Tag Archives: Anime

Review: K-ON!! 14

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SURPRISE! :3

From the tone of my last K-ON!! review, you may have thought I despised this show. But it’s quite the contrary; I love K-ON!!. It’s chock full of laugh-out-loud humor and entertaining characters, and this week’s show was a great example of that. After my disappointment from last week’s subpar offering, this episode thoroughly rekindled my love for this series. It was filled with enjoyable humor and charm, and was a sheer delight from beginning to end.

Read more after the jump! Continue reading →

Crunchyroll on the Road to Profitability

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Earlier yesterday, ANN reported that Crunchyroll—the formerly illicit streaming anime site that went legit in January of 2009—broke even in May. This is huge news for advocates of on-demand and simulcasted anime like myself. It proves that Crunchyroll’s strategy can work, which hopefully means Japanese companies will be less hesitant to put their stuff online.

To put this in perspective, the enormously popular YouTube has yet to turn a profit, though this is likely because the service was largely ad-free for quite a while. Crunchyroll, on the other hand, supports itself by charging subscription fees for instant access to their newest shows and—for non-subscribers—including commercial breaks in their videos. It would be interesting to see what percentage of their revenue comes from each source, though it’s highly unlikely Crunchyroll will ever release that kind of information.

Whatever the monetary breakdown, Funimation and the Anime Network are probably feeling much better about the chances of their own streaming services. And if they succeed, us fans may finally get decent, legal alternatives to DVDs.

Review: Seitokai Yakuindomo 1

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From what I’ve read on the interwebs thus far, most people seem to have a low opinion of Seitokai Yakuindomo. Although I enjoyed watching it, I find it hard to disagree with them. However, some are saying this is the worst of the season, which I believe is taking it too far. I mean, sure it was generic, bland and cliche… but at least it was funny enough to get a few laughs out of me.  I’m going to attempt to explain why I don’t hate this show. Hopefully, this won’t provoke people to hunting me down and slaughtering me.

Read the review after the jump! Continue reading →

Review: High School of the Dead 1

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Here is the basic premise of High School of the Dead. There are zombies. There are high schoolers. The high schoolers beat up zombies. Some of the high schoolers have big breasts.

On the surface, that should be a show I’d really like. As I said when I talked about Gunsmith Cats, I’m kind of a fan of well-developed women who kick lots of butt. Unfortunately, High School of the Dead (which I will now refer to as HSotD, because I’m lazy), is a mixed bag. While technically impressive and fast-paced, some of the content made me feel pretty uncomfortable.

And not in the way that horror shows are supposed to.

I’ll explain in detail after the jump.

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Review: K-ON!! 13

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Let me say this now: the one real reason I started watching K-ON! at all was because everyone kept talking about it on Twitter. So I thought, “Hey! I wanna look cool, too! I should watch it!”  However, the second season has been a bit of a disappointment. It doesn’t feel like any major plot developments have come along in a while, and that’s reflected in this episode. K-ON!! 13 is doesn’t deviate much from the standard formula we’ve seen thus far.  There are a few different elements shown, but ultimately it’s just eye candy for the fans. I enjoyed it somewhat, but that was mainly because of Azusa in her swimsuit. But let’s cut to the chase, shall we?

Read more after the jump!

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Series Review: Angel Beats!

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First things first, I didn’t like Angel Beats!

This is totally crazy, I know. This is the show everyone in the interwebs is drooling over. Surely I must have caught some rogue virus that rots away the parts of the brain that enjoy moe anime. I mean, I don’t like K-ON!! either, so just what is wrong with me? You’d think since I enjoyed Clannad so much this new offering from the same writer would be just as good, or at least have the same amount of impact as its predescessor, right?

WRONG.

Looking back at previous Key series, it turns out I didn’t like Air or Kanon very much, so it should hardly seem surprising that Angel Beats! ended up on the disappointing end of the scale with the rest of them. Why is that? The tried and tested formulas were there: mysterious afterlife world, highschool setting, girls with guns, a bit of fun thrown in the mix with emotional reefs to run aground on, etc etc etc. Oh, and a lead female protagonist who looks like Haruhi. Yup, all the key ingredients were there to satisfy my brain, and by all accounts Angel Beats! should have been win… yet it wasn’t.

Find out why after the jump.

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Bakacast 6 – Robots in Hell

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That’s right, it’s the episode everyone I have been waiting for… we finally review Casshern Sins. But because even we can’t fill up an hour with Casshern discussion, we also review Venus Wars and tackle some important issues with the help of special guest Chris (aka Kagami on Project Haruhi): manga aggregation, absurd Haruhi DVD prices, the “loli bill”, Japan’s search for new creative talent and—of course—beards.

Truly, we are the pinnacle of moe- and beard-related content. And if my script for a new slice-of-life show about lumberjacks gets green-lit, we may finally get to combine our passions!

As always, you can download the episode directly, follow our RSS feed or subscribe to us through iTunes. Head on over to our forums to discuss this episode in detail!

The music at the end is “ROBOTS” by Dan Mangan and is available for digital download on Amazon.

Bioware’s Dragon Age Will Soon Be An Anime

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It seems Halo: Legends started a trend. Soon after Bungie made their own Animatrix, Stan Lee and Marvel teamed up with Japanese studios to create Heroman and Iron Man. Now Western RPG developer Bioware is collaborating with Funimation to created an animated movie based on Dragon Age: Origins, according to an ANN story.

Bioware is no stranger to using other mediums as tie-ins to their video games: both the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises have expanded to multiple novels, comic books and even a Flash game. However, this marks their first attempt at an animated film. Combine this with the recent news of a live-action Mass Effect film, and it seems like the game developer is making a strong push to broaden their audience. As a huge fan of Bioware, I sincerely hope they can accomplish that without angering their existing fans.

My advice? Don’t do a retread of the video games.

And don’t let Uwe Boll get within 100 miles of the production team.

Haruhi’s One Night Stand In LA

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One night. One place. 300 people, some of whom WILL be cross dressers. Sound exciting? Yes, our favorite brigade leader will be in Los Angeles on the 24th of June, starring on the big screen for one night only. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, the recent feature length film from Kyoto-animation and Kadokawa, will be making a short and un-dubbed debut in the Laemmel Sunset 5 cinema in L.A.

Thats fantastic for the people in L.A, but what about the rest of us? Sure there some of us are closer to the west coast then others (*glares* @ Ritsu), but I am in a completely different country, let alone hemisphere. Where is that DVD release, Kadokawa? Hmm?

For those of you who are lucky enough to grab some tickets, be sure to drop us a line or something. It would be interesting to hear what sitting through a movie will be like whilst in the seat next to you there is a 6’5″ man dressed as a Japanese school girl.

–Via ANN

Past Masters: Project A-ko

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Did you know that without Project A-ko, anime as we know it would not exist?

Okay, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. Still, Project A-ko was hugely influential on the 80s-era American anime fandom. It was one of the first non-artsy anime to be successfully imported to the States without being ripped to shreds à la Robotech; therefore, it fulfilled the role of gateway drug for many aspiring young otaku, introducing them to anime and launching their lifelong obsession with Japan that would eventually mutate into the modern monstrosity known as otaku culture. So, next time you’re glomped by a middle-aged 300-pound man dressed as Sailor Moon at a con, you can shake your fist at the sky and angrily scream, “PROJECT A-KO!”

But what’s the history behind this oh-so-important anime? Keep reading past the break to find out!

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