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Simoun is a perplexing anime. It's a political war anime with a heavy focus on character drama, usually relating to their relationships with each other.

At the start, the anime throws a lot of terminology and such at you very fast, and it feels as though it's starting in the middle of a story instead of the start. That isn't an inherently bad thing, it can be done in a way to throw the viewer into an interesting situation immediately, but I found it a little jarring and hard to follow for the first few episodes. Eventually you do start to understand what these words ... mean and what's going on, but it took me a few episodes.

While this anime is about a war between two factions, the heavy focus on character drama made what the opposing side was fighting for kinda vague. A few episodes early on focus on the enemy side, but it feels as though their motivations were given less focus to give more room for drama between characters. I don't mind this focus on character drama, but I feel as though that had the consequence of making it very hard for me to get invested in this war when we really only see one side's conflict. Another thing about the enemy faction is that they speak a language the characters cant speak, which they portray with reversed Japanese. I guess this decision gets across that the characters are unable to understand them, but every time I heard the enemy soldiers talk it sounded awful ;/

Speaking of the characters along with the drama, at the start it felt like there was too much of both. Starting with like 10 main characters, and ending with like 13, it became hard for me to get invested and as a result I felt quite bored and confused. But as I stuck with the anime I grew to understand these character's dynamics and became quite invested in most of their drama, especially Aeru and Neviril. They're both deeply flawed people with intriguingly similar yet repellent personalities. Seeing them come together feels quite engaging and very interesting. I think my favorite characters were Rodoreamon and Mamiina. The themes of class disparity and the discrimination Mamiina went through for being lower class made their relationship my favorite. I would have really loved to see more of it TvT.

The anime also has a focus on gender, everyone starting off as a girl and being able to chose your gender once you turn 17. This was the main factor that indulged me into watching Simoun since it's so rare to see any anime with something so overtly transgender, especially from 2006. How is Simoun when viewed from a trans lens? It's intriguing, I think the mere concept alone is a great vessel to tell a story about gender. Early on in the story, it's shown that gender dysphoria is a thing that can seriously harm someone psychologically, but it doesn't really go very deep with that. There are also a few characters in the main cast that don't want to decide a gender, I find acknowledging that possibility at all feels ahead of its time for this anime. It's a shame that the anime doesn't really feel as though being agender as much of a main focus.

Although this anime can also come off as weirdly essentialist when it comes to gender and portrays choosing a gender as an inevitability. Men in this world get better jobs, if a character becomes a man they have to have short hair and boyish clothes and vice versa. Multiple times, characters will say they want to become a man to be in a relationship with someone. As if the show feels two women can't be in a relationship, and that one person must always be a man and one a woman. Which is especially jarring for this anime! The Simoun are literally yuri powered, like they literally kiss and use their connection to each other to make the ship fly properly xD. It's a very odd double standard.

As flawed as the commentary on gender is in this anime, I would have liked to see more of a focus on it within the story. I think even more of a focus on these characters' gender identity and how that meshes with their psyche would have been fascinating, adding an extra layer to these characters and their interactions. Alas, the anime somewhat does this, but it never feels like a main focus.;/ Even then, for 2006 this anime tackles the topic in an interesting and not immediately hateful and stereotypical way and I respect that a lot.

Artistically, Simoun is very apparently low budget and the visual style can be slightly inconsistent. Characters will usually stand around or sit in place, not moving much, and most of the action is shown through extremely dated 3D models of the simoun flying around and drawing symbols in the sky. Despite that I do quite like the look of the characters, especially when they're given varying line weights in their line art, that kinda thing is very appealing to me! The character designs were all around solid, and I grew to appreciate the dated 3D models. As much as they stand out from the hand drawn backgrounds, the ships are well modeled for the time, and I think there's a charm to the slightly shitty mid 2000s CG look!

I also took note of the soundtrack. In many of the fights or preludes to fights, they use these accordion and piano tracks instead of a more traditional battle music. Some have said that this is unfitting and took them out of the fights, but I found this really caught my attention as a unique directing choice. It's as if the simoun are dancing in the sky as they draw patterns in battle, cool stuff imo.;3

In the end, I was very mixed on Simoun. It could have been a lot better in quite a few ways, but I think that there was an okay story and I don't regret my time watching this anime. I wish I could have liked it more

Hidamari sketch embodies and balances its creativity and silly lighthearted nature extremely well, and I believe it's a really enjoyable and soothing slice of life series.

The animation, while feeling a little low budget, works fine but could be better. I find the art style extremely appealing. Verrrrrry 2000s moe cuteness with big eyes and simple designs that express the girls' character well. I love that this anime does the thing where it makes the characters all wide and chibi, but like cranks the WIDE factor to 100%! It's so silly, and I find it so funny and endearing xD.

Being a show set at an ... art school, Hidamari Sketch consistently has a plethora of inspired and unabashedly unique direction that studio Shaft is known for. The show makes heavy use of colorful abstract patterns, solid color as backgrounds as well as imitating Ben-Day dots, those polka-dot patterns on comic books, as backgrounds. Much of the direction of the show is very artsy and bizarre, especially in the dream sequences which happen occasionally. A lot of unconventional camera movement and framing is part of what I think makes Hidamari Sketch so unique. The constant use of real photos of objects in place of a more traditional drawing just adds to the slightly odd and artsy vibe I think the direction is going for. Almost like a collage!

On the other side, Hidamari Sketch is a goofy anime full of dumb gags and humor focused heavily on character interactions at heart. It's pretty standard slice of life silliness, and I love that kinda thing, though it doesn't innovate much on the character front. Still, the characters are all endearing if not a bit tropey and their interactions are fun to watch! Much of the humor is based around Japanese wordplay and puns, some of which I got and others I didn't fully understand. It could be a bit perplexing to those who don't know Japanese wordplay and culture very well.

In conclusion, Hidamari Sketch is a pretty run-of-the-mill yet still quite fun and charming anime with a lot of value to be found! Being a simple slice of life comedy anime about cute girls being silly and doing quirky school and art class things, there is no real overarching plot, and that's okay. If you're watching this anime you're just here for some good vibes and silly banter that is constantly a joy to watch! If slice of life anime is your thing, I think you'd get a lot out of the show and even outside of that, I find the striking direction reason enough to watch ;P

Mitsuboshi Colors is a wonderfully silly and wholesome anime that perfectly captures the feeling of being a kid and just doin random shit and making your own fun out of the mundane
The anime focuses on the main cast, the Colors who do their best to save their town from peril! They usually do this by helping with mundane tasks for others or making up silly situations to protect the city from! This premise alone I find a lot of charm in and the situations these girls make up are extremely silly and childish and that's what is so wonderful about Mitsuboshi Colors.

The group of Colors ... has a really fun dynamic and consists of Yui, Kotoha, and Saki! Yui acts as the leader of the group while ironically being very clumsy and a crybaby. Kotoha, who is constantly seen playing on her 3DS, is more blunt, violent and invested in the Colors' cases. And finally there is Saki who's extremely energetic, really values her cuteness, is a little stupid and really likes saying poop. All the girls bounce off of each other in a really silly and quirky way that is genuinely very funny, as well as being very indicative of how actual kids act.

The Colors do lots of quirky little things that kids do like, making up situations out of everyday things, saying cheesy catchphrases once they've solved a case, doing and saying stuff just because it seems interesting or fun, and generally being imaginative. The anime really feels like it has a great understanding of what kids are like without them being annoying or frustrating to watch. Quite the contrary, actually! It seems as if the Colors are a beloved part of their community, and everyone who knows of them seems to enjoy their presence (Except Saitou, but he's a bitch). Every episode had me smiling, both at the Colors' silly antics and simply seeing them interact with each other and the people around them.

The animation is generally quite nice, and the visual style is very colorful (duh) and cute, but this anime has a pretty big slideshow problem. What I mean by that is that the anime will often times show the girls having fun and interacting, but it'll all be still frames shown one after another, which works but is a little disappointing. I think a big appeal of this anime is seeing the colors having fun doing mundane things, and not having those little bits animated kinda sucks ;/. But overall that's a very minor problem, and for the most part all the visuals and fun antics are wonderfully animated!

The soundtrack is also nice! Much of it is very energetic, if not a bit generic. The soundtrack consistently has this very unique synthesized voice that it likes to use often, and I think it gives the show's songs a very strong identity. I love the OP and ED, they're so adorable, and I especially like the line in the OP "Do grown ups have the energy? They don't have energy! Kids Have energy!", I think it perfectly encapsulates what the anime is, and I think more grown ups should learn from the Colors and have more fun in their lives ;P

I also love how the after episode previews are framed as Colors strategy meetings discussing what they did that day, with a little bit of dialogue from the girls! I always looked forward to hearing what they had to say at the end of the episodes, it's super cute!

Overall, Mitsuboshi Colors is a great anime! Extremely adorable, very authentically silly and wholesome and is overall a great time <3

Usagi ga Kowai is a very bizarre piece of avaunt garde short film.
There is no defined plot or characters. It's simply a film of bizarre and weird things happening involving a girl and some rabbits.
There may be a really abstract message you can pull from this but it's mostly odd visuals and a weird drone throughout the whole thing
This short film has a very niche audience who can enjoy it for what it is but it is not particularly special outside of it's odd visuals and background drone.

If you enjoy avaunt garde and weird visuals I guess you can watch this. There's some interesting stuff ... here and it's very short, only being 12 minutes, if you enjoy that kinda thing.

In the end it's perfectly fine weird art and not much more. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯