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The thing about the fantasy genre is that, as far as I’ve picked up, a large focus is put on creating a fantastical world that the characters inhabit. There are numerous ways to go about this, whether it’s focusing a lot on the magical aspect of the world versus blending the fantasy elements with science fiction, or letting the audience know very little and have them figure out the history of the setting themselves versus letting them in on every little detail, or something else entirely. Scrapped Princess takes all of the wrong turns when it comes to this, but more of that later.

The synopsis ... for the anime you can find up there, so I won’t bother with it. Instead I’ll focus on what I liked or didn’t like about the show.

In terms of production Scrapped Princess does alright. The visuals are nothing too fancy, which one might find strange since it’s made by Bones right after they made Wolf’s Rain and right before they made the original Fullmetal Alchemist. Point is, it doesn’t look impressive, but it looks okay. The same can be said about the music; nothing outstanding, but alright. In fact what I like the most are the character designs and more specifically the costume designs. Bones have a thing for character designs, and it really goes to show. I don’t know why everybody is wearing shoulder pads, but I like it.

The characters are, to put it simply, fun. Most of them are incredibly shallow, and much of their internal conflicts can be seen as a bit dull. There is development, mind you, but we never know anything about the characters for better or for worse. The good thing is we get to see them here and now and how they change as the story goes along. The bad thing is we can’t sympathize with them well. More than anything the characters bounce off each other really well, and they make up for their lack of depth in interaction with other characters.

But where does this anime fall really flat, then? As I stated before, Scrapped Princess takes all the wrong turns in creating a mysterious and fantastical fantasy world – something I absolutely love. I have this idea of fantasy worlds that you have to immerse yourself into it, preferably by questioning the mechanics behind it and figuring out how everything works out by yourself. Scrapped Princess doesn’t allow you to do so. Scrapped Princess is filled with so much expositioning you can’t help but ask if it’s trying to insult your intelligence. “Now it’s time to explain this thing,” “Here’s an explaination of that explaination,” “Here’s an explaination of what we just talked about,” “Here’s a thing that can do this, now let me remind you that we still have that thing and it can still do everything we know it can do, just in case you forgot.” But why is this a bad thing? Because you can never be fully immersed in the world the anime tries to create. Every time you think of a question the series answers it within five minutes, along with giving you many more answers that completely kills the wonders of the setting. You can never immerse yourself into the world because there is nothing to grab hold of your interests – all of your questions have been answered, so why should you? Is this bad storytelling? Yes, because it doesn’t view the audience as an entity capable of free thought, a person who is able to pick up small clues and use them later when they’re needed to answer a question – and the audience has to do this on their own, I might add.

All in all Scrapped Princess had potential but ultimately fails under its own ambitions. It’s still enjoyable enough though, and it does have a set of fun characters that are fun enough to watch on their own. This is one of those “I’ve seen it just for the sake of having seen it” titles.

I have always considered Berserk to be one of the four great classics of anime, alongside Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion and Trigun. Now, Berserk has always been my favoruite of the bunch, and upon rewatching it I think I am better able to pin down why. Bebop and Trigun I felt had too weaks starts and it has been too long since I watched Evangelion to remember anything, but Berserk really does it for me, and, looking at MAL numbers, is the least popular of the four, something which saddens me, because I do think it is the best of them.

The story is basically about a ... big guy waving his big sword and cutting every face he meets with it. Those of you who have watched it will disagree and say there is more to it, but I think it is the best mindset to have when going into Berserk. Chances are you will be blown away by how deep and sophisticated it really is because I sure was. If you want to know more about the basic plot go read about it, I am sure that would be more interesting than me talking about it.

One area where the anime really shines though is the characters. The characters are all great, especially our main trio of Guts, Griffith and Casca. Seeing the multi-layered relationship between these three and seeing this relationship build up over the course of the story makes for some of the best moments in the show. Guts' friendship towards Griffith and his feelings of loyalty conflicting with his own ideas of self-worth and questions as to why he does what he does, and his feelings of affection and companionship towards Casca who he has a hard time accepting as a soldier since she is a woman. Griffith's feelings of ownership and obsession towards Guts coupled with his dreams and ambitions and pride. Casca who cannot be complete without Griffith and feels jealous of Guts for making her feel worthless while at the same time having feelings for him. Those are all great characteristics and the result of great writing and, as mentioned, are more deep than one might initially think.

Another area I have to mention is the music. This is because Berserk has my favourite overall soundtrack with every piece of music ranging from bombastic to emotional to haunting and downright scary. These great sounding tracks are couples with how well they are actually used. The Berserk OST consists of 11 tracks, so there will obviously be repititions, but every track is perfectly able to not only fit or set the mood but also greatly enhance everything going on on-screen. Go listen to "Guts" or "Murder" or "Forces" and then see how they are being used in the show whenever Guts is being thoughtful or during the last episode (which is the best shot that I have seen at anime being scary). It is truly something to behold.

The art is nothing to write home about - it is downright terrible, and many shortcuts are taken. Despite of this the gritty, unrefined style does fit the show, and the story and music more than make up for it.

Berserk should also at this point be infamous for its lack of an actual ending. I can certainly forgive bad endings (hell, my two favourite anime both have such), but in the case of Berserk the ending is not there at all. At least with something like Gankutsuou you finish it and be all "wow that was a great show with good closure," but with Berserk it just ends right there in the middle of everything. Some people use this as an excuse to tell you to read the manga, but I never really gotten into for whatever reasons. Point is that the ending sucks, but everything leading up to it has been absolutely fantastic.

In short, Berserk is great and deeper than one might initially think. It has a great story, great characters, a godly soundtrack, poor art and a shitty ending. It is highly worth the watch, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Katanagatari is interesting because it's one of the better anime in recent time (that I have seen), one of the best anime from 2010 (that I have seen) and arguably the best work of NisiOisiN (that I have seen, even though this only includes two titles).

Now, Katanagatari is great, it's absolutely wonderful, but depending on your ability to immerse yourself in a story so much that you forget time this may or may not be for you. If you are like me with the attention span of a goldfish, initially the 50-minute long episodes might scare you off. If you are able to put up ... with it, however, you are in for a treat.

I will not summarise the series because frankly you can look at the anime description for that, that and I doubt I will make it that much more interesting. I will just go through why I like it.

First of all there are the characters, which I think are the main driving force behind this anime. They bounce off each other really well, providing good (but not ROFLOL hilarious) comedy and creating an overall likable character dynamic. The side characters are also fairly good, they do their thing, but for the most part you will not see them for more than one episode, so they do not matter too much. I will also give points to the incredibly forced romance. I like that Katanagatari doesn't even try to build it up naturally but instead approaches it like "Yeah, we're in love even though we've shared a whole of five miniutes of screen time. Deal with it."

The action scenes are short but very energetic and well directed. While they are very good, be warned if you are going into Katana thinking it wll be 90% action; it will not. In fact, much of the anime is spent on dialogue. Think Bakemonogatari, just not quite the same bullet pace.

The sound track is excellent, and while I do not think it stands out per se the music tracks are used very efficiently, creating just the right mood every single time.

The art can be descriped as fairly minimalistic - it certainly does not stand out in terms of production values - but it gets its job done and does it well.

Overall, Katanagatari is gud, you should definitely check it out if you like dialogue and good action scenes, but due to the length of the episodes you may or may not be able to marathon through it. Also: dat last episode.