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Review: “A Certain Magical Index” Season One – Overstuffed
A Certain Magical Index is a true phenomenon in Japan, having spawned multiple spinoffs (one of which, a manga called A Certain Scientific Railgun, has gotten a two-season anime adaptation in its own...
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Review: “Naruto Shippuden” Box Set 21 – Talked to Death
From where we left off in the last boxset, the Fourth Shinobi World War was upon us. Now the war actually begins. Is it the arc we’ve been waiting for since the Five Kage Summit so many episodes ago?...
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Review: “Ben-To” Complete Series – A Fulfilling Full-Course Meal
One of these days, they’ll have made an anime about everything. Are we approaching that point? The entire concept of Ben-To seems to imply we are, but even if that’s true, there is a chance that even...
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Review: “A Certain Scientific Railgun” Season One – More Bang, Less Inane
The success of the light novel A Certain Magical Index quickly spawned a spinoff manga, A Certain Scientific Railgun, which starts off as a prequel but soon becomes concurrent with the Index...
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Review: “Tokyo Ravens” Season One Part One – Taking Flight
Another review, another anime series based on a light novel series. It would be so easy to just go “ho hum,” right? Light novels have almost supplanted manga as source material for anime adaptations,...
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Review: “Naruto Shippuden” Set 22 – Loose Lips Sink Shonen
The biggest difficulty with writing this review is that it’s difficult to articulate the same points that I did in the previous boxset without using the same words. The same issues that plagued the...
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Review: “Freezing Vibration” Leaves the Viewer Cold
The Freezing franchise makes itself clear what kind of show it is from the moment you look at the box art on the DVD/Blu-ray cover. It’s undoubtedly another “buxom women fighting each other” series,...
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Review: “Guilty Crown Complete Series”– The Crime of Being a Mess
On the surface, Guilty Crown has a lot of what it takes to be a spectacular sci-fi action series. It has a near-future societal outlook. It borrows liberally from recent headlines detailing biological...
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Review: “Code:Breaker” Has Too Many Broken Parts
I did not have high hopes for Code:Breaker upon sitting down to watch it. I have been a reader of the long-running manga, and I knew the story, at a mere 13 episodes, would either be incomplete or end...
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Review: “The Last: Naruto The Movie”– A Fitting, Definitive Epilogue
The Naruto saga has been an enduring and popular one, perhaps only eclipsed by Dragon Ball Z in viewer consciousness of anime in the United States. In Japan, its popularity lags behind only One Piece...
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Review: “BlazBlue: Alter Memory” Fails to Ignite
Sometimes it is hard to sum up something in just one sentence. BlazBlue: Alter Memory made it all too easy, and not in a good way. You can’t please everybody, but BlazBlue fails to please anyone at...
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Review: “Tokyo Ravens Part 2”– Chasing the Light
NOTE: This review spoils the first half of Tokyo Ravens. Also, although she’ll likely never read this, I would like to apologize to composer Maiko Iuchi for mistaking her as male in my earlier reviews...
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Review: “Naruto Shippuden” Set 23 – The Allure of Power
Naruto Shippuden‘s quality has been slipping for the last couple of DVD volumes, but the series aims to pick it up in a big way in this set. The fan-favorite original arc “Power” is included on here...
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Review: “Naruto Shippuden” Set 24 & 25 – Zombie Apocalypse
After the exciting divergence in Set 23 with the “Power” mini-arc, Naruto Shippuden returns to the regular state of things with the Fourth Shinobi World War. And, unfortunately, the same rambling...
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Review: “Black Lagoon Complete Series Blu-ray”– Anime Painted Black
Black Lagoon is one of those rare anime series that is more popular on American shores than in its native Japan. Over the years, there have been a lot of debates as to why Black Lagoon is one of the...
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Review: “Naruto Shippuden” Set 26 – Canonically Decent
The anime adaptation of Naruto Shippuden has been a bumpy ride for the last couple of boxsets, with the series mired in a dirge of random mix of filler and poorly paced canon episodes, often with poor...
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Review: “Gonna Be the Twin-Tail!” Complete Series – Transgender Dysphoria Fun
Ah, the gender bender anime. Every couple of years there seems to be an entry into this sub-genre of Japanese animation, popularized in the 90’s by the classic series Ranma 1/2. Now it is Gonna Be The...
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Review: “Rage of Bahamut: Genesis” is the Ultimate Fantasy Love Letter
This series should have failed. Rage of Bahamut: Genesis is based on a mobile social card game that has been a fairly sizable hit in Japan, but barely penetrated US shores and obtained mediocre-to-bad...
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Review: “Blood Blockade Battlefront” Has Potential Held Hostage
Blood Blockade Battlefront is a title whose pedigree matters more to Western anime fans than to the nation it came from. After all, the manga is drawn and written by Yasuhiro Nightow, renowned in the...
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Review: “Sword of the Stranger” Is Tried But True Entertainment
No J-pop song opens or closes Sword of the Stranger. There are no celebrity stunt-casts for either the Japanese or English versions. The director, Masashi Ando, was the ultimate workman of the Japanese...
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