginning of 2009, I missed the buzz when it was nominated for an Oscar in 2010 and I ignored the few images I saw of it online, until I read that it was a kind of successor to The Thief and the Cobbler, being a beautiful and idiosyncratic

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-9656854696442081062012-02-08T16:14:00.000-08:002012-02-10T19:06:15.543-08:00

I would have reviewed this at the time, but I assumed it would be the first in a series of OVAs. In fact, a full series is now in production and has begun airing in the noitaminA slot, so this stands alone – and thus deserves a review. It was the first production made by new studio Ordet alone – they warmed up with a few co-productions first. The studio was founded after Yamamoto Yutaka’s

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-54643345989766712702012-02-03T20:03:00.001-08:002012-02-15T17:56:46.461-08:00

The usual reaction to the production story of this film is one of great sympathy to a genius of an artist and anger towards idiot corporate busybodies who don’t understand artistic vision. But personally, my own thoughts tend towards disappointment – this could have been one of the best animated films of all time, widely-known and admired, pushing traditional animation a long way…had it been

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-81343614734634913122012-02-02T17:35:00.000-08:002012-02-02T18:06:57.082-08:00

This film is a guilty pleasure. It ought to be terrible: made by DisneyToon long after Pooh’s glory days with Disney in the 60s, this 2000 release was the Australian studio’s first theatrical film not made as a tie-in with an ongoing Disney TV series (their previous releases had been for Ducktales, Goof Troof and Doug), and centred on Disney’s somewhat annoying interpretation of the Tigger

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-65063323203836664232012-02-01T20:33:00.000-08:002012-02-01T20:42:41.670-08:00

It seems almost unbelievable that when this came out, South Park had been airing for less than two years. It’s even harder to believe that it came out in 1999, well over a decade ago. I’ll leave it until I write my thoughts on the full series, which will be when it finally ends for good, to talk about how I first got into it, remarkably early and certainly before its popularity exploded over

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-86425166528764108372012-01-27T09:09:00.000-08:002012-01-27T09:54:01.778-08:00

It seems a little counter-intuitive, but this kiddie-friendly animation about cute talking animals seems much more likely to prove to the world that Korea’s animation industry is becoming mature and able to make its own artistic statements than a sci-fi feature film like Wonderful Days. That’s because while Wonderful Days seemed derivative and to fall short of what it aimed for, Leafie certainly

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-87878482056614510952012-01-25T14:38:00.000-08:002012-01-25T14:51:43.926-08:00

It’s probably on the strength of watching the Tales of Symphonia animation and feeling it was all so truncated that it was unfair to the story of the game, but I feel it’s just a little unfair to judge this anime adaptation of not one but two Sega JRPGs without playing the games. On the other hand, I like neither the world nor the characters enough to feel any drive to play the games through, and

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-14581129795191025142012-01-24T19:07:00.000-08:002012-01-24T19:30:50.254-08:00

Here it is, then. The worst piece of animation I have ever seen. Stephen Fry writes in his autobiography about the guilt he felt giving a book a bad review, but I feel no compunction calling this the worst anime I’ve ever seen: it’s not anyone’s personal baby but the mangaka’s, and after all, it’s the lowest sort of trashy porn so I seriously doubt she has any great attachment to it. Yes, this

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-23668951768562682012012-01-22T14:59:00.000-08:002012-02-12T16:42:37.484-08:00

First Impressions, 22.4.06: New anime: Kyou no go no ni (‘Today in [Class] 5-2’) Heheheh! Ultimate pedo-bait anime! Perverted humour mostly involving a boy getting inadvertently put into seemingly sexual situations with various girls, then being found in compromising positions, is an old staple of anime humour, especially in the harem genre. But they’re not normally 11!Funny little show. Could be

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-24966300911455275122012-01-21T12:19:00.000-08:002012-01-21T19:59:13.847-08:00

First Impressions - 3.10.05Tried some new anime – cutesy classic Di Gi Charat, designed by the same person who came up with Pita Ten, but it was extremely annoying and not at all cute, so I didn’t download any more of it. Follow-up - 8.1.07Fortunately, I’m not in bad spirits because Di Gi Charat turned out to be just what I wanted last night. I think I was put off by episode one because I was

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-60286520625729039062012-01-17T19:20:00.000-08:002012-01-21T12:07:21.062-08:00

First Impressions, 13.6.07Heee, the Tales of Symphonia OVA makes me happy. The only thing I dislike about it is that at only four eps, there’s no way they’re gonna be able to go into the kind of depth they need to do the game justice. It was great hearing the Japanese seiyuu, whose performances are subtly different from their American counterparts’ (unusually good though the acting on the Western

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-88718498622024757122012-01-14T20:28:00.001-08:002012-01-14T21:04:00.541-08:00

Though I’ve been watching Doremi for years now, it’s only with this series that I’ve really started to love it. I suppose it’s quite telling that while it took me six months to watch Sharp, I watched the full fifty episodes (plus rather surreal short movie) of Mo~tto in under four weeks. It’s really the only series I’m watching just now that leaves me wanting more each time – and it’s a silly,

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-25574178463488707312012-01-12T18:08:00.000-08:002012-01-14T21:39:43.202-08:00

A recurring comment I see about this film is that it was a ‘big screw you to the fans’ – albeit often in less charming language. That seems fair – I got it on VHS as someone who wasn’t a huge fan of the first film but one who had enjoyed it and wanted more of the same, and after all Fievel Goes West wasn’t an utter disgrace to An American Tail, so nothing prepared me for just how dire this was

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-5170077707277794882012-01-11T17:04:00.000-08:002012-01-12T09:59:21.024-08:00

With this artsy short film, Kousaka Kitarou managed the rather bizarre feat of becoming the new figure to watch – after already having had a remarkable career that meant he had a significant role in many of anime’s most important films. He started out in Oh! Production while Takahata was still working for the studio, and though he had no credited part in Takahata’s Gauche the Cellist, nor in the

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-47615461187775812482012-01-07T07:31:00.000-08:002012-01-18T21:56:29.914-08:00

Released in Japan in the last few days of 1959, this is the oldest anime I have yet watched. It was Toei’s second animated feature film, after Hakujaden, and as far as I can tell only the third animated feature film Japan ever produced, the first being 1945’s black-and-white Momotarou, which today is looked at slightly askance for being made under a regime after all allied to Nazi Germany. This

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-57173516007290454242012-01-03T16:59:00.000-08:002012-01-03T17:08:10.430-08:00

Of all the anime I’ve watched, including all those that are many years in the past now, Fafner has been by far the most forgettable. Even the likes of Ragnarök and Kono Minikuku mo Utsukushii Sekai, which I barely gave a thought to since I finished them, years ago, left much more of an imprint than this. Without prompting myself, I could remember little more than that it was a mecha series about

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-34711402250143670872011-12-30T08:39:00.000-08:002012-02-11T18:11:22.694-08:00

Honestly, I expected to hate The iDOLM@STER. I didn’t know much about it before I saw it – it was based on some fanservicey game full of cute girls that seemed to be part dress-up doll and part visual novel; it had catchy songs like the one that kicks off Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga; Hatsune Miku was going to show up in the second game as DLC; and its characters had already been in a weird-looking

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-66956797251980687592011-12-29T19:34:00.000-08:002011-12-30T06:19:06.304-08:00

I’ve already written about the anime and how sad I was that it didn’t reach greater heights of popularity, especially in the West, so there’s really no need to restate that. But today, I got around to finishing the manga, and thought the series deserves a few more words, because though the last arc was rather problematic, the big payoff at the end touched me. I’d love to see a Kekkaishi series 2

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-3847457216832103482011-12-28T18:17:00.001-08:002011-12-28T18:19:34.045-08:00

I’ve written a few impressions of animated films aired over the Christmas period in the last few days, and it seems remiss to neglect this, perhaps the most iconic of animations centred on Christmas, The Snowman. While it lost out in the 1982 Oscars to a Rybczyński short, it cemented its theme song, ‘Walking in the Air’, in popular culture ever since, and gave animator Dianne Jackson a strong

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-83924613178077939652011-12-27T16:22:00.000-08:002012-01-02T12:19:42.068-08:00

Another animated movie screened during the Christmas period, I thought it worthwhile to put down a few thoughts, since I neglected to do so when I saw it back in 2004. This seems a bit of an oversight, as it was my favourite for the four main Shrek films, and indeed had a soundtrack I loved – I got Frou Frou and Butterfly Boucher’s albums as a direct result of it, and it contains one of my

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-1813393906710021342011-12-26T20:03:00.000-08:002012-02-09T04:38:08.404-08:00

I’ve been meaning to write my thoughts on The Sword in the Stone for a little while, as – being one of the few Disney films we had on VHS – it was one of the animated films I watched the most as a young child. Since I had the happy experience of waking up on a Christmas morning and turning on the television to see it there, bringing back waves of nostalgia, I thought now was as good a time as any

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-36126518656169760972011-12-25T17:48:00.002-08:002012-02-26T20:42:01.006-08:00

I’m not quite sure what I expected from Rango, but it wasn’t this.The clues were there, really, in the posters and trailers. There was that Hawaiian shirt, and that crick in the neck recalling another famous poster. Then of course, there was Johnny Depp in a cartoon that sounded somewhat surreal. But I definitely didn’t expect another outing for his Hunter S. Thompson impression (ahead of The Rum

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-30312169870973021262011-12-23T03:13:00.000-08:002011-12-25T18:09:54.267-08:00

English title: Guardians of the Crescent Moon KingdomMuch like the previous two films in the Naruto series, this one sets up a promising premise, adds very nice animation and well-integrated CG to what is already one of Naruto’s greatest strengths - character design – and then soon grinds down into very formulaic, cheesy silliness. The

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-60558435989521634292011-12-20T20:37:00.000-08:002012-01-13T21:49:08.361-08:00

The different series of Ojamajo Doremi almost don’t count as such, seeing how after the season finale, invariably a cliffhanger about the girls no longer getting to be witches, the first episode of the next season airs the very next week. So it was with the beginning of this season, and so it was again at its end.However, the seasons seem very much to have been conceived as separate, whole

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-69854255849533673382011-12-19T17:44:00.001-08:002011-12-20T22:13:48.180-08:00

The real question for this film is…why? I thought it would make for quite a good idea. Going back to one of the more memorable One Piece arcs and giving it the big-screen, big-budget, bravura animation treatment. After all, Studio Pierrot’s films for their Jump properties often look far, far better than the weekly television show – the most recent Bleach film in particular – and as for just

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-17844875364112215212011-12-18T17:36:00.000-08:002012-02-13T16:50:04.262-08:00

NIMH, as with An American Tail and very possibly All Dogs Go To Heaven, sits uneasily between being recognised as a classic of animation and falling into obscurity. When Don Bluth directed the successful Anastasia for Fox Animation, it looked like he would be established as the personality in Western cel-based animation, but Titan A.E. was so critically panned Fox Animation shut up shop until The

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-64352261573349661582011-12-17T20:21:00.001-08:002012-02-15T02:20:06.368-08:00

Another hentai review from me! I’ve never found animated porn much beyond ridiculous and ugly, but this one from 2007 at least manages to be attractively-drawn, decently-acted and with good character designs. It’s also interesting in that it got distribution for the US, so this particular slab of filth can be bought Stateside with mosaic censoring removed – which in all honesty is never much of a

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-31586449782188697712011-12-16T17:27:00.001-08:002012-02-15T02:22:48.176-08:00

Along with Watership Down and The Sword in the Stone, this was the animated film of my early childhood. My mother has always loved Tolkien, and after all, the Peter Jackson films were still a long way off – so short of reading the books to me (which she did as well, instilling me with a lifelong love of the oft-neglected Tom Bombadil), this was the best way to enjoy the world of hobbits and

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-12198863813954017332011-12-13T17:46:00.000-08:002011-12-13T17:54:29.954-08:00

I was actually very excited about the Thundercats revival, despite the He-Man reboot and the Michael Bay Transformers films being properties I’d really rather not talk about. Thundercats was a good candidate for an update, having iconic characters and a strong world but a lot of bad writing and cheesy acting. There had been rumours about feature films and live-action versions for as long as there

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-17319968896783694292011-12-11T15:51:00.000-08:002012-02-09T08:17:24.549-08:00

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Gurren-HenKanji: Crimson Lotus ChapterEnglish: Childhood's EndImpressions written: 19.5.09Watched the first Gurren Lagann movie, which honestly I found very redundant. I enjoyed it very much, because it was manly manly Gurren Lagann, and the altered climax, now having the attacks from divine generals happening simultaneously, made for at least some new experience, but

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-19615792828886496192011-12-09T16:48:00.000-08:002011-12-30T16:45:46.112-08:00

The second animated film with this title I’ve reviewed, and rather different from the lovely classic Toei film with Miyazaki on key animation, though that one is more properly called Nagagutsu-o Haita Neko. This one, of course, is not a take on the original Perrault tale but a spin-off of Dreamworks’ successful Shrek franchise. While I was quite happy to see Shrek come to a moderately dignified

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-20126277700196375332011-12-08T17:23:00.001-08:002011-12-08T17:37:49.446-08:00

It was through Hikaru no Go, still my favourite manga of all time and unlikely ever to be toppled from that spot, that I first encountered Death Note. Back when the translation group hadn’t finished with Hikaru’s adventures in board games and subtextual homosexuality yet (indeed, they never would finish it), they scanslated and released the one-shot pilot of Death Note, which was the first work

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-64606042617791941852011-12-07T19:24:00.000-08:002012-02-09T08:18:32.204-08:00

In the near future, insects have grown resistant to pesticides. What will mankind do? Well, the answer is simple – they must turn to moé-moé little palm-sized robots to destroy them with guns.This is a ten-minute animation that is something of an orphan of a franchise I’m never going to explore. It would seem that the franchise started life as a Dengeki Daioh manga halfway between a parody of the

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-66562452595659977732011-12-06T19:10:00.000-08:002011-12-08T17:44:01.762-08:00

With Chicken Run, Aardman unexpectedly brought their claymation style to a much wider audience. They had been charming British audiences for years, of course, from the Creature Comforts shorts to their celebrated Wallace and Gromit films. Despite my initial fears, this film also does not signal the end of their relationship with the medium – the claymation The Pirates! In an Adventure with

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-13368269222267472062011-12-04T16:38:00.001-08:002012-02-28T08:41:20.351-08:00

Was Watership Down for kids or adults? On one hand, it has some terrifying and bloody scenes of hallucinogenic death, some grimly realistic scenes of violence and voice acting from respected thesps. On the other, it’s about the adventures of a group of talking rabbits trying to establish a new warren after theirs is destroyed. The decision in the end rests with parents, but Watership Down will

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-68291727164692017252011-12-03T17:25:00.000-08:002011-12-14T21:16:15.635-08:00

There is a tendency to remember the original Happy Feet in a…selective way. It gets looked back upon very favourably, as people remember the singing penguins, great mash-ups in the Moulin Rouge tradition and spectacular dances. But I also remember weird scenes in zoos, preachy messages and a slightly awkward ending where we saw something of an alternate world, in which the whole world goes to see

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-80966292754698888532011-12-02T11:50:00.000-08:002012-01-12T19:44:03.575-08:00

Another Production IG project from Oshii Mamoru – bringing with it the hallmarks of that partnership: beautiful visuals, main characters with blank expressions and glassy eyes and questions raised about humanity and existentialism. But all the flaws of the Ghost in the Shell properties are here – with very few of their virtues. The plot here unravels incredibly slowly, with the audience

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-2862060776050245062011-12-01T18:36:00.000-08:002011-12-01T18:41:54.520-08:00

From the maker of Flame of Recca, MÄR is very, very formulaic, being in large part based on a one-on-one tournament so typical of shounen manga, but is nonetheless extremely enjoyable. The story begins with a nerdy high-school loser being whisked away from his classroom to a mystical land, where he finds to his astonishment that (owing to, of course, the weaker gravity...) he can run extremely

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-90420710109159257132011-12-01T15:00:00.000-08:002011-12-07T19:40:02.687-08:00

I got The Animatrix shortly after its release, back in 2003 – nine pieces of varying length that acknowledged what the Wachowski brothers had already made abundantly plain: that The Matrix was as cool as it was because it drew heavily from anime’s aesthetics. This was an homage. It was also several months before The Matrix Revolutions made the whole world realise that there was not going to be an

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-33874210814334470102011-11-28T19:12:00.000-08:002011-12-22T08:22:56.273-08:00

Screened tonight on a high-quality projector in one of London’s West End Odeon cinemas, with horribly inflated ticket prices, was the Sapporo part of the 2011 Mikupa, which was the rather shorter of the two concerts on the Blu-ray, with a much quirkier set-list. I would have rather watched the Tokyo set, being longer and having more of my favourite songs (‘Trick and Treat’, ‘Kokoro’ and ‘Meltdown

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-57972645307564515202011-11-22T19:23:00.000-08:002011-11-22T19:28:41.610-08:00

Corrected to ‘Petite Cossette’ for release outside Japan, Petit Cossette was an interesting, odd little OVA from 2004, probably the prettiest – and strangest – iteration of the Gothic Lolita craze in anime that also spawned the superb Rozen Maiden and the lamentable rip-off Saint October. While the visuals of Cossette are striking and impressive, the plot is rather loose and obscure, and while

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-11588169867486394902011-11-17T07:43:00.001-08:002011-11-25T19:34:04.334-08:00

Since I wrote my impressions of the first two seasons of Drawn Together, there has been a third, news of cancellation and then a direct-to-DVD movie. And there, barring a revival, ends the Drawn Together story, to the regret of few. There were great ideas in Drawn Together and some funny jokes, but mostly it became tired and strained and extremely repetitive.Season 3 was more of the same, 14 new

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-30162755008607057432011-11-16T17:07:00.000-08:002011-11-16T17:18:09.065-08:00

Tegami Bachi REVERSE picked up right where the first series left off – adorable little ‘Letter Bee’ Lag Seeing finally found Gauche, the man he had a huge hero-worship boycrush on since first meeting him, only for Gauche to be nothing at all like anyone remembered him being, calling himself Noir and working for a sinister underground organisation.The original series had a very silly premise which

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-27832683350753893062011-11-13T09:50:00.000-08:002011-12-18T17:50:45.412-08:00

Lilo & Stitch has always been the oddball in the Disney family. By design, too – the memorable advertising campaign for the film had Stitch interrupting and ruining the memorable scenes of various Disney Renaissance films, accompanied by posters with the slogan ‘There’s one in every family’. Stitch’s oddness in the Disney canon goes beyond just the intended weirdness of the character, though –

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-24966895168267240292011-11-12T08:40:00.000-08:002011-11-12T08:46:47.688-08:00

It may seem surprising, given that it was the immediate follow-up to my favourite Disney film, The Lion King, but until last night Pocahontas was the only one of the Disney Renaissance films I had never seen from beginning to end. The others I saw in cinemas or later on video, but not Pocahontas. It’s also probably the most uneven of their films from the era, and with The Little Mermaid about the

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-24439974265236040832011-11-10T17:24:00.000-08:002011-11-14T20:50:43.815-08:00

I’ve always found Tintin a little creepy, even when I was small. He’s always somewhere in the middle of two things, and neither of them. He’s not a child, nor a man. He’s not handsome, nor ugly. He’s not cute, nor cool. And he lives in a weird sexless world of funny men that’s neither comic nor serious. The Hergé comics, despite their great characters, never sat well with me, and though I’d smile

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-34577562501151577252011-11-09T17:46:00.000-08:002011-11-09T17:50:33.925-08:00

Just so you guys know, as well as this blog about full series/movies, I also write down my thoughts about various manga as I read them. Mostly shounen, but with some variety here and there. I've started to put these online, and you can see them here.

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-3069452425807833632011-10-27T17:32:00.001-07:002012-02-11T18:01:03.180-08:00

I’ve done it for the other two Shounen Jump ‘Big Three’ titles, so now that the anime has come out of its latest extended filler arc and skipped ahead a year and a half to one of its most unpopular arcs, it’s time to give Bleach the same treatment.It’s interesting to note that I didn’t get into any of the Big Three on a first attempt. One Piece’s Alvida episode seemed frivolous and unfunny and

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-39274351655503146072011-10-20T17:24:00.000-07:002011-10-20T17:37:37.083-07:00

(more to come when I get the extras with Ghibli ga Ippai)種山ヶ原の夜 / Taneyamagahara no Yoru / The Night of TaneyamagaharaThe honest truth is that if not for the fact that this was a Ghibli short film, directed by superb background artist Oga Kazuo, I would not have bothered. It’s a little folk story by Miyazawa Kenji, the mind behind the wonderful Gauche the Cellist and Night on the Galactic

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-91508158010807956852011-10-15T14:24:00.000-07:002011-12-16T02:22:35.964-08:00

While there are good things to be said for the third Shrek film, which I certainly enjoyed more than the first despite the relative dearth of original thinking, it really should have been the end of the franchise and may well be the weakest of the films. On the other hand, it was successful enough for the fourth film to be made, and we’re soon to get a Puss in Boots spin-off as well. Shrek is

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-44018903085297506112011-10-15T12:51:00.000-07:002011-10-17T05:51:17.897-07:00

Both at the time and in retrospect, 2004’s KonoMini seemed to be something very significant in the anime world, even monumental. Gainax heralded it as their 20th anniversary series, alongside Diebuster as a 20th anniversary OVA. It was one of several coproductions with Shaft just as they were really finding their feet – their Tsukiyomi: Moon Phase also came out in the same year and a few months

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-25815769450012346472011-10-13T19:45:00.000-07:002011-10-13T19:58:11.467-07:00

This anime, a tie-in adaptation of the popular MMORPG, was perhaps my first introduction to typical by-the-numbers formulaic anime, back in 2004. Being derived from an MMORPG with a generic fantasy setting – and having little in common with the original Korean manhwa beyond the world it takes place in – it was never going to be shockingly original, but it has fun little quirks and a working plot.

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-19060316860318325942011-10-12T18:26:00.000-07:002011-10-12T19:20:26.621-07:00

Don’t expect any Rolling Stones references based on that comma in the title – it goes no further than that. If I were writing the review I expected to, that would be a neat way to start a rant about a franchise that likes empty references to poorly-understood ideas. And c’mon, a plotline involving aliens wanting to turn everyone on Earth into a homogenous mass of white blobs so that there will be

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-56560167810741263202011-10-11T17:41:00.000-07:002011-10-11T17:51:00.464-07:00

It wasn’t until 1999 that I saw the original Vampire Hunter D film, but for all its schlocky 80s-ness, I found myself rather enjoying it. So when I found out about Bloodlust through a (pretty awesome) teaser trailer sometime in 2001, I grew quite eager for its release, which as was the way of things here in the UK, didn’t happen until 2004. What I eventually got my hands on was a slightly mixed

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-38254823152837663702011-10-10T17:44:00.000-07:002011-12-14T21:19:44.580-08:00

I was still fairly new to weekly anime and the fansubbing scene when I watched Midori no Hibi, back in 2004. Fresh from Azumanga Daioh and Excel Saga, I thought that in the grand scheme of things, the concept of Midori no Hibi wasn’t all that weird. But it is. I was in a little bubble of surreal anime, and I’m not sure anything has had such a weird basis since. Even OreTama has a more coherent

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-4565134910500624612011-10-09T16:21:00.000-07:002011-10-09T20:09:26.871-07:00

Stray! Stray!!It’s quite easy to forget, eight years on, how frustrating it was to watch Wolf’s Rain when it was airing. Not only did the series slap its fans with no less than four back-to-back flashback episodes, retelling the events of the first half of the season from the point of view of each principal character, but it did not end properly, so that we had to wait six months for four final

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-6330896735708662632011-10-09T07:32:00.000-07:002011-10-09T07:51:23.190-07:00

After reading some pretty poor reviews, including several from disappointed Pixar fans, I wasn’t expecting much from Cars. I was led to believe I would be seeing something cliché, irritating and preachy in its condemnation of the modern world. Happily, I was pleasantly surprised, and Lasseter has served up another winner. Let’s face it, Pixar do not write original plots. That’s not their thing.

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-61630401796146454672011-10-07T18:14:00.001-07:002011-10-11T19:01:03.091-07:00

There’s not a lot to say about The Lion King that I haven’t said before, so I won’t write another review. This is the fifth time I’ve seen the film on the big screen – three times on its original release (once as a school trip), once on the IMAX and now in 3D. The conversion was very nice, actually – the expected spectacular parts, like the opening shots of birds, the clouds coming together and

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-65227328459450303792011-10-07T15:12:00.000-07:002011-10-07T19:05:00.032-07:00

I’m not sure why I expected this anime to be serious and ambitious. Judging by the first episode, it’s the lowest of lowbrow ecchi, with little going for it but cuteness and nice music-video visuals. I will probably keep watching it as something light and insignificant, and to see how Silver Link do in their second project after Baka to Testo, but if it’s going to take a turn for the dark and

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-45519140321007041542011-10-06T17:15:00.000-07:002012-02-13T08:21:00.099-08:00

I find it more or less impossible to answer when someone asks me my favourite anime. There is too much diversity, I think. Too many great series and too much variety – how can you weigh Azumanga Daioh against Paranoia Agent or Spirited Away? And then I feel inconsistent, because I know full well what my favourite manga is, despite there being even more titles and even broader degrees of variation

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-78102678905490461032011-10-06T04:46:00.000-07:002011-10-07T19:32:30.784-07:00

I think few people knew what they were in for when they started Fire Candy, the mangaka included – something that’s more or less admitted in the apologetic afterword. The concept is quite interesting – half-human half-animal teenagers in a future that seems quite heavily influenced by Akira cope with their status as pariahs by forming rollerblading gangs, inevitably ending up surrounded by the

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-48435090183099239402011-10-05T18:05:00.000-07:002011-10-27T17:41:08.058-07:00

This, really, is how one of the tie-in movies for the big Shounen Jump series should be. After a slew of disappointing efforts, I was pleased to find this feature-length side-story compelling, unorthodox and visually stunning. The crucial difference is that the mangaka Tite Kubo was involved in the creative process. Normally, these films are overlong filler episodes, in which nothing of any

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-87834729582027793372011-10-05T06:14:00.000-07:002011-10-05T07:10:54.393-07:00

A small change in the way I write from today on – I keep writing reviews where I end up awkwardly quoting my first impressions of a series. Now I’m keeping a proper blog, it makes more sense to make an early entry, then expand upon them when I finish watching the show. And today, something I’ve been quite looking forward to has appeared. The first episode of the new remake of what was once such a

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-20596036779036319702011-10-03T17:59:00.001-07:002011-12-16T01:53:39.324-08:00

Baka to Test has carved itself out a strange little niche. I never would have expected it to be one of the most successful comedy series of the last decade, but it’s struck a chord with an Internet audience, spawned a huge fandom and numerous derivative works and is likely to continue beyond these two seasons (+OVA). And really, it’s a great example of a series not having a great premise, but

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-12775988186603845922011-09-30T16:49:00.000-07:002011-10-03T18:11:55.349-07:00

I watched the first Digimon movie in June 2007, and even then I’d had it sitting about for about three years before I got around to it, thinking I’d see the series first. No need, though – it was, after all, only twenty minutes long. Besides, it was the first Digimon anime to get released, on March 6, 1999 - one day before the series began. I was very surprised by it, in fact. I had expected a

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-18856247232065392872011-09-29T17:02:00.001-07:002011-09-29T17:06:48.053-07:00

I started watching .hack//Sign back in 2005, and it was very nearly one of the very first anime I abandoned. I didn’t write out my impressions of it back then, but I finished it months later in 2006, and the few mentions I gave it in my journal were unimpressed: ‘It just doesn’t interest me.’ ‘Maybe it’ll get better towards the end.’ ‘Just not cutting it’. But finish it I did, and the OVA

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-29389794477053007032011-09-28T13:59:00.000-07:002011-09-30T18:32:13.723-07:00

It took a long while to finish watching Sunred, because I waited months for the original subtitling group to release the final two episodes of the second season. Eventually, I decided to just track down the alternatives for my last two morsels of pleasure. Because short though its episodes were, Tentai Senshi Sunred has been one of the funniest and most likeable series I’ve ever seen, and a great

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-80634500839865398132011-09-26T17:19:00.000-07:002012-01-03T17:21:45.323-08:00

Deadman Wonderland is one of my favourite manga of the past few years, although admittedly I haven’t picked up all that many lately. There was an interesting link here with the anime Eureka Seven, which was adapted during production by the mangaka duo Kataoka Jinsei (story) and Kondou Kazuma (art) for Shounen Ace. When that series came to an end, Kataoka and Kondou were given a chance to make

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-91496883810773358612011-09-22T18:36:00.000-07:002011-09-23T20:07:00.371-07:00

I was a bit cautious about Tiger & Bunny. When everybody tells me this is the next big thing, I tend to get sceptical, especially as there have been a lot of very popular anime in the last few years I’ve not liked one bit. But Tiger & Bunny was not only superb in concept and execution, but the perfect series for Sunrise to make. It fit their style perfectly, and the hilariously understated ‘

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-69975146608370944452011-09-20T10:20:00.000-07:002011-09-23T20:13:33.804-07:00

A few things held No. 6 back from becoming the classic series it could have been. But chief amongst them was the thing I thought would be its greatest boon: being part of the increasingly famous noitaminA time slot on Fuji TV at quarter to one in the morning on Thursdays. (‘noitaminA’ is ‘Animation’ backwards, and sadly pronounced as one word – I had hoped it would be like ‘Vitimin A’!) A series

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-88788881963684144512011-09-18T14:33:00.000-07:002011-09-20T07:10:36.384-07:00

Going to see the fourth Shrek film, three years after seeing what I had thought would be the final part of a trilogy, I expected a limp and inconsequential milking of the cash-cow, but in fact it was actually an affectionate and entertaining final adventure for what have become well-loved characters. Indeed, they were well-loved even for one such as me, who disliked the first film. It was a

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-81924932186141726652011-09-14T09:42:00.000-07:002011-11-03T20:15:52.185-07:00

The sixth One Piece movie was rather different from what I had been expecting. It had a weird, weird art style, which put me in mind of the episodes of Naruto where the art gets really sloppy so that the animation can be exceptionally fluid. Despite the parallel, though, and despite the movie budget here, the visual effect actually wasn’t so impressive and Oda’s exaggerated expressions really

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-86025113231174759132011-09-04T15:25:00.000-07:002012-02-01T20:44:40.104-08:00

The timing of The Simpsons’ movie adaptation was a little bizarre. Though the story goes that Matt Groening had been eager to make a film since the series’ early days, it certainly seemed to me that the right time had long come and gone without one, so there was real desire to get the hugely successful animated family up on the big screen, where other adult-oriented animated franchises like South

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-10247273416963684082011-09-03T12:56:00.000-07:002011-12-23T03:30:05.504-08:00

These pervy shotacon anime are not for me, I fear. The closest one has come to working was Boku no Pico, and that was more hilarious than anything else. Actually, Enzai probably worked best, but would have been vastly improved if the shotacon part that was its whole reason for being had been taken out. I can understand the appeal of the concepts behind these, but in execution they’re mostly

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-83311665391525416682011-09-03T06:08:00.000-07:002012-01-14T17:48:49.585-08:00

I have very little love for FernGully, an early 90s animation from Fox, with the likes of Rough Draft providing the actual animation, before Fox realised they really ought to go to Don Bluth if they wanted something good-looking. I didn’t see the film at the time, so the nostalgia goggles were off, and besides, Disney’s contemporary films had far, far better writing. Without the least compunction

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-77648368352545507232011-09-01T21:49:00.001-07:002012-02-26T20:47:27.147-08:00

Ratatouille was a lot of fun. Mark Kermode was on The Culture Show last night saying he didn’t like the film because it was too polished, too perfect, but I disagree. Pixar are still taking risks, still pushing to get a different flavour from the last film, and the one before. Ratatouille was a familiar Pixar premise – underdog fights against adversity, with a little help from friends and family

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-22544635022267696752011-08-30T09:25:00.000-07:002011-08-30T09:31:18.287-07:00

Waltz with Bashir got a lot of attention – primarily with arthouse audiences – upon its release in 2008. With a striking, realistic art style, a hard-hitting and intellectually fashionable subject matter and unconventional structure, it was nominated for an Oscar not for best animated film but best film in a foreign language, won the equivalent award at the Golden Globes and earned top awards

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-2425226160514486092011-08-25T15:17:00.000-07:002011-08-25T15:23:20.669-07:00

Dead Space: Downfall is spin-off of a successful atmospheric sci-fi/horror game. Serving as a prequel, it tells the story of how the player comes to be on a spaceship full of nasty alien creatures that can turn humans into six-limbed killing machines. I’m guessing the idea was to produce something along the lines of The Animatrix, an animated tie-in that is well-received by fans of the original,

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-87517527832197219002011-08-25T15:00:00.000-07:002011-08-25T15:14:45.075-07:00

It’s perhaps purely because of his vague presence on Cartoon Network in somewhat bastardized form that Shin-chan isn’t seen as the national treasure he is in Japan. The success of Crayon Shin-chan is phenomenal, both as a manga and on televisions, the anime having run continuously since 1992. The end is in sight only because of the tragic passing of series creator Usui Yoshito in 2009, but such a

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-19236958455921211542011-08-24T21:21:00.000-07:002011-11-03T20:19:14.972-07:00

Beowulf turned out to be quite a surprise, albeit not a very good one.I didn’t think it was going to be animated to the extent it was. I thought it would be like 300 or Sin City, heavily stylised live-action with lots of CG overlaid. But alas, Robert Zemekis is no Robert Rodriguez, and is still hung up on his Polar Express experiments, so Beowulf takes the interesting step of having real actors,

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-82156167278133594222011-08-23T15:32:00.000-07:002011-10-09T19:53:13.108-07:00

This, the first Naruto film, is also the only one to date that I saw on a big screen. I saw it first as a fansub in 2005, but then caught it again in 2007 when there was a single promotional screening in London. That may well mean that it is the one and only Naruto film I’ve watched through twice. By 2007 Naruto was already losing its lustre as a series, though had nothing like the blind hatred

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-52964177534383898332011-08-23T15:17:00.000-07:002011-09-14T16:45:52.260-07:00

This silly little piece of moé frivolity was apparently based on an H-game, and given that although it calls itself a ‘movie’ yet is only 20 minutes long and dispenses with more or less everything that could be called exposition, it’s one for the fans.But anyone familiar with archetypes in anime will instantly understand the cuteness factor of the girls here, and the charm of the broad slapstick

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-50541556152178686692011-08-18T17:31:00.000-07:002011-08-18T17:38:07.138-07:00

Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis was a very interesting project. Made in 2001, of course long after the death of the legendary Tezuka, who created the likes of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, it was based on a 1949 manga he created, adapted by Akira’s Outomo Katsuhiro and directed by Rintaro, renowned Harlock helmsman who worked with Tezuka in the 60s. These names, the legacy of the ‘Godfather of

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-51908746645999045252011-08-17T19:06:00.001-07:002012-02-17T19:23:51.367-08:00

This 1997 animated film was for some reason quite heavily promoted over here five or six years ago. It’s dated in several ways, not least of which being the notion that any young idol could be clueless about the Internet, but it’s still a very powerful work, and something of a mind-fuck.When a pop star wants to make a transition to being an actress, those responsible for tarnishing her pure image

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-13576047865464302122011-08-17T07:28:00.000-07:002011-08-17T07:31:29.985-07:00

With a title like that, it’s going to be a comedy, right? And so it is, a very strange piece of ecchi irreverence from 1994. I got this out to amuse people at a con, and it didn’t fail – Buddhaaaa became one of the in-jokes of the weekend. A surreal comedy, it centres on a girl who in order to protect her best friend is granted the powers of the Buddha (Gautaman being ‘Gautama’ rendered in

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-9168733963380851402011-08-17T06:27:00.000-07:002011-12-16T21:32:24.572-08:00

Time to slip impressions of a hentai in between two slightly more respected older anime, albeit possibly not much. From Green Bunny, the great minds behind Wordsworth, and apparently farmed out to be animated in Korea, comes a hilariously plotless pornographic comedic anime that can’t quite decide who its audience is. Like so many ecchi series, Countdown to Delight gets most of its laughs by

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-31934097494178281292011-08-17T06:12:00.000-07:002011-12-02T11:58:41.823-08:00

What a peculiar little piece of animation the Twilight Q OVA episodes are. I don’t know exactly when or where I got hold of these 1986 episodes, but it was at least two years ago. Very mysterious, I’m sure you’ll agree. With the title drawing immediate comparisons to The Twilight Zone, the episodes also revolve around mysterious supernatural events, and are rather unimpressively realised and

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-3235578962215171052011-08-12T18:44:00.000-07:002011-12-26T20:18:10.045-08:00

What a strange place in Disney’s story this film occupies. A CGI film from Disney, but not from Pixar, but still going for a more realistic aesthetic rather than the stylised look of films like Bolt or Chicken Little. It was for whatever reason excluded from the official Disney canon for some years, before being slotted back into place in 2008, possibly because only then would including the likes

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-60800502849129524292011-08-08T15:09:00.000-07:002011-08-08T15:12:08.229-07:00

I wasn’t impressed by the Tokyo Babylon OVAs when they were screened after Read or Die at the first meeting of my university anime club. In fact, all that I wrote on 13 October, 2002, was that ‘the comparatively dull Tokyo Babylon proved an unsuccessful follow-up’. But the scant two episodes, barely hinting at a main storyline, were never going to be a satisfactory adaptation off Clamp’s manga.

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-29970264910147892862011-08-08T13:35:00.000-07:002011-09-01T22:01:13.662-07:00

Aside from the Pixar films and the likeable Lilo & Stitch, The Emperor’s New Groove was the last Disney film I watched in cinemas until 2009’s The Princess and the Frog. For me, it marked the end of an era of great affection for the studio and the beginning of a notable slump. While my short diary note about seeing it on February 26, 2001, was simply that it was ‘quirky & amusing’, it has been

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4890012648547129169.post-44465671847795603682011-08-03T13:33:00.000-07:002011-08-03T14:00:11.978-07:00

Marvel Animation, in its various iterations, is perhaps under-appreciated as an American animation studio. Over the years, there have been a huge number of Marvel properties adapted into animation – Ralph Bakshi was animating Spiderman in the 60s (very badly) just before he went to work on Fritz the Cat; a wide variety of shows in the 90s were made under the studios of New World Animation that

Adziuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14424682692020409451noreply@blogger.com0