I have to admit, I did not watch the two live-action Zeiram movies. I saw a clip or two (I used one of them) and read a summary on Wikipedia. Because of this, I approached Iria: Zeiram the Animation not as a prequel to the movies, but as a distillation of elements from the movies, an anime that stands on its own. But it's not a great anime on its own, or at all, really. It's not truly awful, but there are so many other anime out there worth your time more than this one. Some of the plot beats are head scratching, to say the least.

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I love the Lupin III franchise, but there is a lot of crap in it. And the crappy parts range from dull and lifeless to actively painful, and all shades in between. Legend of the Gold of Babylon was interestingly bad, which may or may not fall on the spectrum of crap (it may just be an exception). Farewell to Nostradamus, on the other hand, is the kind of terrible that you can't really say that much about. It's just a very dull, inert movie that feels like Lupin III in automatic mode. There's nothing special about it whatsoever, aside from being a theatrical feature.

Excel Saga is the anime that I immediately think of when somebody says "anime comedy". It could've been FLCL, which I think is better, but FLCL isn't as gut-bustingly hilarious, so much as it is contemplative with a little zaniness baked in. Excel Saga is pure comedy, through and through, and I recall the hype around it on the original Otaku Revolution message board. I didn't see it until ADV licensed it, and I still have the DVD singles that I collected over time. Excel Saga may not be up there among my top 20 anime, but it's always a treat to revisit.

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Black Jack is glorious bullshit. It's like watching the medical version of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure sometimes. You think you have a good grasp of the real life medical information being relayed, everything seems pretty grounded, if not always believable (just look at Pinoko), but then some wild nonsense like a talking thousands year old tree and a leaf boy are thrown at you and you're left wondering what Osamu Tezuka, or Osamu Dezaki, were smoking that lead them to these plot beats. This is why I watch two episodes at a time, to get a decent sampling of both the realistic and fanciful, and still have episodes left for later.

In case you were wondering, my review of the first movie is here

While not holding up entirely, Trigun is, overall, a pretty fun television series that can proudly stand apart from the manga. There are definitely episodes that are significantly better than others, but you can find that in even the best anime. What I think I like the most about Trigun is that it's a unique experience. I mean, name another anime that's even somewhat like it. I mean, aside from (vaguely) Kenshin, but Trigun is more than just "Kenshin with guns" or "space western Kenshin". I was happy to revisit it.

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Part two of my look at 2001's Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier involves looking at some of the non-Black Ghost related storylines in the series. There's the mythology arc with the cyborgs fashioned after Greek gods, the two parter with the extraterrestrials/otherdimensionals, and there's the unfinished final arc where the cyborgs get an upgrade. But there are also one-off episodes that I thought were worth highlighting here, like the one where 009 experiences time different because his Accelerator Mode is stuck (that might be my favorite episode).

It's been a while, huh? We're all still feeling the hurt from last year, aren't we, and yet here we are? As usual, I took January off to cool my jets, but I'm back for another year of the plucky little anime review show that can... well, can't, really, but tries anyway.

First up? A look at the 2001 anime TV series Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier. It's a 51 episode series about cyborgs with different abilities fighting... well, mostly other cyborgs with different abilities. It's like Kakaider, but a little less up its own ass.

2020 was a horrific year. The year saw a pandemic, social strife, and an election that seems to still linger (for some reason). We lost Kobe Bryant and Alex Trebek, and many of us lost people even closer. So it feels a bit frivolous to care so much about a silly little anime review show that few people even watch to begin with. The weight of this year is heavy. But maybe that's why we need some lighthearted frivolity now and then.

Alright, let me get this out of the way. The marketing surrounding this kit is pure bullshit. Take everything you’ve heard about this being the ‘next evolution of Perfect Grade kits’ and toss it out the window. What it really is a nice PG RX-78-2 2.0 release. It’s will built, well designed, and very accessible for folks who haven’t built a Perfect Grade kit yet.

I’m also going to get a bit of a tl;dr at the top of this article which I’ll detail out in a bit…