Beautifully envisioned in magical Kyoto, The Eccentric Family tells a masterfully wrought story of a family healing after the death of their father and learning to come to terms with the lives they’ve been given.
Review
Aquarion EVOL Part 2 DVD Review
Aquarion EVOL continues on its brash way, although it seems to be trying to grow up a little. Sometimes. (Part 1 review here.)
Aquarion EVOL Part 1 DVD Review
Welcome to the world of Aquarion EVOL, where love must yet be sin, nakedness rivets you to the pulse of life, and punches go on for infinity.
Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Light Novel, Volume 1 Review
A transparent attempt to cash in on the popular tropes and trends of the day, but Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? is not without its charms.
Level E Review
Orange (Manga) Review
If you knew the past and could use that knowledge to make a better future, would you be able to do it? That’s the question Naho Takamiya is faced with when she receives a detailed letter from her future self with instructions on how to save a boy she hasn’t even met yet. That boy, Kakeru Naruse, is the boy Naho will fall in love with and the boy who will eventually break her heart when he’s killed in a car accident on his 17th birthday. But the present Naho has been given an opportunity to avoid this future of regrets, guided by the letter in the ways she can save Kakeru.
Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta Review
There are always a few shows each season that, for whatever reason, don’t get licensed for streaming. One of the more egregious omissions in recent memory, at least as far as I’m concerned, is Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta [Tatsunoko Production, 2013], an adaptation of Suzuhito Yasuda’s popular manga. A beautifully crafted production, YZQ is charming and tons of fun, fitting it nicely into my ratings at a 6/10 (Rankings).
Akame ga Kill: A Reflection on the Futility of Violence?
So, I’ve been watching Akame ga Kill for a while now and I’m starting to wonder if there’s actually more to this show than just extreme violence, no censorship, and an infatuation with grisly deaths. Is it, perhaps, a reflection on the futility of violence as a solution or as a method for change disguising itself as a cheap shounen thrill fest?
I’m well aware that on the surface, this seems an absurd suggestion—I myself, after the first episode, felt that Akame ga Kill did nothing less than glorify bloodshed by “justifying” it through the immorality of those who were being killed. 17 episodes and a few heartbreaks later, I’ve realized that, for all the characters who have died and who have been introduced and died, Akame ga Kill, Night Raid, and the Jaegers are no closer to any sort of resolution to their conflict than they were at the beginning of the story.
AKB0048 First Stage: Dreams, Performance & the Machine
I’ve always had mixed feelings about Japan’s idol industry, and AKB0048 First Stage [Satelight, 2012] is kind of the perfect review of everything I find enchanting about the system and everything I find terrifying and troubling about it. Like many anime shows that heavily feature music, I seriously believe in the unitive and uplifting abilities of music and, perhaps even more than just music itself, performance. Having been a part of a show choir for three years in high school and one year in college, the similarities between idol performances and show choir performances have always struck me. (Don’t know what show choir is? Here’s a video of a nationally renowned high school show choir from California.)
So, the trouble comes when I have to compare the affection for the past and resonance with my own experience generated by these shows to the dark side of the industry such shows sometimes tackle, but often gloss over. But before that, have some tunes!
Gundam Build Fighters: When Toys Come to Life
Gundam Build Fighters [Sunrise, 2013], as a glorified toy commercial, stands at the fascinating intersection between art and commercialism. As most involved in the anime fandom know, these foreign cartoons are almost always little more than an advertisement for their source material, and Gundam Build Fighters has the slightly more unique distinction among them by being an ad for model robots rather than an narrative product.
This in mind, it is all the more marvelous that Gundam Build Fighters is simultaneously a triumph of creative narrative entertainment and intelligent advertising—but more than that, it’s a beautiful affirmation of the importance of fun, play, and sheer joy. How incredibly ironic that such a blatantly commercial enterprise should leave us with the final message that to sacrifice the love of something in the pursuit of material success is the worst kind of destruction that can be inflicted on our souls.
Mage in a Barrel 