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Given that the story essentially revolves that time in life when you first become aware of this strange creature called "The Opposite Sex", Sakuraba has latched onto a topic that one can have a great deal of fun with - and in some cases he does - playing off the slightly more aware girls (they do say girls mature faster, after all) against the blissfully clueless boys. There are some genuinely funny moments too, such as Satou's explanation that men are into collarbones (which, as a friend described, is all a 5th grader really has to offer...) backfiring on him, and Chika's attempt at a ... stolen kiss turning into a head butt.

He also manages, in a few short pages per chapter, to convey the personality of each character, although we don't go into too much depth, except maybe for Chika, as the story unfolds. The artwork and character design is simple, but effective, especially when it comes to Satou's facial expressions when shocked, scared or trying to weasel his way out of a corner and he doesn't try to make the characters look overly moe. If anything, they look like 5th graders should.

However, for reasons known only to the mangaka, he's also made virtually all of the stories unnecessarily ecchi. The subject matter should be able to - and does, on occasion - offer enough laughs on its own, without having to resort to pantyshots, glimpses down blouses and so forth (and the scene in the storage shed is just nasty). Admittedly, none of the set-ups are intentional, and the laughs are supposed to lie in the characters' (usually Satou) reaction to, rather than the ecchiness itself, but it is a cheap shot at getting a guffaw and it wears thin very quickly.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, Kyou no 5 no 2 is no more than a good idea, that fails miserably in execution, which is a surprise (or maybe not) coming from the same author of "Minami-ke."

So, which camp does “Ex Machina” fall into? Without a doubt, the “like” crowd. maybe even the “like a great deal” crowd. Possibly even the “lo-”… no, let’s not go there.

So, what’s so good about it? Well, firstly they’ve gone the 100% 3D CGI route,which, as with any technology, just keeps advancing in leaps and bounds, and the imagery used here far surpasses anything else I’ve seen to date. Buildings and backgrounds are captured in magnificent detail (the Gothic cathedral in the opening sequence has to be seen to be believed); lighting and textures are first-rate (well, to art-ignoramus me anyway), the characters are fully ... integrated into their surroundings (now that I think about it, maybe Appleseed 2004 didn’t use animation for the characters, but they did often look ‘painted in’ when compared to their realistic CGI surroundings.) and for once they finally seem to have CGI humans moving as humans do. No doubt it’s due to the influence of producer/director, John Woo (who, like or hate him, knows how to put an action film together), but the fight sequences are extremely well choreographed, especially the aerial battles involving the land-mates. Not to mention the fluid motions of the characters in these scenes. The programmers really earned their keep on this show and if this is where state-of-the-art CGI stands at the moment, I wait in anticipation to see what the future has in store for us.

Story-wise, I guess it’s nothing too original. Billed as a sequel to Appleseed 2004 (more on that later), it picks up at some time not long after the last film. Deunan & Briareos (not a name I’d like to try and call out in a moment of passion) are still members of ESWAT, defending Olympus against what seems to be a string of random terrorist attacks involving cyborgs. At the same time, President Athena is pressing the remaining world powers for a unified satellite system, to further ensure world piece. Needless to say, somebody has other plans for such a unified system and it’s up to our heroes to thwart his plans for world domination.

During all this we actually get to see more of the dynamics of Deunan & Briareos’ relationship here than we did before, especially after Briareos gets injured and Deunan’s new partner, Tereus (is nobody called Bob in the future?) is a bioroid, cloned from Briareos’ genetic material, thus looking, sounding and even thinking like B did, before winding up as a walking tin-can. How the three of them deals with this adds a decent human (well, human-cyborg-bioroid) element that was missing from the first film. All the classic elements of a good old rough and tumble action film are present and fortunately, they all work. Maybe the only “meh” bit is a scene towards the end which could have been lifted straight from one of the later “Matrix” movies.

Without wanting to sound like a rabid fanboy, I’ve been trying to think about negatives to discuss, in the interests of balanced writing, of course. I’d have to say that there are precious few. True, it’s probably not the most original story you’re likely to see, but then again, I never expected to learn the meaning of life from watching this. I expected to be entertained for nearly two hours, and in that respect, it delivered. However, another potential weakness of the story is the fact that it’s a sequel and it assumes that you’ve seen the prequel. So, although all the familiar characters are present (Hitomi, Pres. Athena, et al) they aren’t re-introduced, but are just ‘there’, which could make them seem pretty insignificant to the uninitiated. It’s not a biggie, as the story really is about our three protagonists anyway, but somebody might wonder why Hitomi invites Deunan to her birthday and why she later…oops, nearly let a spoiler out the bag there.

I guess the final criticism comes down to a combination of the shortcomings of CGI (no matter how advanced it is) and budget. As good as the character design is, it’s no more than ‘realistic’. Facial expressions are minimal and often the only thing that moves on a character is their mouth. Blinking obviously wasn’t added to the jobcard, so the minute a character has a close up for longer than a few seconds, your eyes start to water in sympathy. Lastly, as good as the faces and bodies are designed and textured, hair seems to have been last on the list and in many cases looks as if they’ve had a large blob of plasticine moulded on their skull. Again, it’s a small point, but it does jar, when there’s been so much attention to detail elsewhere. Then again, I always remember comments about “they spent a quarter of the budget on her hair” when Final Fantasy was released, and yes, her hair looked great, but I wish they’d spent a bit more of that budget on the scriptwriter.

Final opinion? Even if you aren’t a fan of anime (just think of this as a Pixar CGI movie, ok) and you enjoy action or sci-fi films, you won’t be disappointed with this latest incarnation of the franchise. Anybody who saw and enjoyed the first film will lo-… er… really enjoy this one.

Black comedy is an incredibly hard genre to pull off. Lay it on too thick and it becomes a dirge, lay it on too thin and a farce results. Luckily, Otsuka gets it right more often than not in this strange series. Despite the supernatural theme of the stories, it essentially boils down to a detective series, as the team combines their powers, to solve the mystery behind the lost souls and help them reach final peace.

Although some of the set-ups are dazzlingly original (the actuary who can calculate not only how many will die, but also the who and when; the funeral home offering ... a ’special’ service to the families of crime victims; and then there’s the episode with the snails, that’s put me off escargot for life!) others seem to get lost within themselves, becoming overly wordy and meander clumsily to an end.

Despite its humourous undertones (with comic relief provided by the foul-mouthed sock puppet) this isn’t a manga to be taken lightly (I believe it comes with an 18 age restriction), as it does feature nudity, violence and more dead bodies than you can shake a big stick at. That said, both in terms of the story, as well as the art work, it’s not overly graphic, but presented in a clinical, matter-of-fact style. After all, you’d expect a body to be naked on the autopsy table.

If I have one criticism it lies in the lack of character development. Often they seem to fade into the background as the plot becomes more complex and it sometimes feels as if they become bit players in their own story. Conversely, however, when they do get the balance right and we see the group become stronger than the sum of its parts, the execution (a little dark humour of my own there…) could almost be called brilliant.

Overall, it’s an entertaining, albeit macabre read, and certainly not for the squeamish. Interesting to see that apparently a US company has bought the rights to produce a live-action version. CSI Afterlife, anybody?

Every now and again an anime comes along that restores my faith in the creativity of Japanese visual culture, especially given the number of sequels and game-based shows we seem to be getting lately. Moyashimon is just such an anime.

Besides the initial premise, which involves our hero being able to see, and communicate with, microbes, we're faced with a cast of delightful characters, from the leather-clad lab assistant, the saki-obsessed sempai and the rather odd collection of friends and co-students to the slightly insane (and dare I say lecherous) professor.

The first couple of shows might leave you feeling a bit like you've just sat ... through a science lecture as we delve into the world of microbes (with the advantage of some delightful microbe-enhanced food jokes). Word of warning... it might be best not to eat while watching this.

Once the cast is established, it switches into full-blown comedy, with some serious laugh-out-loud (and possibly taboo) scenes playing themselves out.

Without a doubt one of the best and funniest off-the-wall comedies to come out in recent times. If you're looking for something different, you could do far worse than watch this.

I'm hearing so much bleating about how different S2 is to S1, I thought I'd better jot down a couple of pointers for the uninformed.

Anybody who's watched S1 will realise that Madhouse spoilt us - everything was right, the artwork, the music, the character design and most of all the story. When Marvelous commissioned S2 they, for whatever reason (I assume Madhouse had become victims of their own brilliance and had too much work - including, I heard, Satoshi Kon's new movie) they gave the job to ArtLand. This meant an entirely new crew working on the project, from the artists to the seiyuu (so, ... yes, the characters will look and sound different - live with it). Sadly, for whatever reason, ArtLand simply don't seem to have the budget to fill the very large shoes left by Madhouse (maybe all is not well at the production house, Marvelous.)

Let's start off with what's wrong. The artwork is generally horrible, especially the 'shakey stills' used in episode 1's fight scenes. That was nasty. However, there does seem to be a gradual improvement up to episode 3, although there still isn't enough cash to animate the fight between Pinocchio and Triela properly. (I can only hope that they're keeping funds in reserve to throw at the payoff at the end of the story). The backgrounds are good, but I have a sneaky suspicion they're merely photos that have been painted over.

That said, I want to make one thing very clear: If you're watching GSG as an action show, stop watching it now, because you've missed the point. Whatever action there is, is merely the thread that ties the main story - the relationships between the girls and their handlers within the various fratellos - together.

Character design is another weakness, as are the voices. Jose's terrible hair keeps reminding me of Satou from Welcome to the NHK, and I have no idea who decided to make Henrietta sound so chirpy - it just doesn't work. Maybe I'm nitpicking, but the OP is a bit lame too (although the words have significant meaning) but it's never going to be a 'Light Before We Land'. The ED, however, is about as perfect and suitable as you could get - haunting and evocative and a good replacement for LBWL.

So, that said. what are the strengths? Simply put, the story. Anybody who's read the manga to this point (Basically starting at Vol 3) should be more than happy with the anime. This is largely (I think) due to the greater input of Aida Yu in both the screenplay and art direction. Given his genius in weaving the overall original story, it can only be a plus that he's on board for this series. The opening episode, which rearranged certain events into a more logical chronological order, gave us a good view of the 'goodies', even all the backroom staff. It's just a shame they missed the payoff of the 'walking on the curb' scene. Ah well. Likewise, episode 2 gave us an insight into the 'baddies' and expect a lot more film to be used on their stories. The opening, with the youthful Pinocchio, was IMHO better than the manga. Likewise we're being given a deeper insight into the workings of the most complex of the fratellos - Hillshire/Triela. Her line "everything about me is fake" was not only very insightful from her, but also very sad. Add her newfound insecurity and we're in for an interesting time watching this young lady. In terms of storytelling, Season 2 is more than holding its own against its predecessor.

Yes, it does have it's faults, some of of them are sadly disappointing, especially for a rabid fan of the series like myself. However, if you can look past that you'll find there's still the same ugly/beautiful/gentle/violent/ light/dark/happy/sad and brilliant story that captured our hearts first time round.

Overall, there’s themes running through this that have been done many times before, from Welcome to the NHK, with its take on otaku and erogames; Chobits, with its ‘which-is-better’ theme; and the herd of slightly deranged magical-girlfriend stories that are out there.

Hanazawa manages to combine all three elements, however, in a tightly-knit tale using humour, pathos, drama and wrapping it all in a slightly stinging rebuke of otaku-dom and their retreat from reality into the world of moe dating sims.

Watching Takuro and Tsukiko’s clumsy courtship is sweet, but entirely fake - she’s nothing more than a program, whilst he is an attractive and unreal facsimile ... of himself. Hanazawa reminds us of this, dragging us back into reality with some effectively used cut-scenes. In the best example of this, we are shown Takuro hugging a sobbing Tsukiko, as she wails about how alone she was before he came. “Don’t worry,” he says, “you’re not alone.” Immediately, we cut back to his bedroom and are confronted with fat, slovenly Takuro hugging thin air.

In stark contrast to their VR personas, all of the characters in this tale are generally crude, vulgar, shallow and generally unlikable. This is reflected in the character design, which really highlights everybody’s worst features. I’d go as far as to say that even Tsukiko, the love interest, barely passes for cute, compared to standard manga and anime definitions of moe. Despite all this, Hanazawa weaves a tight, complex, not-quite-subtle story, which will leave you with the feeling that no matter how much of a loser you think Takuro is, you really do want him to get the girl in the end.

Overall, it’s a refreshing, funny, albeit somewhat scathing, take on familiar themes and worth tracking down.

I must confess to being one of those impatient readers – if a story doesn’t grab me quickly, I tend to lose interest. That said, the opening of Anne Freaks not only grabbed me, it gave me a good shaking by the metaphorical scruff of the neck. It’s clear from watching Yuri dispose of his mother’s body that he’s not the most mentally balanced person you’re likely to meet and within a few more pages, we realise that young Anna herself is about as sane – and dangerous – as a bag full of wasps on LSD. Admittedly, given that there’s only 24 chapters to ... tell what becomes a fairly convoluted tale, there isn’t really much time to fanny around, and apart from a brief wobble halfway through, the story doesn’t let up the pace, nor does it lose its focus.

Equally impressive are the number of layers surrounding the basic plot. Yes, it’s essentially a tale of revenge, except you’re rooting for some rather poisonous anti-heroes (in typical Bonnie and Clyde style, I guess). Even when the police become involved (and we are faced with a rather clichéd good cop / bad cop team at this point, although they are both female, so score one for Women’s Lib), you’d rather they didn’t catch the young killers… well, at least not until revenge has been had.

In a strange and slightly twisted way, it’s also a love story – albeit a very one-sided love story. Mentally broken from years of abuse and the recent trauma, Yuri becomes besotted with Anna, seeing her as a kind of redeemer who saved him from his past life. She exploits this to the maximum, ensuring his slavish loyalty. When a rival appears on the scene, who not only witnessed Yuri with his mother’s body, but wants to use that to blackmail him into going out with her (didn’t her mother warn her about boys like that?), Anna is pretty quick in making sure she won’t bother Yuri again… ever. It’s round about this point that I started to realise that calling Anna a cold-blooded killer, would give other cold-blooded killers a bad name. That said, the characters are not merely portrayed as ruthless killing machines. Kotegawa gives us glimpses of their human side too, one of the funnier examples being Anna muttering jealously (as many adolescent girls might) about the size of the female detective’s chest. It’s simple, but effective – if they were simply mindless killing machines, I doubt the story would be able to sustain our sympathy for very long.

When Mitsuba, another troubled youth, is drawn into the fold, it adds another dimension to the dynamic of the team. Soon she’s playing the two boys off against each other, making each prove their loyalty to her (even if it just be via a shopping trip, or cooking supper), whilst being equally careful not to let the rivalry escalate into jealousy. She’s just happy knowing that they’ll do whatever it takes to please her. It might be stretching the metaphor a bit far, but you have the impression that if she rang a bell, they’d both start drooling. Certainly, it’s a performance that would have Svengali nodding and taking notes. Therefore, you could also add that it’s a tale about people and their interactions. It would have been nice to see some more ink used on character development, but it is interesting to watch what we can of the developing relationship between Anna, Yuri, and Mitsuba.

Finally, underlying all this is a very subtle steak of very dark humour. I don’t think it’ll have you laughing aloud, but it’ll wring a wry smile from you occasionally.

The central cast of characters is kept small, apart from a small army of expendable cult members, which gives us time to get to know them and their back-story, even if the story doesn’t allow much time for character development. Maybe character deconstruction would be a better phrase as we first watch Yuri and Mitsuba fall under Anna’s spell (not to mention watching Yuri lose touch with reality, illustrated by his frequent flashbacks to his mother), then realise that Anna herself as been carefully moulded to fulfil this role by people I’ll call her mentors (to avoid any potential spoilers).

The artwork is crisp and clear with good attention to backgrounds and little details that might just as easily pass unnoticed. Even the crowd scenes are filled with individuals (well, within reason anyway), not faceless blobs. It’s nice to see Kotegawa giving the character design a feminine touch, making everybody variously pretty or handsome – but not overly so.

It might even be borderline shoujo-esque. I don’t mean this in a bad way - after all, there’s something to be said about pretty girls with guns… sorry, I thought I heard an angry buzzing sound just then.

It’s also not afraid to occasionally switch to chibi mode for a couple of frames – normally just before something nasty happens. It might be a cheap attempt at shock value, but used in moderation, it does work. In addition, Kotegawa also scores points for her attention to detail when it comes to weaponry. I’m no expert on guns, but I’m guessing any fancier worth his salt wouldn’t have trouble identifying those used in the manga.

The real skill of the mangaka comes through in the action scenes. Firstly (much like Aida Yu of Gunslinger Girl fame), the frames aren’t cluttered with unnecessary sound effects, or action lines, yet still manage to convey the impression of motion and force. Secondly, much of the violence (and don’t get me wrong, although this is a fairly violent manga, it does pause to take a breath now and again) is implied rather than shown.

Taking a leaf from Hitchcock you’ll be shown a before and after frame, and maybe a hint of what’s happening in between (one of the nastiest involves a glimpse of bloody scissors). Just how much violence is actually happening is left up to you and the size of your own personal bag of wasps. A picture might paint a thousand words, but the imagination makes movies…

Take all that, then add a plot that twists and turns on itself, a cast that straddles that fine line between the perception of good and evil, a climax that covers the better part of the last 2 volumes (including a bit that will hopefully have you going “I can’t believe he did that…” and stir vigourously. The result is a pretty decent, fast-paced action tale, that doesn’t really pretend to be anything else. Even its conclusion, which might be described as “open-ended” and probably not as “happy” should leave you satisfied.

If you’re looking for a fairly quick read, that’s not too taxing on the mind and if you don’t mind a spot (or a splash, in this case) of violence, Anne Freaks is worth looking at. Now, if only they’d make the live action version…