Feb 25, 2010
Baccano is a great short anime series set in Depression-era America and involves immortals. The great thing about Baccano is that the story is out of order so you might see what happens to somebody and use that knowledge to deduce what will happen next. Both the story and the setting are my favorite things about this series. Many other people may like the many characters that Baccano features. All of the characters are really unique like the wimpy mob boss or the homicidal guy that kills for fun. The character designs are relatively generic looking but it's easy to look past that since the
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Feb 8, 2010
Mazinkaiser
(Anime)
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Mazinkaiser is based on one of the first super robot shows, Go Nagai's Mazinger Z. I'd heard a lot of good things about this seven episode OVA so I was excited to see it. Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as I was led to believe. Mazinkaiser is also the name of the main giant robot in this show. It was originally created for the Super Robot Wars video games and apparently the fan reaction was so good that they decided to make an OVA series based on it. It's set in the Mazinger Z universe with the same characters as Mazinger Z. The characters are
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Jan 31, 2010
The Sky Crawlers
(Anime)
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From the director of Ghost in the Shell, Mamoru Oshii, comes Sky Crawlers, one of the most boring movies I've ever seen. The whole point of the movie is that the first hour and a half is monotonous. Then, with a half an hour left of the movie, we get a clumsy infodump about how people like war. A little after that, there's a scene where this girl starts freaking out about how her life is totally rote. That scene would have been pretty cool if she didn't flat out yell out the theme of the movie in the process. If you're trying to make
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Jan 30, 2010
Legends of the Dark King (or more literally translated, Conqueror of the Heavens: Fist of the North Star Raoh Gaiden) is a prequel to Fist of the North Star focused primarily on Raoh building his empire. You could, in theory, watch this short series before you tackle the original hundred episode long series but the story would probably make even less sense; it's just really helpful to know who the characters are. The plot isn't terrible but it is very different from what is normal with Fist of the North Star. While most Fist of the North Star anime is focused on one guy punching
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Jan 25, 2010
Sin: The Movie
(Anime)
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I'm not going to waste any time with this review. If you are thinking of watching this movie, don't. It might be free on multiple video streaming sites but you won't be able to replace the wasted hour of your life. You might think that I'm overreacting but I can't think of any worse way to spend your time. The movie is based on some 90's shooter that I'd never heard of. Since Sin: The Movie is based on a video game, it's not a big surprise that the plot is totally weak. It had something to do with people getting turned into zombie-mutants and
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Jan 18, 2010
Apollo no Uta
(Manga)
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Apollo's Song is an interesting manga by the God of Manga himself, Osamu Tezuka. It starts out by introducing Shogo, a kid that hates love so much that kill animals that show any signs of affection. Because of this habit, Shogo is sent to a mental hospital where he goes through electroshock therapy (it was written in 1970 after all). During one of his sessions, Shogo has a vision of him talking with a Greek goddess who then curses him for committing crimes against love. Shogo is sentenced to love a woman again and again but one of then will always tragically die. And that's
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Jan 15, 2010
If nothing else Kaiba is unique. It starts out with a guy waking up with amnesia (how original....) and a gaping hole in his chest. He soon finds out that he lives in a world where memories are stored on little cone-shaped microchips, and bodies can be traded and swapped between individuals. While themes of memory and identity play big parts in Kaiba, the show doesn't explore these themes as well as other shows and movies have. The emphasis is more centered on the love story between Kaiba and a mysterious girl he sees in his locket. I usually don't like romance stories, but I
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Dec 31, 2009
Mononoke Hime
(Anime)
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Princess Mononoke is one of my favorite Miyazaki movies. Granted, I particularly like his movies but I really liked this movie for some reason. It seems that I like Ghibli movies with more fantastic settings than the realistic ones. The film is about how terrible humans are and how we're all killing the environment. While I do hate these overused morals in Miyazaki's movies, I didn't bother me as much in Princess Mononoke partly because the setting was so unreal and partly because the rest of the movie is that good. Another great thing about this movie is that it has one of the best
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Dec 31, 2009
Chirin no Suzu
(Anime)
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Ringing Bell (or Chirin no Suzu) is a 70's children's cartoon animated by Sanrio, the same company that created Hello Kitty. The movie is about a little lamb named Chirin that lives in a scenic pasture with his loving mother and a herd of other sheep. One stormy night, the Wolf King comes to the barn where the herd stays and kills Chirin's mother. The distraught Chirin decides that he must get revenge on the Wolf King. As Chirin's Bell continues, things get more and more brutal until we get to the bleak end that offers no hope for our sheep protagonist. The whole reason
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Dec 19, 2009
xxxHolic (pronounced "holic") is an anime adaptation of a CLAMP manga of the same name. The anime was made as a 24-episode advertisement for the manga. There's no real overarching plot or even an end. The show expects you to read the manga if you want any kind of closure. This series is exactly what you'd expect from CLAMP. It's in each episode the main characters solve a person's problem, making the person happy by the end of the episode. If you've read anything by CLAMP you'll know what to expect. On top of that, the character designs for xxxHolic are downright ugly! Every character
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