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This right here is the real deal, the end of innocence, the end of the easy days, the garish bubble of 1980s positivity is popped, your soul is crushed and you can never go back.

What is Kimagure Orange Road(KOR)? It was a long running romantic comedy series about a love triangle between a spineless goody-goody male lead, Kyousuke, the alluring high-school delinquent Madoka, and the bright-eyed always cheerful Hikaru. It was a huge hit at the time, not just in Japan, but in many European countries, especially Italy. Despite that, it fell down the memory hole at some point, and all that remained was a ... small cult following of superfans from back in the day.

It is the most 80s Anime ever created, the opposite of timeless, something totally rooted in 1980s Japan. If you think the 80s died for a reason, this is pure torture. However, there is something very nostalgic about it for me, even though I wasn’t alive back then. 1980s Japan was one of the last times in the West when a generally positive or even utopian attitude about the future was still present, where the future was still possible. With the 90s, the economic recession, and The End of History, all this would die. Of course, the 80s were a pipe dream induced by neoliberalism, but at the time, people really did believe in it.

The series had it all, cheesy, energetic pop music, discos, skateboards, soda cans, aerobics, extravagant outfits, youth gangs, warm summer nights at the beach, skiing trips, totally confident in its decadence. Back when it aired, this was just a reflection of the perceived reality, but today it is a melancholic time capsule. What was then simply anytown is now a very specific setting, the 80s Japanese suburb. I love that each episode ended with a zoom out into a photo. I love the super stylish intros, some of the best in all of Anime. The soundtrack in general is excellent. And I love the character designs and dreamy artwork done by Akemi Takada, like the poster for this movie, she also worked on Patlabor and Urusei Yatsura.

But after all, the 80s did die for a reason, and something that looks awesome in a vaporwave music video might not be as awesome to actually watch. Even if you ignore all the sexism of that period which KOR is full of, the 80s were also a time when Anime could just run forever. Excess was all the rage, and we have all the time in the world, baby.
With 48 episodes KOR was even tame in that regard, Maison Ikkoku lasted 96 episodes, Urusei Yatsura 195 episodes. At some point, the plot in KOR ground to a halt and it lost itself in episodic nothingness. The love triangle became very stale as the same situations are repeated again and again. The series always teased you with some resolution, but never delivered, the status quo was always restored by the end of the episode, no matter how contrived, sometimes with literal magic powers.
Thus, what first appears to be a simple, cute and nostalgic romance about youth and growing up is eventually suffocated in endless filler and shitty pervert comedy. The characters really outstay their welcome after such a long time(I never want to hear “Daaarrrling!” again ), and even when you power through to the end, the central issue remains unresolved.

And this is where the movie “I Want to Return to That Day” comes in. It is the conclusion which was always meant to be, presented with an emotional brutality totally contrary to the easygoing nature of the series. There is nothing cute in this film, nothing funny, no fantastic power to save the day, it’s true to life, and it hurts in the soul. The characters are full of subtle sorrow and display their deepest vulnerabilities. They are pathetic, egoistic, and thus completely human. This film does not hold back, a choice has to be made that will have terrible consequences either way, and these consequences are displayed without mercy. Ultimately, it is a story about accepting that things can’t be the way they were.

While the movie also takes place in the 80s, they are very different from the bubblegum 80s of the series. The music still has a certain cheese factor, but it is much more somber and less energetic. The two songs “I Love You” and “Embrace That Sky” by Kanako Wada, who is a J-Pop singer referenced in the movie itself, are particularly beautiful. Many scenes take place in total silence, always an effective choice.
Shots focus on the fleeting things, ice cream in the summer heat, birds flying away, the direction is placid, allowing us to really soak in the emotional turmoil of the characters, there is an Oshii quality to it. As with many productions of the time, the background art is beautiful and atmospheric, the evening star in the orange sunset sky, nightly cityscapes with the red blinking position lights, lakes shimmering in the sun. I really don’t understand people who call this look dated, do they even have eyes?
This is a film in which relationships start and end, accordingly, there is always some couple in the background of a scene, telephone booths are plastered in pornographic adverts, radio and TV full of romantic advice, when you have a breakup it seems everyone wants to remind you of it.

The most interesting background detail is that we see the ugly side of the achiever society, as if the emotional turmoil our characters and many teenagers go through isn’t enough, it is also the time in their lives when they become firmly embedded in a bureaucratic machine which doesn’t care about them. As one character jokingly remarks “Why do the college entrance exams have to be right when we’re hitting our sexual peaks?”

Madoka and Kyousuke, all grown up, attend a special summer school just to succeed at those exams.
This school is a depressing environment, where you don’t learn for your own sake, but just to pass a test. When Madoka and Kyousuke in one scene quiz each other, all they do is spout historic dates and the events that happened then, a meaningless exercise in memorization. While the cicadas chirp in the summer heat, they lock themselves into their rooms to study, have others bring them food, can’t even attend the town festival. All that will ultimately decide their future are two numbers on a board among hundreds of others.

Hikaru is still in school, but in a similar situation. She wants to be an actor in a school play done by a famous director, and the casting process is analogue to the college entrance exams, anonymizing and merciless. The director seems devoid of any empathy, we never see his face, just that he always taps his hand with the script impatiently. The intense external stress imposed on the characters serves as a backdrop to the internal emotional conflict.

FULL SPOILERS BELOW------------

In a way, this film gives us the conclusion we all wanted. In the series, Kyousuke was really in love with Madoka, and she with him, and it was always clear they would end up together. He kept dating Hikaru because he didn’t want to break her heart, maybe also because she was a “safe” alternative. As mentioned above, this dynamic never changed which became increasingly frustrating as the series went on, he would have to tell Hikaru the truth at some point, and the longer he waited the worse he would hurt her.

This movie finally is that conclusion, but there is no sense of achievement, only raw sadness, because what we wished for was ultimately a crushing breakup story, and that is what we got.
Most powerful is how the film treats Hikaru. In the series, she became nothing but an annoying plot device, someone to keep Kyousuke from Madoka to artificially extend the show’s lifetime, her screeching voice certainly didn’t help, it was someone you just wanted to do away with.
But here she is the most interesting and sympathetic character. After all, it is her heart that is broken and ground into dust, because Kyousuke does break up with her. Not only that, he shuts off all contact completely. But she doesn’t let go, calls him day after day, visits him unannounced, always appearing in high spirits which cover her ruined interior. It must be doubly harsh to be depressed when you’re the designated cheerful person.

The film is really about Hikaru coming to terms with the fact that she wants to return to that day when they were still together, but can’t. It is an insanely painful thing to accept, so her actions shouldn’t be judged too harshly. People today are in denial about lesser things.
After all, what happened to her is through no fault of her own and very “unfair”, she doesn’t understand it at all. She did everything for Kyousuke, while Madoka really only had to exist for him to fall for her, this is what Hikaru accuses Madoka of. Of course, she is wrong, affection can’t be judged in those metrics, Hikaru tells herself in her desperation that the situation can be rectified if she just puts in the work, tries hard enough.

While the series always teased us with change but restored the status quo, the movie gives us the change with total resolve and teases us with restoration. But it really is over for good this time. In their final scene Hikaru appears in front of Kyousuke’s home late at night. They argue once more, and he leaves her to her tears. When he comes back, she is crouched on his front poach, waiting for his return. He can’t even bring himself to walk past her, and goes to a dingy supermarket instead. It starts to rain, and he can only think of one thing, how she must now be getting soaked. He sees umbrellas for sale. He could run back to her, maybe some reconciliation would be possible. In the series, this would have happened. But this is the new, adult Kyousuke, and he overcomes this final temptation. Instead, the tears start flowing. “Goodbye Hikaru”.

What he does to Hikaru is quiet cruel, and his actions are certainly controversial. In their final argument, she asks him what she even was to him, and it is a good question he never answers. In some ways, she was always just his backup plan, when things wouldn’t work out with Madoka he could return to her, but now that they did he discards her.
But he was a confused teenager as well. And there is so much pain in his brooding silence, by the end of the film it’s pretty clear he really did love her, but couldn’t ignore his feelings for Madoka any longer. He completely separates himself from Hikaru because he knows that if he gave her an inch she would have taken a mile. She flat out doesn’t accept that he broke up with her, and any reprieve from him she would take as a false hope that maybe time can be turned back. It would be more cruel in a way.

As one relationship dies, another forms. Like Kyousuke, Madoka is quiet different from her TV-series version. There, she had a tough no-nonsense attitude, was on top of most events, did cheesy saxophone solos at night, and got into fights with gang members, most of which she won. It was easy to like her, and her character design is straight up iconic.
She is much more vulnerable in this film. She loves Kyousuke, she is jealous of Hikaru’s relationship with him, and very much ashamed of that jealousy. There is a sense that her feelings have been kept inside far too long, her cool personality didn’t permit their expression, so that they must now explode outward.

Just like for Kyousuke, for Madoka it is a choice, between him and Hikaru, as Hikaru is her childhood best friend. In the series, it seemed Madoka tolerated the relationship between the two because it made Hikaru happy, and that she was too aloof to really care. But she can’t ignore her feelings anymore, and ultimately she accepts whatever happens to Hikaru, as long as she can be with Kyousuke. Is that egoistic? Maybe, but it is also how many people would act. This movie is not concerned with blaming anyone.

The most cathartic moment in the film is when Kyousuke finally confesses his love to Madoka. It is night, the rest of the town left for the festival, while Kyousuke and Madoka have to stay home to waste away at their studies. At that moment, it seems they are the only lonely people in the world, with the fireworks outside to remind them. She calls him, crying. The voice acting throughout the film is incredible, but here it reaches its peak, there is so much shame and confused hurt in her voice. It’s entirely one static drab shot, Kyousuke talking on the phone in his living room, there is no music, no flashy background art, the movie is so confident in its emotional impact that is removes all distractions, the antithesis of a Shinkai picture. Madoka tears down her protective walls, she is so afraid that Kyousuke might not like her after all, she blames herself for being too passive. He has to tell her at that moment or never again. “I want to see you.”

A photo is probably the ultimate means to return to that day, so they make multiple appearances in the film. There are the polaroids Kyousuke takes with Madoka when they’re on a date and in the final scene of the film the pictures in the photo album entitled “Sweet Memories” of Madoka’s and Hikaru’s shared childhood. In a flashback, Madoka remembers the three of them looking through that album, they joke around, everything was still alright. But these friendships are indeed nothing but a sweet memory, just as a photo can never really take us back. Now it just reminds us of what was lost, and it would probably be best never to look at it again.

“I Want to Return to That Day”, the characters want to return to the days of the TV-series, when everyone was friends and everything simple, but the message of the film is that you can’t, certain things can’t be undone. You can only heal by moving on, but it will take time to accept this. In all the hurt, there is some consultation. Madoka and Kyousuke can finally be together for real, they are accepted into college, they have a future ahead of them. And in the post-credits scene, it seems Hikaru has also regained some of her happiness.

But it is not just the characters, it is us who want to return to that day as well. We live in a time of revivalism. It has been 80s revivalism for the longest time, but that aesthetic has gotten so stale at this point I suspect it will be replaced soon. It was just last year that this very series was rereleased on Blue-ray, the same year there was a successful kickstarter to publish the manga this is based on in the west. The future under capitalism is impossible, but we can’t think of an alternative outside it, so we look towards a supposedly better past. We find refuge in these old styles of music, storytelling, clothing and animation.
And it is true that much has been lost since then, cultural artifacts out of print, for a long time it was very difficult to even obtain KOR in legal ways, its legacy only maintained by Italian Web 1.0 fanpages. But with the emergence of vaporwave, in which 80s J-Pop of the kind you hear in KOR, so called City Pop, is often sampled, we reached into the deepest corners of the dust bin of history, and so the Orange Road was revived.
It is nice to give the forgotten a second chance, but we go much further. We are just like Hikaru, who keeps returning to Kyousuke, our media landscape is obsessed with going back, remixing, remaking, entire big-budget franchises like Stranger Things exist solely to euthanize us in comfortable 80s nostalgia. We keep looking into the photo album even though it hurts ever more. And according to this movie, this is exactly the wrong approach. We can only push onward, look forward, no matter how impossible it seems. Just like for Hikaru, it will be painful for us to realize that time can’t be turned back, but there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.

This is Shinkai’s worst film yet. He had a mixed record in the past, from the quality entertainment of Your Name to the embarrassing Studio Ghibli “homage” Children who Chase Lost Voices. But Weathering with You somehow sets the bar even lower. Its unoriginality is pathetic and its self-indulgence repulsive.

No emotion is real, nothing is there to think about, everything is a glossy facade of high resolution backgrounds and J-Pop to pull you into this man’s fantasy land of childish romance, where every bad thing is always resolved and no uncomfortable question ever asked. How can Shinkai write the same weepy love story so ... many times? How can he pretend this grandness, and yet I feel nothing?

People accuse Shinkai of being style over substance, but he is less than that, he is production value over style and substance. His photo-realistic backgrounds may be difficult to produce on a technical level, but so what? This is yet another sterile portrayal of Tokyo, lacking any atmosphere or grit. Compare this to some of the all time great animes, Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor 2, and their breathtaking rendering of the mega-city. It’s not even close. There is no artistry to be found, and no real style to speak of, just money and raw technical skill, a technocrat’s dream.
As is tradition, Shinkai’s use of music is incessant and terrible, every opportunity to cram in another J-Pop song is shamelessly taken, no moment is allowed to speak for itself, no emotion allowed to be felt on its own.

There is nothing of substance, but this is very much by design for the people this appeals to. The only interesting question posed at the end of the film gets resolved in one of the most laughable and dishonest ways I have ever seen, all in service of this film’s real function, a warm blanket of cheap pathos. Forget the real world, and forget that it’s going to hell, here is a cute anime girl that loves an insecure teenager just like you. And this whole climate change thing is not gonna be so bad after all, it’s just the way of nature bro.
I have no problem with escapism, I mean what else can you really do, but escapism into a world that is so obviously made to pander is impossible. It is a world of plastic. Even the tears of the characters are fake and over the top, big and bubbly, not the thin streaks of reality.

It’s incredible how this movie fails completely at its goal. It wants to cause the big emotions, all of Shinkai’s movies want that, but it just doesn’t. It’s bland, the characters are bland, the love story is bland, the directing is bland, so the solution is to bombard the film more viciously than Yemen with 4k backgrounds, lense flares, tracking shots, grand statements and characters crying and running determined to their goal.

It is striking how uninspired it all feels. It is seriously beat for beat the same story and tropes as Your Name, just with a different fantasy element( and much worse). Shinkai cannot help himself, it has to be a romance between a teenage boy, possibly a self insert, and a strong but perfect looking cute girl. Sometimes it may end in sadness, and sometimes happy, but it is the same story every fucking movie. I thought that was kind of endearing at first, but I’m sick of it, the kind of sickness you get after eating too much cheap candy.
Directors like Miyazaki may have universal themes that reappear in all of their works, but Princess Mononoke certainly has a very different story from The Wind Rises. This here is just an amalgamation of hypercharged Shinkaiisms. Whole scenes in this film feel like stock “Anime great emotion” set pieces, the entire final sequence of the characters falling through the sky has been done uncountable times.

There is an attempt to link the plot to Shinto religion to have some pretension of depth, but nothing in this film feels even remotely spiritual, just a bunch of platitudes about nature working in mysterious ways. Seriously, never compare this dude to Miyazaki again. The movie also has tonal issues, there is a stupid subplot about a gun and criminals for no reason expect that Shinkai really still is a teenage boy in his heart.

One of the most embarrassing moments is the masturbatory Your Name cameo, where the main character from Your Name just shows up as if we all know him. There was absolutely no point to it, except that Your Name was a mega hit.
There is also a shameless amount of product placement, including a scene that might as well have been a McDonald's commercial. Every character uses a MacBook and the film makes damn sure that you know it, and social networks like Twitter also make an appearance. It’s honestly depressing that a movie that advertises some of the world’s largest cooperations then tries to tell you some absolute bullshit dressed up in Shinto aesthetic about nature just doing its thing. Capitalism coopts everything I guess.

There was one running gag about the main girl’s boobs in Your Name, which was admittedly funny and at least had a purpose in the story. Here, the pervy humor is back with a vengeance, and more overt and tasteless. The jokes are of incredible versatility, for example, the main character looks at a girl's breasts, and she says, “Are you looking at my breasts??” Or, in another example, the main character looks at an underaged girl's breasts, and she says, “Are you looking at my breasts??” These are truly new heights of comedy, never explored in Anime before.
I saw this in a cinema filled mostly with much bigger weebs than myself who genuinely laugh at this stuff, but I sat next to a Japanese mother with her two little kids. I guess she had mistakenly thought that a movie with an extremely childish story must also be for children. That stuff is just weird, and I don’t really get why it’s there, except that Shinkai is very horny on main.

There was also a stupid pet cat which is only there for kawaiiness, and the cinema erupted into laughter and “awws” whenever it was on screen, at that point I really wanted to sink deep into the cushions of my seat.
This is a movie made by an algorithm to maximize cuteness and “the Feels”, its only contribution to the world is to provide more background footage for lofi hip hop compilation videos. Truly a product of late capitalism.

Some light spoilers for some episodes

Patlabor is a gem in the trash heap of mecha shows. It sets itself apart by being human in a dehumanizing genre. Despite being a huge hit when it came out, it is now mostly forgotten, a true shame, but not surprising considering the state of anime today.

Patlabor was created by a team of artists known as Headgear, with the most notable members being Mamoru Oshii(Ghost in the Shell) and Masami Yuuki. Yuuki came up with the original concept in the early 80s, and Oshii directed the first OVA and the first two movies, which are an entirely different beast ... compared to the mostly lighthearted TV series, being much more serious, dark, and politically charged. While Oshii wrote some of the episodes of the show, his influence was more limited.

The core idea behind Patlabor was to refresh the mecha genre with realism. In the future of the 1990s, so called Labors are developed as construction robots for the Babylon Project, a giant dam in the bay of Tokyo against rising sea levels caused by global warming. As the use of Labors increases, criminals and terrorist also start to use them. Thus, Special Vehicles Section 2, SV2, is created, a Labor police force, to combat Labor crime with specialized patrol Labors, or Patlabors.

This setting is a product of the optimistic 80s, when Japan’s economy was booming. In Patlabor, there are mega construction projects everywhere in Tokyo, technology has advanced rapidly in some areas but has mostly stayed the same. It does not intrude on people’s lives, but is a net positive force. Peace rules, there is no forever war or alien invasion. The worst that might happen is a bombing, but even the terrorists are often in over their head and can be talked down. The city of Tokyo remains mostly unchanged from the real world.
At the end of some episodes, there even is a tag line: “This story is fiction, but in ten years, who knows?” Of course, in the year 2020 we know, such a future never arrived, we got the corporate dystopia of cyberpunk without any of the cool tech or aesthetic. The positive attitude about the future, coupled with glorious 80s animation and a soundtrack by the always excellent Kenji Kawai just ooze nostalgia and even a subtle melancholy.

Realism is everywhere in Patlabor. It takes the ridiculous premise of the mecha and says: If this technology had been developed in the real world, this is probably what it would have been like. The Labors are not flying killing machines shooting lasers and rockets, but devices more like a forklift or an excavator. They are fragile, clunky and only have a few hours of battery life. They leave base not through an underground launch tunnel, but get driven to their destination on the back of a large truck, which might also get stuck in traffic.
The tasks of SV2 often reflect the mundane realities of police work, sometimes they sit in the base for weeks waiting for something to happen, deal with budget limitations, or worry about collateral damage during missions(SV2 has become infamous for this).

However more striking than the realism of the setting, the show also puts realism in its characters, despite their eccentric nature. This starts with the excellent designs done by Akemi Takada, another Headgear member, whose characters have distinctive faces instead of distinctive hair colors, from the wide eyed Noa to the seemingly always half asleep Captain Goto.
They wear orange reflective vests because it’s the most safe in the urban and industrial environments they operate in, a far cry from the outlandish uniforms sometimes seen in anime, and the women even get to wear the same clothes as the men. In fact, these high visibility uniforms are also a political statement, they clearly separate SV2 from any sort of military, they are not warriors, they are civil servants. (If you believe this about today's police I leave up to you).

Patlabor boasts a fantastic cast of characters, they are the main focus of the series, much more so than the robots some of them pilot. All of them are exaggerated and eccentric, but never so dominated by their antics that they become unbelievable(except for Ota), nor do they have any outlandish powers. Noa’s pretty quirky but she’s not a hyperactive MPDG, she’s a great Labor pilot but nothing she does is outside the humanly possible. Hirmoi is kind of a recluse, but not a shut-in brooder.
It is this restraint and placidity combined with the willingness to go completely over the top in other areas that make this series something special. It makes these characters very relatable and it is immensely fun to watch them deal with some new crazy situation or each others personalities.
I rarely get really attached to characters in media but you spend so much time with these people that you get to know them very well. It’s like spending time with your buddies at work, and the entire series is so good-natured that really every single episode put a smile on my face and made my mood better.

Noa is the main character, and embodies the show’s spirit the most: quirky, optimistic and easy going. She is often the center of action and the most fun to watch because of her demeanor and plucky nature. She loves Labors and treats hers like a favorite pet, calling it Alphonse, sometimes refusing to carry out orders for fear that it might break or even get dirty. She also becomes depressed when there is talk of replacing SV2’s labors, including her Alphonse, with a different model. Nobody else on the team really understands that, to them a machine is just a machine. This is kind of a precursor to the themes Oshii would discuss a few years later in Ghost in the Shell.
Also, she really dislikes firing her weapon and her hesitation sometimes leads to bigger problems, this might be incomprehensible to American viewers. While this hesitation stems in part from the fact that she doesn’t want to damage precious Labors, it is also her principle, an ideal of what a good, deescalating police officer should act like. In her own words from Episode 4 of the New Files OVA, in response to Kanuka wildly firing her Patlabor’s revolver at the military Griffin Labor occupied by an out of control child: “This isn’t America! You can’t do that here!”

In general this show has extremely good female representation, with a variety of woman often being more competent at their job then the men. Kanuka Clancy is a hyper competent police officer from the NYPD send to Japan to train with Labors first hand, she has a no-nonsense attitude about everything. Sadly, halfway through the series she gets replaced with Kumagami who also has her moments but is a bit dull compared to the rest of the cast.

Goto, the captain of SV2, is probably the most noteworthy character. Nothing makes him loose his laid-back attitude, he seems nice and even simple, however under the surface he is a master manipulator, well informed of important events and extremely clever. He employs unconventional methods and also bends the rules whenever he sees fit, which leads to many highly entertaining situations.
He was likely exiled to SV2 for political reasons, and now has to spend his time overqualified for this often extremely boring job, which consists of sitting in his office and drinking copious amounts of tea. This is a not so subtle critique of politicians and the top brass, who never look good in Patlabor. However, Goto also enjoys the comradely atmosphere of the SV2, and certainly cares about his subordinates.

The last character definitely worth talking about is Ota. The series itself most aptly describes him as a psycho cop, his first solution to really any problem is shooting his gun and violence. This often makes the problem worse and leads to his Labor being busted up. While he is responsible for many hilarious scenes, he is a bit of a wart in this cast. Now I have no trouble believing such a guy to be a police officer, much worse people have become policemen in real life, and SV2 has a reputation for taking in the stragglers. However his antics can become grating and repetitive. With him some more levity would have been nice. Also, his violent methods, sometimes through random chance, succeed more often than they really should. Part of that’s comedy of course, but it also seems to portrait police brutality as some viable alternative.

While these character’s quirks are exaggerated, sometimes to an absurd level, they are realistic in the sense that these are just adults who do their mundane day to day job like any civil servant, it’s just that the job involves giant robots. This is what truly sets these characters apart from standard mecha fare, they are not larger than life, they have no troubled past, they don’t go through some grand development or arc, and they’re not angsty teenagers.

This show has some overarching plot threads, but most episodes are dedicated to some new adventure, which can reach from relatively serious police procedure to completely absurd situations and parody, with great versatility in the stories being told. Sometimes, Labors are not featured at all.
In contrast to the realism of the setting, the episodes can go all out in terms of ridiculousness, and sometimes feature ghosts or monsters. Often, a completely mundane situation like ordering food from a restaurant or filing an insurance claim(there is really an episode about that) is escalated to an hilarious degree. It is the hyper realistic combined with the hyper unrealistic.

Patlabor has a fantastic sense of humor, again the series shows great versatility, from the wacky plots to the slapstick, visual gags and the banter of the characters. There are none of the more unfortunate sides of Anime humor like fan service. It doesn’t take itself very seriously, but it never becomes farcical or obnoxious, because it also knows when to be silent.
Some episodes are parody of other media but never rely solely on reference. A few episodes even tap into the realm of social satire, most noteworthy “The Seven Days of Fire”, a satire of the Japanese student movement, written by Oshii. He would later become famous for serious Sci-Fi movies like Ghost in the Shell, but his involvement in this series shows that he is just as great a writer of comedy.

The show also has some quiet and somber character moments which work just as well and it even pulls quiet an effective ending for a show with so little overarching narrative. The series can pack an emotional punch, it just chooses to do so very rarely.

Now I still prefer the movies, the TV series just doesn’t come close in terms of directing, production value, or thematic depth. For example the Griffin arc in the show I had some issues with, because it’s the closest it gets to being a standard mecha show, and it also features an annoying prodigy kid character. The writing in some of the more serious episodes sometimes had a bit to many plot conveniences for my taste.

But the show’s core idea, portraying ordinary people in a world of ordinary mechas, is a great success and still feels fresh today. This is obviously worth watching for its characters and humor. It’s a delightful time capsule back from anime’s golden age, when such things were still possible.