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Rewatching Evangelion is one of the scariest things I've chosen to do, recently. It was hard going back to it. I didn't care too much for Eva when I watched it as an angry, angsty 14 year old. At one point I may have even written a - thankfully deleted - post about what I thought about the characters and how Shinji is awful. I rode that bandwagon for a while, far longer than I should have done. "Shinji's a little bitch" I might have said. "No one is likeable" I might have also claimed. Sentiments that reflected how I was at the time; a ... child. I don't think I would have ever said that I didn't "get" Eva, at least in the sense that I see people talk about "getting" it, but it wasn't a show for me at the time. The only things I knew about it going into it was that it was ranked highly here, the last two episodes were - as someone I knew at the time described them - a "mindfuck", and the Spike Spencer rant. That was it. I didn't have any idea what else to expect from it. I didn't like it.

But people did, and that part always confused me.

A lot's happened since then. I'm 26 now, and a completely different person to how I was at the time. Over the years, I came to respect Eva more than I ever thought I would do; something worth seeing, even if only once. I tried recommending it to one of my brothers in the past, he still hasn't watched it - I'm not sure if he ever will. I began to understand that for some people, Eva was a transformative experience. Several friends I've spoken to have talked about how it was monumental, life-changing, really made them figure things out about themselves. I was glad for them of that, I didn't have that experience with the show, but I was happy that they were able to get something out of this that I wasn't. I realised that, as a teen, I lacked empathy towards Shinij, towards Asuka, towards everyone in the cast with the exception of Gendo, who I never liked. When I heard people talking about Shinji as a case study of someone living with depression and a complete lack of self-worth, I realised that there was definitely something I missed and tried to retroactively revise my views because of it. I still didn't like Eva, but I began to understand why people did.

As a teenager, I was bitter. I didn't have a particularly good time in secondary school. It took me several years to digest that, in spite of what I may have told my parents and other people, I was bullied. It didn't feel like it at the time because I was a scrappy child, always trying to fight back, always quick to violence and anger. I earned a reputation as something of a psychopath, I don't think there was a single person in my year group and the one immediately below it that didn't know my name at the very least. I think on some level, I was proud of that. It definitely caused me some issues, but I liked part of the rush that came with that.

I didn't have an issue with hurting people. I didn't have an issue with being nasty towards them, towards burning bridges with them, towards just not wanting anything to do with them. I was fine in my small bubble of me and the one person who I thought I was going to stick with through thick and thin. That cost me. It cost me valuable friendships that could have lasted all the way until now if I'd really tried. After I'd finished secondary school and gone into college, I met a person there who was nothing but nice to me. On the day of my 17th birthday, I was due to meet up with some friends and he showed up, uninvited, but it was a really nice surprise. He gave me a big hug. I should have valued that more than I did. When we returned to college I ended up repaying that kindness with a joke that went too far. He had explicitly told me and some friends not to make jokes about how he and this girl should get together, but we ignored his wishes and did so anyway. We definitely made jokes that we shouldn't have done. The following day he came in, crying because it turns out he had been going through a really rough time without any of us realising. One of the guys playing the joke argued that we were blameless because how were we supposed to know? It didn't matter. We should have listened. I apologised, but he never looked at me in the same way after that, and I haven't spoken to him again since college. I doubt he'll read this, but I've always wanted to give a better apology than what I gave him.

In that same year, I fell in love with someone. Hard. I had had crushes before, but this was different. I don't think I believed in love at first sight until then. This was the first time I had ever realised that I wanted something for myself. I think that was the first time I had ever made something of a conscious effort to change things about me. I was so determined to try and make something out of this that I had to turn down a guy who had a crush on me. I was absolutely flattered, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted. People on the internet - on here - had gotten the idea that I was intimidating and hard to talk to. I personally thought that I was cold and emotionally distant. It was over a year before we finally got together, and it was incredibly hard trying to form a relationship with someone. I screwed up several times in the process and nearly lost the whole thing. She was with someone at the time, I resolved to move on and just maintain the friendship because I valued it a lot. I began to understand why it was so scary to try and make connections with people of your own volition.

To hammer that point home to myself, I got back with an ex that I had met up with recently and reconnected with. We didn't have a particularly good breakup - she stole my copy of No More Heroes - but we reconciled and that was the main thing. I had moved on, I thought, but I was lying to myself. We broke up not too long after we got back together. I was going to university, she was working full time and it was already hard to find time to meet up with her on her days off. I argued that it was because it was too difficult to maintain this relationship whilst I was at university; she thought I was saying that as an excuse to do drugs and cheat on her with other people. I was fed up with the childish arguments with her over every single little thing, like I was walking on eggshells. We broke up and haven't spoken since, but at least I got my copy of NMH back.

I went to university. My first year was a big change for me. I was living in a city that I had been to a few times for visits, but had no idea what it was like to live there. It was an interesting adjustment period. I was in private accommodation halls because all the halls of residence for students at my actual university had been fully booked. The accommodation was nice but I had no idea how to connect with the people there. They weren't going to the same university I was. They were aspiring drama students going to a specialist acting school that required you to audition every year to make sure that you have a place there. I was doing a combined honours course of English and History because I wanted to do a course I thought I would be good at. We had nothing in common. I'm from about as heavily a working class background as you can get, one of them had relatively rich parents that made sure their daughter didn't need to pay for their accommodation. The other dropped out to be with her boyfriend back home. The one remaining balked at it, "She could have been something, but instead she'll probably just end up working the tills at Lidl". I felt isolated. I didn't like this girl and it was clear that she didn't think too much of me. When other people on our floor - other students at that acting school - came over, they all looked at me like I was out of place and didn't belong there. I felt the same way they did, but not for the reasons they probably did. I wasn't a super-outgoing party animal, but I did try to spend time away from my accommodation whenever I could. I wasn't needed.

April the following year, I finally got with the person I had fallen for. We had stopped talking as often. I had said things that I thought probably damaged our relationship too much, but at the very least we were still talking, even if it wasn't often. She thought I had a right to know that she had broken up with the person she was with, which only irritated me at the time because I thought I was finally over it. I wasn't. We got to talking again and I realised once again that nothing had changed and I still felt the same way. With that in mind, we got together.

At the same time, I started to lose contact with the person in school who I thought I would always be friends with. He'd gotten himself a girlfriend. He'd had relationships before, but this one was different. The previous Christmas, he had gotten her a ring for a present which her family misconstrued as an engagement ring. It wasn't, but they went along with it anyway and it ended up becoming that. I didn't like her. I didn't like how she tried to undermine my friendship with him by acting like the things that had happened in school weren't such a big deal for us. People in school, people who liked him but didn't like me, always referred to me as his tagalong, or asked why I'm so gay for him. I realise in hindsight that on some level, it stopped being a friendship for me and that I was in love with him, at least for a time. I asked when he was going to stop the charade with the engagement ring and he said he wasn't. I can't remember what it was that ended up being the catalyst for us not talking as much until my third year of uni, when I cut him off completely due to what I described as "irreconcilable political differences", but it might have been that.

Our first year together was the happiest I had ever been with a person. I felt so content and, for what felt like the first time in my life, really loved and needed. I started venturing into other places like twitter and meeting people through there. It was wonderful. I was having a great time at university, too. I met people that I looked forward to meeting every week at the gaming society I ended up joining. A friend and eventual housemate I met there was talking about Evangelion with another friend. That friend didn't understand why it was that Shinji just didn't get in the damn robot, to which my housemate friend responded with "Alright, you try telling me that at 14, you would have gotten into that fucking thing, it'd be scary as shit". I laughed.

Things looked like they were going to go well in the second year, too. I thought things would pan out in much the same way, but they didn't. After a time my relationship began to show cracks. Small arguments at first, and then things started to get nasty. There were elements of this relationship that I wasn't prepared for at the time, but they were also things I wouldn't have been prepared for if I was to try a relationship like that now. I won't go into any specifics about that because it's not my place to do that, but it was very hard. It nearly all fell apart and then we finally met up after I flew to America the first time. That was an amazing holiday and I still look back at it incredibly fondly. We both thought that was what we needed to really make things better for us. It didn't last.

Fast forward a few months to December of that year. Everything fell apart. Late nights. Constantly exhausted Skype calls. When my dad came to pick me up for the Christmas holidays of that year, the first thing he said to me was "You don't look good, you've lost weight". I hadn't noticed because I've always been on the skinnier side, but I had dropped about half a stone or so without realising it. Maybe that was why I was so low energy and why some of my jeans didn't fit properly anymore. It was the worst Christmas I had ever had both physically and emotionally. I barely paid attention to eating out at the family meal with my mum's side of the family, I was too busy lost in trying to salvage what was going on in my life. I didn't want to try having a conversation with anyone or being open towards them, I just wanted to scream into the void at that point. It was hard. The following night something happened which I also won't go into specifics about here, but I hardly slept that night and broke down crying the following morning. My youngest sibling, who had resented me since secondary school, consoled me for the first time in years.

I stopped attending lectures. I didn't see the point in going, especially as I could just as easily listen to the audio versions on the university website. I hadn't written anything for my disseration yet and kept putting it off. The deadline was approaching and I applied for an extension on mental health grounds. I got the extension and still didn't write. I was too busy procrastinating, doing things that... weren't really anything. I watched anime, I watched a couple of regular TV shows and also played games. The disseration could wait. I was a mess at that point. My relationship wasn't getting any better and it wasn't right to call it a relationship anymore. I wanted to believe that it was, but they evidently believed differently. A lot of things happened which I still have trauma about to this day.

I'm not with that person anymore. There were several times that I thought "this time I'll cut them off for good", but it didn't last. Now I don't talk to them at all and haven't had proper contact with them for a period of time that I don't care to keep track of. I kept talking to them long after I should have realised that it wasn't going to last. But it's better this way, I feel like it has to be.

In the past couple of years, there was a friend from school I reached out to catch up with. We went to have lunch together and she saw it clearer than I ever did. "You had a really rough time in school, didn't you? I'm glad you're doing okay now". By that point I'd already come to realise a lot of the damage that that environment had done to me, but it shook me to hear someone else had seen it long before I did. I wondered if anyone else had noticed it, or whether it was always obvious to people that my violent temperament was nothing more than a terrible defence mechanism against some of the things that had happened in school. Against things like being laughed at by teachers when I was rejected by someone, against my parents divorcing, which I was convinced hadn't impacted me in any way. Against the idea of being hurt, being in pain, trying to be close to people, trying to become friends with them. Doing anything I could to prove to myself that I wasn't lonely.

All of this, ultimately, comes back to Evangelion in the end.

I hadn't touched Eva in the entirety of the time that everything I just described happened. It had been on the back of my mind. Maybe I should rewatch it, I thought. I had come to like a lot of other shows that Anno had worked on in some capacity since then. Maybe it was always just childish sentiment that prevented me from going back to look at Eva with newer, older eyes.

But I was scared. I didn't want to do it. I ran away from it. I continued to convince myself that I didn't like Eva and that a rewatch of it wouldn't change that. There was nothing there for me. It wasn't a show that I would ever end up ultimately liking. I would never have the transformative experience with it that other friends who I love and respect had with it. It was alien to me, I wasn't going to do it.

End of Evangelion is showing at Scotland Loves Anime next week at the time of me writing this. The excuse I had been looking for to rewatch this show had finally arrived and I decided that it was going to be now or never. If I wasn't going to watch it now, when was I? If I buy the blu-rays, perhaps, but the opportunity to see End of Evangelion on the big screen would have long passed since then. A friend of mine said that he understood the novelty; he would see it there too if he was going.

So I got to work watching it. The first few episodes were a bumpy acclimatisation period. The fear of rewatching Eva had set in already. Why was I doing this? What did I want out of this rewatch? Did I finally want to like Eva? Did I want to see what Eva really meant to me, all these years later? No, I'm scared. I need to not like it. I have to look for reasons not to like it. Quick, talk to your friend about it. Oh, episode 4, Shinji aimlessly wandering around? Yes, an easy target. Talk about how it feels clinical and efficient, talk about it feels antithetical to what the episode is trying to do. Rei's smile in episode 6 is weird and creepy. Look for something, anything, *anything* to dislike this show. You cannot like it. It doesn't matter how petty it is. You can't find value in it. You can't find out what Evangelion means to you now.

It was when talking to another friend about this rewatch that I realised just why it is that I was so scared of this rewatch. Whether I like it or not, Evangelion has served as a sort of microcosm of the past 12 years of my life. There are other shows that I remember watching from the same period of time, Eureka Seven and Gurren Lagann, for example, which I liked considerably more and yet don't remember in the same way. I've not touched either of these for a similar amount of time that I've not touched Eva, and the difference is palpable. I remember fragments of Eureka Seven, bits and pieces of it. I remember Charles and Ray in the middle section, but I'm not sure how much of that is down to having seen Hi-Evolution. I would struggle to tell you anything that happened in the story of that show in even the broadest of possible strokes. My youngest brother, who I at least have something of a working relationship with now, told me that he watched it way more recently than I did, and he would still struggle to explain what happened. Gurren Lagann I at least remember more of, but again, it would be a struggle.

But Eva? I can recall things as vividly as though it was the first time I was watching it. Toji and Kensuke meeting Shinji and the formation of their relationship. Asuka arriving for the first time. One of the friends I spoke to about Eva told me their favourite episode was the one where the power gets cut to Neo-Tokyo 3, and at first I didn't remember it. I remembered everything about it immediately following the opening credits. It all came flooding back to me. Toji becoming the 4th child, I remember that entire arc, beat for beat and how I felt at the time. Seeing Unit 01 going berserk, really, truly going berserk, has been seared into my mind as Kaji watches on, watering his plants. Rei's monologue immediately following the recap. Everything about Kaworu. The Angel absorbing Shinji into its shadow and going inside his mind. Asuka's trauma. Misato trying and failing to be a functioning adult. I didn't need to rewatch Eva to remember this. It's all there, all of it lodged into my brain.

I understand Shinji now more than I ever thought I would do. I get him. I understand what it's like to be at your lowest now. To have no sense of self-worth. I've had moments of breaking down crying, realising how much I hated myself and the things I'd done. Wishing I could take it all back, that I could do it over and never make the mistakes that I made so that things would be okay. But I can't go back. Those mistakes, everything that's happened, has defined who I am today and to do that would be a disservice to myself and everyone else that I've met in the years since Eva.

I relate to Misato more than I ever thought I would do, or wanted to. I get what it feels like to be a barely functioning adult, dealing with the crushing pain of traumatic experiences and old relationships that are better off not rekindled, but you wish they could be, because the fire in them burned hot. What it feels like to justify to yourself that what you're doing is okay, and that you're not just using people. I understand it all, now.

I realise now that Asuka's self-destructive tendencies are nothing but a terrible defence mechanism to cope with the horrific trauma she's endured. They don't work. They only serve to push people away and isolate her, but I understand them. The struggle to really be nice to people, to let people in and actually be willing to repay their kindness with kindness. To feel completely inferior to the people around you and to hate because of it.

I understand now that Kaworu and Kaji both influenced my taste in men way more than I was willing to admit. I do not actively look for people like them, regardless of gender, but I am ultimately drawn to them regardless. That has probably led to some questionable decisions which I have made in the spur of the moment that I can look back at and laugh at now, but they happened nonetheless.

I admire Rei now. I don't think she will ever be a character that I can relate to personally, but I admire the growth she goes through and how, even if it's only a little bit, she does grow as a person and tries in a way that Shinji and Asuka don't. She may not be very good at living, but I admire what she becomes nonetheless.

I still don't like Gendo. There will never be a time that I like Gendo. When I was a child, he was just an absolutely terrible person to me. Now that I'm older, I see Gendo as every expectation that was placed on me by family that I failed to live up to. That I never had any hope of living up to. Now that I have to deal with the existential yawn that is working for a living, I realise that Gendo represents everything I cannot stand when I am inevitably compared to people I did not ask to be compared with. When Shinji resigns from being a pilot and says that his intention is to never meet Gendo again, it was something I sympathised with him over then and even moreso now.

Over the course of rewatching Eva, I came to another gradual realisation: whether or not I liked Eva in the end is irrelevant. For what it's worth, on this rewatch I ended up liking it quite a lot, even in spite of its issues. But whether I liked Eva, or what Eva really meant to me were both things that did not end up mattering to me in this rewatch. I could never approach this show as though I had never seen it before, as though it was a clean slate. The memories of the imagery of the show are too vivid, too entrenched in my mind for me to ever act like I've not seen it before, to act like I have no opinion on it. I got something far more important out of it instead.

When I go to see End of Eva next week, I will be meeting up with friends that I haven't seen since before the pandemic started. I will be meeting up with my partner, who I have also not seen since before the pandemic started. I'm very excited to once again be surrounded by people that I love and care about, that I value so much, who ended up encouraging positive change in me. In spite of how many negative anecdotes I might have included here, there has also been plenty of good. I have a circle of friends who mean the world to me and would do absolutely anything for now. Real, meaningful relationships with people that I don't want to give up. The kind of people who make things worth it, even when life gets too much.

Whether or not I ended up liking Evangelion ended up not being important in the end. Whether Eva meant anything to me ended up not being important in the end. The score I ended up giving it here isn't important; a mandatory requirement of MAL's which I just have to deal with. Watching Evangelion was scary, but it gave me an opportunity to talk to myself. It gave me a chance to talk to myself about everything that's happened in my life since then. I got to talk about all the good and bad. I got to let my 14 year old self know that, in spite of it all, things do get better for them. They end up figuring things out about their sexuality and gender that they never thought they would do. They end up not giving up on the things that they're passionate about even when they give up on other stuff. That they end up finding new passions and are equally enthusastic about them. That there's going to be a lot of bad stuff that happens that you won't know how to deal with, that won't be easy, but there's absolutely going to be more than enough good to make up for that. You're going to go to Anime Expo at some point and get drunk and high with friends, you're going to yell at kids in the street "Be gay, do crimes" and try stealing one of those electric motor scooters. You're going to have a lot of fun, I promise. It gave me the opportunity to look back at things that I didn't think I would ever look back on, that I didn't think I would ever want to look back on and really, truly talk about them. I wanted to run away from them several times. It was scary and unsettling. It was emotional, charged, it made me question if it was really worth it. I'm glad I got to do it.

In the end, if I didn't end up liking Evangelion, that would have been fine, too, because I got to talk with my younger self about it, and I didn't run away.

"I want to be a hero!"

Majestic Prince is an incredibly tough sell, on the surface it's nothing more than your generic mecha series. At the start it's a dull, generic, predictable, incredibly by the numbers show with literally nothing new to put on the table. It's riddled with clichès, one look at the synopsis will tell you right away that this series has been done lots of times before, the plot twists used throughout have nearly all been done to death, and you will see them coming from miles away.

All of the above are reasons that, understandably, would likely put many people off the show ... - frankly, the only reason I gave this series a chance was because I, unlike so many, actually like Hisashi Hirai's art and was interested in seeing a series which involved his trademark character designs until Fafner Exodus came out (which sadly, didn't happen). Indeed, it's safe to say that, back in the Spring 2013 season, Majestic Prince was one of the worst shows airing at the time, as well as one of my lowest priorities.

The funny thing is, by the time the show had finished, it had become one of the best shows of the year.

That statement might sound unbelievable to you, but through a mixture of what becomes an excellent, well rounded, likeable cast of characters, stunning combat sequences and its usage of typical mecha tropes, Majestic Prince has ended up becoming what is probably the sleeper hit of the year. Despite its severe underdog status, one of the largest ironies with Majestic Prince is that, its heavy reliance on incredibly overused mecha clichés - its one huge weakness - is also its greatest strength.

I'll cover that more later on, but first, let me start off by pointing out that (if you haven't guessed already), Majestic Prince is full of well known, overdone, predictable tropes that, at the start anyway, do nothing to help it. I was often left wondering at times how the writers could possibly expect a series that was so predictable to actually do well - it's clear that the series was trying, it definitely wanted to do something different, but it was going about it in such a mechanical way that any attempts at plot revelations had me saying to myself "Yep, saw that coming" and "Well that was obvious". You could literally lose count of the amount of overdone clichés that are so present in Majestic Prince.

Story execution too, is lacking. The major issue with being able to actually predict the plot twists before they happen is that, by the time they do, you've probably pieced together most of the information yourself - or at least gathered enough information to be able to form your own theory on it, which you're probably right about on most accounts. The mechanical approach to the way these twists are implemented doesn't help, it makes them slow and boring, as well as very yawn-worthy and often, the question isn't "What's going to happen next?" but "I wonder if they're going to include this trope?".

Majestic Prince isn't helped by its cast either, like the story, they are dull and predictable - one look at them is all it takes to figure out their character archeype; naivé idealist, weapon freak, ditzy girl, level-headed responsible girl with possible interest in main character, arrogant pilot who isn't really used to working together with his team, they're all present and accounted for. And every single one of them acts as you'd expect them to act. There's nothing new about these characters, they've been done a thousand times before and better too, they're all somewhat one-dimensional - they certainly could have more personality to them than meets the eye, but it's not showing. I wasn't surprised by anything that these characters had to offer, and I could see elements of their character coming into play later on in the series - again, before it happened and again, I was right.

But that's only the first half, once the second half begins, something...changes.

At around the halfway point, Majestic Prince suddenly jams the brakes on its story for about four episodes, it stops and decides to take a breather, the story doesn't matter right now - it's got a direction that you know it's heading in, but what matters during these four episodes is the characters and their lives.

Suddenly, all that reliance on overused tropes makes sense, it wasn't to surprise the viewer with unexpected plot twists or interesting variations on already known ones with its story, it was so that, when it actually developed its characters their development would be the most surprising thing.

It pays off excellently, over the course of these episodes, the cast of Majestic Prince goes from being the most predictable group of mecha anime characters you could probably ever think of, to being three dimensional, realistic characters whose lives actually matter.

One thing the show doesn't do is just develop these characters for plot convenience, any time these characters go through something it's not just a character developing a new resolve to fight or a character having an ideal they held dear to them shattered and being forced to re-evaluate it. Majestic Prince isn't interested in that; superficial developments such as those aren't even remotely touched upon in the series, instead, what we see is the daily lives of the characters, what they do when they aren't out on missions - their cool-off time. One of the standout moments of the series is an episode in which one of the main characters, Asagi, ends up spending his day shopping with one of the members of his mechanic crew, at first glance, you'd think this is filler when in fact it's quite the opposite, it shows another side to his character - one that you definitely wouldn't see if the show spent all of its time fighting, a side that humanises him and shows that he has a life outside of fighting, interests and things to do that make him a normal person - a real person.

Coupled with this is the fact that, rather intriguingly, the characters aren't really sure what to do with their free time - as tropes dictate, they're all genetically engineered so that they can fight, so they haven't had a chance to actually act like a normal person before. It's interesting watching moments such as when Izuru ponders what his life is for, his whole life has revolved around two things: being trained to fight the Wulgaru and trying to become a hero, it's somewhat poignant hearing him wonder about what will happen to him after the war is over, and if he'll ever be allowed to meet the parents who contributed their genes to create him - and if he'll ever be able to write a manga good enough to get published. It's not forced development, which is the important thing, it all feels natural - even the romantic sub-plot feels natural, and that is, in part, due to the fact that you could see it happening before it did, but when it actually does start to kick in, thanks to well placed foreshadowing and your own personal knowledge, it hasn't come out of nowhere - it was there the whole time, it was just waiting to emerge naturally.

When the story does actually get going again, things have changed again, suddenly the stakes are raised - you actually care about these characters and what they experience, they're definitely not the cast of one-dimensional archetypes that they were right at the start of the series. Their lives matter, both during combat and outside of combat, it's at this point that Majestic Prince really does come into its own, suddenly, the clichéd story doesn't matter at all, in fact, what were once just overused tropes suddenly carry new meaning - they have an effect on the characters that they didn't do before, they suddenly get to them in different ways than what would be expected. There's one twist in particular towards the end of the series, that is actually unexpected, humourous and rather poignant that has an effect on the characters involved in it in two very different, rather realistic ways. That's the beauty of watching the final third of Majestic Prince, the characters have developed to a point that you can no longer predict what they'll say or do, how they'll think or feel and suddenly, the question changes once more from "I wonder if they're going to include this trope?" to "I wonder how this will affect the characters?".

Animation wise, Majestic Prince is a true site to behold - when it comes to the battle scenes anyway, which I will cover in a bit. When the series isn't showing action scenes it looks - for the first half anyway - rather weird, and not really in a good way, I mean, I'm a fan of Hisashi Hirai's art and even I didn't find the art all that great, there was something about the character designs that just didn't sit right with me - perhaps it's due to me not seeing his designs in HD, I'm not sure. Over time though, that problem definitely went away and the characters look a lot nicer than they did at the start of the series.

It's clear though that the majority of the budget was saved for the battles - and my lord, what a site to see. Up until the halfway point, the main reason why I stuck with Majestic Prince was to actually see the battle scenes; fantastically animated, stunningly choreographed, the battle scenes in Majestic Prince have an incredibly fast paced, visceral nature to them which is sometimes hard to keep up with - although it's hard to pay attention to anything else when two characters are going at it one-on-one. The fight scenes between Izuru and Jiart in particular, have to be seen to be believed and are the true highlight of the series various combat sequences. If the mech battles had been handled by anything other than CGI, I doubt I would have stuck with the series as long as I did. Next to the characters, the animation is by far the best thing about Majestic Prince.

The soundtrack in Majestic Prince is rather good, both opening themes sang by Chiaki Ishikawa sound fantastic and really help to set the mood for the series, and the multiple ending themes are all varied and are each appropriate for different points in the series, with my favourite one being "Arigatou. Tadaima." sang by Yuka Iguchi (who, for all the flak I give her for playing Index, has a fantastic singing voice) and Yoko Hikasa - it's a very nice, moving piece for the show.

The rest of the soundtrack consists mostly of orchestral tracks, with one track in particular standing out due to being played a lot during most of the intense moments of the battle scenes, so that would probably be my favourite track.

Voice acting is rather solid, with the standout performance going to Live action Prince of Tennis Musical star and relatively new voice actor Hiroki Aiba being my favourite in the show, although it's hard to decide who really is the best voice actor in the show, Akeno Watanabe for instance, is fantastic as Ange, being able to switch between psychopathic and incredibly timid at the drop of a hat. Miyuki Sawashiro plays a role much different to characters I'm used to hearing her as, showing she's got very good range. Yoko Hikasa is also very good as Kei, Yuka Iguchi, for all the criticism I give her, shows that she's actually able to do more than just play annoying characters and is actually rather funny. Shintaro Asanuma and Junya Ikeda both do very well as Asagi and Suruga respectively...it's difficult to say which voice actor does better than the other in this case.

By this point in the review, I've talked about the characters so much that there's really not much left for me to cover, although I will say that, even though it has a fantastic cast, apart from Jiart and Rumes, none of the villains end up being anything more than rather clichéd, almost pantomime villains who you know are bad - you're never really given a chance to root for them or understand them. Don't get me wrong, the Wulgaru are clearly the villains and there is no doubt that, even if you were to go into more detail about them, they would still definitely be the clear villains with absolutely no chance of them ever showing signs of being good, but it would have been nice to understand them a bit more than the few scenes we're privy to - even Jiart, the most well developed of the villains, is really nothing more than just a Char Aznable clone, although a far more dastardly one at that.

Although, with that being said the fact that the main cast are so well developed definitely does redeem this problem somewhat.

So that's Majestic Prince. I certainly had an interesting ride with it, watching this show evolve from being one of the worst to one of the best - it definitely became something far more than what it originally started off as, one of the shows I was looking forward to every week, up there with To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S and Uchouten Kazoku. It's a mixture of stunning mech battles, fantastic character development and a usage of clichés that, by the end, have turned the series into, yet another irony, a unique experience that is far better than what it originally started off as. To those of you who were deterred from watching this by the first few episodes, I'm not sure if the rest of the series will change your mind but it definitely changed my mind about it, and even if Fafner Exodus doesn't end up coming out this year, I won't mind (alright I will seeing as I was promised Fall 2013, but still) seeing as I got to see what is definitely one of the biggest surprises of the year and what is probably one of the best mech shows in recent memory.

Now if only I could become a hero like Izuru...

"Do you believe in miracles?"

A somewhat cheesy start to the review perhaps, but appropriate to the theme of the movie nonetheless.

Recently, I've noticed that I seem to have developed a knack for somehow always being able to review a show by J.C Staff, despite me saying that I'm not too fond of them. Now, honestly, I've had to re-evaluate that assessment, seeing as I've been somewhat unfair on them in the past - they've got their fair share of fantastic shows under their belt (Honey and Clover and To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S), as well as some that are bad or lame representations ... of their source material (Little Busters! and Spiral, respectively).

To Aru Majutsu no Index: EnK finds itself somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, not really ending up on either good or bad. I got exactly what I expected from this movie, that is a really, really enjoyable feature which still retains quite a few of the problems that oftentimes hamper Index.

At its core, Index EnK is really nothing more than your average Index filler arc in movie form, all of the right boxes are ticked: Mysterious girl with some kind of special ability? Check. Touma needs to save that girl? Check. Some kind of group wants to use said girl for nefarious purposes? Check. Said girl will fall for Touma and add herself to his ever growing harem? Check. Index biting Touma in an attempt to create a humourous scene, only for it to fall down on its face? Most definitely. Indeed, the Index movie really does hit all the clichés that you've probably come to expect from the franchise.

This serves as both a negative and a positive; negatively, the story is quite predictable and you'll be able to see quite a few of the twists coming before they happen - with that being said, there are a couple of rather unexpected twists towards the end which did surprise me, so I've gotta give the movie kudos for that.

Another negative with the movie is one that irked me throughout the film, that is, the need to show every character who has had some role of importance or another in the story so far into the film - including characters from Railgun. This is an incredibly double-edged sword with some rather nasty repercussions, for instance, I would have been annoyed had Accelerator not been in the movie, so I was happy to see him, but at the same time, his cameo was wasted so much it makes me wonder what the point of including him at all even was.

The same thing applies to Mitsuko's appearance too, if she's only going to appear for one scene, then what's the point of even bothering to include her in the first place? I realise that this movie is, essentially, character fanservice - but it feels like such wasted character fanservice; the second Prince of Tennis movie did this as well, but it did it far more tastefully than the Index movie, when a character made a cameo appearance in that movie, their appearance held meaning, this just feels like they're including the characters because they're obligated to do so.

Another issue with the story, aside from the wasted cameos, is the really cheesy ending; you know the kind, the one when every character has to lend a helping hand in order to assist the main character in stopping whatever calamity or disaster is about to happen - the movie is incredibly guilty of this, and the way it happens feels incredibly silly and doesn't sit right with when the movie is set canonically with the series (granted, it'd still be silly even if it was right at the end of the series).

Then there's the singing thing, don't get me wrong, I don't mind the fact that this is essentially To Aru Majutsu no Index: The musical (sadly there was no Touma and Misaka singing duet, which would have made the movie totally worth watching for that alone), but considering how cheesy everything is building up to the climax, this also felt incredibly silly and somewhat unnecessary too.

On the flip-side of things, average Index arc though it may be, it's definitely among the best of these average Index arcs, mainly to do with the point that, for once, Touma doesn't end up giving an idealistic speech to the person he ends up fighting and keeps his idealism well in check - which is a saving grace to say the least.

Another thing is the twists towards the end, which are actually genuinely well executed and do serve to spice up the story a little bit - even if, for the most part, they remain on the predictable side, the twist that is implemented right at the end is actually rather well done and something I was caught off guard by (albeit, only slightly).

Aside from that, the story isn't really anything to write home about, if you didn't like arcs like this before then it certainly won't change your mind, but if you can tolerate Index filler then you'll probably be able to make it through this without too many problems.

There is however one thing that caught me off guard completely about the movie, and it's not the story twists - it's the animation.

Put simply, it is stunning.

Now, don't get me wrong, the Raildex franchise has always been receiving the best part of J.C Staff's budget, but Index: EnK takes that to a whole new level; in the past, the Index TV series has always suffered from the occasional still frame or an off-model every now and then, the movie gladly doesn't have that problem and, when it's in motion or if there isn't much action, it looks absolutely fantastic.

Magic attacks in particular, such as Stiyl's Innocentius, are an absolutely glorious sight to behold, and don't just look but feel powerful, I was left with my jaw slightly hanging open when I saw how good the movie looks. There was a fight in the movie about forty minutes or so in, when Touma is up against a random dude that he has to fight due to plot convenience, and I was honestly wondering if this was still To Aru Majutsu no Index, the animation was incredibly fluid and well done, more-so than a lot of the big fights in Index (although they're usually bogged down with monologuing, so maybe this is an example of what would happen if Touma didn't speak during his fights). There's even a car chase.

Another thing worth mentioning about the animation is that, with the increased budget, Academy City looks far more detailed than it did in the TV series. The night sky, the lighting - for once, Academy City feels like a proper city rather than just some location that the characters happen to be in at the time, it looks like a place that people would actually live in. It's impressive to say the least, the little details that are usually ignored such as crowds moving in the background are actually given quite a bit of attention, I remembered that there are actually people supposed to be living in this city as opposed to it being somewhat empty.

The CG for the most part looks rather impressive too, particularly the Index equivalents to Tron's lightcycles, which do look incredibly cool and have become another item on my list of fictional vehicles that I would love to ride one day. Sadly, the one chink in EnK's otherwise impenetrable animation armour is the rather ugly CG that is used whenever a character is singing, it does look incredibly out of place and, in comparison to the rest of the movie, just looks plain odd and somewhat unnecessary, what they were trying to achieve really could have been done better with conventional animation.

Sound wise, the music isn't really worth mentioning all that much, seeing as t is, for the most part, tracks from the TV series, there may have been a couple of remixes in their too, but I sadly can't recall, my point being that, if you liked the music in Index, you'll like the Index movie's soundtrack, if you didn't, then you won't like it.

The actual song that is performed by Meigo Arisa throughout the movie isn't really something necessarily special either, it's a nice little song, but not necessarily something that I'd say is any better or worse than the soundtrack as a whole.

As for the cast, you get exactly what you expect from them by now, Yuka Iguchi is still incredibly annoying as Index, Abe Atsushi delivers as Touma, Rina Satou gives us exactly what you'd expect from Misaka (not at the level of To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S mind you, but this isn't her movie so I can't complain as much as I'd like), they're almost all good performances apart from Index.

The major additions to the voice cast, Sachika Misawa, Yoko Hikasa and Ayane Sakura, all give passing grade performances and all deliver exactly as you'd expect them to, with sadly no surprise star performance to speak of, they do the job and that's that really.

Other cast members, such as Nobuhiko Okamoto, are totally wasted in the few seconds of screen-time that they get, it goes back to my original point of the character cameos feeling so wasted that there's really no point in them appearing at all.

Which brings me to my next point.

Index, as a series, has a lot of characters that appear on quite a regular basis throughout, characters like Accelerator, Stiyl and Tsuchimikado, the series suffers as a result of this, having to deal with too many characters at once - and the movie suffers as a result of this as well. Nearly every character that has served some role of importance between volumes 1-7 of the Light Novels (not including villains), gets an appearance in the movie, however short their appearance may be - heck, even Aleister of all people gets an appearance in the movie. This is a serious problem, as the movie wastes cameos that should have been something that really pleases fans, I should have felt happy that Accelerator appeared in the movie at all, instead, I was left feeling rather confused as to why he was there - don't get me wrong, I'm happy that he was in the movie, as he's by far the best character in Index (at least, by this point in the story), and I'm pleased he had a moment, but it's not the kind of cameo he deserves.

This waste of cameos actually also has a negative effect on the new cast members too, the movie spends so much time bringing in everyone that it hampers any serious development for Meigo Arisa and Shutaura Sequenzia (which is a ridiculous name even by Index standards), as such, they come across as rather flat and somewhat one-dimensional, this in turn also harms the twist at the end now that I think about it, seeing as the characters are rather unsympathetic, which lessens what should have been serious emotional impact.

The main villain isn't worth talking about, motivated by a stupid reason that is really not worth going into due to its stupidity, it tried to develop her in some way I suppose, but I can't say I actually felt anything even remotely resembling sympathy for her, especially considering what she was going to do to achieve it.

All flaws aside though, Index EnK is a very, very enjoyable movie - one that I was quietly anticipating. A common thing I've noticed with Index (especially in Index II), is that, when it's going in all guns blazing, it's totally possible to ignore all the flaws and just find something really enjoyable. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's "turn off your brain and enjoy it" style viewing, as there's method in the madness (for lack of a better idiom). I don't think I would have enjoyed this anywhere near as much as if it was an actual part of the TV series though - the animation is definitely one reason why I enjoyed it so much and it really is stunning to behold, but the wasted character cameos did detract from my enjoyment of the movie a bit.

Don't go into this movie expecting some kind of revolutionary new appreciation for Index that you never thought possible, you won't be getting it. It's traditional Index filler at the end of the day, meaning that it comes with all the pros and cons that you've come to expect from the franchise by now - it also comes with fantastic action scenes that should are totally worth watching the movie for.

Now hurry up and announce Index III J.C staff, you've kept me waiting long enough.

"I'll break this illusion, with my right fist!"

A Certain Magical Index should really be renamed, and I have the perfect title: A Certain Frustrating Show. I don't think I've ever actually been so frustrated with a show quite like this before, not because it's bad, but because it's good, and very enjoyable - but for some bizarre reason, the show never uses its latent potential to become something truly outstanding.

Let me get one thing out of the way first: Index II is a significant step-up from the first series, the first episode was actually better than nearly every single moment of the original series (minus ... Accelerator's little mini-arc) and actually got me looking forward to a show that I thought would only be marginally better than its prequel, instead, what I got was a series that involves a lot of evil Roman Catholics who are more extreme than most actual religious extremists, a lot of idealistic speeches and a lot of women being punched in the face.

Another thing I should get out of the way, if you're an easily offended religious person (specifically, a Roman Catholic) or a fairly hardcore feminist who believes that all men are "pigs", then this probably isn't the show for you, seeing as, more than likely, you may be offended by the shows content at some point.

Having said that, I don't think the show is actually trying to be offensive, it's just unfortunate that certain aspects of the show - which I'll cover later on - can be misconstrued as either racist or misogynistic depending on your beliefs. If you're able to get past these issues, then there's a good chance that you may be able to enjoy the show despite its faults.

Now that I've covered the obligatory "If you're easily offended, don't watch it" section, I should probably move onto the reason you're (probably) still reading this review, that is, the part in which I'm actually reviewing.

Index II continues to follow the misadventures of everyone's favorite unfortunate protagonist, Kamijou Touma, and his exploits as he tries to deal with the looming threat of the Roman Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church and...the Roman Catholic Church, because apparently, the Roman Catholic Church seems to have nothing better to do with their time than try to take over Academy City - occasionally they mix things up a bit by not going after Academy City itself, but generally speaking, the Roman Catholics serve as the main antagonists for the most part.

They also happen to make some pretty poor antagonists at that, usually guided by poor motivations and weak reasons which are broken down by Touma's equally weak idealistic speeches which serve as a constant reminder that, despite having his occasionally cool moments in Index (and to a much greater extent, Railgun): Kamijou Touma is an idealistic buffoon, whose only redeeming feature is that he happens to have one of the most overpowered abilities in the history of fiction.

However, poor antagonists aside, the most infuriating aspect of Index II's story is its own inability to capitalise on the clear potential that it actually has here, I'm not joking when I say that the potential for a really outstanding story is absolutely huge here. The story has a lot of really good ideas that, frustratingly, are hardly ever capitalised on for the majority of the run time - we still for example, don't actually know what Imagine Breaker is, all we know is that Touma's only redeeming feature is able to negate any supernatural ability that is thrown at him - magical or otherwise. No explanation is given as to why it is he has this power, what its full potential actually is, or why it's capable of negating supernatural abilities in the first place - it becomes clear in one of the later arcs that there is clearly a lot more to Imagine Breaker than meets the eye, (although this statement is kind of redundant, seeing as it was obvious) but that's about it.

Index too doesn't seem to serve any more importance than she did last season, in fact, there are several people who have argued that she was actually more important in the first season, even though there are arcs in which she doesn't actually appear at all. The MAL synopsis for this show is actually very misleading; if there are any of you who think that Index will serve a greater role in Index II then think again, she won't, and you'll be left feeling very disappointed. She's still just as annoying as ever mind you, so there are some definite pro's to this particular con of the story.

There are plenty of other occasions when the story fails to capitalise on its potential too, for instance, why doesn't it introduce any other saints besides Kanzaki Kaori? Surely the Church of England has other magicians it can send besides Stiyl, right? Just what exactly are Aleister's plans? Are there any other interesting Espers besides Misaka and Accelerator? Who exactly are the other Level 5 Espers anyway? (although Railgun S has already partially answered that question for me) There are a lot of other questions that I'd really love to ask, because this show still hasn't answered them, although I'm fairly sure that when Index III comes out, (it's a question of when, not if) I'll be getting my answers - in fact, I'm starting to think that Index II decided to purposely dodge any questions I may have purely for the purpose of getting me excited for the inevitable third season - and if that was the case, it succeeded.

Another issue with the story is the woman punching, personally, I wasn't as bothered by this as some people may actually be, but I can certainly understand why it can be seen as an issue. Nearly every arc (with a few notable exceptions) revolves around Touma punching the antagonist - in this case, the main female villain of the arc - in the face, and potentially rearranging it whilst he's doing so; I'm fairly sure that Index II's intention wasn't actually to be misogynistic, in the same way I think it's just using the Roman Catholic Church because of the various pieces of Christian symbolism it can use rather than being racist about it.

It's not all bad though, the last two arcs are actually really good and really enjoyable, for a few notable reasons, one of which being that they actually serve to progress the story and in a very notable way. The final two arcs are huge indications that something really big is coming, and make a large change to the sometimes filler-like feel of certain arcs (the Daihaseisai arc feeling like it was just dragging on, especially towards the end). Another reason is that Accelerator ends up becoming the main character for a time, which is a nice change of pace when compared to Touma. Everyone's favorite psychopathic anti-hero with a heart serves as a much more interesting main protagonist (which is why his little arc in the original series was by far the best thing about it), not to mention, he gets the good villain too, with his main enemy serving as a much more interesting, well motivated antagonist in comparison to Touma's villains.

Another notable aspect of Index II's story is that this time, it doesn't bombard you with lots of terminology, which was a huge problem of the original series, instead, any new terminology is actually explained and, more importantly, serves as relevant information to the plot - even if in some cases, it's arc limited. This makes it much easier to sort out plot details in your head, but it never feels like it's just spoon-feeding you either, which is nice.

The final thing about the story is, that, well, it actually goes somewhere...eventually. The original series never went anywhere with its plot, despite hinting that it clearly could, and whilst it takes a while for Index II to go somewhere, when it does eventually move, there are significant leaps in progress in comparison to the original.

Animation is also better than the original series, attacks look cooler and pack more of a punch in terms of visual clarity, the series animates rather well and it's obvious that Index II is getting the best part of the budget that I didn't know J.C Staff actually had.

It's not perfect however, there are some times when the animation becomes quite choppy and inconsistent, with the occasional off-model appearing every now and again, as well as some static images appearing here and there too. These are minor gripes however, as for the most part, Index II is generally rather good to watch and look at, especially when characters are bringing out their most powerful spells or Esper ability.

Similar to the first series, the OST doesn't really have that many notable tracks to go with it, although there a couple of tracks worth mentioning, probably because the show likes to play them a lot - Kyuuketsu Koroshi is a nice track that brings an atmosphere that wouldn't be out of place in a good detective show, Gensou Koroshi is essentially Touma's illusion breaking theme song, Nichijou provides some amusement when it's covering the daily lives of the characters. It's not a bad mix of tracks, although there are definitely better OST's out there.

Opening and ending themes fare similarly to the previous series, with the one notable exception being the second opening, See VisionS, which is the series best opening by a long stretch and, funnily enough, becomes the shows opening theme when the story actually decides to become interesting.

Voice acting is pretty strong too, now that I actually understand why it is that the various Misaka's speak like they do, I now actually think that it was a pretty clever choice as opposed to an annoying inclusion that actually does makes a lot of sense in context. Despite his character, Atsushi Abe is actually very good as Touma, and there are often plenty of times that his performance is able to sell the character despite the stupidity of his speeches (were it not for the fact that what he's saying is rather stupid, Abe puts so much effort into the role that he's capable of fooling you into thinking that what he's saying is worth listening to). Rina Satou still delivers well on Misaka - I'm inclined to like her more now seeing as I actually liked Railgun. Satomi Arai is actually pretty funny whenever she screams "Onee-Sama" as Kuroko, Rina Hidaka is fairly adorable as Last Order now that I understand more about the character...the list goes on.

There are a few notable performances in the voice acting as well, although, for different reasons. Rie Kugimiya does her trademark squeal as Sister Agnese, whether this is a good thing or not is entirely up to you, I personally didn't mind it. My man Keiji Fujiwara is a great addition to the cast as Accelerator's villain, Kihara, bringing a sadistic, cynical performance that totally fits with an arc revolving around Accelerator. Yuka Iguchi is...well, she's Yuka Iguchi, I didn't like her in the original series and honestly, my opinion of her hasn't changed all that much either.

Once again though, the best actor in the show is by far Nobuhiko Okamoto as Accelerator, he's able to pull off every scream, every insult, every single psychopathic laugh with amazing sincerity, all whilst being able to bring emotional depth to a character who, for all intents and purposes, you should probably hate and would do whatever it takes to avoid if you saw him on the street. It's Okamoto's performance when Accelerator's not screaming that really sells it, his world weary voice and seemingly apathetic attitude showing that, underneath the psychopath, is a very lonely and unloved boy who's just trying to get by and find people that he can actually get along with - which is probably why he goes so far to help Last Order and why they play off each other really well.

The characters of Index are a group of people who you will share a mixed relationship with, on the one hand, there are characters who are actually rather good, Accelerator being the most obvious example followed by Misaka, as well as characters who you will probably really dislike. I'll make this clear now, if you didn't like Index in the first series, forget about liking her here, she hasn't changed, she's still annoying and the moments when she bites Touma are not funny. The show does actually have some cool characters like Stiyl and Tsuchimikado, but they're never usually on screen long enough for you to actually say "Yeah, these guys are actually really good characters." and that's actually a recurring issue with a lot of the characters in Index, there are definitely some cool characters here, but that's all they are: cool. You won't see any characters of any noticeable depth unless they're either main characters, or you watched Railgun and got to see Misaka's life fleshed out more. It's that irritating issue of when a show has too many characters, and doesn't know what to do with them, so you're left with two-dimensional to one-dimensional characters.

Then there are the antagonists, a completely mixed bag of characters who range from decent (i.e Kihara) to pretty lacklustre (i.e most of Touma's villains) - Biagio Busoni I should add, is a total waste of Emperor Wakamoto's voice, in fact, if it turns out that they end up going up against God in Index III, Wakamoto should play God, that would be an appropriate role for him (for God I mean, 'cause he doesn't even come close to Emperor Wakamoto after all).

The most polarising character however, is Kamijou Touma himself. The main problem with Touma is that, well, he's a buffoon, an idealistic one at that, spouting out his ideals whenever his altruism gets him caught up in the final fight of the arc. Although, there is something there that doesn't make me totally dislike him - and I'm not just referring to his ability either. Kamijou Touma is a genuinely nice guy who goes to great lengths to ensure that everyone, be they friend or enemy regardless, turns out better for it, his altruism truly knows no bounds. Whilst I can't necessarily vouch for his brilliance as a character, he certainly does have some admirable traits about him, and if someone bothered to fix his idealistic speeches and terrible debating skills, I'd probably be saying I like the guy.

With all this being said though, Index II is an immensely enjoyable show. I managed to get through it in two days and I'm really looking forward to Index III (from what I know, the light novels are supposed to get really good once all the filler style stuff is out of the way), and flaws aside, when Index II is going at full swing, it's actually a hard show to fault - despite its issues, Index II has a considerably high entertainment factor. The comedy is actually legitimately funny and gets past cheap gags that were never really funny to begin with such as Index biting Touma, the action sequences are very good and are great to watch, and similar to the last season, the arc like structure allows you to pretty much watch the show at your leisure without feeling too bad about not watching for a bit. There's a lot going for Index II.

I should also point out that, Index II is not a bad show, it's actually a good show - and it's fantastic in comparison to the first season. It's just a shame that, despite all its pros in comparison to the first series, its many cons, such as the frustrating inability to actually capitalise and fully exploit the good ideas that it actually has, prevent it from being truly outstanding, which is a really frustrating issue indeed. I'll just hope for now that, when Index III is confirmed, I'll finally be able to enjoy To Aru Majutsu no Index at its best and that I'll finally be able to say "It's totally worth watching the first two seasons for."

Until that point however, it really will just be A Certain Frustrating Show.

"Mada Mada Dane"

Once upon a time in Japan, a manga artist by the name of Takeshi Konomi came up with a manga by the name of Prince of Tennis, and it quickly became one of - if not the - most popular sports manga of all time, doing for tennis what Slam Dunk did for basketball, it caused a massive boost in popularity for the sport in its native country. To this day, it's hard to really say that Japan ever got past Prince of Tennis fever, one look at the various pieces of Prince of Tennis merchandise like the musicals or even the live-action ... film, makes it instantly clear just how big of a thing this is for them.

Naturally, such a popular manga was bound to be subject to an anime adaptation, and so in October 2001, an anime version of the mega-hit was released by none other than...J.C Staff? Wait, seriously? Someone thought that that was a good idea? I mean, J.C Staff, a company that is well known for messing up and/or butchering adaptations of great works? (I'm looking at you Spiral) This is a company that for the most part, seems to have very little in terms of "great" budget, and suddenly they're expected to animate 178 episodes of such a huge hit? All of a sudden, Prince of Tennis the anime sounds like it's going to be a disaster.

You know what though? It's not; in fact, Prince of Tennis is actually pretty good.

That's not to say however, that this is the best sports anime out there - indeed, there are definitely flaws with PoT, mostly to do with the animation, which I'll cover later on - and if you've had any animosity towards sports anime in the past then you can immediately forget about liking Prince of Tennis, as it most definitely won't change your mind about them, it's possible that it may make you dislike them even more actually; even sports anime fans that I've talked to have dismissed PoT out of hand calling it "ridiculous" "a joke" and "an insult to the actual sport itself", and whilst I can certainly understand why people dislike certain ridiculous elements of the show, I find comments about it being a joke and an insult to be quite puzzling, because personally, I found that once PoT hit its stride, it was a huge barrel of fun and enjoyment.

The story is typical sports anime fare: Team wants to become the best. Team goes up against many strong opponents and becomes stronger after each match. Team wins some games, team loses some games. It's a tried and trusted formula which, while not really turning any heads in terms of how things play out, provides decent enough motivation for the characters to at least keep you emotionally invested in them for a while.

What's interesting about the story is that, whereas other sports shows would immediately opt for making the main protagonists team a group of underdogs, going up against impossible odds and coming out better for it, the tennis players of Seigaku are actually rather strong by comparison. We're presented with players who are already known at the national level, a player that's regarded by practically everyone as a tennis prodigy, and Jesus himself, Captain Tezuka. These are character archetypes that, in nearly every other sports show, would be reserved for the opposing teams, their sole purpose to make the protagonists team stronger and stronger after every single match, and we're meant to watch them playing for the home team.

So how then does that make the matches interesting?

As mentioned before, Seigaku is constantly going up against stronger and stronger teams, with players that are just as equally strong as them (with the exception of Captain Jesus, who I'll talk about later on), this means that even though there are main characters who are ridiculously powerful, the players are almost never really in a position in which they can just sit back and take the match easily, meaning that it successfully maintains a feeling of excitement and tension, despite the several curb-stomp matches that do occur throughout the series.

One major stand-out of the original PoT's storyline, rather funnily, is the filler. Now obviously, in an anime this long filler is bound to be expected - this could range from anything to funny filler episodes to outright filler arcs - but what's interesting to note is that, well...the filler is actually pretty damn good.

No seriously, I mean it, I wouldn't joke about this even if you paid me.

After about 125 episodes, PoT goes off on its own route because the animators decided that they wanted to give the audience a different Prince of Tennis experience than that of the manga, and it actually pays off rather well, I'm sure the whole Junior Selection Camp thing served in some way as the basis for what would eventually form the plot of New Prince of Tennis; in reality I suppose these filler episodes are nothing more than a clever way for J.C Staff to fully exploit the huge cast of bishonens that exist in PoT, and create new pairings for its ever growing fanbase of yaoi fans (heck I'm a straight male and even I supported some of the pairings). Nonetheless, these filler episodes are at times more entertaining than the actual matches from the proper storyline, they're a strong example of how to do filler, and more importantly, how to do filler well - the fact that I was able to marathon through the final 78 episodes in the space of about two weeks is a testament of how good I personally found the filler.

However, regardless of how good everything else is in Prince of Tennis, there is one factor that threatens to nearly derail the viewing experience almost completely. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Prince of Tennis's utterly woeful animation.

Artistically speaking, the series fares well, Takeshi Konomi's numerous bishonens translate well to the screen, enough so that that was the deciding factor in why the score isn't less than 5, it's when it actually comes to animating that Prince of Tennis utterly falls down.

You will see stock footage, a lot of it, I lost count of the amount of times I saw the same footage for Ryoma's Twist Serve or Fuji's Higuma Otoshi repeated again, and again, and again. Static images are abound in the anime. It's not often that animation in an anime is so bad that it's actually detrimental to the viewing experience, but in this case, it most definitely is. For whatever reason - perhaps due to J.C Staff's lack of funds - simple shots are repeated in little boxes that suddenly appear on the screen, so you're subjected to the same footage you saw not two seconds ago; randomly, a character will take a shot and the anime decides that for whatever reason, it's going to show the same shot again in a spiral that suddenly bombards your screen. I could quite literally turn this review into a complete list of faults with the animation of the show. The animation is meant to be a medium that conveys the manga format effectively, and it seems as if somewhere along the line, J.C Staff forgot about that little detail, as such, we're presented with matches that, in the manga, would only take about 3 to 5 chapters (I bothered to use the Seigaku VS Yamabuki match as a reference for this) and in the anime, take roughly the equivalent of about 4 episodes by comparison.

In short, it's pretty much total butchery, and something that wouldn't be fixed until the National Tournament OVA's in which it was then animated by the far more capable hands of Production I.G.

Musically speaking, PoT fares significantly better, one of the many things that defines a sports anime - or long running anime in general - is the soundtrack; without a good soundtrack, quite a bit of the effect is lost whenever something dramatic happens, and what PoT lacks in the animation department is something that the sound department makes up for. Cher Watanabe composed an absolutely awesome soundtrack, the opening themes are, personally, among some of the best and really get you in the mood for Prince of Tennis, seriously, just try and listen to "Driving Myself" (by far the best of the opening themes) and not get pumped.

The rest of the soundtrack is also pretty good, I remember plenty of moments when the music was the best thing about the show, particularly when tracks like "Mission", "Hangeki" and "Koutekishu" were playing, it's hard to not at times feel a big goofy grin appear on your face when the soundtrack is at its best.

Voice acting is equally strong, there are plenty of arrogant characters in Prince of Tennis, not least Ryoma, Atobe and Kirihara, and the voice acting is able to pretty much hit all the right notes when it comes to performances, whether it be one of the arrogant characters or one of the softer characters, or perhaps one of the stoic characters - it's hard to fault the voice acting, with the exception of the really annoying little kids that pretty much form Ryoma's fan-club, their voices grate significantly and any attempt at humour with these characters falls flat down on its face.

Also, a word of advice, avoid the dub at all costs, they never did dub the entire show but what they did dub was pretty poor; it seems as if practically no one was taking the anime seriously enough to bother contributing something that can actually be considered a performance.

As you will no doubt know, sports anime and manga are usually not reliant on their story (even if, in this case, it's actually pretty good), the sport is usually the lifeblood of its respective anime or manga, but it's the characters that really make it stand out. If you were, for instance, to try and watch Eyeshield 21 without Hiruma, you would be stuck with an anime that, while having its moments, doesn't have a strong enough cast for you to keep yourself interested in it. Thankfully, PoT's characters are strong enough to keep your interest, you will definitely find at least one character among this cast that you can actually bring yourself to like. Like yourself a cocky, confident main protagonist who knows what he's doing? Then you'll probably quickly find yourself fawning all over Ryoma. Do you like relaxed, composed characters with strong poker faces? Fuji's the one for you. Do you fancy unbelievably arrogant, king-like characters? Look no further than King Atobe himself.

Of course, those are just the base character traits, over time, the characters (especially Ryoma) develop into more than that, becoming much more likeable, more sympathetic and much more worthy of you rooting for them. Gags that originally weren't funny, such as Inui's special juices or Kawamura's Engrish, gradually become chuckle-worthy, heck even downright funny, and that's because of the way the characters develop.

Unfortunately, the characters aren't quite perfect, and that's due to the fault of one character: Captain Jesus - I mean, Captain Tezuka.

Tezuka is, hands down, the worst character in the show, so naturally, he's one of the most overpowered too. He's bland, dull, has practically no emotions whatsoever, and is just completely uninteresting as a character and as the team captain; Kabaji had more character development than Tezuka, and the only thing he said was "Yes"! Of course, this also makes him practically unbeatable, with only really the best of the best standing a decent chance against him. The only thing that Tezuka is good for is providing Ryoma with at least some motivation to start getting better, and even that's only a small catalyst.

Despite its faults - and woeful animation, which it should be noted, does actually start to improve in the last 8 episodes - I thoroughly enjoyed Prince of Tennis, it was a fun ride with some excellent filler, a strong cast of likeable characters and a great soundtrack. It most definitely won't change your mind about sports anime if you didn't like them to begin with, especially when it starts bringing in elements that take it from almost believable to downright Super Saiyan, and I wouldn't really recommend it if you're just starting to get into sports anime either, perhaps after you've seen something much more realistic like say, Hajime no Ippo and fancy something that isn't as bothered by the laws of physics. Still, it's a great ride once it gets going and well worth the time you put into it, especially as you're rewarded by Production I.G's glorious animation in the Nationals.

"Such misfortune!"

It's somewhat apt that I happened to choose that as the opening quote to this review, because it really does sum up To Aru Majutsu no Index rather nicely - that is, an anime filled with misfortune.

Initially, Index got off to an...interesting start, it wasn't particularly bad, nor was it particularly good either, it was just interesting. We are introduced to our main character Touma, rather interestingly, Touma is not the stereotypical useless protagonist so often seen in shows like Index; don't get me wrong, at his core, he's just a variation on the plain nice guy, but this nice guy also happens to ... have one of the most overpowered abilities in the history of fiction: the ability to negate literally any form of supernatural ability that happens to come his way with his right hand.

However cool it is to have a main character who has an ability that, in most cases, is reserved for the most powerful of powerful enemies, having this power also presents a couple of immediate problems for the show, the first of which being that there is near enough no risk whatsoever when Touma fights; it doesn't matter what the situation is, Touma will undoubtedly get out of it using his hand of God (a rather ironic statement if you've actually seen the show), as shown during the Accelerator and Sherry Cromwell fights, you could quite literally throw the most powerful supernatural abilities at this guy and he will negate them instantly. Consequently, this also makes none of his fights remotely interesting if they have anything to do with supernatural abilities, as he will just spam his Deus Ex Machina ability repeatedly in order to get out of whatever predicament he's in.

Our other main character is Index, and the moment she is introduced to the show, things immediately go downhill, and it's not just her character (which I'll get back to later), the show itself breaks two rules of writing that should never be broken:

1) It throws out lots of random terminology.
2) The story doesn't go anywhere.

That first one is a trap the writer fell into all too fast, right from Index's introduction we are suddenly given an influx of terminology that we are supposed to remember, things like "Necessarius", "Dedicatus545", "Johann's Pen", "Imagine Breaker", "Judgment", "Esper" and "Anti-Skill" just to name a few out of the dozens of terms that populate Index's world, there is literally no point in trying to remember them all, especially not the magic spells which are frankly ridiculous in terms of naming length. Now, as you no doubt know, throwing out random terminology in the hopes that some of it will stick does NOT make a story, frankly, they're nothing but a bunch of meaningless words that are, at most, given a three line explanation as to what they actually mean. Worse still, the terminology doesn't stop, and we are continuously hammered with terms that make it seem like the show is ridiculously complex and would take nothing short of a quantum physicist to understand everything that goes on. Don't get me wrong, there are shows that have done exactly what Index did, Haruhi is guilty of it, Shakugan no Shana is most definitely guilty of it, but the major difference between those two shows and this one is that Shana and Haruhi actually made progress in their story.

Which brings me onto my other point.

The biggest problem with Index is that the story doesn't go anywhere - at all. The first series does nothing more than introduce certain characters, and give out lots of random side stories that do nothing but hinder what little progress the story makes; there are literally only three arcs in Index that actually serve to deliver something that's beneficial to the story at all, those being the first arc, the Sisters arc and the finale. Admittedly, the character development that Accelerator received in his own little stand alone arc was rather good, but one character getting developed when there are more characters and terms than the writers can keep track of is nothing but a minutely small achievement when there's so much that the story has to tell. Honestly, it's hard to tell what exactly is going on in Index half the time, there are arcs in which characters that were key in the beginning are totally swept aside, arcs in which characters I thought were nothing more than minor extras are reintroduced and are suddenly given total importance (with absolutely no foreshadowing whatsoever), and, of course, a beach episode.

None of this is helped by some of the worst writing I've ever seen. There's bad writing, then there's bad writing and then there's To Aru Majutsu no Index. There are several times in which a character is delivering a monologue that not only seems completely out of context, they're usually random and worse still, they don't make sense. An example of one such monologue is in the first arc of the series, Touma happens to be engaging in life or death combat with a character who happens to be hunting Index, Touma, our ever rational hero, then proceeds to start a speech about friendship that not only doesn't make sense, but somehow wins over said villain; it's one moment of utter stupidity amongst hundreds of others in Index. The lapses in logic in Index only get worse as the series goes along, this is not helped by the plot holes that the series induces upon itself later on in the series (especially in the beach episode), and we're left with a series that certainly seems to want to do something with all its terminology and characters, it's just abstaining vehemently from doing so.

On the flip-side of this, Index does at least look okay, which is surprising considering that this is J.C. Staff animating here. The character designs look good, the spells and abilities look pretty decent, and the fights look nice as well; it's definitely not perfect, there are several times in the series in which the quality of the animation dips drastically, and several abilities lack the impact that they should considering how powerful they're meant to be, which is more along the lines of what I've come to expect from J.C. Staff. Oh and the fan-service, it would most definitely not be complete without the fan-service.

As for the sound, the main themes are generic and utterly forgettable at the end of the day, and the rest of the OST is passable at best, there's no major stand-out themes in it so I won't dwell. The voice actors do nothing more than an average job, the already bad writing delving further into horrible melodrama due to some of the female seiyuu coming out with really hollow performances at times; the only two voice actors who deserve a mention are Yuka Iguchi as Index and Nobuhiko Okamoto as Accelerator, both of which are here for very opposite reasons. Iguchi is mentioned because she manages to turn Index from a generic loli-tsundere, into a horrendously annoying one; her performance as Index is tantamount to taking pieces of broken chalk and scratching them down a chalkboard. As for Okamoto, he manages to deliver a performance as Accelerator that captures his sadistic personality rather well, and also manages to act well in the scenes when Accelerator isn't finding new ways to deflect people with his vectors.

One last thing about the voice acting, try listening to the many Misaka clones keep repeating "Misaka Misaka" all the time, I guarantee that you will never want to hear that name ever again.

And now the characters, they're a rather interesting bunch, each having some form of cool ability or special magical power that's almost interesting enough to make you want to see what it does.

Nearly every single one of them is characterised horribly.

As mentioned before, Touma is a variation on the stereotypical useless hero, but don't let that "variation" part fool you, he's just as idiotic and naive as nearly every single other character in this archetype. Fueled by his idiotic need to save every person around him regardless of the risk to his own life - oh wait, that statement is redundant considering who he is - Touma's only real saving grace is that he can actually do something rather than get overshadowed by a far superior female lead.

Accelerator is hands down the best character in the show; he is after all the only character to receive some good character development, and manages to be as sadistic and twisted as I first imagined him to be. He's deeper than he actually first appears, has a cool ability, and watching his stand alone arc made me think that somehow Index was about to improve.

There are many people who believe Mikoto to be the best character in the show; unfortunately, I cannot agree with this statement as Mikoto doesn't remain the focus of the show anywhere near enough to warrant the term "best character", not to mention she's somewhat inconsistent, developing tsundere characteristics whenever the plot feels it to be appropriate then dropping them as the story demands only for them to appear again at random intervals. Her characterisation in Index is nothing more than very mediocre at best and if you really want to have a better opinion of her, it's much easier to watch To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (which is actually much better than Index anyway).

The rest of the cast (aside from Index who I'll cover in a moment) are a random bunch of almost remotely interesting characters, and most of them hit the stereotypes rather well, there's plenty of loli's in the show, a lesbian, big boobs, blonde haired delinquents...nearly every single stereotype is hit at some point by Index.

And the titular character in the title is the biggest offender of them all.

Index is not just a bad character, she is the worst type of loli-tsundere around. My argument for why I think tsunderes are bad would have to be Index, she is perhaps one of the most ungrateful little brats in animation, whose only real purpose is to make the main characters life worse, and more than likely win in the harem that he forms (I neglected to mention that, but oh well). There are very few characters I want to see die more than Index, in fact, if I had the chance, I would personally ensure that she does get killed off - and I would be the one doing the killing. She somehow manages to make every episode she's in worse (this isn't helped by her appalling voice actor) and I saw her turning into a loli-tsundere 5 episodes before she actually did. Index is the kind of character that needs to be slapped repeatedly until she understands that she's a bad character, then slapped some more for good measure; frankly the one redeeming thing about the random side stories is that she doesn't feature prominently in them (if at all).

I will admit, To Aru Majutsu no Index has its moments; the way that the story is structured means you can marathon through an arc and come back to it without really forgetting where you are in the story - wait, that statement is redundant too. And despite my major gripes with the writing and characters, Index is hugely enjoyable, if I was to base my score for this series based off enjoyment, this would be a very different review.

It's just a shame that isn't the case.

In summary, Index is an anime that suffers from poor writing, an extreme lack of story and poor characters (as well as characterisation), and manages to carve itself into a level of anime that's usually only reserved for travesties like Mars of Destruction - it has its moments sure, but then again nearly every anime does.

What a waste.

"Kamille Bidan, Zeta Gundam, launching!"

Zeta Gundam is many, many things.

Zeta Gundam is boring, Zeta Gundam is hypocritical, pretentious, and filled with the sort of dialogue that makes Air Gear look like 20th Century Boys (and even then it's not that good). Zeta Gundam is filled with annoying characters that need a good gunshot to the head, Zeta Gundam is confusing and Zeta Gundam is overrated.

If it hasn't been made clear.

I hate this show.

Yes that's right hardcore Gundam fans, I hated it, I'm talking to you Tomino fanboys, especially the one's that think that Zeta Gundam is his chef d'oeuvre and the only Gundam worth liking. ... Go on, hit that not helpful button because I know you've got your finger ready to click it.

Also, let me be quick to clear something up, that 8 is purely based on how good the last two episodes were (truly some of the greatest anime episodes ever made), if you were to ignore that 8 throughout the review, the general score is a 6.

Zeta Gundam has a lot of problems.

For a start the story (for the most part) is confusing, convoluted and feels very forced in some places, back in the day this may have been truly ground-breaking stuff, but father time has definitely not been kind as to how Zeta Gundam has aged and though it may have laid out the archetypes and clichés you see in most mech anime today, seeing those original archetypes 26 years after they were created when there are mech anime out there (i.e Soukyuu no Fafner) that have characters that are based on them and do them so much better just shows how uninspiring they truly are (though Kamille and Char remain the exception to this).

But the main issue is just how confusing Zeta actually is, this is not an easy anime to get into, this is an anime that expects you to marathon it and it wants you to marathon religiously.

This wouldn't be so much of a problem if Zeta Gundam actually made sense, keep in mind that this is set 7 years after the original, 7 years of unexplained back-story (5 if you're willing to accept Stardust Memory as an explanation) for many who probably fell in love with the White Base crew, this is 7 years too much, hardly any explanation is given to just what has happened to the characters (I appreciate that this is a new cast, however cameo's don't cut it, explanation is needed) and though certain characters have tiny pieces of information revealed as to just what happened to them following the end of the One Year War, the anime expects you to use these tiny pieces to figure out where they've been and what they've become. It's very, very frustrating.

The new cast on the other hand, definitely does not cut the mustard in terms of being likeable, throughout the anime, there will most likely be 5, 6 or 7 characters that people will find likeable, and most of them do not get enough screen time. Characters like Fa, Reccoa, Jerid and Katz to name a few are insufferable when they're on the screen, which makes things even worse because you will be seeing these characters a lot of the time in the first place.

Zeta Gundam is made worse by its absolutely awful scripting, I have to wonder how the actors could have said these lines as they make absolutely no sense; an example of this is early on in the series when a character starts to babble on about something to do with feeling apathy apparently making her an Oldtype. After this line I was constantly scratching my head trying to figure out just what exactly this meant, and, nope, I still haven't figured it out. I can only assume that it wasn't the writing that made Zeta Gundam a so called "Masterpiece" at it's best it's awkward (unless they're going on about the mechs, then and only then does the script make sense) and at it's worst the series becomes almost unwatchable.

There is at least some solace in knowing that the art in Zeta Gundam is outstanding quality for its age, so much so that it still looks damn good now, I can only begin to wonder how good it must have looked for those who were watching it when the show was airing.

That being said, there are some major inconsistencies in the art, particularly during the mech fights; these should be brilliant spectacles that truly define Zeta Gundam, but it seems the artists went a bit overboard with the colour black, which considering the very dark colours of the mechs (which all look excellent I should add) makes the fights hard to watch, rewinding becomes a necessity in order to get the enjoyment that was intended by the anime, it's a very large annoyance which really snatched away quite a lot of the enjoyment in the show.

The soundtrack on the other hand is outstanding, considering the amazing quality of some of the tracks like the theme of the Zeta Gundam, Argama and some of the battle tracks, it's hard to believe that this soundtrack was composed 26 years ago, some of them could easily pass for tracks from modern day movies, it's a definite step up from the soundtrack from the original MSG, which while enjoyable, can't hold a candle to hardly any of the tracks from Zeta.

The voice acting is equally impressive, a special mention must go to Nobuo Tobita and Shuuichi Ikeda who are both excellent as Kamille and Char. Hirotaka Suzuoki is excellent once more as Bright and Toru Furuya is also great as Amuro. I was also pleasantly surprised by at least one voice in the dub, while I never did manage to watch a whole episode of the dub, Johnathon Lachlan-Stewart really makes for an excellent Kamille, his performance is by far the best out of the dub cast (and it's also worth pointing out that none of the original dub cast returns either) so much so that he could give Nobuo Tobita a run for his money in some cases, no small feat considering how expertly Tobita pulls off the role.

It's when Zeta Gundam gets to its characters that you start to see how bad this anime truly is, as I mentioned earlier, these characters became the archetypes and clichés of modern mecha today but looking at them, you'd hardly begin to think that they could even pass with being on screen to begin with. It's easy for me to say that Zeta Gundam's characters are some of the most annoying, hypocritical creatures to ever appear on my monitor. Most of the time, the logic they use makes no sense, they contradict themselves in ways that shouldn't be possible, they're idiots, and Kamille manages to be the only saving grace of the cast (that and Kai's cameo, though he's a personal favorite of mine to start with). Many people have complained about Kamille, personally, I enjoyed him as a protagonist, his logic makes sense and if the other characters actually stopped being morons for at least one second of their lives, they would see that Kamille is actually right about a lot of things.

However, as idiotic as the characters are, the actions they take are nothing compared to the Titans, I've often heard that Tomino tried too hard to make the Titans unlikeable, and I have to agree with them, I realise that this is fiction but no military corporation in their right mind should ever be allowed to take the actions that the Titans do, the actions they take are deplorable and then some.

Zeta Gundam is a very, very, very hard anime to enjoy, it's stupidly confusing, the plot points that it does make are either moronic or ruined thanks to it's terrible script, the fights are unclear and unlike the first series hold little to no strategic relevance, or any of the clever introspection or military tactics that MSG had; the vast majority of characters are idiots and killed off in ridiculous ways and it isn't exactly a spoiler to say that most of the good ones die too, (this is one of Tomino's kill em all's after all) and in no way shape or form is this ever a masterpiece. The last few episodes especially are a major chore to watch as the established formula of battle after peace after minor plot point after battle (wash, rinse, repeat) has been drilled into your brain so much that it's only through sheer will power that I was actually able to continue. With that said, the art is very good, the soundtrack was, and still is outstanding and the last two episodes really are everything the hype says they are.

I've often heard the story that Zeta Gundam was telling turned very dark and depressing in the second half of its story.

I disagree, this is not a dark and depressing story.

It's just a very boring one.

All the way through.

"Fuck up. Gentlemen"

First of all, let me point out I am a huge fan of the Dogs manga, originally I never intended to watch the OVA's because I had heard that they were a very disappointing adaptation of the manga. I decided to give them a watch because of the more recent chapters of Dogs: Bullets and Carnage that I had been reading and wondered how it would be if it was actually animated, so it was with some trepidation that I watched the OVA's.

Secondly, this is not an adaptation of Bullets and Carnage, so anyone coming here expecting to see that will just have ... to do with watching the original manga play out being animated.

Thirdly, it's very disappointing.

Dogs doesn't seem to work as an anime, I can't describe why it doesn't work, it just doesn't. If you want to understand what I'm getting at go and read the manga then watch the OVA's, you'll soon realise what I mean.

Now I'll be honest, Dogs story was never one of its biggest strengths, however in the manga it was enjoyable, it was entertaining, and at times it was downright funny. But the manga's storyline doesn't translate well onto the screen and it becomes all too obvious what the weaknesses with the storyline were. If there's one thing that's frustrating about Bullets and Carnage, it's that it tries to present the storylines for each character as separate entities, without really taking notice of the character interactions, as such the story feels more disjointed and broken up than the sort of one shot chapters that actually spawned it.

Another issue is that some of the humour is lost, this is more prevalent in Badou's chapter than anyone else's, his most memorable scenes in the manga are again, a victim of not translating well and his episode in the anime (in my opinion anyway) suffers more than anyone else's in the story.

The art in Dogs was always the selling point of the manga, it looked gorgeous, and the action scenes were very intense, in the anime though, the quality has dropped considerably. The character models by Kumi Ishii do at least resemble the characters in the manga but most of the time they look awkward, especially Heine and Nill who both seem to have undergone a massive change from the manga, and it doesn't suit them, in fact, most of the character designs in the anime don't suit the characters. I will cede though that at least they look good in colour.

The biggest disappointment about the art though is the action. I wondered how David production would be able to pull off the amazing action scenes in the manga, and to be quite honest, they can't, maybe that's a sign of their inexperience (they've only done 5 anime after all) but I digress; the action doesn't look good in the anime, and I mean that it doesn't look good, the manga had a way of making the action look good thanks to its outstanding panelling, the anime naturally doesn't resort to this and it suffers tremendously because of it, the gunfights are boring, the chase scenes are boring, the standoffs are boring, in fact when it's not busy being boring it's looking bad thanks to the character models. Don't go into this anime expecting to see the amazing art in the manga, you won't get it.

Before I cover the voice acting I should address the music, and really, there's nothing worth addressing, the score is instantly forgettable being some sort of weird jazz/techno hybrid which tries to create a noir feeling similar to something seen in Darker than BLACK but fails. The music won't be getting any awards anytime soon so here's the next question.

How about the voice acting?

Well, my instant reactions to the voice acting where mixed, especially Heine's voice, Takahiro Sakurai makes Heine sound older than he actually is in the manga, his voice is too deep for me to believe him as a convincing Heine and made the character less of the cool cat that he is in the manga. Shizuka Itou and Akio Ootsuka manage to make passable performances as Naoto and Mihai, but the honour of best voice actor in this little disappointment of an anime goes to Akira Ishida.

Yes Katsura fans, Ishida manages to be extremely impressive as Badou, you can literally feel that Ishida is putting his heart and soul into this performance as he embraces Badou's (very unique) personality wonderfully. Ishida needs to play crazy roles like this more often, rather than go with the weird (and annoying) bishonen that is Break Xerxes, and the creepy emo that is Gaara, I mean it when I say that Ishida is the best thing about the voice cast, his acting managed to save the sound aspect from a much lower score.

The characters are nowhere near as impressive as they were in the manga, Mihai and Naoto were never going to win any awards to begin with, it was always Badou and Heine that stole the show for me but they suffer in the anime, it's hard to describe, again it's something that you have to read the manga to understand what I'm getting at but they're nowhere near as cool as they were in the manga.

Now, I'll be honest, I made a lot of comparisons between the manga and the anime here, I admit that the anime should be judged on its own merits but it's very hard to do a review of the Dogs anime without doing comparisons to the manga in a lot of places, it's not a terrible anime by any stretch of the imagination but it is very, very disappointing. It's also worth mentioning that the anime can't pull a stand alone move either, as there are so many indications of the producers wanting to do a Bullets and Carnage anime as well.

Maybe Dogs was never meant to work as an anime.

What do you know, I think I solved my own problem there.

"What's that? You can't catch up to the worlds largest fool?"

There was so much that could have gone right with this series.

If I was to sum up MS IGLOO, the words that would be best used to describe it are "It was a complete disaster".

The concept sounded promising, a re-telling of the One Year War from the Zeon's perspective. Sounds great, I mean, finally we get to hear what the One Year War was like from the Zeon's point of view. Already you have me hooked, I mean we've seen what it was like from Amuro's point of view in the original Mobile Suit Gundam, ... 8th MS Team showed us how the One Year War was for a group of conventional Mobile Suit pilots and 0080 effectively shows us how the war is for a little child. So when I found out about this series, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hear what the Zeon's thought of it.

Oh what a bad move that was.

If there is one positive from this OVA's story, it's that we at least get some backstory on Operation British and the Battle of Loum (aka Char's big moment when he destroyed 5 Magellan Class battleships, and when Mobile Suits where first used in actual combat) but aside from that? Nothing. The story is a complete and total shambles, in fact I'd be hard pressed to call weapons testing a story when placed in a meta-series that is thick with mythology.

Its not that MS IGLOO's story is bad; it's terrible. An episodic series about weapons testing does not work in a series that has become well known for its large scale mech battles; and to be honest its not like the story would be able to stand on its own two feet as a completely stand-alone series either, the reason? It doesn't have its own two feet to stand on, it constantly tries to place itself in the Gundam continuity and fails. Another problem that the series has is its evident lack of character development, even if it is an episodic series, a lack of character development is inexcusable. If I wanted a show where the characters are worse than wafer-thin cardboard cut outs I'd just go off and re-watch the entirety of the crap half of Tsubasa Chronicle. But I'll get onto the characters later.

Now the interesting thing about MS IGLOO, is its decision to put the entire series in CG, if done right, this could have worked so well for Sunrise and Gundam in general. I mean, can you imagine? CG Gundam eh? Now THAT sounds like something special, definitely would have put an interesting spin on things. But no, Sunrise managed to completely squander that opportunity as well. The character models in CG look awkward and flat, here's an example, they look like a bunch of rejects from Final Fantasy The Spirits Within and even that film had the decency to opt for photo-realism. As for the Mobile Suits? Hah, don't make me laugh. Try imagining a bad looking game from the PS2, imagining it? Now think about how bland and flat the textures in that game looked and then compare that to the Mobile Suits in MS IGLOO, done that? That bad looking game from the PS2 era doesn't look so bad now does it?

I suppose that when they're actually in motion they at least look the part, the one benefit about those bland Mobile Suit models is that they at least animate smoothly, the same can't be said for the characters though, I mean we have a salute here and there and odd bit of walking now and then, but most of the time they stay in one place at one time, Sunrise can't even create the illusion that these CG models look even remotely good. Talk about a wasted opportunity.

The voice acting in MS IGLOO is appalling. There is no other word that I can use for it without going into obscenities and its never a good idea to use too many of them in one place. Hideo Ishikawa may have managed to impress people as Itachi Uchiha and Juushirou Ukitake, but in MS IGLOO, he sucks. Voice acting tends to make a character more convincing, of all the characters, Oliver May manages to at least make some sort of impact but that doesn't mean he's good. However the real cretin of the voice cast is Miki Nagasawa, I've heard bad voices and I've heard annoying voices, very rarely though do I ever see a cross between the two. Nagasawa is unforgivably bad, her Monique being one of the most annoying female characters I've ever had the displeasure of viewing on my computer monitor, I actually felt bad for the poor thing; no not Nagasawa's character, the computer monitor, there were a few occasions that I swear it was going to start breaking down on me because of how bad she is.

If I was able to say anything about the characters, it would be...they certainly know how to leave an impression, and no that isn't a good thing. They are hard to watch, a lot of the time I felt like giving up on MS IGLOO because of how bad it was, and the characters are the main cause for it - at no point do you ever feel a connection with them, they're just there, on your screen, wasting your valuable time, I could have accomplished so much in the time it took me to watch an episode of MS IGLOO, something that would have actually been productive rather than wasting goodness knows how many minutes/hours on this travesty that I know I will never get back.

At the end of the day, it's easy to say that MS IGLOO is one of the worst Gundam side stories available, it fails at being a re-telling from Zeon's perspective, it fails at being a stand-alone series, it fails at making you connect with the characters and it fails at showing weapon testing, its original aim.

If this was the first Gundam series you watched, I feel sorry for you. You wasted time, and probably got a sour taste in your mouth of what is usually an excellent mecha show, you're better off forgetting this disaster and going off watching something that's actually good in the Universal Century like 8th MS Team or indeed the original Mobile Suit Gundam. I'm pretty sure most long time Gundam fans will agree that this is definitely ranking up there as one of the worst Gundam series out there.

And to those who have actually watched and enjoyed this series, I have to ask: Are you mental?