Category Archives: Review

A Silent Voice, Volume 1 – Review

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And the manga reviews continue, this time with Oh God This Is So Uncomfortable Why Am I Reading This Why Do I Like Drama What Is Wrong With Me. A Silent Voice was one of the most teeth-clenchingly painful reads I’ve encountered lately, but that was only true because the story was told so damn well. The very strong dialogue paints characters in immediately humanizing strokes, making it all the more painful when awful stuff happens to them. Piercing character drama, why can’t I quit you.

You can check out my review over at ANN, or my chapter notes below!

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Saekano – Review

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Yep, there was actually a reason I was going back and watching Saekano. REVIEW TIME! If you’ve been checking my week in review posts, you’ll know I haven’t been so hot on the show, and that carries through to the review. Saekano takes elements from a bunch of things I like (Genshiken, Monogatari, TWGOK), but the overall package comes across as just way too lightly felt, scattershot, and indulgent to really drive at the humor and humanity any of those shows find in their weirdo characters. You could construct a good show out of Saekano’s pieces, but Saekano is not that show.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or run through my consistently frustrated episode notes below!

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Fragments of Horror – Review

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I reviewed some Junji Ito this week, his first horror stories in a fair number of years. And that kind of shows in the result – Ito’s work has always been strange, and often relied on horror ideas that other people wouldn’t necessarily find horrifying, but some of these stories are just flat bad. There are also some real hits though, and his visual style remains uniquely creepy throughout, so overall I had a good time with this collection. Manga short story collections are fun – I’d dearly love to get some Nickelodeon over here to review, but I’m sure the chances of that are basically next to nothing.

You can check out my full review over at ANN!

Fragments of Horror

A Bride’s Story, Volume 4 – Review

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Time for A Bride’s Story! ANN already had reviews for the first three volumes of this one, so I’m picking up where Rebecca left off. Volume four is all about the twins Laila and Leily, whose irrepressible scampishness makes this the most comedy-heavy volume yet. That means Kaoru Mori doesn’t get to indulge in quite as many breathtaking full-page spreads as usual, but the volume’s still a lot of fun. A Bride’s Story is good, you should read A Bride’s Story.

You can check out my full review here!

A Bride's Story

Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 – Review

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Time for another review, and this time we’ve got… a random-ass show from the late ’90s. And boy is this show EVER from the late ’90s. This might the most “from the ’90s” anime I’ve ever witnessed, absolutely dripping with a specific cyberpunk aesthetic, sound, and idea of “cool” that at this point comes across as more quaint than anything else. And as I say in the review, once you get past that, the show really doesn’t give you all that much else to talk about – Bubblegum Crisis is a very simple scifi-action thing full of very simple characters acting out a very simple story. Overall, I’d basically describe it as “harmless enough.”

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or read some of my frankly unnecessary notes below!

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JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders (Egypt Arc) – Review

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And we’re back for the second half of Stardust Crusaders! This one won’t be a huge surprise if you’ve been following my week in review posts – I found SC’s second half to be a huge improvement over the first, and a legitimate return to form for the show overall. Lots of exciting fights with far better narrative composition, some really great visual tricks echoing the style of the first season, and even better music. The last dozen or so episodes of SC in particular were almost all the series at its best, from Pet Shop through Vanilla Ice and on to Dio himself. Egypt Arc has me eagerly awaiting the third season/fourth arc, whenever JoJo returns to us.

You can check out my full JoJo review right here!

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

Turn A Gundam, Part One – Review

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TURN A TURRRRNNNN. TURN A TURRRNNN. Sorry. That ridiculous opening song is has been stuck in my head for weeks.

Anyway! I got to review some good ol’ Gundam this time, and really enjoyed the experience. I’m told Turn A is often regarded as the best (or at least most accessible?) of the central/Tomino Gundam shows, and it certainly does have plenty to recommend itself. A compelling world, an engaging cast of characters, and lots of fun/silly ideas. It’s also marked by some really, deeply weird quirks of storytelling, but I’m told that’s just how Tomino rolls, and I’ve kinda gotten used to it. The weirdness of the telling means this isn’t nearly as emotionally strong of a ride as it could be, but it’s still a very enjoyable one.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episodic notes below!

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Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer, Vol. 5-6 – Review

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Back to the manga front, with some more Biscuit Hammer. This story is just getting consistently better at this point, with the story and characters gaining complexity and poignancy as everyone moves towards the endgame. The art is also improving, though it’s still a mix of highlights and lowlights – some of the shots of the horse in particular made me kinda wince. If you can’t draw a horse, it is pretty ambitious to make a Horse Knight one of the main characters of your story. But that’s beside the point – this story is great, and you should buy it. I hear the manga hasn’t been a success for Seven Seas, which is a shame, because they really deserve to be lauded for bringing this one over.

Anyway. Here’s my full review over at ANN, and you can check out my chapter notes below!

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Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro – Review

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Diving deep for another review, this time covering Miyazaki’s very first film. This was both a fun artifact and a really entertaining film, and seemed particularly relevant since I’m just now nearing the end of The Anime Machine, which is deeply interested in Miyazaki’s evolving feelings on conflict, gender, and technology. Castle of Cagliostro fits neatly into the old side of these ambiguous themes, totally reveling in explosions and devices and masculine heroism, but it’s still rich with Miyazaki-isms, from the kinetic direction to the reveling in a kind of timeless, faux-medieval European aesthetic. And also it has a bunch of sweet chase scenes. Recommended!

Here’s my full review at ANN, and you can check out my notes below!

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Ping Pong the Animation – Review

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Aaand we’re back to the full lengths, with a review of one of the best shows of the past few years: Ping Pong the Animation. Ping Pong is a stellar achievement in basically all categories, and will likely be one of my gateway recommendations for many years to come. I actually wrote an essay about the show back when it aired, so I got to double-dip on this one, covering themes specifically then and the whole package this time. More writing about Kong can only be a good thing.

You can check out my full review over at ANN.

I didn’t take notes on this one, since I’d already watched it twice before my review, but I did write episodic posts about it back when it aired, so there’s a whole bunch of Ping Pong content to go around!

Ping Pong