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Hen Zemi is a comedy anime by studio Xebec, of Outlaw Star and harem/shounen fame. The story follows Matsutaka, an ordinary girl who enrolls in an abnormal psychology class, and her adventures with her salacious and deviant classmates. It’s not often you get an anime in a university setting, and it’s refreshing to see adult characters who actually have sex and talk about cultivating their own feces. It’s also interesting to see how the others’ bizarreness rubs off on Matsutaka, and how she changes through the show.

As you might have guessed, this show has some pretty weird jokes, and it’s definitely not for the faint ... of mind, or those who mostly keep to more generic comedy. If you liked Panty & Stocking (with Garterbelt), it’s a little like that, but more straight faced. Without hesitation, the characters seek out all vile perversions in the world, from indirect kissing to walking around in public in a diaper or with a phone-activated vibrator. The characters are varied, and feel fresh and original. There’s of course a lot of focus on the main character, and as such, more interesting characters sometimes get left behind, but everyone gets their share, one way or another.

The art is simplistic, and while it may seem a little bland at first, it fits the show very well, and never feels unsatisfactory. The characters either have over-the-top reactions to most things, or remain calm and collected, which varies things, and gives each character their own identity. The animation is really nothing special, but it doesn’t need to be. It looks and feels very much like the original manga.

The soundtrack is pretty unimpressive, but fits the tone of the show, especially a piece of music introduced near the end. The voice acting, on the other hand, is wonderful. The voice actors give it their all, and they each do a smashing job, my favourites perhaps being Norihisa Mori (Ichikawa) and Shiraishi Minoru (Taguchi). The ending, song by Hanazawa Kana, is catchy and light hearted. It’s certainly a notch above average, but not quite up there with the great.

I’d recommend this to anyone who wants a comedy out of the ordinary, those who like the abnormal, and deviants in general. It might not be for those new to anime or those a little pretentious, but I had a lot of fun with it, and you should watch it.

”Yondemasu-yo, Azazel-san” is a comedy anime by Production I.G, known for Ghost in the Shell and Kimi ni Todoke, amongst others.

The premise is pretty simple, but very functional. A detective called Akutabe summons a demon named Azazel, and the story follows him, his assistant Sakuma, and their various demon helpers as they solve cases and engage in depravity and lasciviousness.
Because the humor ranges from mild to Detroit Metal City-level swearing, visually almost grotesque gags, and numerous mentions of bodily waste. All the demons (unsurprisingly) have some sort of perverse gimmick or vice, and the show pulls no punches when it comes to exploiting ... these.
Compared to the only other I.G comedy I have seen, Cromartie High School, the humor is very different, though that mostly has to do with the source material. I have not read the manga, nor have I been able to locate it, but I think the anime does a pretty good job on its own of delivering a story that at a few points made me surprised at how involved I had become. Still, it’s nothing to write home about for the most part, but the humor, though juvenile, is great.
The shortness of the episodes make it good for sporadic watching, and I joined in late, but marathonned the first five episodes without noticing it.

The animation is mostly decent, with a couple of scenes with slightly above average fluidity. What makes the show stand out a little, though, is the overall design and expression of the characters. It’s very similar to Sgt. Frog in its simplicity, and while there is not much detail in the appearance of the characters, their over-the-top reactions and facial mimicry reinforce the gags, and do an effective job of bringing the characters to life.

The other thing that brings them to life is the voice acting. The show has a great cast, featuring Kobayashi Yuu (Undine), Nakai Kazuya (Salamander), Kamiya Hiroshi (eBeelzebub) and Namikawa Daisuke (Akutabe). They all give it their best, and do a wonderful job of giving the characters identity, making them lovable (or even more detestable) and they all fit their roles like a hand fits a glove.

If you’re of the opinion that all anime needs to have at least two subtle messages hidden in the plot, and that comedy you don’t consider high-brow is worthless, then you should not watch this. If you liked for example Detroit Metal City or Panty & Stocking (with Garterbelt), then you would probably like this. For everybody else, you’re likely to get a couple of chuckles out of it.

This is my first review, so it may not be literary gold, but bear with me.

First Squad: The Moment of Truth is loosely based on a music video made by Studio 4C, who also made the movie. The story is set on the eastern front during the opening days of World War II. The main character is a young girl called Nadya, member of a secret unit of the Soviet army consisting of teenagers with supernatural powers, who have been drafted and trained to fight off the German advances. With all her squadmates dead, Nadya now finds herself alone in the barren and frozen Russian ... landscape.

She soon gets involved in a plot to fight against an SS officer who plans to raise an army of 12th century crusaders and have them help conquer the Soviet Union. The cast of characters is largely forgettable, save for a man taking on the role of Obi-Wan Gandalf, and of course, Nadya herself. Her interactions with her crewmembers, as shown in flashbacks, is largely uninteresting, and only one of them seems to actually have been friends with Nadya. The rest might just as well have been strangers, which bothered me.

The brave, little Nadya is a character you grow to like very quickly. She is a frail, young girl, wandering alone over the tundra, and being chased by forces that in comparison seem insurmountable.

The pacing is good, even if it takes some time for the plot to kick off. The animation is sometimes broken up documentary (or if you will, mockumentary) style, with live-action clips of (probably false) Russian and German war veterans and historians talking about the story as it progresses, which I found to be a nice touch.

The animation is very well done, and the incorporation of CG is nearly flawless. While the animation is not mind-blowing, though high above average standards, what sticks out is how detailed everything is. The backgrounds are generously decorated, the characters all look realistic, and the artists have really done a good job of accentuating the loneliness and hardships Nadya must endure.

One thing that makes this stand out from just about all other anime set in Europe, is that it is not in Japanese. All the voices are originally Russian, and while I have little experience with Russians and their language, they do a good job of bringing the characters to life, especially Elena Chebaturkina (Nadya) and Sergei Aisman (the big baddy). The music is also great, especially the opening and ending songs, which of course would be expected from DJ Krush, whose previous works include a song in LittleBIGPlanet and some other soundtracks. It becomes apparent very quickly that the directors have put effort into making the music fit its Slavic setting.

All in all, I recommend this movie to anybody who has seventy-three minutes of free time. It is a good experience, and if you are interested in WWII, the Soviet Union or just fictional war dramas, then you should definitely watch this.