Toaru Hikuushi is more tortoise than hare, but we all know who won that race. After a Fall season that had a decidedly retro feel to it, we haven’t too much this season that evokes that old-school feel – it’s mostly been an unambitious sampler platter featuring the various flavors […] Read more
Out of the frying pan, into the fire. So much for the last six episodes of Kingdom being a kind of postscript or epilogue – the peacetime focus lasted all of half an episode, and then it was right back into battle again. That said, the game was definitely changed […] Read more
Four weeks in, some trends are starting to emerge with Space Dandy. For those that care about such things, Space Dandy seems to have been better received in the U.S. than in Japan – which is not surprising given how much backlash the show got in advance in Japan for […] Read more
That was simply outstanding, start-to-finish. Space Dandy’s second episode has competition now for the best by any new series this season, as BONES stablemate Noragami delivers easily its best ep yet (and the first three were darn good). I’ve noted the consistency this series has shown in its first three […] Read more
Well, I guess I put off watching it as long as possible. This is going to be a short one. I think I said pretty much everything I had to say about this OVA series and its place in the Rurouni Kenshin canon when I reviewed the first one, and […] Read more
I must confess that the second episode of Kami-sama no Memo-cho didn’t interest me as much as the first one did. It seemed to lack a certain snap that the premiere had, somehow – the entire episode had a more generic feel to it, and I found myself drifting during […] Read more
Well, I suppose we were due for something of a down episode with this series. And while we got one, relatively speaking, I think that’s as much a credit to the consistency of the series as an indictment of the episode itself. There wasn’t much new revealed this week, as […] Read more
The trial by fire continues. There’s a sort of watershed feel to this episode of Diamond no Ace for me. All of the pieces (barring unforeseen circumstances) for the first major component of the story are in place – the varsity team has been selected, the training camp is over, […] Read more
What do you know, we have another “good news, bad news” situation this week – but Uchuu Kyoudai has completely flipped them around this time. Sometimes it makes sense to start a post by referencing the last one – specifically, the very end of it: This is an interesting dilemma […] Read more
More than almost any anime, Hoozuki no Reitetsu reminds me how much I still don’t understand about Japanese culture. A funny thing happened on the way to this series being hopelessly obscure – “so far under the radar it might end up on a milk carton”, as I put it […] Read more