Category: Anime

Ore no Imouto ga konna ni kawaii wake ga nai anime review

Ore no Imouto ga konna ni kawaii wake ga nai supposedly means “My little sister can’t possibly be this cute” or something like that. It is a rather bad show about a boy who lets his otaku sister physically and verbally abuse him for 10 and a half episodes. Halfway through the eleventh episode she apologizes and gives him a present and so everything is supposedly hunky-dory. “My little sister isn’t cute at all, what on earth have you been smoking?” would be a better title, imo.

Bit of a waste of my time, to be honest. It had some moments of humor, but the creators spent too much time forcefully extolling the virtues of the otaku lifestyle (there are none) and desperately defending the non-existent rights of 14- and 17-year old children to play pornographic R-18 games. The harder they argued, the worse it all looked. I liked Lucky Star‘s lighter take on the matter: yeah it’s wrong, but it’s fun. When you try to justify the unjustifiable, you just look ridiculous. “I have to play porn games or I won’t be me any more.” Oh? That would be a good thing. The world could use a few less viciously violent PMSing 14-year olds.


So in short, Ore no Imouto is about a boy whose sister plays pornographic games and watches pornographic anime and takes occasional breaks to kick and slap him about. If you’ve watched one episode, you’ve watched them all, really. Or more like, if you watch Lucky Star and whatever you can stomach of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, you’ve watched it all. There’s no otaku stigma where I’m from, so it was impossible for me to relate to the rest of what they were waffling about.

There was one spot of interest though: the main character’s sweet relationship with his childhood friend Manami. There was a whole episode devoted to it, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside after watching it. It’s just happy and sweet and comfortable, no fighting, no crossed signals, no violence, just a lovely friendship that may blossom into love with time.

Well, that’s what I was hoping anyway, but then I looked up spoilers for the remaining light novels and it seems the MC ends up dating his little sister’s dark, sarcastic friend who also verbally and physically abuses him on occasion. They break up shortly afterwards, but the fact that he’d even date her when he has Manami means there’s no hope at all for my preferred pairing. Bummer. I’m rooting for you, Manami! Study hard, go to a good college and find a loving, sensible guy who isn’t attracted to drama and who can appreciate you and your wonderfully welcoming family. Good luck!

Next I really am going to watch Kiki’s Delivery Service this time.

My Neighbor Totoro anime review

Continuing the run of Ghibli movies, I watched My Neighbor Totoro. I’d heard a lot about this movie, and of course the totoros are all over Ghibli’s advertising, but the movie itself was rather underwhelming. Two little girls move to the countryside with their dad, run around for an hour, have a fight, run around for another 30 minutes, the end.

The mythical “totoro” creatures themselves only show up a few times in the film, and only the big one plays any sort of important role. It was a decent watch, but probably one of those things I’d have to be 6 years old to truly appreciate. Actually I know a trio of sisters aged between 9 and 4, and the dynamic between the oldest and the youngest is pretty much like that between Satsuki and Mei in the film. I was impressed they managed to capture that interaction so accurately, but beyond that, yah, nothing special.

Next is Kiki’s Delivery Service. According to a Studio Ghibli special I watched, Hayao Miyazaki spent a whole day staring at women in skirts as research (ahem, ahem) for this movie, so let’s see how it turned out.

Chrome-Shelled Regios anime review

A bunch of kids live in a mobile academy in a world where the outside air is toxic and giant bugs roam the landscape. Our main character Layfon Alseif is extra strong but has issues using that power. He also has lots of girls only too willing to jump his bones. Chrome-Shelled Regios is basically a cross between Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Gundam Seed, without the mecha.

It’s one season, 24 episodes long and divided into a number of arcs, but there’s no real story. It’s just episode after episode of Layfon and his captain Nina taking turns angsting over inconsequential crap.
Layfon: I don’t wanna fight.
Nina: Get over yourself.

Nina: I’m too weak.
Layfon: Snap out of it.

Layfon: I don’t wanna fight.
etc, etc, etc.

Intersperse this with battles against bugs and men and add a number of side characters who don’t do much or mean much and you’ve got yourself a series. It does seem like *eventually* they’ll figure out a way to purify the skies outside and take out all the bugs and reclaim their world, but at the glacial pace the series moves, this probably won’t happen till Kenshiro comes around in 20XX.

It’s still fun enough that I watched the whole thing, but if they made a second season it would still be more angst angst-action-angst-action-angst-lame attempt at comedy-angst stuff, so I’ll just wait for the whole light novel series to end and read the ending with my grandchildren.

Update: Huh. The light novel series did end, in 2013. Much sooner than I’d expected. I’ll have to find the time to read the whole thing from start to finish, because apparently the anime left out a lot of things. I was rooting for Layfon to get together with… never mind, I’ll save the spoilers for when I do read the whole thing. Look forward to the update, in 20XX.

Laputa: The Castle in the Sky anime review

I’m watching the Ghibli movies in chronological order, so after Nausicaa comes Laputa: Castle in the Sky (or just Castle in the Sky if you’re American). Another excellent movie, with an amazing soundtrack. It picks up faster than Nausicaa and has a happier ending, too. I just wasn’t happy with the bad guys getting away with murdering Nausicaa’s sick old dad in the previous movie, but this time everyone gets what’s coming to them so it feels really good.

“Be careful what you wish for” is normally the theme of this kind of movie, but in this case it’s more like “Wish for whatever you want, just don’t be mean to other people while doing it.” Wanting to find the legendary Laputa wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself, and as Pazu said, someone would probably have found it eventually. In fact, if the bad guys had treated Sheeta and Pazu a little better, they might have cooperated willingly (Pazu especially, seeing how eager he was to find it). So they really got what they deserved in the end for their child-kidnapping robot-killing town-blowing up ways.

Laputa is more child-friendly than Nausicaa as well. It’s not half as preachy and Pazu and Sheeta feel more like regular kids just having a fun adventure. What a lovely movie. But the castle itself is such a sad place. I’m not sure I’ll be able to watch it again for a while, but it was a great experience nevertheless.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind anime review

I watched Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind shortly before watching Ocean Waves. I’ve been going on a Ghibli kick lately, ever since I woke up and realized I’d only ever watched two Ghibili movies: Spirited Away and Ponyo on a Cliff. Both were pretty good, so I’ve always meant to watch more stuff from the same studio, so I’m watching them all in order.

I started with Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro, but I’m not going to write about it because it didn’t make much of an impression on me. Nausicaa though, Nausicaa was good. It started out a bit slow, but once it took off it just never stopped. Air battles, land battles, plane crashes, random acts of violence, all sorts of crazy monsters, etc. I’m also watching Chrome-Shelled Regios right now, and I can tell it was inspired by Nausicaa. Just look at those crawling bugs and tell me they aren’t Ohmus.

Great soundtrack, fluid action, tons of twists and turns in the story, a lead character who is a borderline Mary Sue yet somehow manages not to be annoying, memorable side characters, a happy ending…what more do you want? This is a real classic.