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In theory, Speed Grapher is an adult anime with themes of greed and love, but in execution, is an anime that just kind of falls flat in its theming and characterization of villains in exchange for some really cool and innovative action scenes. Allow me to explain. (Theming and character issues in paragraphs 2,3&4, Music in 5, Positivity in 6)

The writers of Speed Grapher want the viewer to see a world where in a post-war environment the rich have gotten richer and the poor get poorer. The first mistake made is that one sees no ... poor people in this show. The rich are set up to be extraordinarily wealthy. This is okay. The problem starts with how as far as the exposition says, the poor lead absolutely terrible lives, yet none of them are ever seen. We see some prostitutes and drag queens, but those are just generic things out of any poor environment. They aren't starving or anything either. Nobody in this show is doing all that bad for themselves overall. This means that there is no dichotomy shown between the rich and the poor, which was part of the original premise. Anyone who claims that the main character, Saiga, is poor is clearly wrong based on how he can constantly buy new cameras, outfits, medical treatment, get cars, and support another human being the whole time throughout the entire series. Seeing as how Saiga is supposed to be a mirror of Suitengu, the villain, who has more money than god, this is a bit of a major screw up. The lack of juxtaposition between the rich and the poor leads to the viewer believing that there aren't actually any poor people and fails to get the point of the "money is the root of all evil" theme through. I guess a war between the wealthy and the slightly less wealthy will just have to do.

The second major problem with Speed Grapher is that despite trying to show that money corrupts people, none of the things that the various villains of the show do seem to be caused by being rich. One lady eats diamonds. That's not because she's rich, it's because she's a freak. She belongs on My Strange Addiction rather than be a henchman for the leader of a large underground organization. The show goes into a backstory bit about how her husband drove himself into debt getting diamonds for her, but she isn't ever shown to be sympathetic. Instead, the story leads the viewer to dislike her more, seeing as how it seems as though she liked the diamonds more than her husband. It isn't shown that money made any of the characters in the show crazy. In fact, it only shows that all of the people in the super special rich people club are just a bunch of sexual deviants and freaks because that's just how they are. One guy is just obsessed with skin because that's his bit. It just seems like money isn't even the problem in this world as much as just weirdoes who also happen to have money.

This leads into the third major problem with this show, which is the gratuity with which we are exposed to degenerate sexual behaviors. The degeneracy isn't the problem. The sex isn't the problem. The problem is that the viewer is shown these things far too many times after they've already gotten the point. While at first it seems to be a display of maturity on the part of the series, being willing to show sex stuff openly and all, but as it goes on, it just demonstrates how little understanding it has for all things lewd. This comes from an overall lack of sexual tension between any characters in the show. Saiga and his lady Ginza have a sort of sexual relationship, but there isn't any tension. The same can at first be said of The villain Suitengu and his lady-friend Shinsen Tenozu. They just kind of have sex sometimes with no real build up or expectation. Characters never explore sex or sexuality in any way, and it's just there for no particular reason. It's dumb.

The last thing I have to complain about before explaining that I actually like this show is the music. The opening and the second ending theme of Speed Grapeher are pretty good. Everything else is trash that never sets the mood or accurately displays the tone of any given scene. The show has an odd amount of 80's synthesizers despite having a 2000's grunge vibe that would have felt more dirty if more grunge, punk, and progressive rock had been used in the soundtrack opposed to clean and controlled sounds they have. That's it for my complaints.

I liked this show. You as the reader of this review have no reason to believe that, but it's true. Despite its faults, Speed Grapher did one thing really well, and that one thing drives its score up to a seven. That thing of course is its action scenes. Every fight and encounter in Speed Grapher is outstanding. All of the characters have cool powers that work in interesting ways and are used with a great amount of creativity. Due to this, the show has an appeal closer to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Darker than Black. In fact, I'd say that it's a really good in-between of those two shows. In Darker than Black, the powers are only used in one way, but the fights are really dynamic because of it, and in Jojo, the powers are complex, and the fights have a lot of creativity behind them because of it. Speed Grapher gives our main character the ability to blow things up with his camera. This is used in interesting ways, such as when he photographs a reflective surface, the reflection blows up. If he shoots a transparent surface, whatever's behind it blows up. Where the characters fall short, their powers do the heavy lifting. Whether that happens to be a good or bad thing is really up to the viewer, but I was in the mood for some neat action scenes when I was watching it, and the show definitely delivers on that front.

Speed Grapher has a number of problems, but is worth a watch if you like Darker than Black (Dynamic fights), Jojo (But not as campy) , and Texhnolyze (With a lot less nihilism), but serves as a watered down, shallow combination of them. It's pretty neat. Try it out.

Ushio and Tora is a kids show. Plain and simple. This anime is composed of lighthearted romps through easy to understand, ham-fisted dialogue and blatant character motivation among not only mostly one dimensional villains, but also two-dimensional main and support characters. It's a fine show if you're twelve or have a kid who you want to watch anime with, since its visuals are impactful enough to keep you engaged and it's never-stop, simplistic style of writing are good for a kid to follow along with.

The entire show starts out interesting, with a grouchy main character ... guy who causes his own problems by going into a door he clearly shouldn't have and releasing the demonic aura of a great monster of old, having to fix them by pulling the demon spear and killing the monsters attracted to it. He also pays the price for his actions and gain of power by having the great monster of old at his side for the entire series being annoying and attempting to eat him. Sound cool? It isn't. That premise and the moral quandaries that come with it are basically ignored as the show becomes a popcorn action show with monster of the week aspects, and later, a sloggy adventure story with just unbearably blunt messages about environmentalism and tradition that are just thrown together without any consideration of the thing that got people into this show in the first place. That thing which was of course: a grouchy kid having to pay for his actions and kill monsters attracted to a demon's aura.

This of course leads me to the biggest problem with the show: the static and childish main characters of Ushio and Tora. Tora is a 2000 year old, all powerful demon who acts like a 13 year old boy. He boasts and brags about how cool he is and how he'll kill and eat Ushio, but isn't serious about it in the slightest. And Ushio is a kid who just hits and yells at anything he doesn't like, with a really confusing and irrational morality where he'll hit a little boy for being a brat, but won't slay a bratty demon ferret who kills people.

Those problems lead to another branch of this show's problems, that being that the monsters in this show are treated like people. This wouldn't be a problem in a show that displayed apt peacefulness and overall decency in its beasts like in Nura: Rise of the Youkai Clan, but in Ushio and Tora, all of the monsters are depicted as seeing human beings as inferior and just killing and eating them because they're bored and hungry. It's even shown that they can just eat normal food instead, and it wouldn't make a difference, but they're continually shown to desire to kill/eat people. As such, they aren't put on any sort of moral footing to be left alive, seeing as how even the ones Ushio makes friends with, still go out of their way to cause trouble for people. It gets very, very frustrating.

If I were to fix the show in any way, I'd have made Tora the main villain and made it so that he was just too powerful to kill early on. After a decent number of episodes of monsters of the week, Tora would get fed up with how none of the beasts that come Ushio's way can kill him. He'd then acknowledge Ushio as a nuisance, attack him full force, and end up sealed back inside the basement of the shed he came from. Of course, along the way there would've been scenes of character growth from Ushio, as he would calm down and become a more mature and more thoughtful individual. He would start out rash and impulsive, then end off being a careful thinker and a well trained adult. However, the show isn't that.

Ushio and Tora is a kid's show that thinks it's more mature than it is. That being said, a kid wouldn't pay attention to that and just think it's cool. And, if you're the parent/uncle/aunt/cousin of a younger kid who you want to watch anime with, you can just watch this show and have a fun time seeing them have fun watching this sort of thing for the first time. After all, they aren't nearly as jaded and cynical about dumb shonen story telling as you are. If you don't have any kids to watch it with, then stay away from it. The series will just suck for you.

At some point, a show along the lines of Harlock has to come around. It doesn't shake anything up. It doesn't really do much new. Hell, it's the 90's sequel/reboot/alternate universe canon to a show that came out before Gundam. Even so, the elements of what make it great come from something more than something like originality. It even basically proves that just because the ideas presented have been in works that have come out before it, the compilation of such ideas, as well as amazing characters, atmosphere, and theming can allow even a remake like this to shine.

The characters of Harlock are beautifully designed ... with a semi-sloppy art style that flows well into the atmosphere of the show. It's a show about a universe where nothing new happens. All of the space pirates are gone. No new planets are being discovered. However, it's still a manly man's world with plenty out there, but everyone is in an eternal rut, until a scene of some old men in a bar decide to go pirating again in a scene beautifully directed in that the lights in the bar are stage lights that go on suddenly, and go out smoothly for whichever character is talking. It cut to Daiba, our main character, beating the crap out of two guys. Then his dad dies. Harlock appears out of nowhere with an ultimatum off manly destiny. He tells Daiba that real men hang out on space ships and explore doing what they want. Then, EARTH IS STOLEN!

In the end, this is the best Harlock rendition yet. It's great. Watch it, whether you're a Harlock fan or not.

Watch Hajime no Ippo instead. You'll like it better. It has more unique character designs, good jokes, flawless execution of a character with a lot of heart and drive, which Wanna be the Strongest doesn't. Main character girl Sakura (real original there) gives up a bunch in episodes 2, 3, and 4. There are a lot of shrieks of pain that get upper uncomfortable to listen to, no matter how alone you are, and unnecessary idol friends. Don't watch it. The performances in the original Japanese dub are ear gratingly annoying too. Don't watch it, but if you do, the English dub is surprisingly more ... tolerable.

OKAY MUSIC. I do recommend the sound track if you aren't a fan of idol fodder, but would like to have a good understanding of what it sounds like.

Bleach is pretty cool. I've watched a lot of it, One watch and a recent rewatch. This does not sound like a lot, however, the sheer number of episodes is appalling, the amount of filler post the episode where Rukia gets freed, which, if you haven't watched Bleach up to that point, you're about 15 years behind, so get to it. I listed it as dropped, and not rewatched, because I need to address a major problem with the series. It wasn't that it went on too long, but that the series is mainly just a constant progression of ... peaks and valleys. The first seventy or so episodes deserve the seven I've given this show, and I find them to be entertaining beyond anything else Bleach has put out since then. While it's never been as bad as the vampires right after Rukia gets saved, it hasn't been even as funny, charming, or as cool as when Ichigo fights Byakuya.

The music was okay. The first opening was good, the background music was forgettable and repetitive. The art style and character designs are phenomenal, but the animation quality can be jittery. Ichigo Kurasaki, substitute soul reaper was cool and never too serious (in the fist 70 episodes), Orihime was dumb, Chad was the most amazing character ever created soley based on his determination to punch the air to protect a talking bird, Rukia was funny, and Mr. Hat-n-Clogs matches Chad on the cool guy with massive silliness to him.

The dub is amazing. The sub is standard. Okay, that's it. That's all I needed to say.