Review by Matt S. This anime could not have been easy to localise. In fact, I’m surprised that anyone even tried. Bakemonogatari comes to us from Nisio Isin, the young Japanese wordsmith who is rapidly developing a reputation for being something well beyond his peers in the light novel space.…
Read MoreReview by Clark A. In an industry that often produces movies that directly adapt their TV show equivalents, Yu-Gi-Oh! Bonds Beyond Time is ambitious. Originally released in 2010 as an anniversary movie of sorts, it plucks its four protagonists from the franchise’s first three long-running anime spin-offs. That’s a lot…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. The opening chapter, or Collection, of the Robotics;Notes anime was an odd thing. It starts out as a slice of life tale about a couple of school kids who badly want to build robots. It has an unlikeable lead male character in Kaito Yashido, but an…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Berserk’s concluding chapter is horrific, with some of the most sickening gore and sexual violence imagery that you’ll ever see in a mainstream anime work. What’s so fascinating about it is that this extreme imagery is completely within context and the anime would be a lesser…
Read MoreReview by Clark A. Toradora is a romantic comedy with an endgame that is seldom in question after the first fistful of episodes. Against this handicap, the writers managed to tell an intelligent, multifaceted tale that enriches the premise to the point where the outcome will be the last thing…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. If any game deserved to be turned into an anime series, it is Persona 4. And as it it happens, it was turned into an anime, and it’s one of the finest anime ever made. One of the most complex game narratives ever made, Persona 4…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Cardcaptor Sakura: The Movie was originally released in 1999, but it feels so much older than that. In demonstrating just how far animation has come thanks to the increasing role of technology in it, Cardcaptor Sakura feels more like a Disney movie of old than most…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Robotics;Notes goes weird places halfway through its first season. It’s almost like some anime company noticed that the slice of life genre is popular, and decided to trick people into thinking this anime is also an example of slice of life, only to swap over to…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. After watching the movie-length anime, Mardock Scramble: The Third Exhaust, I needed to hit up the Wikipedia in order to understand what happened in the previous “episodes.” This is a complex anime, to be sure, and while I wouldn’t advise anyone to start with this “episode,”…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Back when I was in high school, if the girls’ skirts behaved like they did in Ikki Tousen: Xtreme Xecutor I suspect that the puberty version of me might not have got much study done. Actually, that’s unreasonable. It’s not like I was the best of…
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