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Maboroshi involves the residents of a small Japanese town being trapped in a mysterious stasis following an explosion at their local steel mill. Trapped in this stasis for years and becoming emotionally numb, the residents accept their circumstances as some sort of divine punishment for their actions that they must atone for before they can return to reality. However, the town’s younger residents come to find this existence an empty one with their inability to grow into adulthood. One of these residents, middle schooler Masamune Kikuiri, encounters a feral young girl within the steel mill that reignites his hope and purpose, coming to believe she ... may be the key to sorting things out with the stasis his town is trapped in.

Maboroshi’s biggest strength comes from exploring how the town residents are affected by their present circumstances. The stagnancy coming from being trapped in the stasis field for years have made them feel internally dead and resigned to living in their same everyday circumstances without any significant change affecting them. This gets explored through focusing on how each of the different town residents are coping with their circumstances from our lead character Masamune to the cult leader-like influence that steel plant worker Mamoru Sagami has on the residents. The presence of feral girl Itsumi brings a significant change to the everyday happenings of the town, something that the residents have varying degrees of acceptance to dependent on their circumstances. This makes up both exploring the film’s main themes of making the best of your situation and change for the better instead of resigning to despair, as well as the developments that the characters undergo as they interact with Itsumi and learn more of the mysteries surrounding the stasis they are in. The focus on exploring these themes and developments offer it engaging drama and character exploration.

On the other hand, my thoughts are a bit mixed on the circumstances involving the stasis that the characters are trapped in. The film isn’t too clear on the nature and causes surrounding it, offering some vague ideas on what these may be involve. It does have some rules to it consistently applied as it is affected by the developments of the town residents and the stasis field undergoing its own changes as the film progresses. Granted, this element of the story is meant to tie in with the film’s themes and is effectively incorporated into them for the most part. But there are still some hiccups with it if you choose to nitpick the finer details of Maboroshi.

Visually, this is an impressive-looking film with the great amount of detail put into the interior and outside shots of houses and the local steel mill. The more supernatural elements of Maboroshi related to the stasis field make for the highlight of the film’s animation with their surreal nature and looking visually pleasing, most notable of which include the cracks of the stasis field continuing to manifest in the sky and wolf-shaped smoke formations moving about to remove characters no longer conforming to the stagnancy of their isolated lives if they experience any extreme emotions.

In short, Maboroshi is an engaging supernatural drama film in experimenting with its idea exploring its characters trapped in a world of stasis and undergoing varying degrees of development when those circumstances change. This, combined with its nicely-animated visuals, makes it worth checking out, even with some of the hiccups involving the nature of the stasis field serving as the major source of conflict in the film.

Senpai is an Otokonoko focuses on a developing love triangle between three high school students. The first, Makoto Hanaoka, is a second-year student who loves crossdressing and deals with being ostracized by many of his classmates and his mother for his choice to dress as a woman. The second, Ryuji Taiga, is Makoto’s close friend who finds himself internally dealing with the gay feelings he has for Makoto. The third, Saki Aoi, is an energetic first-year student who is bisexual with strong feelings toward Makoto and is accepting of his crossdressing.

At its core, Senpai is an Otokonoko is making a point of being true to ... yourself and loving others for whom they are, regardless of differences in gender and sexuality. This is explored through the love triangle that develops with Makoto, Ryuji, and Saki who each have their different struggles in dealing with their interests and happenings in their personal lives. The series takes the time to explore these issues that the three characters have going on within their school and family lives, and each undergo varying degrees of development as they address them.

An interesting way to show how the three feel comfortable with themselves shows in their core personalities seen throughout the series. Saki is the most lively and comfortable in her skin shown through her energetic personality, as she is accepting of her bisexuality and Makoto’s crossdressing. Plus she isn’t afraid to resist her family’s desires in order to help resolve her family issues.

Makoto is more reserved due to the past ostracizing he faced from his crossdressing, as he hides his interest from his mother and uses his time in school to dabble into his interests. While resistant to the idea of wanting romance currently, the support he gets from Saki and Ryuji allow him to gradually become more confident in himself and having the desire to be accepted for his interests.

Ryuji serves as a middle ground between Saki and Makoto’s personalities having a more practical mindset when approaching everyday matters. While attempting to come to terms with his gay feelings for Makoto and is initially resistant toward Saki due to his close friend’s past issues with his crossdressing, he still cares for both of them and is shown to be willing to help out both of them when needed.

The only gripe I have with Senpai is an Otokonoko is the lack of a proper resolution to the love triangle between our three leads. While the first half of the series does offer focus on this element of the story at first, more focus is put on the personal issues that Saki and Makoto deal with going into the title’s second half. It’s not a completely bad thing as these developments helped to further flesh out the two characters and there is a movie that will be out early next year that continues the story of the TV anime, that I’m assuming would provide more focus on the love triangle with our main trio.

In short, Senpai is an Otokonoko made a surprisingly strong impression on me with what it had to explore with its LGBT elements involving the main trio of characters in the series and confronting Japan’s societal norms in regards of accepting individuals regardless of differences with their interests and whom they love. The 12-episode run does enough to explore the lives of our three characters and the developments they undergo, and the love triangle between them hopefully gets its focus for its upcoming film. This is perhaps one of the better titles I’ve seen for 2024 so far.

The Boy and the Heron is Hayao Miyazaki’s return to filmmaking after a decade when he retired from film directing following his prior work, When Marnie Was There. Set in World War II Japan, the film focuses on a boy named Mahito Maki who loses his mother due to a hospital fire. When his father remarries and they move to a rural estate, Mahito finds himself struggling with the changes in his life and not getting over his mother’s loss. Being drawn to a strange grey heron, Mahito gets dragged into a magical world within an abandoned tower when the heron promises he can help ... Mahito reunite with his mother.

Limiting spoilers where I can, Boy and the Heron is perhaps Miyazaki’s most ambitious film to date with the scale in which he creates its world. For his adventure, Mahito finds himself whisked to another world where he encounters a fair number of supernatural and unnatural beings and creatures that include giant fish and man-eating parrots. He encounters some allies to aid in his adventure, leading him to know some shocking truths about the true nature of the magical world and some of its inhabitants. I’ll just say that dealing with these elements is related to the core theme of Boy and the Heron’s premise.

If it’s obvious from the premise for this film, Boy and the Heron’s theme involves dealing with and moving on from personal loss. Hayao Miyazaki was apparently invested in wanting to dabble into this with Boy and the Heron for his grandson to have him come to accept that there will be a point Miyazaki would no longer be in this world. This gets explored through Mahito’s developments throughout the film as while he is nice and obedient toward his family and servants, he is depicted to be internally frustrated with the changes in his life and resorts to negative actions like self-harm and finding outlets to take out his frustrations on. His adventure through the magical world leads him to learn to appreciate what he has currently as he learns more about its true nature. If there’s a weak point to the premise, the story developments for it can be predictable to see come along considering the number of coming-of-age drama films involving young protagonists that have been made in recent years.

Visually, Boy and the Heron retains the high production standards you would typically find from a Studio Ghibli film. A good amount of detail is put into showing off the different settings of both Japan’s historical period in World War II and the different areas of the magical world that Mahito visits throughout his adventure. Such effort is also put into the various supernatural beings that are encountered as well. This creates a vivid little spectacle out of the adventure that gets more elaborate with its settings and animated sequences as the film progresses through more of the magical world.

In short, Boy and the Heron does enough to make a strong impression for Hayao Miyazaki’s return to directing a Studio Ghibli film with its relatable theme, story development, and the large scale of the premise compared to the studio’s prior work. It can be a bit on the predictable side for its storytelling due to the number of coming of age dramas made in recent years, thus I do think it’s a slight step down compared to Miyazaki’s earlier well-regarded films like Kiki’s Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke. But that minor gripe aside, I’d still recommend checking it out if you’ve been a long-time fan of animated films made by Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki.

Oshi no Ko’s been one of the recent big hit anime I’ve heard of getting enough fan attention and critical praise for exploring the joys and pains of being in the entertainment industry, as explored through slain pop idol Ai Hoshino and her children who were reincarnated from prior lives experienced during Ai’s time alive. But getting into things with the first season of the series, I must admit I have mixed thoughts of the series and not sure what the fanfare for this all about.

As far as its exploration of the entertainment industry is concerned, I’ll admit it does a solid job of exploring ... things within different mediums with pop idols, online fandom, a reality show, and movie production being focused on throughout Oshi no Ko’s 11-episode run. While it isn’t groundbreaking seeing the issues within the Japanese entertainment industry being explored in anime, Oshi no Ko does well at exploring the decisions and challenges that come with being part of the industry such as maintaining a desired public image, fan perceptions and toxicity, struggling with maintaining relevance, and being exploited for personal gain. This gets explored through Aqua, Ruby, Ai, and several other characters who are either starting or have established their ties to the entertainment industry and have their own varying goals and developments to accomplish in doing so. The series also creates an effective contrast in focus with Aqua and Ruby’s mentalities on the industry due to where both were at in their former lives with Aqua being more aware of its darker side and Ruby being the naive newcomer. These developments make for the more solid foundation for Oshi no Ko’s storytelling with the focus it devotes to exploring the teenage characters dealing with their varying degrees of involvement in entertainment.

As far as the mystery surrounding Ai’s murder is concerned, will admit I have more gripes with this angle to the series. Compared to the show’s grounded focus on the entertainment industry, the reincarnation angle milked with Ruby and Aqua’s characters is a bit out there and requires a bit of suspension of disbelief in order to get into. Plus in spite of all the fanfare given for Oshi no Ko’s first episode being a movie-length 90-minute premiere to explore Ai’s character, it didn’t feel as if much was established with her character outside of being an ideal for the immense admiration of the former lives Aqua and Ruby had toward Ai. So I did find it hard to care much for Ai as a character compared to her children and didn’t feel too invested in her character’s tragedy. In addition, the focus on the mystery surrounding her death largely felt like it got pushed to the side and more focus was put on Aqua and Ruby’s start in the entertainment industry as teens. It felt more as if this angle to the series was more a means to get Aqua and Ruby involved in the entertainment industry given how hollow it is compared to the title’s exploration of the entertainment industry.

In short, I felt the mystery surrounding Ai’s death felt largely unnecessary to Oshi no Ko’s story given how hollow and unfocused the story element is compared to its exploration of different areas of the entertainment industry. The greater focus on the latter angle has better storytelling and character developments offered up through exploring the teenage characters involved in it, and I think just focusing on this and changing up some story elements with Aqua and Ruby’s beginnings would have Oshi no Ko a stronger quality series in my eyes. As is, it’s still worth checking out. But having the mystery angle implemented as a sort of crutch to get into its main story still makes things look a bit unfocused and hurts a good bit of the title’s quality in my eyes.

Will admit that this was under my radar for 2024 until I seen some of the fanfare for it following its completion and decided to give it a look and got pretty engaged to what it offered up. Low on resources and desperate to save one of their companions from being completely digested by a red dragon, the dungeon party of Laios Touden set out to locate said companion while slaying and making meals out of the various monsters they encounter on their journey.

The focus on eating slain monsters adds some interesting world building and humor into Delicious in Dungeon. On the serious end, this ... angle to the series offers up solid exploration on the different anatomical features, quirks, and behavior of the various monsters encountered by Laios and his group as they venture through the dungeon. The group are shown to determine use of these in their efforts to slay the monsters in question and determine if these parts are edible for preparing meals with. The humorous part comes into play with the varying reactions Laios and his group have to consuming monsters for meals, with Laios and Senshi curious or accustomed to eating monsters while Chilchuck and Marcille show varying degrees of disgust and revulsion at the idea depending on the type of monster slain.

Outside of its monster eating angle, Delicious in Dungeon also offers up a great deal of world building, storytelling, and character exploration in the 24 episodes it offers up. On the storytelling side, Laios and his companions come to realize there is more going on within the dungeon than anticipated as they trek through it to locate the red dragon. The second half of the series mostly focuses on getting more into these details and the impact that dealing with the red dragon has on Laios and his group. The only setback with this element to the series is that the story is left unresolved since more of the title’s manga source material has yet to be adapted. But a second season of the series is in the works, which would serve to continue it.

For the world building and character exploration elements, Delicious in Dungeon dabbles into a decent number of the typical story and character tropes you would find in fantasy-adventure titles of its ilk. While much of the series is set in the dungeon that Laios’ party is venturing through, occasions are devoted to exploring the different races and their societies through Laios’ party and a few other parties encountered throughout the series. This also extends to exploring the back stories of Laios and his party, who each faced varying degrees of hardship brought onto them due to their upbringings and the hazards of the dungeon. This gives each character a good deal of dimension and fleshing out extending beyond the fantasy character types they have, and makes connecting with them even better throughout this series.

In short, I’m quite impressed with what Delicious in Dungeon had to offer up for its fantasy-adventure/ comedy elements. While the focus on consuming slain dungeon monsters is a unique one for a title of the fantasy genre, the additional touches of depth in exploring its world, story, and characters give it a good deal of dimension and engagement that kept me hooked on it from start to finish with the only regret I have being I have to wait on the next season for it to get animated. Otherwise, would easily consider this one of the best titles I’ve seen for 2024 so far.

I’ll admit I’ve largely been indifferent with Makoto Shinkai works with the man’s habit of continuing to rehash the same storytelling premise with his films involving long-distance relationships, many of which involving some sort of paranormal element. It looked like his latest film, Suzume, was an attempt to break out of this habit with the titular character meeting a young man named Souta Munakata trying to prevent a supernatural powered “worm” from entering our world via doorways that open up a parallel world. Suzume and Souta team up to combat this threat, while more about these supernatural elements are explored and Suzume coming to learn ... of her own connections to them.

Before I get into too critical, I guess let’s get the usual out of the way with a Shinkai film in praising Suzume’s visuals. Makoto Shinkai’s films typically offer up beautiful and highly-detailed scenic shots and well-animated movement and sequences that play out. Suzume’s no different in that department with exploring both the normal and parallel worlds that Suzume and Souta find themselves traveling between to deal with the “worm” threat and having its moments of fluid and nicely animated sequences as the two go about their ordeals.

As far as the storytelling and themes for the film go, I must admit their execution leaves much to be desired. In essence, it felt like the film was attempting to try to do too much within the limited time of its two hour run. The first hour largely focuses on Suzume and Souta’s travels to different Japanese locales to locate the different doors that the “worm” is attempting to get into our world from. A few of them have Suzume become acquainted with one of the residents in each locale that she befriends. While this narrative could have worked within a TV anime that would have more time to explore a larger story, Suzume lacks this time as we get little time to connect with these new characters to make Suzume’s bonds with them come off genuine. Not to mention there’s little breathing room with Suzume quickly thrust into her present circumstances right within the film’s first several minutes.

By the second hour, the film attempts to have emotional drama with its story exploring Suzume’s connections to the parallel world and trying to implement a coming of age moral with it. Unfortunately, this story element felt largely shoehorned into the film by this point with the lack of focus on it in the film’s first hour. The same issues also come into play with the film’s sloppy addition of its romance angle and one character’s inconsistent motives in their interactions with our lead characters.

With Suzume’s rather significant flaws with its storytelling focus and having a vision too grand for a two hour film, I’d say it is easily the weakest quality Shinkai film I’ve seen to date. Even with my gripes on Shinkai’s typical storytelling approach with his films, the past ones at least took their time to focus on and explore their characters and story to at least have you give somewhat of a hoot about their developments. But in Suzume’s case, it felt too unfocused and tried doing too much with what it wanted to dabble into.

Train to the End of the World is a surreal/ sci-fi adventure-comedy where new technology called the 7G Network accidentally warps reality throughout Japan. High school student Shizuru Chikura and several of her classmates decide to take an abandoned train to Ikebukuro to find their missing friend, Youka Nakatomi, who had activated the network. During their journey, Shizuru and her companions visit different locales that are affected by the 7G Network in various bizarre ways.

A major area that I praise this series for and found the most entertainment out of is the creativity put into the various locales and characters affected by the 7G Network. ... Train to the End of the World relishes in its absurdity with many of the bizarre ways the Japanese populace and locales are affected by the 7G Network’s reality warping and relishes in the absurdity of the various ways how folks are affected. I won’t bother getting into examples to risk spoiling the experience of seeing this series. But I will admit that this creativity and embracing of the absurd was quite amusing and enjoyable.

But outside of this, I’ll admit I have some gripes with this series. The storytelling and characters are largely kept pretty simple and straightforward in their developments thanks to more focus being put on showing off the various effects of the 7G Network’s reality warping. Shizuru and her friends largely fulfill character types typical of high school anime and largely don’t have much to show as far as personality and developments go. The series also could have been longer to both explore more of the different locales affected by the 7G Network to show off more of this title’s absurd humor and create more world building, as well as offering opportunities to flesh out and develop Shizuru and her friends.

In short, Train to the End of the World largely gets by with embracing its absurdity with the different effects of the 7G Network’s reality warping that made up much of my enjoyment for the series. But at the same time, I do wish it had more time to flesh out its world and characters, as the effects of the 7G Network largely made up the title’s focus. But still, I don’t regret the time I got out of seeing this series.

A Whisker Away is one of the recent anime films to come out focused on a troubled teen learning a lesson on life through some paranormal circumstances. In this case, middle schooler Miyo Sasaki is dealing with a troubled family life between her father remarrying following a divorce and her biological mother neglecting her. In addition, she has an obsessive romantic interest in her classmate, Kento Hinode. Wanting to get close to Hinode, Miyo obtains a magical mask from a mysterious mask seller that allows her to turn into a cat in order to spend time with him. However, this acquisition comes with consequences as ... Miyo find herself slowly turning into a cat due to not wanting to confront the stresses of her human life.

The film’s attempt at expressing its moral comes with its issues involving its storytelling and characters. Miyo’s character is a bit of a double-edged sword where while it’s understandable that she doesn’t know how to properly express her emotions through her rough family life, it makes her interest in Hinode rather uneasy to see in action due to her actions bordering on being stalker-like with Miyo being in the habit of invading his personal space without his permission, not knowing when to take no for an answer when he turns her down, and using her cat transformations as a means to visit him and gain his trust unknowingly. The other angle to the film, Miyo’s family problems, largely plays second fiddle to focusing on Miyo and Hinode’s relationship developments as Miyo is more focused on her crush and not too concerned with her family issues despite this getting some focus during the middle of the film. Hinode’s character is largely pretty one-note and he largely seems to show little romantic interest in Miyo throughout much of the film. But how A Whisker Away chooses to resolve the relationship comes off as too convenient and unconvincing between Miyo’s troubling behavior getting rewarded and Hinode largely having little interest in a relationship before this point.

Far as the paranormal angle to the film goes, it looked like A Whisker Away was taking cues from Studio Ghibli’s The Cat Returns with elements to its story and will admit this has its moments of decent storytelling. The use of masks for humans to turn into cats and vice versa is a solid story element that offers its moments of solid exploration of the character motives for wanting to use the power of said masks, this nicely shown with Kinako, the pet cat of Miyo’s stepmother. The Mask Seller is also a solid villain for the film with his manipulation of the characters tempting them to use his masks for his personal gain and showing his true character by later in the film. Only major gripe I have with this element was that the land of the cats used in the film’s final story arc largely felt like a backdrop between the lack of exploration of the locale and the storytelling it could have offered up going into more detail on other characters who faced a similar predicament that Miyo’s currently undergoing that they since regret.

Overall, A Whisker Away has a good number of issues with its storytelling and characters that hurt it as a coming-of-age film that mainly involve the direction of Miyo’s character developments and the unconvincing romance the film attempts to sell between her and Hinode. The paranormal elements of the film have their moments to shine, though the final story arc in the land of the cats wastes what storytelling potential this could have offered as the setting largely served as a backdrop for concluding the film. In short, this is one of the more underwhelming and flawed coming-of-age films I’ve seen out of this familiar trend of anime films.

Adapted from an otome dating sim game, Amnesia involves the Heroine (literally her name as a self-insert character) suffering from amnesia as she interacts with several men whom she has varying relationships with and can interact with a fairy named Orion, only she can see. Attempting to piece together her lost memories, the Heroine finds herself whisked into some supernatural circumstances.

This adaptation has enough problems owing to its dating sim roots and largely seeming like it has more focus on advertising the game instead of making an effort to do its own take on its source material. It looked like Amnesia chose to use its ... supernatural angle to explore the different story paths in the game to explore the Heroine’s interactions with the different male characters she interacts with in each route. The problem with doing this is that due to its messy narrative, the series has little time to explore and allow you to connect with most of the male characters that the Heroine interacts with and make them seem more like window dressing to pad out the anime’s runtime. This also has the added problem of not doing enough to explore the supernatural angle of the series for the majority of its run and leaving viewers largely in the dark about what is going on. The final story arc has a bit more meat to it with revealing the cause surrounding the Heroine’s predicament, thought even this is still messily handled with the series explaining things in an infodump in the title’s final episode since the final arc was more focused with the Heroine’s struggle against an antagonist.

Issues with Amnesia also extend to its characters as the series doesn’t really do much to flesh the majority of them out nor even have the time to do so. The Heroine is one of the more frustrating lead characters I’ve seen in an anime as she is extremely naive to trust others easily despite many of them having obvious nefarious motives and largely being pretty worthless when it comes to handling her present dilemma. While I’ve mentioned the male characters the Heroine interacts with are largely pretty shallow due to the anime’s limited focus on many of them, a few of their routes push onto the abusive side in regards to their treatment of the Heroine and regrettably get handwaved by the series to be done out of some sort of romantic tripe to protect her. With how utterly worthless the Heroine is and not being proactive to assert herself in those sort of circumstances, this can make these moments seem pretty problematic if viewing this from a different angle.

There are some other issues I could highlight with Amnesia like the ridiculous choice of clothing for the characters, questionable voice acting quality, and shoddy looking visuals. But I think what I covered above is enough to show why this is easily among the worst anime titles I’ve seen. The anime just exists as a promotion for its source material without doing anything to make things more engaging and this obviously shows in the overall quality of the title’s production and storytelling. I wouldn’t waste any time trying to track this down.

An entry in the “real robot” genre of anime, Bullbuster focuses on the members of the vermin extermination company known as Namikome Industries. The pests in question are mutated creatures known as “giant beasts” and Namikome utilizes super powered robots to handle extermination of the beasts in order to allow the residents of Ryugan Island to return to their home. However with the small scale of Namikome’s operations, they also have to be careful with business expenses as far as management of ammunition and maintenance of their robots go.

I suppose I’ll just get the main thing with Bullbuster out of the way first in mentioning ... the title’s mecha elements. Bullbuster goes pretty hard with its “real robot” element with the titular mecha and a few other units used by Namikome Industries being designed to be more practical with their designs instead of the humanoid-like designs that many popular entries within the “real robot” genre like Gundam typically implement. Plus, the action scenes are nothing to write home about with the title’s more realistic implementation of weapons and technology employed by Namikome’s mecha to handle the beasts they are seeking to capture or eliminate instead of anything more flashy and elaborate. The mechas are CG-rendered, but the more practical designs help go well with Bullbuster’s more grounded approach to its storytelling. The only bad part of this element to the series is the rather rough looking rendering and animation of the various giant beasts that would look more at home with a 2000s TV anime with how ugly they look.

The other major element of Bullbuster that sticks out is the office politics in play with the series, harking back to past titles like Patlabor and Dai-Guard that offer this unique focus with a mecha series. In the case of Namikome, the series believably portrays the struggles of a small company with managing their budget and public reputation among the masses as they are financially struggling due to the use of their mecha being a financial strain as far as maintenance and repairs go. Each of the employees have their aspirations and stances with whatever element of Namikome’s operations they are part of, from Kataoka’s efforts to rein in expenses as the company accountant to Tajima trying to keep his employees under control as the company president. Elements of corporate culture also come into play as the origins of the giant beasts are gradually revealed to be linked to some shady corporate activity and exploring the lengths that the corporation in question will go through to mask their true motives and maintain their public reputation.

Characterization isn’t the largest focus of Bullbuster, but it does take some time to focus on the various characters involved with Namikome. Each of them undergo some degree of exploration and development involving their work with the company or how they are personally affected by the giant beast threat, this giving them a bit of dimension and also helping to add more to explore with the office politics explored within the series. The only character I was largely indifferent towards was Okino, whose typical young, idealistic character doesn’t get as much fleshing out compared to his co-workers. While seemingly introduced as the main character of focus at the start of Bullbuster, Okino’s character gradually loses focus as the series puts more focus on exploring his co-workers.

In short, I can see where Bullbuster may not be everyone’s cup of tea within the mecha genre as I’ve heard quite a bit about the indiffernce many had to its premise and the lack of elaborate action scenes involving mecha and mutant monsters. Those wanting something like Gundam or Evangelion with their elaborate action and high drama aren’t likely to enjoy this series. But if you are wanting something that goes hard on the “real robot” element of mecha anime mixed in with exploring office politics a la Patlabor or Dai-Guard, Bullbuster is a solid series that dabbles into those realms with the challenges faced by the members of Namikome and would recommend if you are looking for something different to dabble into within the mecha genre.