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So I finished up the Witchblade anime this evening, and also finally got through vol 1 of The Complete Witchblade hardcover editions of the original comic. I have to say this is a really great watch. And the read is good too. Though the stories are unrelated (they take place in the same universe), they are both really good. And I definitely miss comics and anime that harken back to a time when the "edges" weren't rounded off of all media and everything made "safe". Not only does this series (and the comic books) have a good story, they also have plenty of titilation and ... edginess, that has kinda been lost in most media these days. So much media these days lacks good original story, is afraid of being sexy, and lacks any kind of edge. While I wouldn't exactly describe this anime as a "masterpiece", it's definitely leagues better in terms of originality and storytelling than 99% of the derivative anime that gets released these days.

What's really nice about it too, is not only is it sexy, but the main characters have a real feminine strength. Masane draws her strength from being a mom, and wanting to protect her kid. (A source of strength many women can relate to, and something some of the best heroines like Sarah Connor from Terminator 2, and Ripley from Aliens drew upon as sources of their own strength.) And when she transforms her character is not afraid to be sensual and sexy. It's a very primal, and raw form of feminine power that reminds me a lot of Dakinis in tantric Buddhism. If you're tired of just endlessly canned, derivative, isekai anime that are only slightly different from one another: and want to watch something truly original: you could do a lot worse than checking Witchblade out. I'd give it an 8 out of 10.

The Big O is probably my favorite Mecha ever, and definitely a true classic in general. Imagine if Batman piloted a giant mecha in Gotham City. Only in this city, humans and androids live together side by side, and everyone, (humans and androids), has lost their memory from all events further back than 40 years ago, when some horrific cataclysm happened. The world of Big O has a very Art Deco, retro noir feel to it. People use rotary phones, but they also have a kind of ray-punk
esque, technology with vacuum tubes, computers with lots of wires and typewriter like keys, and retro-looking ... giant robots. If Cyberpunk, Raypunkm and Diselpunk, combined and made a desaturated noir detective story, this is what you'd get. It's fantastic.

The characters stand out the most. Each is mature, acts like an adult, and there's a real sense of mystery and paranoia in the city they live in, as people both don't remember what happened 40 years ago, but some mysteriously do seem to recover fragments of "memory" which often makes them a target. Most of our main characters seem to have a more mysterious past than the viewer, or even the characters themselves, realize. And most of the characters are terrified of finding out what is truly in that hidden past. Each character both is what they are now, but also an enigma because of what lies hidden within them.

Our hero, Roger Smith is a professional negotiator by day, secret giant robot pilot by night. Slick, black suit wearing, and genuinely gentlemanly. The two ladies in his life are android named Dorthy, a mysterious blonde woman named Angel. His best male friend is an old police Colonel former comrade, and his butler. The mecha battles are fantastic. One of the things I usually hate about mecha anime, is that the giant robots usually don't move and feel like they actually are huge and have mass. In the Big O, the mecha are huge, lumbering, slow moving, and pneumatic and mechanical in their feel. These are not Gundam race cars. These are slow lumbering tanks. And the result is fantastic as you really feel a sense of weight and power behind them when things are damaged and destroyed.

But the mecha is in some ways not the primary aspect of the story. As you work your way through the episodes, you keep getting little hints of the wider mystery of this world and characters and more reveals. In season 2 things start to really ramp up with the story.

The music is fantastic too, with some of the most memorably soundtracks of any anime. Tracks are recycled, but tastefully so, and it always adds to the tension and excitement.

Overall, I highly recommend this anime, a true noir, and not to be missed for a mecha. Even if you don't like mecha (and I usually don't), you will probably like this.

So many long reviews, I'll keep it simple: I give it a 7 "for a shounen", and I'd basically give all shounen's a 6 out of 10 compared to all anime. It's a fun shounen. Basic plot. Macro plot is that there is a big bad evil monster that did big bad evil stuff, and they're slowly working towards trying to find and kill it. In between this larger macro plot; the micro plots center around monster of the week/arc where the demon hunters have to fight and kill or capture the monster of the week. Main characters work for a public police-like agency that ... tracks down demons and kills them. Lots of the main characters are part-demon themselves, or have pacts with demons and this gives them powers that can be used to kill or capture the evil feral demons they hunt. Our main character is a simp boy who was so deprived and abused as a child by organized crime members, that he is easily manipulated by a hot chick into doing anything for the promise of a reward of some vaguely (or overtly), sexual favor, and basic necessities like food. MC can pull a string in his chest and turn himself into a part-demon that has chainsaws for a hand and face and he and his other teammates fight monsters.

That's about it. People die, villains die, lots of colorful action scenes, and they are reasonably well animated. It's fun to watch: it's eye candy, but not really big on plot. There's not a lot of tension building or character development, or story that keeps you watching. It's all about colorful action. I would definitely recommend Noragami, or Yu Yu Hakusho, or Hellsing, or Attack on Titan over this if you want an action shounen but also more story.

It is what it is. Colorful, brainless, action eye-candy.

So, I'll keep this simple. A lot of people don't seem to understand what this short film is. It's an incredible artistic feat. This film is the first hand-drawn anime to be done in full 4K resolution and it has so much detail in the art, that it took 2 years to complete. I think a lot of people watching this probably think the whole thing is a computer graphic animation or something because of how high fidelity it is, but that's not the case. This was actually hand drawn. Appreciate it for being a historic artistic feat. Enjoy it like you would a painting, ... and you'll get a lot more enjoyment out of it. If you try to view it as some kind of full-story anime, then you will be disappointed. But as an art piece, this brief anime film is historic and groundbreaking, and truly a masterpiece example of what Production I.G's animators can do.

One of the things you'll notice about the people who've given this a negative review, is they mostly have only seen the first 3 episodes.

This anime is a hidden gem this season. It's a Yuri action romance, and a "travel to another world" type, (not reincarnation), Isekai. And it has seriously good story. Be warned, I've seen some people who gave it negative reviews that only watched the first 3 episodes. This has some major story twists after those episodes and towards the end of the first arc had me like, "What?? Whah!" You find out that this story goes a lot deeper ... than you think it does. It's still airing so I wouldn't quite compare it to Madoka Magica, but lets just say if you've seen Madoka Magica then you understand what I mean when I say it has some pretty interesting plot twists. And, is a really sweet Yuri romance. If you want a hidden gem this season, this is not to be missed.

The synopsis of this anime on myanimelist is very misleading. It really has nothing to do with the MC and a boy: in fact, there are no male main characters in this anime at all. This is a straight-up Yuri action romance. The MC is an assassin who executes Japanese people who've been summoned to her world. "Why?" do you ask? Well it turns out Japanese people summoned to their world, don't bind well with the magical energy of their world, making them so powerful that their magic can quickly get out of control and destroy the world. There have been several major calamities in the past and so our MC's job is to destroy them before that happens. There's a caste system in this world similar to Hinduism with the priests on top, and the warrior/leaders below them. This leads to political fighting between the castes, but among the priest caste is a group who's job it is to do this killing of summoned Japanese people.

Our MC is going about her duties when she runs across a girl who is summoned who has a mysterious ability to heal, causing the MC some difficulty. MC's church (she's part of the priest caste), tells her to bring the girl to them, leading them to travel together and a yuri romance blossoms. But along the way, well lets just say story ensues and not everything is as it seems.

The anime is still airing but having completed the first arc, I can definitely say that this has some twists in it that reminded me of Madoka Magica. There's actual story here, the characters are not Mary Sue's, and this goes a lot deeper than you think. Some of the reveals are quite amazing. If you want a good anime this season that's a hidden gem, and quite good, I would definitely recommend Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road.

Really cool anime that may have slipped under the radar of some. Basically it's about a prima ballerina who has to stop doing ballet because of an injury. But while in college she stumbles upon this college club of people who ride this motorcycle-mechs called RideBacks. She finds that her ballet skills make her a natural rider, and falls in love with the sport. However things quickly deteriorate because the political situation in country is ruled by a global military regime which begins to implement martial law. And she finds herself unwittingly falling in with some terrorists who oppose the regime, and finds herself reluctantly ... forced into making tough decisions about who she wants to be and what kind of life she wants to live, and how dance for her, is integrated in all of that.

It's a great anime with really good character development, action, and is shorter at only 12 episodes. And has a really nice story. Go check it out. 😉

This anime is bad.

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Spoiler alert, read no further if you want to avoid spoilers.

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Basically, this anime has the same masochistic story elements that Game of Thrones has. As in, basically everyone you get invested in, dies. This story is a tragedy from start to finish. You basically just watch all of the main characters die, from start to finish. You've heard of "monster of the week" tropes? This is "main character death of the week." Basically you start with a cast of characters, and by the end of the show, they all are systematically killed. And to make matters worse, you find out they are ... all basically slaves, and children at that, forced to fight and die for a Nazi-like country that doesn't care about them.

Like, imagine the Nazi Holocaust, only they used Jewish children as their soldiers to fight and die, and then whenever the kids get kind of good at fighting, they put them in a special unit to make sure those elite kids get killed for good.

That's basically the story, and when watching this, just like with Game of Thrones, you keep watching because you think, "Surely, if I keep watching, there'll be some payoff at some point right? Like it'll turn around and the kids will find a way out of this hell, and/or something will happen to put a stop to this right?" So you keep watching, and the main characters keep dying. And it keeps being depressing. And then you get to the last episode and then all the main characters die, and you're like, "Wow, that was it?? Just killing all the characters one by one until the last episode? Well that was depressing."

This anime basically has no happy ending. It's just children being lined up in a row, and killed, episode after episode, until the end, when they're all dead. And the whole time they know it's happening and they march to their deaths anyway, and it's super depressing and pointless. This. Is. A. Dumb. Anime.

Now it sets it up at the end to maybe have a more interesting Season 2? But honestly if an anime starts as a dumb, depressing, morose tragedy for 12 episodes, why would Season 2 be any better? This is the same thing that brought so many people into Game of Thrones, thinking that, "Surely, next season they will find a way out of this mess!" And so people kept watching, and then by the end of the last season, it was just a disaster.

If you're into super depressing anime where you get to watch, and care about children, only to watch them die, one by one, with them all seemed depressingly resigned to their fate, until they are all killed by the last episode, then you will probably love this anime. But if that's not your thing, I would watch something else. This is bad.

Let me say, this is an outstanding anime. A truly original story, that is heartfelt, enjoyable, has incredible character development, and truly wonderful sci-fi plot. It's really a gem. In an age when it seems so many anime are just run of the mill, recycled plots, this is magnificent. Easily will go down among the best.

The story revolves around an AI robot girl, Vivy who was created to be a singer, a pop diva. However 100 years in the future, a war has broken out between AI and humans, and a scientist sends an AI program back in time to recruit Vivy to help ... in the project of trying to alter important events over that 100 year timeline to try and prevent the catastrophe. Along the way you see some incredible character development from her and supporting characters, and each mini-arc truly deepens the story. Never once when watching this did I feel like some tired trope was being used. It has been incredibly enjoyable. The animation is great, the characters are great, the music is top notch, the story is great... really everything is fantastic.

If I had to compare it to an anime, Violet Evergarden came to mind, as well as Madoka Magica, or perhaps Moribito Guardian of the Spirit. But really, this show is not those, and it's story is not like those. Perhaps it's just the strength of the main characters of those shows, and how they evolve that inspires me. Vivy stands alone as it's own masterpiece. Many anime in the future will be compared to this one, and it's one of those true gems of a story. This is a precious gem of an anime, and one not to be missed. Go check it out for a true masterpiece.

Basically Attack on Titan, with trains and zombies. And a far stupider story and plot. This show was basically made to cash in on the popularity of Attack on Titan as far as I'm concerned, and it's big on spectacle, and short on plot and story. Basically just a hack and slash with fanservice by the way of ninja girl fashion-wearing Mumei (that is, she's basically wearing hardly anything under her kimono), which is fine, I don't object to fan service, but the story and plot is basically lacking. You could skip this whole movie and if another season happened, you wouldn't be missing much ... except the love-story aspects which are barely touched upon. Basically there's a town castle controlled by zombies, they have a nest, and our hero's need to kill a bunch of zombies to stop it. Oh and there's a boss fight. The End. I mean, it has a lot of bombast and spectacle, but it's really lacking in story.

Pew! Pew! Slash! Slash! "Arrrgh!" Boom! Stab! Stab! "Mumei!" Boom! Pew! Pew! Slash! Slash! Arrggh!! Oh look at Mumei's butt! She's cute and isn't she vulnerable! She looks like a hentai girl! Oh look some more stabbing and shooting and jumping and explosions. -The End. -That's pretty much it. I'm not saying it's bad or anything. If you've seen the series you might as well watch it. But it's far from great. Don't expect too much, just watch it if you want your brains to melt and all you need is fan service, stabbing, shooting and explosions.

A surprisingly refreshing anime. This one took me by surprise with it's original concept. In a year after year of repeated, rehashed concepts, this is a light refreshing anime that is lots of fun! Definitely give it a watch and I'm glad I saw it. If you've been tired of the same-old, same-old, give this a shot. You won't regret it.

What I liked about it:

Unique concept. In the far future humans live in a giant mobile city, that keeps them protected from creatures who constantly attack. Soldiers fight back using flying packs, and the two classes of citizens: Tanks and the Gadol, team up ... to fight the creatures. The story comes from learning about the secrets of the two classes of citizens, and follows a girl named Natsume who wishes to be a soldier, who is taken under the wing by her boss, who see's potential in her.

It's a kind-hearted story with loads of action and lots of fun, and a genuinely good time. And the concepts and art are unique. The tone reminds me a lot of Little Witch Academia, or Kill La Kill. So if you like those you will very likely enjoy this. Definitely worth a shot.