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Another Review

 

Always uphold the class rules…

(Note: Contains extremely minor spoilers, mostly with regards to the exposition of the story.)

 

Another is a 12 episode adaptation of the mystery horror novel by Yukito Ayatsuji produced by P.A. Works. In 1998, Kouichi Sakakibara moves from Tokyo to the town of Yomiyama. His mother died shortly after his birth and his father is a college professor doing research in India, so Kouichi is sent to live with his maternal grandparents and attend the ninth grade at his mother’s old junior high. Kouichi is assigned to class 9-3, which turns out to be quite unfortunate. read more

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Three Episodes In – Robotics;Notes (Actually Five, But Who’s Counting?)

Tanegashi Accel Impact!

 

Robotics;Notes is the third anime adaptation of one of the Science Adventure series of Visual Novels by 5pb. and Nitroplus, following Chaos;Head (produced by Madhouse) and Steins;Gate (produced by White Fox). This time they handed the keys to Production I.G, and FUNimation has already licensed it to stream on their website.

 

  

Robotics;Notes takes place in 2019, presumably in the same universe as Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate (a bit more on that later), and ostensibly centers on a high school robotics club in danger of losing its club status. Its only two members are the terribly disinterested gamer Kaito and the overenthusiastic club president and mecha freak Akiho, who is obsessed with completing a giant robot that the club has been working on for years. I say "ostensibly" because clearly there is more to this story. All signs point to it being more than just a show about a high school club building a giant robot together. Kaito and Akiho are linked by a mysterious incident in their past and something awfully weird is going on with the world… read more

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Three Episodes In – Psycho Pass

Psycho-Pass takes place in a futuristic Japan (I guess) where society is governed by tests which index people’s personality traits. The tests help determine best career paths and, most importantly, the likelihood that they might commit a violent crime. Psycho-Pass tells the story of a police division whose task is to stop those who commit these crimes and are likely to do so. A proper synopsis from Wikipedia…

In the near future it is possible to instantaneously measure a person’s mental state, personality, and the probability that a person will commit crimes with a device installed on each citizen’s body called the Psycho-Pass. When this probability, measured by the "Crime Coefficient" index, is too high in some individuals those individuals are pursued and apprehended — with lethal force, if necessary. This task is performed by a special team of potential criminals called Enforcers, who are supervised by police officers known as Inspectors; the Inspectors ensure that Enforcers perform their duties within the constraints of the law. Enforcers and Inspectors employ special weapons called "Dominators" that are designed to fire only on those with a higher than normal Crime Coefficient. The story follows Unit 1 of the Public Safety Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Division.

Psycho-Pass is another piece from Production I.G, directed by Naoyoshi Shiotani, and written by Gen Urobuchi (Fate/Zero, Blassreiter). It’s already been licensed in the US by everyone’s favorite Chris Sabat employer, FUNimation. read more

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PG Sized Action Base Review – Chinese Knockoff Edition

Recently I acquired a second-hand PG 00 Gundam from a modeler in Australia. In my haste to get it up on it’s stand and take a look at it I accidentally broke the little piece of plastic that’s supposed to connect the huge kit to the stand (smooth thinking there, Bandai). Early attempts to fix it were less than successful, so, to the internet I turned. Turns out you can buy display stand purposely built for the PG 00 Gundam… for only 90-fucking-dollars. $90, for just an oversize d action base? I really hope that’s just inflated due to demand and not a serious price tag from Bandai. Not willing to dump so much on so little I kept looking and found one of these… read more

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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

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Evangelion Rebuild 3.0 – First Trailer

Here it is, so hot off the presses that it’s not even a properly captured video!

After all this waiting anything new or unexpected? Well… no, not really. At the least it hints at more Asuka and Mari battle shenanigans. It’ll be a long, long wait until the BluRay release and eventual subbed rip here in the USA. Sigh.

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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

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