Category: Reviews

Dragonaut: The Resonance anime review

Or, “Boobs and Dumb Women – the Anime.” It’s been a while since I watched something this horrible and yet so compelling. Dragonaut: The Resonance started out with a fairly good premise about humanoid dragons, the humans they have formed pacts with and the ominous “Thanatos” creature that was drawing nearer to the Earth every day.

Then it turned into a stupid rescue romantic farce where the main character Jin chased his lady love Toa for endless episodes, Toa always managing to either run away or get herself captured as soon as Jin found her. It’s revealed halfway through that Toa is directly responsible for the death of Jin’s family, but this is tossed to the side like it means nothing. Hos before even families, huh? Even Kouta from Elfen Lied wasn’t this faithful to his romantic needs.

From that point I was just watching to see how bad the series could get. And boy did it get bad. Toa! Jin! Toa! Jin! I want to see Toa! I want to see Toa! Jin! Jin! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH! *pukes* Phew, that’s better. You know, the dragon transformation sequences should have clued me in from the start that the creators had no idea what kind of series they were trying to make, but I foolishly persevered. In the end Jin and Toa manage to persuade Thanatos to leave Earth alone by showing her the Power of Love – as if it wasn’t bad enough when Gankutsuou did it – and they go back to Earth to live happily ever after. They’d better, after all the happiness GONZO robbed me of just by making this show exist. I’ll think twice before I try anything from that company again.

Hidan no Aria anime review

Anime about high school kids that function as “armed detectives.” The titular Aria is yet another twintailed tsundere played by Rie Kugimiya *groan*. The twist in the tale is the protagonist Kinji, who goes into super-powered mode when he’s sexually aroused. Feel free to roll your eyes at this point.

I read some of the manga and volumes 1-2 of the Hidan no Aria (Aria the Scarlet Ammo) light novels in Japanese. I thought it was okay, but nothing spectacular. The novels especially read like a middle-school boy’s diary: girl x is so cute, i saw her panties when she bent down today, and then i saw her bra, oooh, and then i got to play with a gun and some knives, tehe, im so cool and mature. etc etc.

I almost liked it for that, mainly it felt like a direct look into Kinji’s head. In the anime I can’t even tell when he’s out of Hysteria Mode until he explicitly says so. Plus in a novel/manga you can imagine that he’s faster and sharper in Hysteria Mode, but when you actually get to see him move in the anime, he doesn’t seem any different at all. It’s like the horrible singing in Beck all over again.

So anyway, the anime condenses three novels into 12 episodes, which makes each arc feel very rushed. I was initially curious about what would happen next for Kinji and co, but Tvtropes was kind enough to spoil all future plots, including who the real leader of the IU is. They also revealed that the story doesn’t end when the IU is defeated but is instead dragged on by having the splintered IU members come back for revenge. That’s another 10 volumes of “XYZ showed me her boobs, which turned me on so much that I went into Hysteria mode.” Enough already, it’s embarrassing. Next series, please!

Kiki’s Delivery Service anime review

Well I watched it all right, but I didn’t like it much. After the halfway mark I was just yawning non-stop. Some Ghibli movies are just about admiring scenery, not telling a story, and there’s certainly plenty of nice scenery to admire in Kiki’s Delivery Service. The plot itself though… This rather unpleasant girl named Kiki flies around on her broom delivering a few items over 1h 45mins, meets a couple of nice people, makes a couple of friends, has a crisis of confidence and gets over it in time to save one of the new friends she has made from falling to his doom. I can’t exactly say “Nothing happened” though. It’s more accurate to say that everything switched over so quickly and all problems were resolved so easily that I couldn’t really appreciate what was going on.

How’s she’s going to find a place to live?
“Hey there!”
Oh. That’s settled then. Now she’s running a delivery service.
*cough cough*
Oh. So much for that. Well at least she made a friend.
*sulk pout*
…Or not. Oh no, she lost her powers!
“Help me!”
…Guess not… And there go the credits… Good riddance.

I always did like the ending theme though, which I heard long before watching the series and which made me a Yumi Matsutoya fan. But the movie itself is pretty, but dull, and I’ll have forgotten most of the characters by the time I wake up tomorrow. You win some, you lose some. The next Ghibli movie chronologically should be Only Yesterday (Omoide Poroporo) but I’ll watch some regular anime before that.

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.