Author: neontaster

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Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Review

You must be thinking to yourselves, "Really? Mahou Shoujo? What are you, 12?" Ah, yes. The Mahou Shoujo ("Magical Girl") genre – bunch of cute schoolgirls with magical powers, mascot characters, chibi humor, and fanservice galore…

Not here, my friends. Not here.

If you read my Mawaru Penguindrum review, you know I am a fan of shows that are not what they seem, and Madoka Magica is firmly in that category. It breaks almost every rule you’d associate with a show about little girls in adorable outfits fighting evil witches, and manages to do so much more than shows with a similar launching point. Madoka Kaname is a cute little girl with a nice family, nice friends, at a nice school, in a nice city. Then Madoka and her friend Sayaka discover that not only can they become Magical Girls that save the world from evil witches who curse weak humans, but they get those powers by having one wish granted to them. Sounds like a sweet deal, right? read more

neontasterby neontaster•
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Is Astral Ocean a Worthy Sequel to Eureka Seven? (Short Answer: Yes. Long Answer: No.)

(Caution: Contains some Eureka Seven spoilers and very mild Astral Ocean spoilers. I’ll just assume the target audience for this is people who watched E7 and are curious about AO.)

 

This might be a weird statement to see on OR, but I never considered myself a huge mecha fan (meaning a huge fan of mecha, not a fan of huge mecha… Never mind). I mean, it’s not that I don’t like the mecha genre, it was just never on the list of things I would actively seek out and I am woefully uneducated in the field (I know more about Gungrave than I do about Gundam). Consequently, I didn’t really have any expectations coming into Eureka Seven – a show that now ranks very high on my must watch list. I’m sure you already know all the superlatives – the mecha, the animation and design, the world, the characters, pacing, story – it all works extremely well, and it certainly left room for a sequel. So imagine my horror when I discovered that they decided to change everything for Astral Ocean. All of a sudden it’s 2050. All of a sudden we are just on good old near-future Earth with Americans and Japanese and… No Eureka or Renton. What the fuck? read more

neontasterby neontaster•
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Mawaru Penguindrum Review

 

I hate the word "fate"…

 

I am a firm believer that a lot of anime (especially the good kind) can appeal to non-anime fans if they just give it a try. Thus, I find myself talking about it a lot with the non-anime crowd, and by "talking" I mostly mean "defending." One of the most common charges I hear is that anime is just too weird. And it isn’t like these people are talking out of their asses. To say that anime isn’t weird would be disingenuous, but is weird really a bad thing? Would you rather have yet another generic product full of the same tired narrative and visual conventions, or do you want something new and interesting that resists classification and cannot easily be put into a mold? read more

neontasterby neontaster•