Archive for the 'Anime' Category
Yuri-fix: Strawberry Panic 02
You may have been fooled by my previous post into thinking that Strawberry Panic is about the contrived relationships between adolescent school girls. In fact, this series is about rainbows. Specifically: one girl’s illicit love for rainbows.
Yuri-fix: Strawberry Panic 01
I’m easily manipulated so the promise of an schoolgirl yuri bonanza that is (apparently) Strawberry Panic is hard to pass up. I already know that it’s not going to contain the top-heavy, titilation of Ikkitousen (all iterations) or the gender-bending bizarreness of Simoun, but agressive lesbians are hard to come by nowadays (ah Shizuru, your stalker tendencies are sorely missed).
It starts rather inauspiciously with a girl talking to trees; apparently her hair-colour is indicative of her vision as she muses on how the trees no longer contain any colour. This does not bode well for her pilot training. (more…)
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
How would a studio approach a manga known for its wordplay and focusing on a depressively suicidal teacher, a manga that was notoriously (even infamously) claimed to be untranslatable? Surely even SHAFT, known for their off-the-wall adaptations of other, more straightforward manga such as Pani Poni and Negima, could manage such a feat? They did, and with such reckless disregard for obstacles such as plot, continuity and sanity; Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is bizarre, satirical, cynical and rambunctious and solidifies SHAFT as a skilled and confident studio. (more…)
Minami-ke
Having a character in a series attempt to win an argument using squirrels seems like it would go down well around these parts; thankfully squirrel related tomfoolery is not all Minami-ke has to offer as it manages to break out of its well trodden, all-girl-school-comedy premise and develop into a raucous look at the life of a family of oddities and the selection of characters which get pulled into their orbit. (more…)
ef - a tale of memories
Given such an auspicious and confusing opening three episodes, it would have been easy for ef to fall into obscurity and abstraction with deep symbolism and obscured plot; thankfully this is not the case and the series manages to make the absurdly stylistic symbolism part of itself while still a sometimes unique, not wholly original story which ends well at a petite twelve episodes. (more…)
3 Episode Taste Test: You’re Under Arrest - Full Throttle
Coming from a franchise that started in 1989 and comprises seven manga volumes, three separate sets of OVAs, a movie and two extended TV shows, it would be easy for Full Throttle to be weighed down by a lot of baggage that has gone before it. Thankfully this isn’t the case and, while the minutiae of ongoing relationships is perhaps lost, the core dynamic between the two female traffic officers and their outlandish adventures takes centre stage. (more…)
