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Death Note... ah yeah... Death Note didn't really go down so well.

The simplest way to put it is that it's about two high school then college kids who attempt to outwit each other in games of strategic internet keyboarding.

Right! Sounds like MAL eh BA DUM TISHHHHHHH

Ok sorry.

Anyway, the biggest thing to note about Death Note is that like everything happens in the first few episodes. In that span we go from someone who has the power of life and death over all kinds of people and what that might entail to a cat and mouse game between an ace detective and ... a clever high school student.

The problem though is that it became kinda hard care about either one of them after a certain point, they admit at certain times simply to being bored, self-possessed, hating to lose, and otherwise go to great lengths to hurt and destroy the other (even if it means sacrificing other people in the process)

In other words, it's hard to take the messages about justice and light and L very seriously once they've killed so many people.. textboxes and internet messages being their weapons of choice.

It seems Death Note was animated by the notion that society is too permissive of crimes in general and indecisveness, but that's pretty backwards! No Death Note that's not right! It's often far too harsh. It seems to me even Light realized that, hence the severe interruption and transformation of his goals into one of simply evading capture.

Light wanted to show that he wasn't afraid to take a stand, but I get the sense he also kind of realized he was going too far at times.... or maybe he just wanted to show he was capable of these acts and it would take someone like L to stop him.

One way or another, Death Note just wasn't very enjoyable, it had the back and forth of something like Dragon Ball Z but without any of that extra-intensity solar flare chaos that DBZ can summon out of nowhere, no Kamehyahya, just, texts and emails.

The fact is, Death Note really amounted to initially a kind of extreme moral system, if you are guilty of a crime, and in a justice system of some kind, anywhere around the world basically, you deserve to die. If you aren't, you don't, it's a strange concept really, I don't know if that's what they were saying.. but that's what it seemed like.

Really,though, instead of Death Note, you could just watch a good Batman movie or something and watch the villains go at it because that's more or less what DN is all about.

But I'm not going to pass judgment so harshly in this form of live or die in the way of Light and L, right? RIGHT.

In fact, Death Note was kind of fun at times! I think once it moved away from Light and L and big struggle it was just about like sillier stuff like L's addiction to candy (something I can definitely relate to mwaha. er ^_^)

That would be simply taking Death Note's messages a bit too seriously, the rather frequently false idea that everything rises and falls on that brilliant chess play, instead I would say it wasn't super exciting, but not the least fun, just, a 5.

Unlimited Blade Works basically sucked, but seriously the whole F/SN is just kind of suspicious to me.

I mean first of all transforming King Arthur into a needy kind of female servant of a Japanese guy that is tethered to him and must obey his commands...............

............................................................................................................

I'll just let that one sink in for a bit.

Anyway, moving on now to be objective completely, Saber actually does have sort of an interesting personality, the idea of King Arthur repenting for some sort of failure clashes with the idea of King Arthur as this kind of indominatable super king (I read a fair amount of King Arthur ... legends once upon a time), but it's not an entirely inconsistent switch, given his issues with Mordred and Lancelot and Guinevere.

Can't say the gender bending bothers at all, why not a female King Arthur? Or as the show states, Arturia.

No the problems become clear really once we start moving a bit outside of Saber, and what do we have? I don't even know what we have, to be honest, it's hard to remember who was what or why, particularly in UBW.

Basically Hercules is a monster from a video game, Lancer is some kind of baity edgelord, and then you have a smart but shy girl... which.... pretty sure.... encountered that one.... somewhere.

The rest, are there more? Can't say, the point is once you move outside Saber they just were basically mobs in a video game. In fact, most moments are filled with just very long and built up fights.

Sorry but, might as well just play a video game.

Ok, so as someone partially familiar with the manga of F/SN, and watched all of FSN, and now F/Z, I have to say, this did not at all feel like Fate to me.

If you consider for example "worm girl Sakura," this is one of the most disgusting things I've seen! It's basically the notion of a character who is kind of turned into the perfect weapon by virtue of being kind of permeated with like killer worms or something, or so.

Pretty much everything in F/Z is about people just going into conflict and fighting and then fighting and then they fight and duel ... and it just never added anything that the original FSN anime didn't already have.

Saber and Lancer were pretty fun to follow, basically they have a kind of rivalry where each is determined to best the other in battle. They don't really get too involved in the overall anime.

But then instead we get Waver and Rider, who are sort of cool I guess but they were the focus of the entire show after awhile, I didn't get to see more about the other masters and servants. Assassin basically I honestly didn't even know was in the show hardly, which I guess is part of the theme, but mostly it becomes almost entirely about just going on a random bit about so and so before bringing it back to some dueling.

The original Fate series had more variety and stuff it seems to and also blended the Holy Grail Wars with dating, romance, and that to quest, whereas Fate/Zero decided to pin everything around the mythos of the Grail, the wars, the conflicts, the "nature of heroism," and kind of turn it into a Philosophy class which is I guess fine in a sense, but even Aristotle probably would not have minded a bit more give and take, ebb and flow, yin and yang to the proceedings (which FSN anime did provide)

So yeah, it was very colorful and flashy and had some cool music so it wasn't un-fun per se but a 5 was about right.

Tsubasa: Tokyo Revelations was pretty special at times, it had the kind of CLAMP magic that you see in various other media by them, such as Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, or even Code Geass.

The kind of annoying thing is it has this spark of imagination that is so often underpowered because it ends up being poured into a conventional kind of gooey cheesy romance.

Moreover, there is a grating sense of disconnectedness fueled by the anime's bizzare relationship to the previous anime, the manga itself, and events in the future, as well as current events, which all do not ever really feel that ... they are all heading totally in the same direction.

It's a mixed experience for me, and this sounds like it almost wasn't worth watching, so I wouldn't be surprised if other people felt the same. In other words, but anytime CLAMP does anything I think it is something unique and interesting, but all the possibilities drown beneath so many other wild and erratic things it becomes difficult to stand firmly by it.

CLAMP will always have this weird special thing with magic or honesty or something that tends to raise an interest or catch your attention, but outside of maybe Cardcaptor Sakura it never really felt like it coalesced into a formidable current (and maybe not even Cardcaptor)

A 6 seems appropriate.

Elfen Lied! Whoa this one was wild. Well this one was pretty exciting and different!

Elfen Lied is essentially all about Lucy, who is a member of a special group of people known as the Diclonius (sic?), which all have the ability to psychopathically or telepathically control and use these invisible arms. They all start with the powers when there are younger and they eventually become more and more powerful.

The problem though is they can't really control their own powers, it has a habit of getting out of hand and when that happens there is often blood and terrible things..

Really, Elfen Lied revolves around ... the nature of tragedy and the impact it can have on a person, or, simultaneously, the experiences of being different or the impact of that on emotions or kind of a dozen other related things.

It's hard to summarize, in essence, precisely what makes Elfen Lied tick, but there is a strong theme that the nature of suffering is more universal and that it can be shared, it does not have to be condensed and solidified, for such an act on the nature of suffering causes it to warp become malice, hatred, rage, envy... etc.

So, why did people react negatively then at times to this well to be honest the anime/manga is very kind of slapped together feeling at times, it hopefully doesn't spoil anything to say that it doesn't really "end" per se, or it has a confusing ending.

Moreover, the rest of characters and stuff at times feel kind of wispy, I get the sense that Elfen Lied was kind of hurled together in a moment of inspiration, but it's also hard to try and draw too much from it at the same time, that, the ideas were in flux and so you can't rely on them.

But even then, it just evokes a serious sense of emotion and power all the same, the characters feel like people you know, and the overall experience is actually empowering as much as anything.

This review is perhaps a little vague on who the characters are, or what they do, or how they do it, but that seems to be the point of Elfen Lied, that people are after that emotional expression as much as they are a story of A goes to B goes to C.

Anyway, all said it was a refreshing blast of something a bit different, so an 8.

So the Cowboy Bebop basically got all the parts that the TV show didn't really capture, Spike is a cool guy at the forefront of a major kind of planetary issue, and it's cool to be on his side. Unlike the show, it plays up his charming and suave compassion/skill and less his burdened past and all that.

Also, Elektra is kind of this fiery sort of passionate personality which is a bit unusual in the Bebop world. I also personally was a fan of Spike being more active and focused in contrast to his usual lack-a-daisical attitude in the TV show.

There were also several ... really spectacular fights such as a fight on a train as well as a few other really exciting sequences. In general, I thought the movie was a compression of the interesting ideas and possibilities in the TV show but stripped of the filler and other things like that.

Mostly though, never really thought Bebop was an incredible franchise, a fairly solid one, perhaps, but not on the level of some of the classics, so my attachment remains somewhat limited, would probably just have to settle for an 8 or so here although was tempted to drop it to a 7. One way or another, it's the best encapsulation of Bebop that I've seen.

I thought I'd try writing a review for once, and also for an anime I have sort of complicated feelings on so here goes!

I enjoyed Cowboy Bebop a lot more than most anime, so it was by no means unenjoyable. However, I never liked it as much as a lot of people and also by comparison to a lot of really popular anime so I'm going to try and pinpoint the reasons for that.. it's still a very entertaining anime though make no mistake!

Basically, it just comes down to not really being a big fan of the characters at times.. Spike is kind of ... a bit easygoing for me, Jet is kind of a bit stiff, Ed is kind of too random, Faye is sort of greedy.

Well ok, Faye is pretty cool, it's true, then Ed.. but overall I the biggest thing was that Cowboy Bebop kind of starts off insanely slow and is very, very cautious

Now, that is, on the one hand, appealing! Certainly Cowboy Bebop is one of the more engaging anime for that reason, but when things often had a kind of filler-y approach for the most part.

The story moves around a lot, basically Spike and Jet are perpetually out of $ because they keep almost failing to get so-and-so or such-and-such, as a consequence the anime is more about the banter and character experiences as much as the big mega moments involving old hatreds or new optimism or whatever it is.

Like, ok, it's a unique blend of different worlds, it's fantastical, it's realistic, it's sensible and boisterious, it's a strong personality, it's Cowboy Bebop, but, the best? Hmm I mean consider there are lots of really engaging anime out there.

Ok, lets make a deal, and put Cowboy Bebop up there, but the movie much more resonant in many ways, it incoporated the cool things about the anime and kind of squished it into something that didn't feel like it dragged as much.

Overall, I can't say I hated Cowboy Bebop, it just felt like the experiences of emotional high were few and far and in between, thus, an 8 (ah screw it, I'll just give it a 9)