Anime Reviews/Recommendation Thread

Live actionwise I heartedly recommend Cutie Honey:The Movie.Though I think I said that before,bares repeating.

Great fun and campy superhero movie.Will give you an entire new view of bubblewrap!!!! 😆 😆 😆

Furthermore, my personal preference comes into play here. I’m very anti-cop out and “ridiculous ending for the sake of crushing ending into 3 eps” or the “kill everything!” type motif. Not too keen on fanservice either. Those are some of my criteria for a poor show. Your criteria may be different. To each their own. I can’t write 300 paragraphs like I used to, so these will be coming out as I can get to them…

Sword Art Online

This was a widely renowned anime (and prior to that a novel series) back actually from a couple years ago, which is finally gaining ground thanks to Aniplex picking it up and promoting it very heavily in the US. The main plot is that a new combat-centric game has been released that is based on total VR (virtual reality) immersion, that game being Sword Art Online. On the inaugural launch day 10K people log in and the creator of the game cuts off everyone’s ability to log out. Any attempt on the outside to tamper with the headgear used for the game, or death in the game world, means actual death in the real world via your brain getting microwaved. Players are told to fight to the 100th floor of the game world tower they inhabit, as if the game is cleared, then they can return to real life.

The story itself mainly focuses on the hero, or anti-hero in some ways of Kirito, a beta tester that starts out trying to work through the game to stay alive and return home, but ends up taking on himself the hate of the player community by being branded a “beater” (beta + cheater) so he becomes a solo player. Along the way he meets and separates from other players, some involving more tragic events than others.

Zinv’s Take:

I’m a pretty big VR / alternate reality / virtual world fan, so this hits a pretty solid sweet spot for me. The animation of the game world and all it’s various seasons and locations is excellent, the battles are excellent, the music is fairly decent.

The story progression and layout is at least done chronologically, which helps, as the novel chapters were originaly all over the place over a period of years on the author’s website.

As far as characters go, if you’re a guy you probably relate in some fashion to Kirito, as he’s designed to be the loaner, the super powered hero, the chick magnet. The other main character is Asuna, the female lead. Due to the nature of the game world, there’s very few female players – so naturally we see her to begin with as a cloak huddled player with little social interaction. Time skip ahead, and she is one of the top players in the game and essentially vice captain of one of the largest guilds. While her character is likable, after a lot of review, I can see where there was a “tsunundre-shift” that took her back to a more meek and home-y personality too. In both cases, there are justifiable reasons why the characters are the way they are, so it gets a free pass. In general the side characters don’t annoy, nor are their inclusion pointless, so everything meshes pretty well.

The series is split as well into two arcs. Essentially Aincrad (the 1st game world), and Alfheim (2nd – recovery arc). More on this below…

Alternative Take:

Out of everything, I have to say my biggest disappointment is that with this coming from a novel series, and a large one at that…. having read everything translated to date… a lot was left out of the anime. A handful of scenes or events in the anime are very or totally different in the novels. As a result, character motivation or reasoning-wise they gave off a totally different impression. We’re also brought to believe that Kirito and Asuna have next to no contact with each other over the period after the first boss fight up until the later floor raids. This couldn’t be any farther from the truth. In the novels they literally talk at the second floor exit, and bump into each other and party up or butt heads anywhere from every couple of days, to weeks. Kirito is less brooding, more vulnerable, and more of an jerk, Asuna less thinly developed, and the game world at large is far more intricately developed at every level.

The anime yes gave it life, but the novels had it’s depth. The anime made it more of a sit back and enjoy, turn off your brain kind of vibe going for it. The animation also as I mentioned before, ordered the various side stories, fit in the Yui chapters correctly, and made it as a tight package. Really with the novels extending from Aincrad, to Alfheim, to Gun Gale Online, then the current Fluctlight arc, there’s enough there to justify saying they can be treated as two separate entities.

While she did get to show she still had teeth in the Yui arc, Asuna’s character really seemed to get… “domesticated” for lack of a better word, and I wish to some extent they’d kept her with a stronger personality. We do get a lot better look at her character in the Mother’s Rosario novel (pretty much Asuna’s book), and it also features a beautiful display of gamer/friend/human comradere, caring, and sportsmanship at the end of that novel. I actually had tears reading it and wondered if we’d ever get to that high a level of honor and respect in out real life games. In the current chapters Asuna has a role to play, but once again she’s chained down by the author to playing 3rd fiddle when she’s got so much more potential. I’m waiting for her to drop the maiden act and beat down a room of armed guards with a broom handle or something in order to reach her partner. Enough woe is me, you’re the sub commander of the Knights of the Blood for peats sake!

Lastly in the “cons” category, Kirito’s sister… in the classic “not really his sister / cousin / et cetera” love interest theme, comes around in the Alfheim arc and plays that angle fairly hard. This was totally not necessary. She’s a weird distraction / excuse to have her virtual form in the game world lead Kirito around a new environment. While she’s a bit more subdued in the novels, she does continue the trend of wanting her “brother’s” attention over Asuna. All it really does is attempt to sully a good thing… so she’s unnecessary, and really replaced with stronger more interesting characters in time via the novels anyway.

Verdict:

Overall – Solid 7.85 out of 10

Anime – 6.90

Novels – 8.0

Zinv Says: “Watch the anime for the entertaining ride, but the real (virtual?) meat & potatoes here is in the novel series, which can be found at baka-tsuki.”

Accel World

From the same author of Sword Art Online, we have a series set 20 years into the future from SAO’s timeline. Here now augmented reality and virtual reality devices have become normal, particularly for young adults and children.

At high school the most socially lacking, fat, slow, awkward, tormented kid is Haruyuki. After getting his typical run in with bullies, Haru is approached by the famous upperclassmen Kuroyukihime (black snow princess) who offers him a chance to install a program in his VR gear that will change his life. The program can accelerate the person 1000 times faster, drop them into a VR realm based off real life structures, and even in limited cases impart special abilities at great risk to the user. The main purpose is a 3D world battle game based on burst points. Every acceleration uses points. Fighting battles uses points. You run out of points and the program is removed and your memories wiped along with it. Kuroyukihime takes Haru as her apprentice, then begins forming her once mighty guild again after years of hiding from other powerful players looking to take her head.

Zinv’s Take:

Accel World by the author’s own admission, was an experiment of sorts to use a unattractive character with real problems, rather that SAO’s Kirito who’s more of a superman type. As a result, the anime here comes off not as widely liked as SAO. Partially too I think due to the animation style, which differs and lends itself much more towards making supposedly 14 year olds look more like 8.

One thing going for this though, is the anime covers a lot of novel territory, and is nearly a verbatim copy of the novel material. While there are nearly as many novels as SAO (the releases alternate now) the ending of the anime in the Dusk Taker arc is a good ways in an you can transition from one to the other without having to catch up much.

AW shouldn’t really be compared to SAO, but they do share a detailed game world and user system. Here you have a tighter focus on a group of about 5 characters around Haru all the time, where SAO is more so Kirito and Asuna. It yields itself to more of a high school anime with a high stakes game and a coming of age story rolled into one. Relationships are pretty well established in the first 4 episodes and develop in those boundaries. Just add about 12 pounds of rosy cheeks and cutesy style animation… and you’d pretty much have it.

This isn’t to say AW doesn’t have it’s serious moments, as there are some twisted characters, but it doesn’t quite get to that level of “you’ll actually die here” drama hanging overhead in SAO. For some that might be a turn off, some a turn on. Your mileage may vary.

Alternative Take:

Probably the thing hurting AW the most is Haru himself. The character was designed to have no self esteem or back bone. He’s designed essentially to be unappealing in an age where we are hyper sexualized and supposedly required to conform to standards. We’re also looking at an art style that just simply makes everything too young. It works fine for doing a stark contrast between the game world and real world, but it just doesn’t help it’s ratings.

Novel wise, I think AW is actually more complex and consistent on almost every level, than the SAO novels. It does more, with less. SAO uses the past history of the death game as a crutch and keeps putting it’s characters in similar situations and changes how they will get out of it. AW tends to change the situation, and then try to have the players bring something new to the table to compete or dig up more history in the game universe to compensate. Unfortunately, this doesn’t translate as well in detail to the anime. Most of the content is there, but you do miss some finer details like Haru or the Hime’s thoughts on matters, or how something intricate works. You don’t get some of the gems like Mother’s Rosario, but it is more consistent with an entertaining story.

The animation and lack of advertising promoting AW as the long term successor to SAO, really hurt it. This is to be expected though, as it was produced and licensed by totally different studios.

Verdict:

Overall – Solid 7.5 out of 10

Anime – 6.0

Novels – 8.4

Zinv Says: “Faster to watch the anime, then start the novels, but there’s still enough to get into here whether you’re a SAO fan or not.”

Infinite Stratos

Pretty much this is the cliche’d “all girls school for flying battle armors, add one male pilot in existence” story. Amazing scientist creates battle armors that can fly around and protect the pilot, gives out only so many to every country to keep the peace. Scientist has a sister at the academy she likes to pamper. Male pilot shows up, his sister is the abusive teacher, seems to know half the school as some kind of childhood friend. Females fall out of the sky for his attention. Trap character appears. Etc etc etc.

Zinv’s Take:

Oh, I could probably stop with the opening sentence, that pretty much explains what there is in the way of a plot.

I’d like to say there’s something unique or good here.. but um… drawing a blank.

The psychotic German pilot calling her squad mates back home for extraordinarily weird and creepy dating advice was slightly funny.

Alternative Take:

The characters are cliche’d and stereotypical to a T. The combat animation camera tracks like a cat chasing a pack of flies. The animation is clean 3D and computer aided, but nothing special. The main male character is air brained. There is a sub plot about some greater evil organization out there that’s creating unlicensed high powered drone suits, but it’s never explored. Male character’s strategy consists of “get shot and get protected,” “I ran out of power,” and “I’ll chop it with my awesome unique giant sword really hard!” Trap character is just another excuse brought out to extend series 4 episodes. Ending and choice of love interest was thin or vapid at best, pointless and developed nothing at worst. Fanservice was loaded into a salt shaker and sprinkled till dish lost it’s flavor.

Verdict:

Overall – 1.2

(It somehow got published as an anime 1, .2 cause it has samurai ladies in flying robots)

Zinv Says: “I’d spend less time and learn more from reading a phone book, without getting as dizzy.”

Toradora!

Ryuji is entering the new school year worried about wasting his youth since he doesn’t have a girlfriend. However thanks to his delinquient eyes, the school body avoids him like the mob. Somehow he’ll have to work up the courage to ask out the most athletic and eccentric girl in school. After running head-on into the “Palm-top Tiger” Taiga, Ryuji gets a thrashing and discovers he’s got a new neighbor. The Tiger’s interested in Ryuji’s best friend, and Ryuji in Taiga’s – they aim to confess to their loves and help each other get the chance. But with the tiger always at his place planning and eating, won’t everyone get the wrong idea?

Zinv’s Take:

I think the most redeeming thing about this series is frankly it’s main element. It takes most every high school love anime trope/cliche out there, and instead of doing the same old typical thing… takes it into more realistic territory or down the “right” path. I’m not sure original is the right word, but compared to the mountains of high school unrequited love stories in anime, this is something unique.

High School Rumble is probably the closest reference for it, but it’s not meant to a comedy at it’s core or have a hundred and one otaku references to find. Ryuji’s a student that takes care of his mother who works at a bar. He cooks, cleans, and has a complex about mold and his father that abandoned them. Taiga’s run away from her own split home, has a complex about her size (short, child like, etc), can’t take of herself, and spews cut downs or explodes at most any moment. Each character has their faults and has to deal with rejection, on a few occasions on a very large and public scale. You get to see them work through that.

If I were to count the common school anime “events” that were used, but turned on their heads, not made into an excuse for pandering to the viewer, or took the easy route out, it’d probably be up around the 70’s.

How about the classic “let’s elope” or run away together schtick? Well there’s consequences there, how would you live, would your friends help you out, what about those you leave behind, what about school credits, how do you travel?

Instead of the parents “of course” showing up to cheer on their child at event X, what if they just texted something came up and won’t make it, and you’re on stage waiting for an answer from the crowd?

What if instead of brushing it off that you tried to scare your love interest in a remote beach cave, she got angry and pushed the issue as to why you did it? What would result then?

It doesn’t pull punches, which is a refreshing change of pace.

Ultimately it’s not any one thing that makes it great, it’s the sum of many well crafted parts. For it’s core material, it doesn’t really do anything original, it’s that it takes overused tropes and spins every one of them differently. The pacing is very good too, just when you’re bored of where the story is at, you get a major game changing twist to go off on another little story arc. It doesn’t lose the “main thing” being the central focus though either.

Alternative Take:

I guess if anything it has as a fault, Toradora isn’t cheap. It only saw 2 releases, a regular and deluxe pair of sets in the USA in 2010 and 2011. In Japan they have a giant Blu-Ray rerelease box set that’s $700. The US publisher was NIS America, which sounds small, because it was never dubbed and released sub only. Doesn’t hurt it any however…

Taiga doesn’t get to use her wooden sword on people more often…

Also if you don’t watch past the credits for the real conclusion of the final episode, your heart may stop out of sheer amazement that the production staff just pulled a complete and utter 180 in the last 2 minutes of the show.

Verdict:

Anime – Solid 8.2

Zinv Says: “I’ve got my vote on the Palm-Top Tiger of Happiness.”

From ANN:

Takumi Nishijō suffers from intense delusions as a result of his apparent schizophrenia and the extremely secluded lifestyle he lives as a hikkikomori. One day he accidentally stumbles upon a gruesome murder scene, a part of a chain of events called “New Generation”. After this, his life gets caught up in these events, and he meets a bunch of increasingly insane anime girls with swords.

Zinv’s Take:

Honestly, I couldn’t structure my thoughts together better than the ANN summary, so there you go… Began watching CH since I’d just finished Stein’s Gate.

ChaosHead like the two following reviews, is a chain of Japanese dating sim games that were well received and then adapted for anime. They all have ties to each other, such as character crossovers or cameos. CH may or may not be in the same timeline as the other two.

To their credit, many such games are shallow and vapid in terms of plot. Traditionally you just have to pursue a course after one character and tread a fine line of responses to reach whatever ending has been setup, good or otherwise.

While there are such animes out there, here the production company went farther than the source material and tried to create a story.

The animation is clean and quite bright.

Alternative Take:

In the interest of full disclosure, I started fast forwarding and skipping episodes around Ep. 5, then caught up around the last three. My reasoning being that the main character is constantly having psychotic or lecherous delusions, which really make no sense other than to serve to illustrate he’s a nutjob. As introduced, he lives in a shipping container packed with anime figurines of one character, and envisions her constantly playing the “desires fulfillment” role.

The supporting characters end up being all female stereotypes, that for added “whizzbang” factor, can pull psudeo-real giant swords out of thin air, due to the power of will or imagination. Instead of trying to kill each other as they start out, the group eventually bands together as a evil fighting force/protection squad for the male lead.

The twist here, being that the main character isn’t real, but a delusion himself, created by a far older original. The world is breaking apart and chaos is being caused as the original can no longer maintain he grip on his “reality” since he’s nearing death.

One of the female support team is the primary love interest, who’s completely devoted to both the new and old Takumi for the entirety of the show. She manages to play up the too cute/bloody murderer side of things. Acts like the most powerful of the group, yet fails when it comes to standing against the villain so we can get 2 more episodes of pandering out of the show. The ending pretty much involves Takumi casting multi-delusions on himself inside of a delusion (yes it’s a delusion-ception), in which he gains ultimate power for a minute and creates an impossibility. As everyone crawls out of the rubble, they agree to live in the same shared delusion.

There’s not much if anything in the way of justification given for anything, you’re pretty much supposed to watch, try to survive the no-sense plot, paper thin cookie cutter characters, and pray it ends quickly. If you fed random episodes of power rangers, paranoia agent, and some high school anime through a shredder, then coated it in LSD and ate it.. the result would be ChaosHead.

Verdict:

Anime – 1.6

Zinv Says: “Ow my head… it was all a bad dream right?”

Stein’s Gate

Stein’s also comes from a dating sim style game, however it departs from that formula quite extensively and focuses instead on plot to great effect.

In Stein, we have Rintarō Okabe who goes by the mad scientist name Kyōma Hōōin, going to a conference on theoretical time travel with his childhood friend Mayuri. Kyoma plays at having delusions of a massive evil organization out to get him, and frequently talks to his turned off phone requesting support from a virtual agency helping him to defeat their plans. As an over the top character, he typically makes grand speeches or blows anything he can out of proportion, and pretty much doesn’t know a thing about what science he’s spouting.

After having a heated argument on time travel with the young scientist prodigy Kurisu Makise, he’s near to where a giant object crashes and destroys part of the building. Searching around he finds Kurisu lying dead in blood, panics and leaves. Kyoma sends a text back to his hacker friend who stayed at their rented room “secret base” and suddenly things shift. Once outside he finds that his friends can’t remember certain events of the day, and neither can anyone else. The most surprising of all is Kurisu is still alive.

At their “laboratory” room, Daru the hacker works on things they cook up, the childhood friend Mayuri (Kyoma’s fake-hostage) makes lunch, and Kyoma tries to figure out what happened. Kyoma had mistakenly sent the text back in time via their phone-microwave… which typically produces gel-bananas, and gel-chicken tenders instead.

Given time, Kurisu gets involved and supplies the brains, Daru supplies the code, Kyoma supplies the posturing and crazy, Mayuri gives the tours. They get the future gadget / texting time machine working predictably and start experimenting with texts in more and more complicated ways.

In the process they run afoul of CERN (of Large Hadron Collider fame) and get mixed up in stories of John Titor, a self proclaimed time traveler. CERN being a real, evil organization working on time travel to control the present.

In the course of sending the texts, reality is diverged into more and more variations (butterfly effect), but the only one that remembers everything from the previous histories is Kyoma. More people become involved with the time machine and send texts of their own that drastically change history and the city of Akihabara. The text machine soon gets an upgrade to a memory sending machine, allowing the user to effectively time jump back a short period.

Kyoma finds it’s not all fun and games when the lab is assaulted and people are killed right in front of him. That starts a chain of mad attempts to save lives, but events repeat no matter what he does. In this far darker reality, he has to get each person that sent a text to reveal and reverse it, including one person who’s after his life. In the process of reversing the timeline changes, he’ll have to make the choice of having Kurisu killed again, or seeing others die instead.

Zinv’s Take:

Well if you didn’t gather from the long “summary” I like this one a lot.

The story is very well developed to pull you in, it manages to hide critical plot changes very well, and still connects you to the characters, and even throws in a romance sub plot too.

Even with what I wrote above, there’s tons more to see: You have a time traveler from the future that comes back to see her father and was part of an armed rebellion. There’s lots of tie in’s with internet lore and things like Warner Von Braun, the twist on CERN and them being a far reaching outfit for evil was well done and surprising.

The first third of the show is really setup for the development both in situations and characters of the latter two parts. It does take a very sudden shift into the dark side of things once people start getting killed and Kyoma is desperate to save everyone.

There’s a bit of humorous product placement as well, like Dr. Pepper being the “Intellectual Drink, For The Chosen Ones” among other things. There’s a great couple of scenes regarding lab coats, that to an extent, became memes on their own.

Kyoma and Kurisu’s banter and development pretty much solidified the show to a large degree. There are a couple favorites in their scenes that stand out, but I won’t spoil the fun for you.

Ultimately it’s a very well put together, intricately fitting series, that anyone who is a fan of parallel dimensions, or time travel, or mad science should thoroughly enjoy.

Alternative Take:

If anything I’m a little irritated that the true ending of the show, which is a OVA episode (25) isn’t included with the main series as it should be. The main cast goes to America for various reasons and Kyoma gets arrested about 4 times in as many minutes just getting in the country. It has a good ending. It is required to watch the OVA as long as you see the rest of the series first!

Some of the repeat sections do get a little old (ie. groundhog day style), but they are almost always told from another angle, or done differently. It’s nothing like the infamous endless 8 of Haruhi. To a degree it was done to express desperation, and give you a taste of how many times Kyoma was jumping, in which it served it’s purpose.

Evidently a movie which extends things beyond the OVA has been released in Japan this month, but no subs have come out for it.

So… while I’m sure I could pick at it given another viewing, there are a few places where the foreshadowing is obvious, my only real complaint is there’s not more of it already ready for consumption.

Verdict:

Anime – Solid 8.6

Zinv Says: “Even if the world line changes, as long as you don’t forget me, I’m there”

“El Psy Congaroo”

Robotic’sNotes

Robotic’s Notes takes place 9 years after the events in Stein’sGate

and can be considered a distant sequel, as some of the characters do show up.

The plot ceneters around Akiho, a girl who is dead set on fulfilling the dream of her now largely defunct robotics club at school, that being to create a full scale mobile giant robot.

By her side is Kaito, whom never has interest in anything besides playing the robot battle game Kill-Ballad on his tablet. Kaito frequently will challenge anyone who wants him to do work or expend any effort by saying he’ll do it, but they have to beat him in a game. Kaito being ranked 4th best player in the world, never loses.

Akiho and Kaito both are survivors from a mysterious event on a cruise ship, where each one of them will get weak or stressed, and experience time moving extremely slow or fast in the form of “attacks.”

As time moves on and things get more complex, more characters show up, such as the creator of Kill-Ballad, Nae Tennoji from Stein’s, a karate club member, and Akiho’s sister.

Akiho will move heaven and earth trying to get the club’s giant robot built, made up of mismatched huge parts that have been left behind in an abandoned hanger. So she starts out competing in a small hobby robot competition to strike a deal with the school to get funds. Either they win and get money, or fail and have to close the club.

While they do end up winning and gaining an ally, they are not allowed to keep the money. Essentially set back after set back occurs to try and crush Akiho’s dream.

Along the way, their interest in building a giant robot is picked up by JAXA, where Nae comes into the picture, as they are an outfit which helps supply special interest groups. Akiho initially rejects them and tries things her own way once again, only to create a giant robot that can only move a few feet before failing due to it’s massive weight and old diesel engine.

Meanwhile, Kaito has been traveling around their island with his tablet and using it’s augmented reality program to discover hidden files. These files describe secret plans to experiment on people and cause mass genocide by way of using solar flares and robots. Early on Kaito meets an AI that guards the location of each set of files, although she has two personalities. Each file also has prerequisets that must be completed before the file can be unlocked. So whenever he’s not forced into helping with the club robot, Kaito is wandering about the island trying to find these files, even though certain adults pressure him to leave it alone.

After a key character’s death, they do get to go to the robotics festival with their new and stripped down robot, but it looks like the lead robot of their favorite anime when viewed through augmented reality. At which point the series shifts very abruptly to dealing with Akiho’s dream of getting to the festival, to travel to save the world from a black hole bomb being launched at the sun (yes you read that right).

The cast has to get another robot working with the help of everyone on the island, as their mobile unit was destoryed when the robotics stadium was attacked. Then attack the shuttle lauch platform being guarded by Akiho’s sister (in mecha), who’s been brainwashed by another AI. So you have more of a David vs. Goliath bout.

Zinv’s Take:

Ok so I spoiled a chunk of the plot. For the positives side of things, it does try to take a peak into our future with augmented reality playing a heavy role in the series, as well as motion capture and input controls that we’re just now getting a grasp on. It does take a bit generalized, but practical approach to building robots, which is nice to see.

For such a large cast of characters the show does manage to try and keep it’s focus on Kaito and Akiho, which is a good thing.

Animation throughout was very good and well done.

Nae gets to have a few “bad ass” moments for looking like a 20-somethings field secretary. The little “too-ta-roo!” girl from Stein’s takes out a platoon of armed soldiers on her own in short order.

CERN returns from Stein’s as well, to be a source of problems, still trying to control the world. They remain a threat, but not nearly as direct or involved as Steins portrayed them.

The one main death in the series is done well enough to make you irritated they died in the fashion they dead. So mission acomplished there.

The blink and you’ll miss it final ending, that portrays the future several years after the main ending, is a nice touch.

Story wise, I’m split on, so I’ll cover most of that below.

Alternative Take:

Honestly the story as it goes, I think is paced a little slow, and then it demands that we accept in very short order (as in the span of 2.5 mins) to switch over to the rushed “save the world” plot line that was building up across the series.

Sure there is is foreshadowing, but they keep it so hidden via the secret file unlocks over a long period of time, that it’s obscured. The quick rebuild of their original robot, was probably done to say that when everyone works together, you can make a miracle, but at the same time, when you’ve spent 18 episodes building the last two, amongst many failures, isn’t believeable.

There’s several overly “conveinent” moments where things just happen or fall out of the sky “literally” to solve their problems, which ends up making it feel like a cop out.

The relationship between Kaito and Akiho is pretty much resolved in 3 minutes in the episode before last. If it had been actually given a little more time to be shown or matured, probably would have had more impact, though it was a nice scene. Kaito suffers from being a jerk or too lazy to help for a vast majority of the series, so it’s hard to like the character, even as a gamer myself that loves robots.

While the plot or story was somewhat generic, there have been other “I wanna build it!” animes before, it did play some new angles and is generally entertaining. However just like it’s main character, it suffers from several setbacks that mar the resulting output.

Verdict:

Anime – 5.9

Zinv Says: “If you’ve seen Stein’s Gate, give Robotic’s a shot for the sake of seeing it (if you have nothing else pressing in queue). It’s not a waste of time, but just don’t expect to be amazed either.”

1.Girls Und Panzers

2.Black Lagoon,are you also going to review The Second Barrage and Roberta’s Blood Trail?

3.You’re Under Arrest

4.NOIR,this is the only one I actually own(ok only ADV’s volumes 1 and 4 but still…)

5.Aria The Scarlet Ammo,been watching the previews every Sunday since Funi has it on vol.1 of

Tenchi Universe.

6.Birdy The Mighty Decode

7.Corpse Princess(not to be confused with the Tim Burton movie The Corpse Bride)

8.Coyote Ragtime Show

9.My Bride Is A Mermaid,ah…yes…Mermen mafiosos!!!! 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆

RWBY Episode 1

Enjoy.

If it hasn’t been posted here already, I’d throw in a good word for the recent Watamote (No Matter How I Look At It, It’s You Guys’ Fault I’m Not Popular). No, it’s not competing for the prestigious longest name in anime award, but it is worthwhile; twelve episodes, slice-of-life, oodles of gags marked by rewarding buildups and payoffs. But it’s not your run of the mill lolifest; in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Despite its surrealist moments, it aims for a more frank, less glamorous view of the typical Japanese high school experience from the viewpoint of a typical girl (well, okay, maybe not that typical). Definitely worth viewing.

Let’s start this right!

Joshiraku

Five raikugo performers debate about everyday life and drop references both American and Japanese audiences are sure to enjoy. Complete with god-tier opening and ending song.

Should you watch it? Why haven’t you? Go do it now! You’ll have a blast!

Watamote!

An unpopular girl in Japan’s high school system wonders why she isn’t popular, despite being extremely shy, introverted, perverted, and socially-inept. Hilarious (possibly cringe-worthy) hijinks ensue as she struggles to find friends and a boyfriend.

Should you watch it? Yes you should, and then read the manga and realize your life isn’t as bad as this.

Shingeki no Kyojin

Humanity must fight against abhorrent abominations that look just like them. Blood, action, humor, and lots of gruesome deaths litter the series that has taken over Bleach as one of the most cosplayed series at conventions.

Should you watch it? If only for Female Titan’s running animation in the second half of the series, then yes. Otherwise yes.

Shinrakyu! Ika Musume!

A squid girl invader from the sea attempts to take over the surface world, but royally fucks up when she is stuck being an indentured servant for blowing a hole in the wall of a local snack shack. She then tries to adjust to life on the surface world and fails for the most part, but that’s the fun.

Should you watch it? Yes and be like me and buy a statue of the title character.

I also recommend for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet:Rozen Maiden.Think of it as Highlander

done with dolls.It isn’t as bad as it may sound though.There’s a good combination of humor and drama to it.

Also the Dolls really come across as individuals.There’s plenty of good plot and character development and a lot of twists and turns.The original series is divided into two seasons and one two episode OVA:

Rozen Maiden

Rozen Maiden:Traumend

Rozen Maiden:Overture

the Overture OVA takes place in the middle of Traumend and serves as a backstory to the relationship between Shinku and Saigunto and explains why they went from friends to enemies.

Kill Me Baby!

A normal high school student is friends with an assassin in her class, and her ninja co-worker shows up to add to the fun. They tackle everyday things such as building snowmen, 2spooky4me abandoned classrooms, and near weekly hits. Don’t be fooled by the opening; it’s not nearly as nonsensical as the actual show.

Yuyushiki

Three friends join the Data Processing Club at school (the what and the why?) and research whatever they find interesting. Funny ass reaction faces, lesbian vibes, and hot Christmas Cake buns are included in the cute-girls-doing-cute-things story.

Ladies Versus Butlers

A young man is accepted into a prestigious Maid/Butler/Ladies academy full of crazy characters, including a drill hair, his childhood best friend, a cross-dressing girl, a very artistic loli, and of course, the typical perverted butt-head. Don’t let Mom watch!

Here’s a classic if you can find it:Gin-rei Special episode 3.

Episode’s 1 and 2 are take it or leave it ecchi comedies that you can tell the staff of Giant Robo did to release some pent up energy.The gem of the lot and the one I recommend if you can find it is episode 3.

It’s a more serious episode and has all the hallmarks of Giant Robo except without either Daisuke or Robo

or most of the other regulars.The animation and acting in it are superb plus we get to see behind the mask of

a Big Fire Henchman and find out just how human the bad guys really can be.