Read or Die (R.O.D.) 10/10

Before R.O.D. The TV there was R.O.D. and before there were the paper sisters there was The Paper.

In recent years OAVs have fallen out of fashion, with the continuing recession in Japan there hasn't been the spare disposable income among the populace to support the $50 price tag an average 30 min. The sad part about this is that OAVs had become the traditional home to experimentation, where unusual plots are given a change to be animated and if things don't go well they can just stop making the shows. Some become hits that spawn TV series such as Magic Users Club and Bubblegum Crisis but most fall by the wayside, hopefully lending their creators valuable experience for future projects. R.O.D. is one of the few recent OAVs produced and eventually fell into the former category. From what I understand R.O.D. is actually based on novels of the same name and the story told is an original one with characters from the books.

To get technical, I liked everything about this set of 3 OAVs. The art is fantastic and very detailed as expected for an OAV. The music is really great and of course the characters are quite good. The VA for Yomiko is especially a favourite of mine with her constant eeks and yelps as she fights. I always laugh. These 3 episodes were released in 2001 & 2002.

The plot is strange yet great. There is an underground organization known as the British Parliamentary Library (BL). While the organization exists publicly it has a secret operations division that performs missions geared at protecting the UK from it's enemies. This protection seems to revolve around the control of information as the library part of things seems to be the real focus.

We meet our bookish heroine Yomiko Readman, a young woman living in Japan who works as agent "The Paper" for the BL. James Bond she is not. She's a bibliomaniac. LOVES books, reads them all the time, this means she hasn't much time for anything else. Why an agent then? She can also control paper, form it into shapes and moving it around. She blocks bullets, sword fights and flies on a massive paper plane. Over the course of the OAVs she is sent on missions to recover books of interest to the BL and teams up with a busty agent known as "The Deep" who can go through solid objects and an American mercenary known as Drake. The villains are famous figures that have been cloned by an organization to take over the world (naturally) and the story ultimately leads to the big showdown to foil the evil plan.

I really loved the idea of a secret agent who from all outwards appearances is nothing more than a librarian. Better yet, even when she IS a secret agent she acts like a librarian, a very ditzy one. Partly goofy but pretty action-packed I really enjoyed this OAV and hope they make more.

Highly recommended.

Gunslinger Girl 9/10

I need a team of cyborg assassins for my secret government agency. Who to use? Little girls of course!

Another girls with guns show? Nope. Well yes. This show follows in the recent footsteps of Noir and Madlax by getting into the whole "young girl assassin" genre.

These 13 episodes were released as OAVs with games of the same name in 2003. On the technical side this show looks and sounds amazing. I understand each episode had a huge budget ($130,000 US) which really shows. Every scene looks amazing, the backgrounds are amazing, the few CG effects are amazing, the score is incredible and the VA's are perfect. Especially our little main assassin girl Henrietta who has a perfect quiet little voice that contrasts amazingly well with her killing bunches of bad guys. I'm shilling a little here but this show really looks incredible and it's the rare show that maintains this level of quality throughout.

I would like to take this opportunity to nominate the opening of this show for best ever. The song is called "The Light Before We Land" by the Delgados (who just broke up Aug 2005) on their album "Hate". Is pretty awesome. It's a Scottish band and the song sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings.

So, does the story keep up to the amazing production values? Well yes. The show is set in Italy where this intelligence branch rescues dying girls and turns them into cyborgs for use as assassins. The girls still LOOK like girls but are now super fast and super strong. They are trained to kill and somewhat brainwashed so they forget their former lives and are able to follow their orders without question. Each is paired with an older male agent as fratellos. (Italian for siblings) The show follows the lives of the girls and focuses on their relationships with their male counterparts.

This could be a cue for a perverted tilt to the show but it keeps well away from anything of the sort. In fact the guys rarely touch the girls and we thankfully get no sexual tension or fan-service to ruin the series. The main characters, Henrietta and Jose are perhaps the best duo. She is quiet and the most like a normal girl and Jose treats her like an older brother, buying her presents and being unfailingly kind to her. This is in contrast to some of the other fratellos. One pairing is more like a stern father and daughter, one is like a grandfather and daughter and of course there are a couple of fratellos where the man treats his charge like a weapon and a weapon only.

This leads to a series of examinations of the effect these relationships have on the girls. The series tries to answer the question "If you HAD to do this, what is the best way to deal with the situation." Of course there is no easy answer. What happens if one of a pair is killed? What if they don't get along? Remember, these girls could kill their partner without breaking a sweat.

The show also deals with the inevitable effects of the cyborg implants on the girls. It shortens their lifespans and causes memory loss. The brainwashing or "conditioning" screws them up too. These girls were rescued from death by the implants they get. Are their lives worth living considering the alternative?

I liked the story here and along with some pretty cool action scenes was highly entertained. I was ALSO a little disturbed at the plight of these girls. I come from a society where we shield children from almost everything bad in the world. While I currently disagree with that way of raising kids I find as I get older I can see why parents feel that way is best. These girls have to deal with things much older people would have problems dealing with. I really felt sorry for them.

One of the minor characters puts it best at the end of the series: "It's a shame that they have to be cyborgs."

Highly recommended.

InuYasha Movie 3: Swords of an Honorable Ruler 7/10

The third of 4 InuYasha movies and they still haven't fixed the character designs.

Anime films based on an on-going TV series usually assume you have some familiarity with the show on which they're based. In this case I believe this movie falls between the NA 4th and 5th seasons but unlike the previous movie, has little to do with the on-going plot of the series at that point (or any point for that matter).

Compared to the TV series I really don't see any differences other than the uglied up character designs. The plot is like a 3-4 episode arc of the series without the credits, eye-catches, previews and re-caps. The CG effects, music and art really don't feel like anything special here. This isn't a bad thing but I expected a little more flash somewhere for a theatrical release, if not in the plot than on the technical side. This movie came out in 2003.

As far as the plot goes, the story is about a 3rd sword InuYasha's father used to carry around with him along with InuYasha's (the destructive one) and his brother Sesshomaru's (the healing one). This third sword is not crafted from one of their father's fangs (watch the show to understand) but an older sword possessed by an ancient demon. This sword is a mighty powerful one and the story revolves around the two brother's battle to destroy the sword which has possessed a long dead rival for InuYasha's mother's affections.

This is strictly a fight movie. Unlike the last movie that advanced InuYasha and Kagome's relationship this movie has precious little of the minor characters at all. They're there but don't say much. We learn more about Sesshomaru and InuYasha's father than anyone else and it's still very little. I was a little disappointed. If you aren't going to advance the characters in the TV series do it in the movies.

I can recommend this to any Sesshomaru fans and any InuYasha fans easily. Anyone else might like it as a fight movie but might need a crash course in who the characters are.

Millenium Actress 8/10

A movie about an interview with an old lady sure gets exciting at times.

Anime feature films rarely fall into anything other then two categories as far as I'm concerned. Great and crap. Millennium Actress was great.

The look of this movie takes alot of cues from Perfect Blue in the character designs and backgrounds. (They share the same director.) Here the Japanese characters actually look Japanese which is rare for anime and a nice change. The VAs were average but the music, what there was of it, was great. I'll buy the soundtrack if I ever stumble across it. It's pretty Japanese without the J-pop so prevalent in so much anime these days. This movie was released in 2001.

This film has a pretty good story behind the big-budget animation. An old Japanese movie studio is being torn down. Two guys producing a documentary go to interview the 70 year old former female star of the studio (Chiyoko Fujiwara) who dropped out of public life 30 years earlier. As the interview starts the two interviewers seem to live out the story of Chiyoko's life, being thrust into the past as observers while Chiyoko, at different ages through the movie, goes about her life. Her story is also told through the characters she played in movies with the interviewer getting to play a character as well. This gives the story some comic relief as he has a thing for Chiyoko and tends to play her servant or helper, falling all over himself to rush to her aid when she gets into trouble.

So what's the story about you ask? When she was young, Chiyoko helped a man wanted by the police and fell in love with him. She didn't know his name or saw his face. All she knew was that he was a painter and he gave her a key that he was to get back when they met again. The entire movie follows Chiyoko as she searches for the mystery man while acting in many movies that provide backdrops and parables for some of her real-life experiences.

To tell more would spoil it. It's a romantic movie and I liked it. Some of the movies Chiyoko was in add some pretty neat action sequences where a normal romantic movie would get boring. Recommended.

Master Keaton 8/10

Old-school animation + mature storylines = I likey.

Master Keaton is a bit of a strange duck. I understand that there are manga written for an older audience and we see few of those translated into anime and fewer still brought over to North America. The only show I can really put in this category is The Legend of Black Heaven and it was still a somewhat different show than this one.

On the technical side Master Keaton has a real old school look which is surprising for a show dated late 1998. It looks great as I'm a huge fan of old school but it's got one or two CG shots I picked out in the series that kinda stood out like sore thumbs. These can, of course, be forgiven. The music was great with a real European feel to some of it, this works great since the majority of episodes are situated in Europe. The VAs were great and overall I have only one real complaint which is the latter episodes have a simple white credits scrolling over a black background. Spend some money boys. By the way, this show was 39 episodes long.

Story-wise I again have few complaints. Master Keaton is a near middle-aged, divorced father of one who works as an insurance investigator for Lloyd's of London. He is really an unemployed archaeologist and also a retired member of the British Special Forces (SAS). Each episode is stand alone and usually Keaton is investigating something, typically in England, for Lloyd's. The investigations range from a mysterious death, inspection of a to-be insured item to an historical site examination. Some of the episodes also deal with Keaton's personal life, focusing on his relationship with his daughter, father or some adventure he gets into just travelling. His daughter even gets her own episode.

I really liked Keaton's character, he's intelligent and very keen on archaeology and this contrasts with his formidable fighting and survival skills. He always wears his blue suit and never gets frazzled. He's kind of like a cross between Indiana Jones, MacGyver, Columbo and James Bond. He's frankly, pretty cool.

I must note that ALOT of research went into this show. The locations, items and historical references are all correct as far as I can tell. It's funny but I thought the IRA didn't bomb to kill civilians but looked it up and sure enough in 1983 they bombed Harrod's and killed 5 people and wounded 80.

This was a great show. There's no real ending which is disappointing but other than that it was great. Highly recommended

Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture 7/10

The best fighting game based anime out there. Though that's not saying much.

Since the beginning of time there has been anime. Relegated to Japanese TV or the occasional film, and it was good. Usually.

Then one day in the mid-80's, someone somewhere decided that the Japanese anime market could support anime created for the direct to video market (OVA's) and it was good. Usually.

Then someone decided to make OVA's based on fighting video games. That man has probably committed ritual suicide by now. We don't miss him.

The list is long and miserable. Street Fighter II, Street Fighter Alpha, Battle Arena Toshinden, Samurai Showdown, Tekken, Virtua Fighter. While most contain fan-service of your favourite female fighter that's not enough to make up for the crappiness. Samurai Showdown is practically unwatchable. The one OAV series I do like though is the Fatal Fury series.

Of the 3 released I like the second one best, but the third, Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture is quite good. The character designs are by Masami Obari who we all know from Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer, Gravion and others. His designs are an acquired taste but since he loves the breasteses it's all good. A movie budget is here so the animation looks great and the music is OK too. The JP VAs were average and I will say I've always liked the English dub for this one. This movie was released in 1994.

The story here's pretty simple, our hero Terry Bogard, his friend Joe, his brother Andy and the busty ninja girl Mai decide to help a girl named Sulia(sp?) stop her brother from collecting armour the she figures is screwing with his mind. Many cameos here of characters from the SNK fighting games and some pretty cool looking super moves are shown. Being a big fan of Fatal Fury I really enjoyed this one, the final battle being particularly exciting and well done.

Masami Obari fans, fighting game fans, fan-service fans, pretty good anime fans. You'll all dig this movie.

D.N.Angel 7/10

For a show that really gets away from the main plot during it's run, a decent ending was unexpected and a pleasant surprise.

I really didn't like the guy who sings the opening theme and a couple of other songs during the show. His voice grated and I skipped it all but once. The rest of the music sadly contains many instrumental variations of the opening and it always made me cringe when I heard it. I liked the JP VAs and the look of this show was great. Consistent great character designs, nice backgrounds and well blended CG effects make this show a pleasure to watch. This show ran for 26 episodes in 2003.

The main plot here revolves around a junior high kid, Daisuke, who is possessed by the spirit of a mysterious thief, Dark. For generations his family has aided Dark in stealing artworks possessed by malicious spirits to seal them away. Of course this part of the plot fades as the episodes begin to focus more on Daisuke's love life.

Daisuke has a thing for one of a pair of twins in his class. Of course the one he likes is the girly one of the two and she shoots him down in the first half of the first episode. As the show moves along Daisuke eventually resolves his love problems as he gets to know the tomboy sister and things actually get resolved some ways before the last episode. This gives the whole ending a stronger emotional feel as his girlfriend and her feelings affect his choice of actions and any sacrifice made will effect more than just the main character.

This anime is also one of the few where the main character has a caring and supportive family. Father, mother and grandfather are there throughout the series helping Daisuke and offering him their support and encouragement. This is worth noting as many anime characters live alone and get little help from their loved ones and this is an interesting change.

I really didn't have much hope for the ending but it turned out pretty well. I felt Dark's nemesis wasn't prominent enough throughout the series but the ending ties things up nicely and this show was different enough throughout to compensate for that. Recommended.

Spiral 6/10

Spiral was interesting but kind of repetitive. It's like watching Die Hard With a Vengeance without an ending.

I really wanted to jab pencils into my ears every time I heard the beginning of the opening theme. The shrill scream of the first few lines caused me to skip that bad boy almost every time. The rest of the show's music was average. I didn't much like the character designs in this show as it seemed like they were all wearing pointy wigs. I don't believe anyone's hair moved once during the series. This was a symptom of the animation being pretty low budget in this title and I was not impressed overall. The JP VAs were average. Spiral ran for 25 episodes in 2002-2003.

Where did this show go wrong? It started as the mystery of a girl who was pushed from a building and the story's hero was blamed. Like Sherlock Holmes he solves the mystery with his plucky sidekick and we're introduced to the mystery of the Blade Children. The REAL mystery is why the Japanese always refer to one of the children as children. Mix in a dictionary. It's CHILD. This is directed at you as well EVA!

The series proceeds with more of the same as our heroic team is thrust into several more mind-bending puzzles where the failure the properly solve them means death. There's alot good here and I was entertained trying to figure out the mysteries along with the characters.

Since comic relief in this show is nicely handled by the plucky sidekick the real problem with this show is the complete lack of an ending. I can't spoil anything as it never gets revealed.

Where is the main character's missing brother. Who knows?

What are the Blade Children? No idea.

Who is organizing the hunt of same Blade Children? No clue.

Where the hell are everyone's parents? On vacation?

Maybe the secrets are revealed in the manga but I'm sure this series won't warrant a sequel so I'll never know. Not a bad show, as I was entertained but I like closure and this show has none of it.

Sister Princess 1/10

Ugh! If I ever have to watch that mess of an anime again it'll be too soon. Read my review, save yourself the pain.

This was not a great show. In fact it was a crappy show. I didn't mind the music but that's about it. While the character designs are OK this show suffers from VERY inconsistent quality. Bad drawings, bad animation, crappy CG effects. The JP VA's, YIKES! It seems in order to keep the 13 sisters straight their crazy outfits weren't enough, they each have different accents. The girl in the big dress particularly infuriated me. Why DO this? I can only assume there's some radio play or something where they set a precedent they couldn't change but it's pretty annoying. This crap ran 26 episodes in 2001. 26!

Plot? What plot? This is the worst harem anime ever. No-one is funny, there's no fan-service, the shows INSIST on having EVERY sister in EVERY episode. Jesus. When they ALL feel OBLIGATED to comment on EVERYTHING it doesn't leave much time for anything else. Also, they always address every inane comment to their damn precious brother I hate so much. HE DOESN'T NEED ALL 13 OF YOU TO TEEL HIM HOW FUCKING GREAT YOUR FUCKING DINNER TASTES FOR FUCK SAKES! HE CAN TASTE THE DAMN DINNER! LEAVE HIM THE FUCK ALONE AND LET THE MAN EAT IN PEACE! I feel better now.

Each episode kind of focuses on a different sister. All your favourites are here: sporty, cookie, sexy, demurey, techie, spooky, sickly, cutie, nosy, clutzy, dummy, fakey and the sister that actually seems like his real sister. I call her bitey. Is this a spoiler you ask? NO! This damn show hints at this BIG SECRET and it's never really explained. I experience more suspense when taking a dump.

Don't get anywhere near this one. One point for 1 meganeko (sickly).

The Place Promised in Our Early Days 10/10

It's the rare moment an anime is released that reminds you of why you got into it in the first place.

Before you got "into" there was "something" that made you a convert.

You may have seen an interesting cartoon on Saturday morning about a space war filled with more mature storylines than you'd ever seen during that time.

You may have caught a Roger Ebert review of some japanimation movie where he declared it a masterpiece and it looked like nothing you'd ever seen.

You may have gone over to a friend's house and someone turned on a show about a guy who turns into a girl when splashed with water and it made you laugh.

That "something" caught your attention and made you a fan. In later years you recall the feeling of having discovered something great, and you long for that again, that "something" which reaffirms your belief you support the greatest artform available to TV. It is elusive. The search is almost impossible. Almost.

In the last few years we have seen an explosion in the amount of available anime in North America. With a massive number of DVD releases, more shows than ever airing on TV and the availability of the internet for downloading we have the ability to access more anime than ever. While this is a great thing, all too often that new series, OAV, or movie are nothing really new. Once in awhile we see a great story, a new premise, an interesting character or a cool CG effect and we're reminded of how great anime is compared to anything offered up from our North American media monsters, who cater to the lowest common denominator, but that yearning is still there.

You search desperately through the morass. As you view title after title you start to lose hope. You view shows that are good, shows that are 10/10 and then finally, at last, find that for which you sit through all the rest for.

The last was Cowboy Bebop and it's been a long time since then.

I have resigned myself to a fate of having few titles of this quality to review. This is a masterpiece. Period. My score may seem odd but my scoring system was meant to compare normal anime. The Place Promised in Our Early Days is not a normal anime.

It's the "something".