Anime Review: Hanasaku Iroha

It’s series like this that give me a stark reminder: stop wasting time watching bad anime. With all of the junk released every year it is an even more important lesson to learn, lest I find myself missing out on stuff like Hanasaku Iroha. There is a long tail of anime, too, and the diamonds serve to remind me just how far behind 2^nd and 3^rd place are. Or perhaps it is precisely because of all of the junk out there that this shines so much more brightly.

Anime Review: School Days

Got a friend who’s not into anime but you kinda wanna show them something to change that? Well, you could always show them School Days and then you wouldn’t have a friend anymore to worry about.

I’m sure you all have seen Spinal Tap. If you haven’t, there’s a very famous scene (and line) from one of the fictional band members talking about his amps: “These go to eleven.” He was referring to volume. School Days has a knob, too, only it goes to 12 and it’s about crazy. Each episode flicks that knob one more notch to the max until you get to the end and…

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anime Review: The World God Only Knows

As a medium, anime sits nestled between two potentially very powerful qualities. As half art, in the traditional sense, it can choose to venture into the highly symbolic, expressive, and deeply meaningful. As half cartoon, it can exploit visual short-hands and exaggerations to great economy. Anime, as a class of media, has many sub-genres, but even taken as a whole most animes tend to follow a lot of the same "rules" (tropes, really). When used correctly, one can get a lot of enjoyment as they set us up for expectations and either meet them or not.

Anime Review: Ore no Imōto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai

As far as pitches go, "guy finds out his younger sister is secretly an eroge otaku" is certainly one that piqued my initial interest. It's obvious wish-fulfillment to the target audience, but the show plays around with homages and parodies to other well-known anime franchises and styles frequently enough that the blatant pandering is actually part of its appeal. It thankfully always keeps winking at the viewer, as if to say it knows very well what it's doing, thank you.

Anime Review: Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko

If I could describe this series in one word it would be frustrating. On it's surface you'll be roped in, as I was, by the high production quality of the art, which is mostly a traditional anime style with an extra dose of daintiness over some stunningly gorgeous backgrounds. But then the nonsensical title will throw you way off (it translates, poorly, to Electric Wave Woman and Youthful Man). And so begins a long chain of clashing vibes.