Ahhh, tragedy porn. A lot of my favorite anime has tons of melodrama, but when an anime really overdoes it in an annoying, nihilistic (in a negative sense) way, it ceases to be tragedy and starts to be tragedy porn. Casshern Sins is, at the very least, borderline tragedy porn, the way that Now and Then, Here and There was. But unlike NTHT, it doesn't have a lot of redeeming qualities that pushes it out of the mire of wallowing. It's just this endless march into hopelessness. But don't get me wrong, tragedy porn can still be somewhat good. It's just that Casshern Sins is just kind of "eh"/okay, at best.

What, me, reviewing a Lupin III feature? Couldn't be! It's only been about a half hour since the last time I did one. This one, Tokyo Crisis, is kind of complicated, quality-wise. It's got plenty of good elements, but it doesn't quite come together all that well. What I mostly appreciated was the relationship between Inspector Zenigata and Maria. Though I have a hard time defining it. Was it meant to be a romantic relationship or more of a father-daughter like thing? Whatever it was, it led to some great moments. But there's really nothing this feature excels at beyond that.

Besides talking about the dub in the Mid Year English Dub Review, this will probably be the last time I make a dedicated video to the Patlabor franchise. After all, I've pretty much reviewed all of animated Patlabor at this point. Well, there's supposed to be a new Patlabor show coming out in the near future, but that would be too new to review for Otaku Evolution, so this video on Patlabor: The New Files will kind of be the final word on the subject. Hey, maybe I'll go crazy and review the live-action series! I, uh, wouldn't hold out too much hope for that, though.

The 1986 animated movie version of Fist of the North Star is an interesting beast. It's not quite a compilation of the TV series. It's a retelling with entirely new animation. At times softened for violent content animation, but new animation nevertheless. I wanted to review this because I wanted to cover the franchise, but wasn't about to watch the 36 episodes of the TV series that were dubbed. I wanted to show everything that I like and dislike about this franchise and I think I accomplished that.

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This video sees me wrap up my review of the 2009 Studio Bones series, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, based on the manga by Hiromu Arakawa. I take a look at the themes of the show, like the cycle of revenge, redemption, and the value of human life. I also curate moments of the show that I consider highlights. And I also compare the two FMA shows, which everyone already does (I love both). I hope I covered enough topics to inform and entertain.

Another year of Otaku Evolution begins with a look at the 2009 64-episode TV series, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the longest title I've covered thus far in these videos. It's a series that is near and dear to my heart, so I'm happy to get the chance to talk about it. I'm actually somewhat surprised that it took me this long to get to it. But then again, I've already reviewed most of my favorite anime, and maybe it was a good idea not to review this one too soon. After this, I don't know if there are any favorites left! Black Lagoon, I guess. I'll get to that later.

One final video for 2022, folks! As usual with my last video of the year, I go over the various English dubs of the anime I've covered in roughly the second half of the year. I think the best dub was Solid State Society's and the weakest Babel II - Beyond Infinity's which is amusing, because I covered those anime originally in that order. But even the weakest anime dub of the bunch still had solid talents, just a lack of commitment to the characters. Most of the dubs I covered were at least decent.

Episode 48, "The Occupation of Fezzan"

*****SPOILERS*****