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Skin and Bone reads like an R.L. Stine book, mostly involves schoolchildren, and is one of the goriest manga I've read with such simple character designs. In yet another compilation of short stories, Hideshi Hino continues to prove his mastery of simple but disturbing horror stories. I'm not sure whether or not his intended audience was children, but it wouldn't surprise me.

The individual short stories were fairly good, or as decent as one can be in 30 pages.Traditional "ghost story" plots, girl gets killed or tormented, comes back to haunt and kill classmates, but they move you quickly to the end of the manga. The art's fairly solid, character designs were fairly grotesque, and many panels were easily cringe worthy. Its no Uzumaki, but if you're looking for a quick horror fix, you might want to check it out. read more

This has got to be one of the most bizarre one-shot's I've ever read. The story kind of goes like this: man meets pretty girl, man kidnaps the pretty girl and takes her to his rinky-dink fishing boat, man is thwarted by the devil himself and a Mini Cooper. Seriously?

I'm all for religious parodies, but this goes so far beyond ridiculous it's no longer funny. First of all, there's not a likable character in this thing. The main character, Vulcan, is so vile that I don't know who could possibly think he was funny (unless attempted rape is hilarious to you). Nazareth I assume is supposed to be innocent and pure, but comes off as kind of bland, especially since she doesn't have a whole lot to do other than to be kidnapped by various people. The demon (who at first describes himself as Lucifer, and then puts that into question by saying he wants to resurrect him), seems to do nothing but summon up really random junk (cars,vending machines, airplanes, etc.) to try and crush people with.

It's only 68 pages long, and its not extremely painful; just extremely silly. The art isn't bad, but the story and the characters were just too out there to make this enjoyable for me. read more

I'm a huge Resident Evil fan, and I've been waiting for Capcom to jump into the film business for a long time. That said, this movie really feels more like a long trailer for the upcoming RE:5 than an actual movie. The story's basically the same thing as most of the games: two characters, Leon and Claire, are propelled through a series of action packed gunfights with zombies and all sorts of twisted T and G virus mutants. While some of the earlier fight scenes are nice, the latter half of the movie has a dreadful amount of drama in it. I watched the dub, which was just horrid. Besides the fact that the lip synching was really off, which I kind of expect when it comes to CGI anime, the faces weren't able to hold a wide range of features, and that makes all the characters look like dolls when they're trying to convey emotions.

The art itself was decent. It's certainly no more advanced than Square Enix's previous Final Fantasy movies. Degeneration actually looks a lot more like a really nice X-box 360 ingame cutscene to be honest. Lets face it: these graphics are really only a little bit better than the game will look. The graphics on this movie are pretty sorry for a movie coming out recently. Some of the characters have rather jerky animations, too, and it gets really noticeable when you see the crowds. Some things look really fantastic in this, though: billowing fire and explosions in particular.

The sound was decent, I have no real complaints. It didn't wow me or anything, but it got the job done. Some of the instrumental music was decent, but the guitar riffs in some of the later parts of the movie weren't really necessary.

Character is where it gets interesting, sort of. If you're already a RE fan, there's a few nods to the players out there. Once again, Claire gets stuck with the kid, while Leon's off attempting to seduce the lady-cop, Angela. Leon's aide Hunnigan has a cameo, but the real lady every fan would want to see never makes an appearance. I don't know why Capcom chose to keep Claire from really getting into the action like Leon (she goes through almost half of the movie without a weapon), but I thought it was a really poor decision.

I had fun with this, but I'd imagine that if I weren't already a fan of both horror movies (not that this was all too gory) and Resident Evil, I wouldn't have cared for it as much. Still, its not too bad, and its a good way to get friends to watch anime (possibly). read more

There's one word that perfectly sums up the Blame! Special/Collapsed Data: pointless. Utterly pointless.

This is just a bunch of clips from the original Blame! OVA, blurred up, with added computer voices and a bunch of flashing symbols. It seems more like some sort of brainwashing tool than something you're actually supposed to watch.

The art, when you can actually see something clearly, is okay. Honestly, there was only about 5 seconds of clear viewing.

The sound will give you a headache. Really. It will.

Character? What character? There's no character to be had, except in the very end when you see an image of Cibo, or what I assume is Cibo. You see a silhouette of Killy, and blurry images of silicon creatures, but other than that, nothing.

I didn't enjoy it, can't recommend it, and I hope you just skip this OVA. read more

This is going to be a very short review for an anime that takes a little over 6 minutes to complete.

There isn't much of a story unless you were an avid reader of the Blame! manga. Several enemies appear, Killy destroys them, Killy continues with wandering the giant cityscape. End of story.

Now a good art design, this has in droves. This OVA was created by the same people who did Appleseed (04) and Vexille, so of course there's a high level of detail in the backgrounds. The city looks great, and it keeps that grungy, almost decayed look of the manga perfectly. The characters look more like action figures or robots more than anything else, but considering the fact that most of them are Silicon Beings, it sort of fits.

The sound was decent, but considering that all there was to hear was eerie noises and gunshots, that's not saying much.

If Cibo had shown up, there might have been some dialogue, but with Killy, its always shoot first, ask questions never. He's as silent as ever, and neither he, nor any of the enemies he runs into (including a brief moment when Sanakan appears) say a word. Its fine though, because you don't really need a whole lot of talking to understand this.

If you're a fan of Blame!, you can't really go wrong checking this out. If you're not, it's only 6 minutes out of your day and it's very pretty to look at. read more

I, like many people, picked up this manga because of my love of the movie, and Tezuka in general. What I didn't know was how immensely different from the movie this is. There's no Rock, no politically driven story or romance: there isn't even a "Tima".

The story focuses on a gender-bending young robot named Michi, who is very like Tima in almost all respects. Both befriend Kenichi, have run ins with Duke Red (who isn't nearly as charismatic as he is in the movie), and both are, for the most part, innocence incarnate. Many recurring characters in Tezuma's world make appearances, and even some hilarious references to Disney (from whom Tezuka's style is mostly based on) pop up in the form of radioactive rats resembling Mickey Mouse.

The art, admittedly, isn't Tezuka's best. The backgrounds after the initial, almost chaotic, pages are very sparse, but when he does do one of those panels that takes up 2 pages, there's a lot going on. His old school style, almost Steamboat Williesque in its simplicity, makes for a very entertaining read considering the content of this manga, which includes blackmail, betrayal, and some brutal (and by brutal, I don't mean bloody) deaths towards the end.

The characters are kept simple. Duke Red is your typical intelligent gangster evil scientist (if having a list of descriptions like that can be called "simple"), Mustashio is the detective (along side none other than Sherlock Holmes himself), and Lawton, who appeared to be insane and almost sinister in the movie, was far more kind and respectful than I expected him to be. Unlike the movie, where there are so many characters its hard to keep up, there were way less characters (the biggest loss for me was Pero who apparently had no role in the manga)

I personally had a blast reading this. It's not the best manga out there, but when you get overwhelmed with the overly complex story lines of modern manga and arch after arch of the same thing over and over, its nice to take a break from the fast paced stories of nowadays and go back to a simpler time. This will certainly not be for everyone, but if you want to pick something short of Tezuka's to get into, you can't go wrong with Metropolis.
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I've never seen or read Bleach, but from reading this, I don't think I even want to bother. The story is typical shonen fare, which normally doesn't bother me if it has something out of the ordinary. Forbidden powers? Check. Wacky villains? Check. Annoying pipsqueak sidekick? Check. Chick with abnormally huge knockers? Double check. The Rings of the Dead were an interesting concept, but immortality has been done before, and it's really just another fetch quest. The action is okay, but other than that, there's nothing to be had. The humor is either way out of bounds or just plain not funny.

The art is just plain awful. The lack of detail is astounding. Some of these characters are missing eyes, which may or may not be a stylistic thing; I leave that to you to decide. It looks sloppy, and whether the character is male or female it doesn't matter because they both look the same. Some of the character designs are decent, but other than that they look like they were ripped from other manga/anime.

The characters are pretty clichéd, and there's back story for about half of them. This is probably because they stopped printing this, so it ends before it even begins. If he'd continued making this, maybe it would have turned out to be something with a decent plot and character development, something worth reading, but as it stands, it’s barely passable. Unless you're a huge fan of Bleach, or a 13 year old kid, I say skip this mediocre piece and go read something good. read more

Story
Real Drive is tough to write a review for. As promising as this series is, it has a major downfall: it can't find its balance. The 1st and 2nd episodes are a great start, giving you all of this information and an interesting and slightly mysterious lead in Haru. I found myself immediately wanting to know more about the Artificial Island these characters inhabit, and, most of all, about what exactly happened 50 years ago to Haru. While the main character may be Haru, this series really switches the focus up after the 4th ep. After that, it becomes Minamo's show until a little past the half way mark, becoming a really drab slice of life with the story left on the back burner. Once it hits that later part of the series, though, it ramps up and you start to get a story again. It's a real shame that the entire series isn't like that, because those last few episodes were really fantastic.

Art
The first thing you notice about this series is how crisp the colors are. The animations for the ocean are particularly beautiful, as they should be when the sea is the focus of this series. The near future setting allows this series to retain a sort of familiarity while being entirely alien at the same time. Many people complain that most of the characters look fat, but by the time you finish this, not only will you not notice it, you probably won't care. The characters themselves are animated well, but its nothing really special. The underwater facility is absolutely gorgeous to look at, like the majority of the background, and you'll probably be paying more attention to them than the characters. The Metal, while an interesting concept, often looks light years behind the rest of the animation standard, with a lot of its CGI looking clunky in comparison.

Sound
The music is give or take. Some of the more orchestral stuff sounds like it could have come from a Hollywood movie, while other things sound about as boring as elevator music. The OP is decent, but the ED is annoying, and I ended up skipping it every time just to get it over with. The sound effects are spot on, and the V/Os are solid.

Character
The other supporting characters often had good foils, even if you learn little to nothing about anyone's past except for Minamo and Haru. Since the show focuses more on Minamo than anyone else, when you do get an episode or two that stars someone else, it's a real relief. All of the characters do their jobs perfectly, but none of them are very memorable.

Enjoyment
I went into this mainly because I love Shirow, and came out with mixed feelings. Its an interesting series, and some of the things it brings up deserve discussion, but there was just too much filler to make this great.
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I'd heard that the story was damn near incomprehensible, and whoever wrote that was right. It jumps all over the place, and it’s pretty hard to follow. It's not that the writing is difficult to understand, the story just literally doesn't make sense. If you consider it to be more of a collection of random short stories set in the same universe, it seems to make it more understandable. Since it was his first work, though, I'll cut him some slack.

The art isn't Shirow's best, and the detailed backgrounds you come to expect from him are nowhere to be found. There was even one panel where a guy was missing an eye for no apparent reason.

The characters never really get a back-story, though I'm assuming that they're supposed to be like gods almost. It's really hard to tell.

Overall, I had fun with this piece, but I can't really recommend it.
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Because MAL does not have a separate page for both of the Dominion manga (which are vastly different, by the way), I'm going to attempt to write this review to suit both of them.

The original Dominion has got to be the lightest read I've ever bought, Shirow-wise anyway. It was funny, had decent artwork, and had more tanks than you could shake a pistol at. Released in 1986, this is his third work, and one of the easiest ways to get someone at least interested in Shirow. There's no huge glossary you have to memorize, no notes to take or side stories to follow. It's just a straight cop and robber case, and all the wackiness that ensues in between. Some of the characters seem to pop up in other manga of his too, Crolis and Buaku to be precise. The art isn't his best, I'll admit, but it's still decent.

Now No More Noise, which was released in 97 on our shores, is much better. While it doesn't include some of the characters from the original, mainly Al, it does bring a whole new squad and a few unexpected members to the team. The art is vastly improved, since by that time he had gained much more experience, and some of the color sections (there aren't near as many as I'd like), are very pleasing to the eye. The story focuses on yet another crazy criminal, but this outing has a lot more going on. The quirky characters in Leona's squad provide a few laughs and keep the ball rolling, not that it ever really slows down. It's more action packed and easily dominates over the original in almost every aspect of its creation.
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