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Plawres has a strong focus on the robot wrestling battles that are titular to the series. These battles are a constant throughout the series and are characterized by wrestling moves and techniques but their repertoires are expanded as the series progresses.

There is little I can say about this anime, what you see is what you get. It's a mostly lighthearted show with an villain-of-the-week formula. Each character serves their role but they are not explored in much detail, with the exception of the mysterious Ms Sheila Misty. Sanshirou gets the majority of the screen time, with everyone else regulated to supporting roles.
The art style of ... the anime is nice but it does not stand out from its peers. There are however flashes of excellent animation that spice up the fights.
The design and abilities of each robot are distinctive but lack the expected appeal of made-to-be-marketed soft vinyl figures. But maybe that's just me.

Directed by Kunihiko Yuyama, who would later make the Pokemon anime. It becomes apparent that Pokemon incorporated elements of plawres, mainly the 1 vs 1 proxy battle structure, with a commander and a commanded.

My main complaint is that I never got invested into the battles. You can have the best choreography and animation but it won't matter if I don't care about the characters.

Overall, I had a fun if unmemorable time with this show.

Goldfish Warning is beyond pleasant!
Every aspect of this show exudes cuteness.
Even if you haven’t heard of GW before, you've certainly heard of the staff's subsequent endeavour Sailor Moon. GW sports the same design sensibilities and craftsmanship as Sailor Moon, making it one of the best looking anime of its ilk.

Every individual scene is enjoyable in its own right, even without context, because the visuals are so outstanding. Just looking at the visuals makes me feel good.
Beautiful watercolour backgrounds, with a soft pastel palette that are often swapped out abruptly with much harsher colours for comedic emphasis. An effect that is heightened when used in ... combination with abstract backgrounds that implement a paper crafts look, with crayon, marker, chalk and paper cutouts.

The characters are just as important to the look of the show, with highly expressive animation that shifts between art styles on a dime, greatly contributing to the show's comedy.
The main cast is relatively small, with a handful of principal characters and about as many secondary characters, but there is never a dull moment because the cast bounces off each other so well.
Background classmates also have distinct character designs to help flesh out the setting though they rarely if ever shift out of their chibi/SD designs, emphasizing how inconsequential they are by literally taking up less of the screen.

The comedy of GW is rooted in the personalities/interactions/animation of its characters, energetic vocal performances, sight gags, cartoon visuals and fast paced editing. On occasion, GW also uses reference as comedy but those scenes still function for unaware audience members.

GW is highly digestible, with 2 episodic segments per episode. However, these segments possess continuity and past events are referenced.

What more can I say? If you're looking for a good time, this is it!

Let me preface this review by saying that I love Mamoru Hosoda. I've seen the vast majority of his directorial output from the silver screen to the small screen. He directs with a deft hand, making the absolute most of any budget he's given. The episodes he's directed in TV anime, imbued with his distinct sensibilities, are the high water mark of any series they're a part of.

But Belle is simply baffling.
Belle makes for the third time Hosoda has revisited the concept of an virtual world. A fact that worried me before the film was even released because I don't believe Hosoda has any real ... grasp of the internet. Oz, his previous depiction of a virtual space found in Summer Wars, felt like a fantasy setting rather than speculative fiction. But oh how I miss Oz when I compare it to Belle's world of U. Hosoda, and by extension the audience, has such a poor grasp of the inner workings and mechanics of U that any narrative he places within it crumbles.

Belle is about a introverted girl named Suzu (the Japanese word for bell) who finds popularity as her online persona named Belle in the virtual world of U due to her amazing singing, something she is too afraid to do in the real world. Except not really because that plot line is speed through in a montage. The plot is actually a Beauty and the Beast story. Except for when it isn't, which is most of the time. The abruptness of these plot points and their on again off again nature is fast enough to make anyone's head spin.

Hosoda's films have not been the same since he and his long time script writer Satoko Okudera parted ways. Okudera worked on what I consider Hosoda's best films, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Wolf Children. Even Summer Wars (my least favourite Hosoda film until Belle) is a perfectly pleasant watch, thanks in part to her no doubt.

Hosoda has been the sole script writer on his films since Boy and the Beast. And while that was still a standout effort, it marked a shift in the writing style of his works. Hosoda has felt unfiltered ever since, adding anything and everything to his works. His scripts becoming increasingly bloated and convoluted.

Even Hosoda's directing gets muddled in Belle, with half the film being in CGI to portray the virtual world of U. These portions of the movie were outsourced to Cartoon Saloon, best known for their gorgeous hand drawn films about Irish folklore. So it's odd to see them commissioned to work on CGI. That's not to say they did a bad job though. The CG animation is expressive but most of the character designs are overblown and the world they inhabit feels paper thin. Nothing about the virtual world of U makes any sense and most prominent glimpse into this world we ever get is a sea of avatars placed in a large void with indistinct buildings in the far off distance.

This sever lack of world building leaves me wondering how U works on even a fundamental level. Placing any story in this setting invites confusion at every turn, creating an incoherent mess with logic gaps everywhere.

There are still tender, well executed moments found in Belle but they're few and far between, found almost exclusively in its hand drawn segments. Honestly, if the film focused on Suzu finding confidence as her online persona which in turn gave her the courage to mend the fractured relationships in her life, that would've been enough.

Instead, Belle is less than the sum its parts and stumbles at every opportunity. The competing plot lines battle for screen time, leaving the narrative under-baked. The CG world of U doesn't leave room for Hosoda to stretch his usual directorial muscles. The cast is overloaded, forcing characters, their development and relationships to be sidelined.

In the end, Belle has too many ideas and lacks the ability to implement them into a cohesive whole.

Ongaku is a pleasant surprise.
The story is very simplistic, a trio of dispassionate delinquents randomly form a band. They have no musical background and no ear for tone but they can bang away at their instruments in a, excuse the pun, one note tune. With this new found passion, the trio practice for their debut after entering into a local rock concert.

The film has a strong comedic sense, reminiscent of Wes Anderson flicks with its focus on deadpan characters and punctuations of silence that last a little too long for comfort. The characters aren’t deep but they don’t need to be in this less ... than theatrical length film. Just as they are for their music, the characters are the medium through which the comedy is allowed to shine.

The art is minimalistic most of the time, accentuated with bursts of creative and smooth animation to accompany the music performances that often take a surreal turn. The animation during these scenes is impressive, especially so when you learn that Ongaku is actual an independent film! Albeit one that took over 7 years to make. The music itself was very fitting scene to scene and added a lot to the enjoyment of the film, both comedically and otherwise. The genre was proclaimed to be rock but it was honestly a little more eclectic than that, with even folk music thrown in.

Ongaku is a borderline experimental piece. It's a breath of fresh air in the anime scene and is well worth a watch!

This is my first review so please be understanding.
Itou-kun wa Koi wo Shiranai is a rom-com about a human girl named Yoshiuchi Aika and a boy named Itou Kazuki who also happens to be a yokai, of the faceless variety. Much of the comedy is derived from Itou's lack of knowledge of the human world and the many difficulties of dating without a face. To put it plainly, the main conceit of the manga feels like a gimmick and it's hard to say that the manga does anything to rise above this label, however this does not stop it from being an enjoyable read.

The ... cast is quite small, consisting of our two leads and perhaps two other regulars. There is also a much larger group of characters that sit on the periphery but are not really note worthy. Yoshiuchi Aika is a refreshing lead, not easily pigeon holed into any one archetype and most notably, is willing and even proactive in showing affection in her relationship with Itou, crazy I know. In most other entertainment mediums this is not worth mentioning but this is the world of anime/manga and it's often hard to find a romantic pairing who are able to be openly intimate with each other (note: if you want to see the main leads being even more affectionate then i recommend the author's Pixiv prototype of this manga titled Noppera-bou ;))
Itou is far more of a blank slate, perhaps due to his limited understanding of human interactions but I suppose this can be forgiven as it is a source of comedy.

The story is mostly uneventful in that slice of life way and there isn't a plot to progress. The manga falls into some tropes, a romantic rival here and reveal there but nothing that overshadows the romance between our leads.

Now to deal with the elephant in the room, which is that this manga has a very rushed conclusion due to what I presume to be its axing after only three volumes. Short manga/anime are fine, heck a lot of my favourites are super short but it feels painstakingly obvious that the author didn't intent to finish this story when they did. i think more chapters, even a few more could have helped this manga quite a bit.

Overall I had fun and I'd give this manga a 6.7/10
Thanks for reading