Month: January 2012

Aquarion Evol: It’s 12,000 years after a previous round of warfare, and the ‘Aquaria’ robots are manned by pairs of boys, or pairs of girls, against the threat of invasion. The boys and girls are forbidden to meet. An attack from another dimension, plus a character who is able to fly, scramble things up, with the boys and girls pairing up and the Aquaria linking with a spacecraft to make one giant robot.
The animation is impressive, with complex backgrounds, and elaborate robots flying busily about, but the spiritual hocus-pocus and suggestive ‘couplings’ are adolescent and not my cup of tea. Definitely of the ‘magical super-robot’ genre. 2/5

Brave 10: In 17th century Japan, pretty priestess Isanami flees a massacre at her temple. She asks ronin Saizo Kikagure to help her, but he is reluctant to do more than fight off an attacker who assaults the pair of them. She seeks the help of lord Sanada Yukimura, but he also is unwilling to help till he sees the power of the jewel that Isanami wears.
Despite the dark events, the overall tone is humorous, with some sexy scenes. There will clearly be a lot of battling between super-powered ninja, but while this could be entertaining, my expectations are not high. For one thing, Isanami looks like she escaped from some entirely different anime series. 3/5

Inu x Boku SS: Ririchiyo, a daughter of the powerful Shirakiin family, is moving into the security-conscious Maison de Ayakashi apartment complex. Her motive is that she wants to be alone while she comes to terms with her character: awkward and lacking in self-confidence after being bullied at school, she has a tendency to be aloof and unpleasant with people rather than let them get close to her. However, on moving in, she finds that somebody has appointed for her a personal Secret Service bodyguard, the overly attentive and over-helpful Soushi, an attractive young man with mis-matched eyes, who declares that he wants to be her dog, and offers to die when she tries to dismiss him. Eventually, she tells him that since he’s going to ignore what she says, he can do as he pleases. This could be a mistake…
An ordinary burglar breaks into the complex, and it at this point that we discover that both Ririchiyo and the bodyguards are more than they seemed…
This is the most psychologically interesting of all the new season anime so far, as Ririchiyo’s character is clearly laid out – she is a self-aware tsundere who doesn’t want to be one. Some of us will identify with her difficulties in dealing with others. There is also a slightly stock romantic situation, and some other baubles thrown in to increase the appeal to fans: sexy views of Ririchiyo, and there’s a comic lesbian guard character. There’s considerable potential here, but it remains to be seen how well the series will exploit it. 4/5

Thermae Romae: An ancient Roman is at the public baths when he slips down a time-hole to a more recent Japanese public baths. He doesn’t quite realise what has happened to him, and thinks he has surfaced in the slave baths, but he likes what he sees, and also the refreshments. When he regains consciousness in Rome, his companions tell him he almost drowned. However, he opens a new baths, with pictures and advertisements, and bottled drinks, with great success. This is an amusing sketch, but the heart sinks at the thought of watching a whole season of it. 2/5

I have viewed first episodes of most of the new TV anime in the 2012 Winter season.
New Prince of Tennis: A distinctly shounen sports anime. In the first episode, 50 junior high school players are invited to an elite tennis academy, and have to prove themselves against older players. Full of fantastic tennis feats and tough-guy posturing, this isn’t bad but it’s not really my kind of thing. 3/5
Amagami SS+ A school anime, and sequel to the Amagami SS series and game. I didn’t see the earlier show, but this looks intriguing. Tsukasa Ayatsuji is a smart and pushy young miss who will clearly go far in adult life. She is standing for President of the student body and means to win. Her boyfriend is the wimpy Juinichi. A new character, Noriko Kurosawa, is a rival for President. Both girls nominate Juinichi for vice-president without telling him. After a straw poll is rigged, Ayatsuji steps up her campaign, but Kurosawa invites Juinichi to a meeting (he spinelessly agrees) and snogs him in an effort to de-rail Ayatsuji’s campaign. Clearly school elections are serious business 🙂 4/5
Kill Me Baby: An anime adaption of 4-panel gag manga revolving around an airheaded, but otherwise ordinary high school girl, who befriends an assassin classmate. Not all that funny, and each episode is made up of unrelated short gags, which doesn’t work too well. 2/5
Recorder and Randsell: An anime about two school students, one of whom is of elementary school age and but looks like an adult man, the other being a senior high school girl but looking like a little kid. In the first episode the guy is arrested as a suspected child molester after over-enthusiastically greeting one of his little classmates. The purpose of this anime seem to be to set up child-molesting jokes like this. Not very funny and rather slimy. 1/5
Highschool DXD: The hero, Issei Hyoudou, is a dim-witted, lecherous second-year high school student. A cute girl chats him up, but on his first date ever, she transforms into a devil and kills him. Issei is revived and reincarnated as a devil, and from that day onwards, he serves as an underling of red-haired Riasu, a high-level devil who is also the prettiest girl in the school. This is rather dire, and its main excuse for existing is to provide views of lots of underwear and semi-nudity. 1/5
Senki Zesshou Symphogear: An original anime (i.e. not an adaptation). Another show in which pop music is used to battle against alien invaders. Two girls in a top vocal unit named Zweiwing fight to save humanity against an alien threat known as “Noise.” The show starts with a cemetery scene and then jumps to a concert interrupted by an alien attack. The singers transform and mount a counter-attack. One has to say that this anime looks good, and the alien attack, which turns people to dust, looks suitably scary. However it’s hard to suspend one’s disbelief about an idea that wasn’t too convincing when first used in “Macross”. The action is also so busy that one is left unsure which of the principal characters is supposed to be dead. 2/5
Area no Kishi (The Knight in the Area): A soccer anime, focusing on the high school hero’s relationship with his aloof big brother, who is an international youth soccer star. A football-playing girl from their past joins the school. Our hero has been acting as club manager, but Big Bro leans heavily on him to play again. This isn’t bad, and could be interesting even if you aren’t into soccer. But ‘Cross Game’ it’s not. 3/5
Bodaceous Space Pirates: Before seeing this, I took a very negative view of it: there’s nothing funny about ‘pirates’ when one’s fellow-countrymen are hijacked by Somali thugs, and I hate that lazy branding of sticking on a tricorn hat, a skull and crossbones and a 18th century jacket to associate with 18th-century piracy that wasn’t very romantic in the first place.  On the other hand, in the first episode we see our perky heroine expertly landing a space-ship belonging to the ‘yacht club’, waitressing at the family cafe, learning that her absent dad was a licenced space privateer, and evading some Men in Black who mean her no good. All good harmless fun. 3.5/5
Nisemonogatari: The sequel to “Bakemonogatari’. In the first episode, the hero Koyomi has been tied up and is beng tormented by his girlfriend for no evident reason. In other scenes, he verbally spars with one of his sisters, and hassles that irritating elementary schoolgirl. This episode has the same clever, spiky dialogue and odd or mildly pervy scenes as the previous series, but so far one feels that it’s merely re-introducing the characters.  3.5/5
Zero no Tsukaima F: This is a particularly boring swords-and sorcery by numbers show. It’s the Fourth such series, so unless you saw and liked the previous ones, you should avoid this at all costs. 1/5
Poyopoyo Kansatsu Nikki:An ultra- short episode about a spherically fat cat that insinuates itself into a family and proves very adept at detecting food, knocking things over and generally being annoying. Not particularly funny. 2/5
Rinne no Lagrange- Flower Declaration: Perky heroine Madoka rescues somebody from drowning while still on her way from school, and manages to lose her school uniform in the process. During the day we establish that she’s popular and an ace athlete as well. A mysterious girl in a rather brief semi-uniform turns up and returns Madoka’s clothes, before asking her if she has ever piloted a robot. The mysterious secret base just happens to be nearby, Madoka is shown a shiny robot which just happens to respond to her touch, an alien attack just happens to hit this very area a few minutes later, Madoka of course agrees to get in the robot and pilot it, and and of course she instinctively knows how to operate the thing and defeat her opponent.  This anime looks and sounds great, and the sea-side scenes are beautiful. Madoka is an appealing heroine. On the other hand the scenario of schoolgirl robot pilot fights to save the world is a clunker; it’s been done many times before, and generally with greater finesse than this. 3/5
Ano Natsu de Matteru: A school romantic comedy in which the normal hero, Kirishima Kaito, fools about with his movie camera, and is persuaded by his friends that he should make some sort of film. His eye is caught by mysterious red-head Ichika, who later turns out to be an alien. Ichika insinuates herself into Kaito’s house, and while semi-wrapped in a towel is caught giving Kaito some alien first-aid when Kaito’s older sister and the girl who has a crush on him turn up. Awkward! It’s all quite pleasant but the first half of the episode was a bit dull. 3/5
Another: A creepy drama about a school where a girl called Misaki died 26 years ago, and the students acted as though she was still alive. Student Koichi Sakakibara transfers to the same classroom, and encounters a girl with an eye-patch called Misaki Mei whom other people maybe can’t see. It’s quite well done and the atmosphere, animation and music all seem to be of a piece. 4/5
Daily Lives of High School Boys: Exactly as the title says, three bored and sex-obsessed high school boys hang out together and mess around while bemoaning their lack of success with girls. The first episode has four or so self-contained comedy sketches. Often, while they try to be rational, stupidity is multiplied by three. They role-play talking to a girl, and when they visit one boy and find some of his sister’s clothes, they dare each other to try them on, but only one falls for it, with embarrassing results. When one of them reads a book by the river bank, a literary-minded girl turns up, but their encounter is a failure. While the show is not visually interesting, the comedy-sketch format works well. 3/5
Listen to me girls, I’m your father: First-year university student Segawa Yuuta has just met a busty girl who is interested in him, when he rather reluctantly obeys a summons from his married sister to look after her three daughters for a few days. The older two daughters are children from the husband’s previous marriage. At this point the show starts to look a bit slimy as there is  fan-service involving Yuuta and his young (but actually un-related by blood) nieces. One’s anxiety is not dispelled by the news that the same production people also did the steamy incestuous Yosuga no Sora. It’s only a mild spoiler to disclose that Yuuta will find himself looking after the girls permanently. 2/5

Junkers Come Here, 100 mins, 1994, dir. Junichi Sato, prod. Bandai.
Eleven-year-old Hiromi is a Japanese schoolgirl from a well-to-do Japanese family. She lives in an upmarket home, complete with housekeeper and a live-in tutor. Her parents, a director of commercials and a top executive, work long hours and are often absent. Hiromi’s most constant companion is a cute schnauzer dog called Junkers, whom she thinks can talk to her. Her parents’ marriage is breaking down because they rarely see each other. Both of them think that Hiromi, a smart and precocious child, will cope with this well, but only Junkers and the tutor can see how lonely and upset Hiromi is.
This much overlooked movie is some distance in style from the usual anime comedy. It gently explores the effect of parental absence from the child’s point of view. The tutor finds himself acting as a substitute Dad, while also being an object of love interest for the maid. It’s attractively animated and the script is good, the direction giving it more of a live-action feel than is common in anime. It achieves the rare feat of being funny, while also dealing seriously with serious matters. The animation is attractive and the character designs are Oriental, which makes a refreshing change from the big-eyes so prevalent in anime. Far more than just another anime for anime fans, this is a movie that any parents should watch with their kids. The visuals too are as good as anything from the Studio Ghibli stable. Highly recommended.