CX's Anime Reviews

[CX]

Well, I'd been hoping to start with a scathing review of Abrams Trek or Avatar, and I guess I might still be able to on the actual blog, but for now I'm starting with some anime reviews here.

As for my favorites/recommendations:

• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
• Cowboy Bebop
• Last Exile
• Desert Punk
• Black Lagoon
• The Irresponsible Captain Tyler
• Golden Boy

Blue Gender
(26 episode series)

I've actually been thinking about this one quite a bit since I started to watch it, and now that I've finished watching it.  It really isn't anything special per say, and in fact one could call it fairly derivative.  It's a mostly standard issue post-apocalyptic fare, with the protagonist having slept through said apocalypse.  That being said, I actually found it quite watchable and interesting.  Especially in the start of the series, I found myself drawn in and I just had to watch the next episode to find out what happened after what was usually a cliffhanger ending.  It wasn't until later on in the series that I found myself disappointed, and frankly at times annoyed with what the series was trying to say and how it was saying it.

The series opened right in the middle of things.  I'm usually annoyed with openings like this, and this wasn't much of an exception, but I was just interested enough by it to not get too annoyed.  Thankfully I didn't have to wait all that long for an explanation as to why the whiny, cowardly main character I was introduced to (he literally pisses his pants within the first five minutes) ended up in a cryo tube, and to an extent why there are giant bugs trying to kill everyone we've met so far.

I hate to say it, but the characters we meet at first aren't all that terribly interesting, including the main character, Yuji, who, for some reason, doesn't even think to ask how long he's been asleep.  He was only supposed to be asleep for a year or two while doctors literally tried to figure out what ailed him and apparently quite a few others so they could develop a treatment for it.  Pretty much the standard excuse to turn someone into a popsicle in pretty much every show to ever have suspended animation that doesn't also include a prolonged journey across space.  As it turns out in this case, bad things happened, and Yuji receives a very rude awakening, about twenty years after he was supposed to have been awakened originally.  

What happened?  Well, to quote Starship Troopers, "BUGS!"   Yes, as lame as that is, somehow giant bugs have taken over and turned all but a lucky few (relatively speaking) into tightly packed green balls that they never bother eating or doing anything with.  Basically it serves as a body horror image until the "message" comes along and ruins everything.

Anyway, back to the characters, most of them are basically cold-hearted bastards, which is constantly rubbed in as the series progresses.  Not only are most of the military personnel who were sent to recover Yuji and his fellow sleepers this way, but their superiors in the orbital stations that serve as humanity's last bastion are especially cold-hearted.  As it turns out, if this recovery team hadn't managed to recover any sleepers, they would have been left planet-side for dead, which is what ends up happening to most of them anyway.  That being said, while plenty of humans have managed to escape into orbit where the bugs can't get them, we're informed that only the select few seen as too valuable to lose were chosen to live on the orbital stations, which are collectively known as Second Earth.  While that makes it all the more confusing as to why they would then treat their soldiers as completely expendable, what makes even those expendable soldiers complete bastards is that they've all been completely brainwashed into believing the humans who have by some miracle managed to survive and not get turned into green balls are actually already as good as dead.  This means that while Yuji, and by extension most people, sees a little girl being attacked by a giant bug and wants to stop to help, none of the soldiers he's with want to completely ignore it.  Oh, and if a "groundling" happens to get between them and a bug, the soldiers are supposed to shoot through them.  While this does lead to some verbal exchanges, I kind of wanted to see Yuji and the beautiful blonde ice queen who initially rescued him, Marlene, come to blows and exchange a few punches, too, mostly just because I would have in his place given what happened and what was being said.  Jury's still out on whether I would have pissed myself upon waking up and nearly being killed by a bug the size of a cow...

Only one of the soldiers really had any redeeming qualities, which was Joey.  Unlike Marlene, Joey actually seemed human.  He was compassionate and more than once stuck up for Yuji when Marlene was being a bitch to him.  It was nice that this was a series so we could see the friendship develop, even though things were still moving along at a pretty fast clip.

We do see some of that development between Yuji and Marlene, but I feel it still could have used a little bit to explain why the two of them develop feelings.  Marlene never really seems to be all that compassionate towards Yuji despite saving his life repeatedly; if anything she makes it seem like a pain that she has to keep doing it, since Yuji is basically her ticket back to Second Earth.  On Yuji's end, it seems more physical than anything, because Marlene is pretty attractive (and also nekkid in the end credits, FYI ).  They do have some time to talk and argue with each other, but most of their time is spent running away from giant bugs.  She explains how humanity has basically lost touch with emotions, which is why they all have pointless sex and why she's such a frigid bitch to him, and he basically goes on and on about how he was only supposed to be asleep for a couple of years and how he wishes he'd never woken up if this is the world he had to wake up to.  This somehow equates to the two of them being in love with each other.

While it's pretty easy to tell I was unimpressed with how they got there, I kind of dug the idea of a somewhat unemotional woman and a somewhat emotional man falling in love with each other.  The fact that Marlene had to figure out just what was going on with her, and started to see just how much the humans of Second Earth really were bastards also appealed to me, and I loved seeing her kick ass to find Yuji, even though it was against the standard idiot mooks that seem to make up the military in shows like this.  It's after this that things kind of go south for me.

As it turns out, the Second Earth military scientist types seem to think Yuji's disease can somehow do for them what really any competent military should have been able to do at any point in the past twenty years – kill all the giant bugs.  This being anime, naturally it features mecha, which seem to be about the most effective means of fighting the giant bugs, even though air support from some kind of gunship would probably work a lot better.  What's worse is that while at some points the guns being used by the characters are quite effective, most of the time bullets seem to bounce harmlessly off of the bugs' armored skin.  And way too many times soldiers freeze up and just let the giant bugs kill them.  All of that was pretty annoying, but that actually isn't what bothered me the most.

So what bothered me the most about this show?  Marlene and Yuji basically switch roles, for no real reason at all.  While it's true Yuji had evil scientists abuse his illness in order to make him basically super-human, his obsession with another sleeper named Tony and the way he turned into the same kind of uncaring bastard that all the other Second Earth military types were just didn't ring true for me.   Worse though was Marlene, who turned into a really emotional and frankly kind of useless woman.  She went from cold and unemotional to really emotional without having much of any transition, and while before she was a very effective soldier in combat, she suddenly started freezing up.  Basically she turned into the Yuji from the first few episodes.

Okay, I lied, that isn't the part that bothered me the most about this show.  What did?  Well, I hinted at the "message" in the beginning of this review, and this one is a doozy.  The message?  Earth is alive and trying to kill humanity, which it perceives as a cancer and therefore a threat to itself.  And if that wasn't bad enough, it turns into a luddite message of how we can only peacefully coexist with the planet by giving up all technology and living in grass huts.  No, really, that's the happy ending of the series is that Yuji and Marlene decide to join some random villagers they met in South America that was living in huts.  This after a really quick WTF montage of the remaining Second Earther's killing the leader who has made it clear that if anyone wanted to leave, he wouldn't stop them, just so that they can fight over the last shuttle and somehow blow up the main space station.  And it all happens in like a minute running time.  Oh, and those green balls the bugs made out of humans?  Apparently tree food, because at one point we see little tree plants growing out of them.  

While there is plenty to rag on in this series, much like Star Trek: Enterprise, I liked the basic concept.  I also liked most of the character interactions and development, at least up until Yuji and Marlene trade roles.  I would still recommend this series, even if it scores a little low at 6/10.


 
Blue Gender: The Warrior
(2002 movie)

What happens when you take a 26 episode series and try to cram it into a 95 minute long movie?  Well, not much good, as you might expect.

The original series was just way too complex to turn into an hour and a half made-for-TV movie, so naturally, while things started out more or less the same, a lot got cut out, and a lot got changed in the plot.  In the end, not much really makes sense about the plot, and if I hadn't watched the series before this movie, I probably would have been completely lost.  Most of what they cut out was either good, like Yuji's friendship with Joey, or important to character and plot development.  It wouldn't have been as bad had they changed the plot even more, but they left just enough in to make things that much more confusing plot-wise.  It also makes the fact that they only left one small part of what had to be the shortest training montage I've ever seen out from the series somewhat amusing.  The part they left out?  Marlene pressing her body against Yuji's in order to show him the proper shooting stance for a pistol.

The Yuji/Marlene relationship just seems to come that much more out of the blue in this movie because so much has been left out or become part of the chopped up journey/survival montage that reduces something like 3-4 episodes into a single minute.  It also makes it that much more pathetic when Marlene becomes such a whiny loser after returning to Second Earth.  Then, after explaining how she doubts she'll ever be allowed to return to Earth's surface, she's suddenly there and searching frantically for Yuji.  She does find him, and he promptly tries to kill her, until something she says turns him back into something like his old self, somehow.

The ending of the movie is even more WTF than the series.  While we never see or learn anything about Second Earth's final fate, the movie basically ends with Marlene cradling Yuji in the middle of the street.  At one point they were surrounded by the giant bugs, looking for all intents to become another green ball in the middle of the street, when Yuji opens his eyes, makes some kind of psychic noise, and all the bugs go away.  Knowing that there is a connection between the disease Yuji and his fellow sleepers have from the series, I kind of sort of know what happened, but in the context of the movie there is just no explanation at all.

So combine the storyline being ripped to shreds with character narration out of no where in a vain attempt to explain what the hell is going on, and basically you get a lot of suck.  The environmental/luddite message has mostly been lost, but in its place it has a "science is bad" message.  Whereas in the series, rampant militarism was blamed for Second Earth becoming what it had when we saw it in the series, the head scientist who actually lead a coup against the corrupt military council turns out to be the bad guy in the movie, sort of.  Basically he's blamed for things turning out the way they are, and he kills himself after whining about what a loser he is in his narration piece.

While this movie pretty much just sucked, I'll admit that there were a few things I liked about it.  To begin with, while it was kind of lame, what Yuji's illness was supposed to end up doing to him and anyone who had it is actually explained in the movie, while in the series it's never mentioned beyond the explanation of Earth using it as a means to destroy humanity.  In the movie it basically just drives them insane and they start babbling predictions about the future.  Another thing I liked is that at one point, Yuji actually hauls off and punches Marlene after calling her and her Second Earth compatriots on their inhumanity.  He actually sticks up for himself beyond words, so I liked that.  Later on, he gives his earring to Marlene as a good luck charm and at one point she expresses he strong conviction for him by piercing her ear with it and wearing it.  The relationship doesn't make much sense in the movie, but something like that would have been nice in the series.

Still, the movie sucked, and I'm only giving it a 1/10.

[CX]

009-1
(13 episode series)

As you might guess from the title, this is basically the Japanese version of James Bond, naturally featuring mostly female spies.  Set in a fictional future where the Cold War never ended, countries have single letter names, and the cybernetic implantation of firearms into one's body isn't all that uncommon, really all this anime has going for it is the amusement factor.  Heavy on fan service without any real actual nudity, this show manages to give new meaning to the phrase "killer set of tits", as the main character isn't the only woman who has either machine guns or lasers for nipples, which apparently come standard issue for female spies in the future.  The male agents apparently pack, too, though in a different part of their anatomy.

The series itself is very episodic in nature, with the only real character development being the title character moving away from being an unquestioning spy into being more of an independent operator.  The series does play a bit with morality as far as the main character's role in this cold war, as well as some romance with a character who's a spy for the other side, but in my opinion it never was very serious.  Basically it's about a chick with guns in her tits having action-filled adventure in each episode and that's about it, which earns it a 4/10.
 


A Wind Named Amnesia
(1990 movie)

Of the post-apocalyptic variety, this movie tries to ask questions, but in the end only rhetorically. 

Basically humanity has reverted to something like cavemen, having lost its civilization along with its memories, which all disappeared on day thanks to a mysterious wind that swept over the entire planet.  Fortunately, all the neat toys the military had been playing around with were left behind, one of which was a convenient teaching tool that allowed the main character to relearn how to be human, if not his own actual past.  He's taken on the impossible task of restoring humanity to its former self, but really all he can do is drive around in a jeep and help a few people as he comes across them.  Along the way he meets a strange woman who also seems to be a normal, civilized human, except for the fact that she seems to know an awful lot about what's going on in any given situation.

In a way this almost would have done better as a series, but it probably wouldn't have been a very good series either.  I found it just interesting enough to keep watching, though amusement with the Japanese interpretation of the United States (the movie took place entirely there) helped keep me watching, too.  In the end it really didn't pay off.  As I'd suspected early on due to some really obvious foreshadowing, the mysterious woman was in fact an alien, and the wind was caused by these aliens, who took it upon themselves to punish humanity or something like that.  I never really understood the reasons, but the message in the end was the standard issue "humanity is growing to fast and too out of harmony with Earth" variety.  So really there was nothing special about this movie.  The main character didn't even act upset at all at this revelation, and instead had some good-bye sex with the alien chick before she left him in the ruins of his civilization, neither of them really having accomplished anything toward the goal stated in the beginning of the movie, which earns it a 2/10.
 


Ah! (or Oh) My Goddess!
(50 episode series)

Yeah, I know there are movies and other versions to go along with this series, but really I'm a little embarrassed that I watched this series in full as it is.  It was actually one of the first when I started watching everything basically alphabetically on my huge "to watch" list, and for some reason, I actually did watch this angst-fest beginning to end.  On the other hand, if I hadn't, I actually would have missed a few interesting stories.

What I'm referring to has more to do with stories involving the Motor Club within the series that the main character, Keiichi, was involved in.  One of them was actually a ghost story, and it's actually my favorite of the stories I found somewhat interesting.  It actually managed to tug on what's left of my heart strings a little, mainly because it involved a sick young woman who died before someone could fulfill a promise to her, which in this case was just something as simple as a motorcycle ride.  So basically she ended up haunting the property she died at until someone else could come along, fix the now classic motorcycle and give her a ride around the nearby lake.  I also have to admit that I liked how the writers pointed out that love comes in many forms, even in the form of someone taking care of their old cars/electronics/etc.

Belldandy, the title goddess, really was too sweet that way.  And really she was just too impossibly sweet.  A "harem" anime, we got to meet her sisters too, but while they were anything but sweet, I wouldn't call them all that interesting either.  That could be because I found most of this series either boring or really frustrating.  The two main characters are basically living together as a couple from the very beginning, but the male lead was horribly immature and the female lead wasn't much better.  It was completely obvious that the two of them cared a great deal for each other, and yet the vast majority of what happened revolved around the other one trying to show their love to the other or still trying to determine if the other loves them, no matter how many times they show or outright say that they do to each other.  No, really, right up to the last episode.

I guess if you like angst (I'm looking at you TnT 'shippers – you know who you are), this might actually be the thing for you.  Otherwise, not much to see here, and if you were only interested in the stories I was talking about being interested in, I'd be happy to look up the episodes for you and list them.  It's for those that I'm even bothering to throw this series any kind of a bone, scoring it 1/10.

[CX]

Akira
(1988 movie, new dub)

So this is the famous movie that is credited with making anime cool here in the US?  Well, it's not bad, but it's not really as awesome as I was hoping it would be.  I'm not even sure what the point was supposed to be, aside from the standard "science gone wrong".  The movie itself is set in the future, after a nuclear WWIII that apparently started with an explosion going off in Tokyo.  Well Neo-Tokyo has been built in the crater, with the old part of the city surrounding it pretty much in ruins.  It's easy to see why this movie is classed as cyber-punk, which can pretty much be summed up as "high tech, low life".

The main characters themselves aren't exactly good guys, most of them belonging to a motorcycle gang which regularly goes out and battles another motorcycle gang called The Clowns.  That is, all until a fateful meeting with a little kid that looks like he has that freakish rapid-aging disease.  Turns out the kid is special, and not in a back of the short bus way, as he uses some kind of a mind force-field to keep from getting run over by Tetsuo, basically the secondary main character of the film.  Why the freakishly old kid didn't use his mind force field earlier to protect himself and the communist revolutionary who rescued him from the secret military lab he was being kept at is never really made clear, or addressed even.

Oh, yeah, Japan is apparently in the throes of a recession which has resulted in massive civil unrest and a practically fascist police state to deal with it.  Naturally where there are fascists, there are communists to fight them ... well, they never really identify as communists, but let's just say I had the feeling.  In any case, the movie never really delves into any of this all that deeply, instead focusing on the main storyline of Kaneda, the film's main character, and his exploits in trying to find and rescue his friend Tetsuo from the military (with a little commie tail-chasing on the side).  It seems Tetsuo is suffering some rather odd side-effects from the mind force field, which is why the military and its scientists have taken an interest in him.  It seems he remind them of another really powerful psychic kid they experimented on named Akira, who has become a messianic figure to a large portion of the anarchist types who make up most of the mobs seen in the movie being oppressed by the police.

This brings up one of the secondary characters, a JSDF Lieutenant Colonel.  He's hard to put a finger on, mostly because at times he's a complete bastard, and at other times the movie basically makes him out to be justified for being a complete bastard, who occasionally has a heart.  He's the one in charge of the military's research into these telekinetic kids, and it's more than hinted at that Akira caused what appeared to be a nuclear detonation at the beginning of the film.  Naturally, the colonel doesn't want this to happen again, and he's determined to kill Tetsuo should he get out of hand, which is naturally exactly what happens.

Akira is an okay film, and is kind of cool.  There is a lot of awesomeness, especially as Tetsuo grows out of control, but it isn't really an awesome movie.  The storyline is at times hard to follow, and there's a connection between some government officials and the communist revolutionaries that is never really explained, and really has nothing at all to do with the main plot as far as I could tell.  That being said, this movie is still worth a watch, and scores a 7/10.
 


Area 88
(12 episode series)

I tried to get into this series, but there really wasn't much there for me aside from cool warplanes and cool air-to-air combat. 

It takes place in a generic middle-east country which is undergoing a civil war, with the government having hired on a mercenary force of combat pilots to aid their side against the rebels.  The concept of mercenary jet fighter pilots never really makes much sense to me, and what makes even less sense is that the mercenary force itself is like the French Foreign Legion of old, which kidnapped people and pressed them into service.  Well, technically everyone signs up for a stint of service, but they're still treated like slaves in the sense that they can't leave the super-secret base they are stationed at unless they serve their full contractual stint, or they buy their way out of it with the money they earn from their kills.

While the series' main character is in fact a reporter who is there for reasons not made entirely clear until later, the character being focused on is a blonde-haired Japanese pilot who flies an F-5.  He's your basic moody type yearning for home and the one he left behind.  Considering he got screwed over by his friend and shanghaied into service that would normally make him pretty sympathetic as a character, but unfortunately this is ruined by the aforementioned moodiness, which fails completely at making him mysterious or even really interesting for that matter.  Ironically the reporter/photographer is more interesting as he develops from the typical snooty press type into someone who's sympathetic towards the pilots at this base.  He ends up having second thoughts about his job, and actually ends up quitting it, which makes it that much worse that he gets the tar beat out of him by the pilots and is almost killed by them when they find out what he was originally sent there to do in typical kill the messenger style.

Well, fear not, all turns out "right" in the end as far as the main pilot's girl deciding to not marry the douche that betrayed him and had him shanghaied, and the fact he's completely forgiven for trying to run, but he still has to serve out his time and do exactly what he's been lamenting he hates doing by shooting down and killing other human beings, which is what's made him such a moody bastard.  I guess if you like the eye candy, this series might be worth the time to watch, but there isn't much of a story that's worth watching.  4/10.
 


Argento Soma
(25 episode series)

This is a classic example of an anime that takes too long to get to the point.  While I understand and like the idea of meeting characters and getting to know them as they develop, there's something to be said for keeping the plot moving at a steady pace, which this series doesn't until the last few episodes.  What's worse is that from the beginning of the series, you're teased by an image in the end credits that doesn't become significant until the last half of the series when the big mystery is finally solved and the series finally gets to the point.

Superficially this series reminds me of what I've read about Neon Genesis Evangelion, at least in the sense that giant alien robots dubbed "angels" have been randomly descending from the heavens and wreaking havoc on humanity.  In fact, New York City, the place they first landed, had been completely destroyed and left abandoned.  Giant mechas also seem to be humanity's only hope, but that seems to be where the similarities end.  There are no children piloting these things, the aliens all seem to be setting down in North America and heading towards a "pilgrimage point" which is just north of the North Dakota border in Canada.  This is the big mystery of the series, as well as the origin and purpose of the very different looking giant robot dubbed "Frank" (short for Frankenstein).  All is eventually answered late in the series, but the pace getting there is what makes it frustrating, because really the series probably could have gotten there in about half the time it did.

I guess the main storyline itself revolves around the character whose false identity the series is named after and his struggle to find out what his girlfriend was doing experimenting with this mad scientist type on Frank, and what the military has to do with what happened.  He's basically made a spy by a person whose identity we don't learn until almost the end of the series in order to infiltrate the FUNERAL organization, which is charged with the defense of Earth against the alien robots.  Hilariously, it's headquartered in Minnesota on the edge of Lake Superior.  In any case, the military is butthurt over what it sees as someone invading its turf, and there is a power struggle which results.  Also hilarious is that while this is set in 21st century America, it's seen as somehow special that a woman is in charge of Funeral, despite female commanding officers being not all that uncommon even now.  In fact the only thing women are restricted from doing is actively engaging in combat, which is something you see in a lot of anime.  The misogyny is very open and frequent, and it all comes off as a hammer-to-the-head message against it.  This is probably because it's from Japan, where misogyny is pretty common.

I guess I found it interesting enough to keep watching, and I don't really regret watching it exactly, but it was very frustrating to have the story crawl along at a snail's pace for about the first half.  The main character is also something of a whiny misogynistic bastard, which also affects the watchability of the series since it's hard to really sympathize with him.  It might be worth a watch, but it's also a bit of a waste of time, earning it a 6/10.

[alexwcovington]

These may be subtly more easy to keep track of if each review was a single post.

You sure seem to find a lot of non-winners out there.  Anything you WOULD recommend?

[CX]

Aside from the ones I posted before my first review, Outlaw Star and Canaan.

[CX]

Armitage III
(4 episode OVA)

This OVA is mostly good.  It's hard to put it any other way, because while it has its interesting points, there are also a lot of clichés which tend to annoy me.

Taking place on Mars, which has been terraformed successfully at some point in the future, the main plot focuses on the murder of several people who turn out to in fact be robots.  While human-like robots are quite commonplace and actually the source of contention on Mars over labor rights, these robots are special because they are so human-like in personality as well as appearance, so much so that if they hadn't been killed, no one would have known any differently.  In fact, it's at first expected that people have been replaced by the robots, since most of them have been famous musicians, artists, writers and the like.  Of course the only one to care that robots are being killed is Officer Naomi Armitage, the fan servicy partner of the real main character, Ross Syllibus, who is actually a recent transfer.  The somewhat annoying part is that she only feels that way because as it turns out, she's actually one of them.

Like pretty much every sci-fi to feature androids, this OVA somewhat awkwardly deals with the question of if artificial life can really be considered that much different from humans themselves, especially since they look and act human (and most of them happen to be attractive women).

That being said, Naomi herself is probably the most annoying aspect of the show, since in the beginning she tends to behave inappropriately, like gushing over how attractive her new male partner is while he's hunched over what they both initially think is a human murder victim, and later on she basically goes off on her own, abandoning her partner, even though it's clear by this point that Ross sympathizes and supports her.  In fact they end up falling in love and going on the run together by the end of the show.  I guess having her go off on her own was supposed to be dramatic, but it ended up just being annoying, at least to me.

Overall this is a pretty good show, interesting to watch, and with some amusing reminders of when it was made.  I would recommend this anime, though I don't think I can score it any higher than 7/10.

[CX]

Armitage III: Poly-Matrix
(2000 movie)

This is a compilation movie made from the original OVA.  Most of it is exactly the same, though some cuts were made to save time, and some bits were added to help make things make a little more sense, which it mostly succeeds at.  It also features Kiefer "Jack Bower" Sutherland as the voice of the main character, Ross Syllibus and Elizabeth Berkley as the voice of the title character, Naomi Armitage.

While this isn't as bad as some other compilation movies I've seen, most of its strengths come from the additional scenes which would have actually added more to the OVA.  That being said, I don't really feel they make up for the storylines that were cut, and I still prefer the original OVA.  It's not horrible, but not really worth the watch unless you want to see the additional scenes I'm referring to, and only after you've seen the OVA.  5/10.

[CX]

Armitage: Duel Matrix
(2002 movie)

A direct sequel to the OVA or the compilation movie depending on how you look at it, it also features some celebrity voice talent, including none other than Jar-Jar Binks.  And no, I'm not kidding.

Just as with the first movie, the plot deals with androids and the people who made them.  In this case the androids look like Armitage and the people who made them all end up being murdered as part of the same type of conspiracy that took place in the OVA.  The difference is, this movie takes place on Earth, where Naomi and Ross, now her husband, have been hiding out with their daughter.  Yeah, that's right, an android somehow had a kid, but then the reproductive capabilities of the new "type III" androids that Naomi is an example of is what caused the conspiracy and systematic killing of those androids in the OVA.  The main difference from the OVA is that Naomi is actually mostly the main character of the movie.

The conspiracy manages to separate Armitage from her husband, who ends up on Mars.  The two of them both work to solve it, which results in plenty of action and drama, especially when two android assassins who look like Armitage are activated and sent after the family.  Armitage then has to deal with her daughter seeing her as the same kind of monster as the assassins for a while, which I guess is technically true except for the whole laughing cruelly and trying to kill them part.

Jar-Jar turns up to lend an unexpected hand after Armitage gets her ass handed to her a couple times, and while initially his motives are somewhat suspect, he ends up being a good guy of sorts and makes it possible for Armitage and her family to defeat the assassins and escape back to Mars.

I'd say the movie is at least as watchable as the original OVA, and I'd give it the same grade of 7/10.

[CX]

Avatar: The Last Airbender
(61 episode series)


This series was surprisingly good, considering the age group it was aimed at.  While early on it was especially obvious that this show was meant more for children than adults, it still managed to have a complex plot that featured an epic journey and a battle between good and evil that might be compared in some ways to the original Star Wars trilogy.  It even features a reluctant hero, Aang, who has a destiny but doesn't want anything to do with it.

Set in an alternate world, there are a select group of humans capable of exerting a kind of telekinetic control over the 4 ancient Greek elements: earth, air, fire and water.  Most of them only have control over one element depending on which nation they belong to, and each nation in turn is named after the element its people can bend.  The only exception is the Avatar, who can bend each element and is reincarnated as a member of each nation in turn every time he or she dies.  The Avatar's function is to keep the balance and peace between the 4 nations.  As it turns out, Aang, the most recent Avatar and a member of the Air Nomads, was frozen during a storm a century before the series takes place and as a result, the Fire Nation has successfully conquered most of the world.

Despite its rather mature story content (such as genocide), the series initially doesn't deal too much with it, focusing instead on immature humor that is obviously aimed at younger viewers.  I found this rather annoying, to the point that I almost gave up on the series fairly early on, but fortunately the series matured a little to something one might expect to be aimed at the teenaged crowd.

While the entire point of the series is that Aang has to eventually fight the evil Fire Lord who is currently leading the Fire Nation in its war against the rest of the world, most of the series actually deals with him learning how to bend each element (despite having access to the memories of the previous Avatars), as well as agonizing over his past actions and that his destiny may force him to kill despite being very much against it.  He's also physically a child, so while he's more mature than any child his age would be, he still wants to be just a child and have fun, but fate keeps robbing him of this.  He meets a lot of people and makes many friends in his search for teachers to help train him to bend each element, including in the Fire Nation itself.  It was actually quite refreshing to have the "bad guy" nation shown to be as much a victim of its leadership as the nations which have been invaded by its armies, with sympathetic characters among them.  Even the persistent villain who is obsessively trying to hunt Aang down throughout most of the series is shown in a sympathetic light at times.

While I really would have preferred that the series would have been aimed at an older demographic and lose a lot of the immature humor it had, it was still a pretty good series, and I would recommend that you watch it if you have the time.  I'm also looking forward to the live-action movie and hoping that the story hasn't been completely ruined in adaptation to screen as so often happens with tv series being turned into movies.  9/10.

[CX]

Baccano!
(16 episode series)

This was a strange but very enjoyable series.  It tells the story of a group of immortals and how their lives intersect during the 1920s and '30s... I think.

Set mostly in Depression era New York, the series tends to shift around between time periods and locations quite frequently.  In fact it was at times hard to follow along, but the complex web of a story was interesting enough to make it worth it.  There were gangsters, silly thieves, and a ship full of French immigrants involved, and most of the story revolves around an incident on an express train called The Flying Pussyfoot of all things.  Yeah, I laughed at the name, too.

The characters themselves were very interesting, and while there wasn't a whole lot in terms of development, there also wasn't really any need for traditional character development.  Even some of the villains turned out to be fun to watch, especially the rather insane one who wore white just so the blood of his victims would show up better.  "Thank you, fuck you, the hero has arrived!" – He was definitely a magnificent bastard, and apparently one of the many immortals in this show.

There was a lot of bloody violence, a mystery, and even a little romance, with some of it being rather twisted.  I really don't know how else to describe this show, other than being awesome in an over-the-top action way.  About the only thing I feel the series could have done without was the framing story, which didn't really do much as far as the story went.  Still, this series is well worth the watch, scoring a 9/10.

[CX]

Barefoot Gen
(movie)

This movie was good in a documentary kind of way.  That's basically all it is, narrator and all, detailing the events of the daily lives of one family as they struggled to survive both before and after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.  It focuses on one boy in particular, who was based on an actual survivor.  It tends to come off as a bit of a white guilt movie, mostly because it completely omits the politics of the war.  In fact, the war is only brought up at all in the first part of the movie as the cause for food shortages and the hardships that the boy's family faces.  Any other reason could probably be given for that aspect of it and the story would basically be exactly the same right up to the bombing.

In a lot of ways, this movie comes off as something for a younger crowd, though it deals with mature topics like the effects of radiation poisoning, mass body cremations, the death of the main character's father and younger brother from being burned alive in the collapsed remnants of their house, and the later death of his infant sister of starvation.

This movie is worth a watch, though it wasn't quite what I was expecting for a movie about Hiroshima.  6/10.

[CX]

Battle Angel Alita
(2 episode OVA)

This is a good, but strange and ultimately frustrating anime, frustrating because it's obvious that the story is supposed to continue and in the OVA it simply ends.

Set in a post-apocalyptic future, it seems that both artificial life and cybernetic life are commonplace, even if the slum city that the story is set in.  The "Battle Angel", is actually dug out of a garbage heap and brought back to life and named Alita.  The scientist who does this is actually from the futuristic and very exclusive city which floats above the slum city.  Much like the Star Trek episode, "The Cloud Minders", the labors of the slum city's inhabitants are enjoyed by the inhabitants of the city above, and the slum basically only gets the trash from the city above.

Basically the story is a mystery, about Alita and her origins, as well as the city above.  There's also a mystery in the slum city involving the murder of individuals for their organs.  Alita becomes a bounty hunter in order to solve this mystery, as the slum city has no police force.  Along the way she meets another cyborg and develops feelings for him, though it ends badly.  In the end, she finds out who is actually participating in the murders, but not the real reasons why, and the floating city remains a mystery as well as a long term goal for her to reach.  But then the OVA just ends.

Having read about this OVA in advance, I knew this would happen, because the OVA only covers about the first two issues of the manga (graphic novel) series it is based on.  I would hope for this OVA to either be finished or remade, keeping as faithful to the source as possible.  It's a pretty good OVA and worth a watch, but be aware that the ending leaves you wanting more, but there is no more, unfortunately.  9/10.

[CX]

Black Cat
(24 episode series)

This is one of those series that while somewhat serious, also has quite a bit of comedy mixed in with the drama.  Overall, it is a fairly good mix of both, mainly as a drama with comedy relief.  At times this is taken a bit far, however, mostly having to do with the main character's nickname, the title of this series (wearing a bell around his neck, drinking a lot of milk, etc). 

The storyline is split between two main characters, a "sweeper" named Sven, and a trained assassin named Train.  The series contrasts the two, with Sven being very laid back and down on his luck, and Train being a trained, ruthless, mostly emotionless killing machine.  The series then slowly introduces the secondary characters, including Eve, who is literally an engineered weapon in the form of a pre-teen girl, and Saya, another somewhat more successful sweeper who gets Train to rethink his life through late night visits.  Train and Saya do develop some romantic chemistry, but thanks to a somewhat odd love triangle with another male assassin named Creed, she is murdered.  The resulting antagonism between Train and Creed is both disturbing and interesting, and it kept me watching.

Then there's the storyline with Eve.  Sven saves her from the evil bastards that made her and intended to exploit her as a horrible weapon and teaches her how to be human.  He basically adopts her as a kind of daughter, and after teaming up with Train, she tends to take what Sven taught her and attempts to teach the same lessons to Train.  At times this can me interesting and/or humorous, but as I mentioned before, the connections she makes with Train being a cat tend to take it too far.

The series does kind of mislead, though, as the antagonism between Train and Creed, while taking up most of the series, ends quite a while before the series does.  There's more betrayal to be had, and Train ends up saving the organization he was originally part of, even though they've basically been hunting him down and trying to kill both him and Eve, originally his target they assigned to him.  The series also misleads in its message of not killing others by advocating alternative uses of firearms that quite frankly would probably still result in people getting killed.  But TV shows and movies tend to be like that with firearms, I guess.

I'm still, in some ways, up in the air as to whether I really like this series or not.  It has some good/interesting elements to it, but it also has some rather annoying clichés that would make me hesitate before recommending it to a few of my friends who might be expecting something else.  Still, I think I feel safe giving this series a 7/10.

[CX]

Black Magic M-66
(single episode OVA)

Ah, more androids, and they aren't the focus of the story ... more or less.  In any case, the story actually follows a sexy news reporter, Sybel, who reminds me a little of April from the old Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles show I watched as a kid back in the late '80s and early '90s.  She's arrogant, driven, temperamental, and has to constantly fight off the advances of her co-worker, who is something of a leach with aspirations of his own.  Oh, and she's a hot brunette with short hair. 

In what is basically a fish-out-of-water story, Sybel noses her way into something big and ends up being hunted by both the military and the android killing machines created by some crazy scientist type.  Some mishap occurred in transporting the things, and they end up on the loose, somehow programmed to kill their creator's spoiled granddaughter, though only after they've ripped a grizzly bear and a couple of hikers to shreds, just to show us how dangerous and indiscriminate they are.  Sybel, being the just caring enough person that she is, takes it upon herself to break free of military custody, during an attack by the killing machines no less, so she can personally save the scientist's granddaughter.

Thankfully this movie wasn't completely horribly clichéd, so the soldiers weren't all evil, even if they weren't real big on the freedom of the press, and actually catch on to the fact Sybel is trying to save the same person they are, and she basically ends up completely forgiven for nosing in on their big state secret.  The end credits actually show us some mildly amusing snippets from her continued exploits, and let's just say that she doesn't change a bit.

Hmmm...  How to put this?  Well, this movie didn't suck.  The plot was straightforward, there weren't any hugely annoying and obvious political messages to ruin things, and the main character was an interesting if not really what a viewer could really entirely sympathize with.  I'd call her a chaotic neutral anti-hero ... maybe.  Yeah, there were some clichés, and really not all of the movie makes sense, but it was still fun to watch.  7/10.

[Bad Car Advice]

For Baccano!: I think you mixed up Claire Stanfield and Ladd Russo.  Also, neither of those two were immortal.

[CX]

If he wasn't, then they gave some very strong indications that he was toward the end of the series.

[Bad Car Advice]

If he wasn't, then they gave some very strong indications that he was toward the end of the series.

Stanfield isn't immortal, but he does live to be pretty old and still capable of taking down a ship like a pirate at the age of 90-something.  (At least, that's what happens in the novel.)

[CX]

These may be subtly more easy to keep track of if each review was a single post.

You sure seem to find a lot of non-winners out there.  Anything you WOULD recommend?

Aside from the ones I posted before my first review, Outlaw Star and Canaan.

My bad, I did the list in a few other forums but not here:

As for my favorites/recommendations:

• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
• Cowboy Bebop
• Last Exile
• Desert Punk
• Black Lagoon
• The Irresponsible Captain Tyler
• Golden Boy

[CX]

Blassreiter
(24 episode series)

Set in a future Germany, this series both entertained and annoyed me, mostly because of the anti-US slant that turns up late in the series, and because of how annoying some of the characters could be, not to mention some of the clichés that reared their ugly heads.

In a problem that is entirely unique to Germany, human bodies have started coming back to life as these strange monsters that are really hard to kill, have devastating attacks, and apparently just appeared out of no where.  Then, just as icing on the cake, most of the victims tend to come back to life as these monsters themselves, sort of like really angry and fast zombies that can blend with machinery to become even worse monsters.  Their origin is finally explained, and isn't exactly a huge surprise thanks to the many hints dropped from the beginning of the series.

The story focuses mostly on one team of elite police, the Xenogenesis Assault Team, which actually reminds me a bit of FUNERAL from Argento Soma in the type of team members present.  As it turns out, one of their number, Hermann, has a friend who is infected and becomes one of these monsters, but to an extent he can control it and he retains his humanity.  This mostly has to do with the manner in which he was infected, which leads into what becomes the main plot of the series.  At first, it seems like this Gerd guy is going to become something like a Batman figure in that while he continually fights the good fight against the monsters, only a few people (and later only his friend) stick up for him and most regard him as simply another monster.

Well, fooled me.  As it turns out, that wasn't the case, and it only set things up for the main plotline, which is of mysterious figures from the past of yet another anti-hero character plotting to force their brand of evolution on humanity.  We eventually learn the past of this anti-hero, Joseph, and through that the solution to the big mystery that's been dragged along since the beginning of the series.  Then, like Argento Soma, there's a betrayal from within the team, but the difference is that here the betrayer never redeems themselves and most of the team dies, and the storyline shifts to follow formerly secondary characters accordingly. 

Then towards the end, the US bullies the UN into letting it unleash nuclear armageddon on Germany in order to prevent the spread of the monsters to the rest of the world.  Oh yeah, and the Knights Templar make an appearance and turn out to not be that much better, except for a few people who mostly all die saving the day.

At times this series grew quite tiresome, either from slow pacing or from the anti-US bullshit, but I guess overall I don’t regret watching it.  It is another series that could have gotten to the point more quickly, but it's still okay.  I'd say it's about 5/10.

[CX]

Blood: The Last Vampire
(2000 movie)

It's safe to say that while I liked this movie, it was also somewhat lacking in story development.  We're very abruptly introduced to the story, and the pace never really slowed down enough for me to absorb as much of it as I would have liked.  We're introduced to the characters very quickly, though the only really important one is Saya, who her handler David describes as "the last original".  He and another character named Lewis are apparently part of an organization called Red Shield, which is charged with battling these bat-like demon creatures referred to as chiropterans.  We're never informed of the origin of these creatures, who or what exactly Saya is, or how Red Shield is able to cover things up so completely despite so much evidence from the various battles that take place.

Movies like this tend to give us an "ordinary" person to sympathize with, and this is no exception.  In this case, it's a plump American woman who is the school nurse at the high school on Yanato Air Base in Tokyo.  She's actually quite annoying, and a pretty negative stereotype of Americans.  Saya has to repeatedly save her, though at one point she seems to lament not being able to kill her.

Saya herself seems to be a vampire, but she doesn't seem to be affected by any of the stereotypical things associated as weaknesses for vampires, and we never see her drink blood.  The title actually seems to have to do with the method Saya employs to kill the chiropterans, which is the only way to kill them, through a single blow that causes massive blood loss.  Saya herself is somewhat difficult to sympathize with as a character due to her temperamental and abrupt nature, but she definitely kicks plenty of ass.

Overall I'd say that this was an enjoyable movie, though somewhat short.  It asks a lot of questions without really answering any of them, and while I kind of like that to an extent, in this case I think there were way too many unanswered questions.  It's still worth a watch though, earning a solid 7/10.

[CX]

Blood: The Last Vampire
(2009 live-action movie)

Based on the animated movie, the live action version adds a lot to it, which in the end I feel improves it a great deal.  A lot of the mystery is lost, which may be why a lot of fans of the original may react so negatively to it, but the story is much more fleshed out to the benefit of the movie, I feel.

Some of the differences are that instead of a school nurse, we instead have Saya rescuing the daughter of Yanato's commander, both from the chiropterans and from rogue elements of Red Shield.  David also doesn't play as big of a role as he did in the original, and Lewis either changed races or was omitted and replaced by another character.  And rather than just a few chiropterans, there's practically an army of them that has infiltrated quite a bit of both Yanato Air Base and Japan in general, and there are also some main antagonists for us to focus on.

More or less, it's the same story of Saya (who's now officially a blood-drinker), working with Red Shield to kill chiropterans, and at one point infiltrating the high school on Yanato Air Base to do so.  From there it leads into a larger story than the anime movie, and while the resolution isn't all that clear, it at least felt like I’d seen an entire movie rather than just half of it.  There are still some absurd parts, the worst offender being the point that Saya fights a massive crowd of chiropterans by herself, rather like a certain scene in Kill Bill that was played for humor.

I'd recommend this movie, but while you could enjoy this movie without seeing the original, I would suggest that you do what the original first, if nothing else to compare them so you can make up your own mind about them and how they compare to one another.  8/10.

[CX]

Blood+
(50 episode series)

This series is a reboot/remaining of the original movie, giving us a much more epic and complex story.  This time, all of humanity is at risk, and our only hope is a (seemingly) teenaged girl who is having memory and post traumatic stress issues from something horrible we see her do in the opening of the first episode.

Saya is shown as being a "normal" high school student, and part of an adopted family, but naturally things come along and ruin that for her.  Of course all along, there have are hints that Saya is anything but normal, but it takes an attack from a chiropteran and the return of her chevalier, Haji, to bring out the killing machine that she really is.  She ends up struggling to remember her past and trying to deal with what she is, and while that could be somewhat dramatic, I tend to think it was drawn out and that it tended to happen at times that made it really, really annoying.  In fact, Saya seemed pretty useless for about the first half of the series.

The series also changes a few other things up, like giving Saya a sister named Diva, whose blood is as toxic to Saya and any chiropterans (which chevalier's and even Saya and Diva are also) and vice versa.  In fact, Saya's blood is the only way to kill the bat-like creatures that Red Shield has been fighting for over a century, which was usually complicated by the fact Saya is only active for a few years and goes into hibernation for something like 30 years.  During the series, the complication is that Saya doesn't remember her past and freaks out at the changes that happen to her when she cuts her finger or thumb on her special sword and kills chiropterans.

Actually the connection with blood was done pretty well, not only in making it the only weapon against Diva's chiropterans, but also in the connection between Saya and Diva, and all of the chiropterans.  The series was pretty well done, and kept a fairly good pace, all while teasing us with Saya's past and how the situation with the chiropterans started.  It's pretty messed up, actually, and no one is really clean, so to speak.

I will say, though, that it seems like someone at Production I.G seems to have an anti-US axe to grind.  While it's ironic, seeing as most of the good guys surrounding Saya, including her adoptive father, are all Americans, this series does pretty much everything it can to paint the US military and US government as evil.  There are even a couple characters that turn up to conspire with Diva's faction who very strongly resemble Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice.  I'm almost surprised Bush didn't get the same treatment, seeing as in some cases the Rumsfeld character was making statements and taking actions which would have been more appropriate for the President anyway.

That aside, the series was pretty good.  It wasn't as good as Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which was also made by Production I.G, but it was still worth the watch.  I'd rate it a 7/10.

[CX]

Blue Submarine No. 6
(4 episode OVA)

This was an interesting take on the whole post-apocalyptic type of story, even with the annoying environment message.  Essentially, some Dr. Moreau type has gone nuts and somehow not only managed to flood most of Earth's surface by creating a polar shift, killing a good chunk of the population, but he's created an army (navy?) of intelligent human/animal hybrids to kill as many humans as possible.  He later denies that was the purpose, but his motivations are rather difficult to understand anyway.  Apparently he hatched his evil secret plan after losing his family in an ethnic cleansing while he was off figuring out how to create more food for the world's population.

In the meantime, the world's surviving navies have banded together and formed "Blue Fleet", a futuristic submarine force, of which Blue Submarine No. 6 is a part of.  It's a little frustrating that they didn't give the sub its own name, as most of the other subs in the fleet do have their own names, but that doesn't really affect the story.  The fleet continues to fight the water-borne forces of Dr. Moreau – I mean Zorndyke, losing many of its number along the way.

Due to these massive loses and an acceleration detected in Earth's polar shift, Blue Fleet plans to attack the tropical Antarctic (yeah, really) stronghold of Dr. Zorndyke in an effort to break the will of his creations to fight.  Dr. Zorndyke interrupts their little briefing and lets them know that he's on to them, right before the massive phantom ship that has been systematically wiping out Blue Fleet turns up at their base to kill them all.

Blue Sub 6  had picked up a former crew member, Tetsu in the first episode, and during one of these fights, he, for no real reason, takes pity on the pilot of one of the machines that was moments ago trying to kill him and lets her go (kind of a fish girl/mermaid I guess).  This comes into play as the Blue Fleet base is destroyed and he is shipwrecked in the process of allowing Blue Sub 6 to escape, as he is in turn rescued by the creepy mermaid he had returned to the water early in the OVA.  While I'm glad they never went the romance route, it would have been interesting to have the two develop more of a friendship, but sadly it didn't come to much, other than this mermaid changing her way of thinking and not seeing humans has her enemy.

What does come of it, and from the help of another friend who has been turned into a sea creature by Zornberg, is that Tetsu is able to infiltrate Zorndyke's "base" and kill him, thus preventing the nuclear strike that was Blue Fleet's original plan, which actually would have finally brought on the end of humanity through the pole shift.  The moral of the story is supposed to be that we should try to get along instead of fighting each other, but it's left somewhat ambiguous as to whether Zorndyke's creations will make an effort to get along with humans or vice versa.

Made by the same studio that would go on to make Last Exile, some of the character designs look rather familiar.  There's even a short-haired tomboy, Kino, who is unfortunately more annoying than anything.  She's moody, unreasonable, and cries a lot, which kind of contrasts the professional officer image they initially tried to sell her as in the beginning of the OVA.   Most of the other characters we meet are interesting enough, though I have to say that the main fish creatures manning the phantom ship (a battleship/whale combination) were a bit too cartoonish for my taste.  The captain of Blue Sub 6 was likable, and actually reminded me a bit of a Star Trek captain, which is probably what they were going for anyway, including with the look of Blue Sub 6 herself (not to mention a Scottish chief engineer).

While an okay anime, this probably isn't what fans of submarine movies would like, simply because it doesn't have much of that feel, which is very firmly in the sci-fi side of things.  I kind of wished that they'd gone more that route, and gotten a more appropriate soundtrack, for that matter.  Other than that, it was okay, so it might be worth checking out.  7/10.

[CX]

Boogiepop Phantom
(12 episode series)

While Baccano! managed to pull off the ADD editing somehow, this series somehow made all the skipping around a bit annoying.  It also tended to skip around in time and location, though each episode was basically its own self-contained story.  Each tended to intersect with more than one other, however, so it could get a bit confusing to follow.  There were also so many different characters that it became hard to remember their names, at least, to even really see how much each storyline might intersect with another.  It also might have helped if I'd understood what was going on or what the show was even really about. 

The title character basically goes around and disappears various characters that all have special powers of some kind, usually after chastising them for the use of those powers.  She alternatively refers to herself as Death, and as "saving" the people she makes disappear, so it's hard to tell if she's a villain or not.  I normally like ambiguity, but this was just confusing.  I guess making them disappear into thin air (or cocooning them as is revealed close to the end) is somewhat better than the obviously evil "composite" humans who literally ate people who were supposed to represent evolution within the human species.  The big evil organization they belonged to apparently controlled everything while actually preferring to just observe, except when it came to preventing change, as in evolution in humans.  That's pretty much all I got out of the series.

I guess if you like having your mind screwed with a bit, this might be worth a watch, but I'm guessing most would simply find this series confusing and hard to follow.  3/10.

[CX]

Burn-Up!
(single episode OVA)

This show was immature and actually a little painful to watch.  It focuses on a mostly female police squad as it investigates a female slavery ring run by some gangster type.  As one might expect, this means some fan service, but while I usually kind of enjoy this kind of thing, it really wasn't worth it to watch this stinker.  The English dub was especially annoying, but having to read the moronic conversation taking place in Japanese didn't improve on anything.  It was just stupid, both the plot and the characters.  Don't waste your time with this one.  0/10.