Julia's Reviews on Various Media

[Juliko]

This review was written on April 24th, 2021.

I give this movie celebrating one of Toei's most popular magical girl franchises...a 94/100!

Whoa. No, seriously, whoa. Based on what I read about Looking For Magical Doremi, I had a feeling it would be good on its own merits, but after finally seeing it...damn. This movie seriously blew my mind in all the best ways possible. I admit, my history with Ojamajo Doremi is rather spotty. I remember seeing pictures of the characters and fansites way back when I was a kid, and later, I saw the 4Kids dub of the first 26 episodes when it first aired, and then it got cancelled. I heard the rest of it was dubbed and streamed on 4Kids' website, but I never sought it out. I've only seen two episodes of the first season in Japanese, and one of the movies, and that's it. I know, I really need to watch the whole series one of these days, as I hear nothing but good things about it. So when I heard a new movie celebrating Doremi's 20th anniversary was coming out, and supposedly not based on any of the shows, I decided to check it out thanks to this review of it. Considering all the good things I heard about the original show, I thought I'd at least give this movie a try, since it's both filled with references to the show and newbie-friendly for anyone who hasn't seen it. What I honestly did not expect was for it to be absolutely one of the sweetest, most wholesome, most heartwarming, and most heartwrenching movies I've ever seen. In fact, I'm declaring this the best movie that ever came out in 2020!

Now, for any Doremi fans expecting this to be a new movie about the girls, you're out of luck. It's not about fighting an evil queen, there's literally no magic at all, and the girls we've come to know and love aren't the focus of the movie. This is because Ojamajo Doremi, in this movie, is a show that the three main characters watched and are fans of. Kind of like how Digimon Tamers made the first and second seasons into a show the main kids in that show watch. Anyway, the story centers on three very different women, living very different lives, and having to deal with various problems. Reika is a young woman trying to make ends meet and get into college, but is stuck in part-time jobs, her lazy boyfriend is constantly stealing her hard-earned money, and she herself is reeling from her family's divorce. Sora, a college student, is struggling with training to become a teacher, as she got too caught up in trying to help a special needs child, and begins to question whether she's fit to be a teacher. Mire works at a trade company, but is constantly belittled and degraded by her bosses for being a woman and for speaking her mind, and they waste no time taking all the credit for her achievements. The three find themselves meeting at a real life location used in their favorite show, and after finding out they're all fans of the Doremi anime, they decide to indulge in some anime tourism in order to find reprieve from their troubled lives and find solace in each other's company. It becomes an experience that the three of them will never forget.

For anyone wondering, although the movie is filled to the brim with references to the show and its characters, you don't need to have seen the show in order to enjoy this movie, thankfully. The movie tells its own original story about three completely new characters, all adults, and how they become friends through their shared love of their favorite children's show, and the hardships they face and overcome along the way. Basically, it's a low-key, slice-of-life road trip anime movie...and honestly, I really like this approach, as not only does it allow the movie to stand as its own entity without relying too much on the Doremi brand, so that it doesn't alienate newcomers, it also presents relatable conflicts and storylines that people in positions similar to the main trio can sympathize with. Even without the Doremi connection, this is a movie about the friendships you forge through shared passions and helping each other. The same story can be told using nearly any other anime one can find, but it's often more poignant when children's shows are involved. I mean, who hasn't befriended someone because they liked the same TV show? That's basically how I tried forging friendships as a kid, and I still do to this day! It really hits home whether you're into Ojamajo Doremi or not, and that kind of universal appeal is just amazing to me.

A lot of animation staff from the original series returned to make this movie, and although I haven't seen much of the series, I can recognize it's animation style from miles away, and based on stuff the staff worked on after this, such as Heartcatch Pretty Cure, it's very easy to recognize. Large, sparkly eyes, exaggerated cartoony expressions and movements for comedic scenes, zany animation, fluid and smooth movement, thick linework, all of it is on display here, and it surprisingly fits the movie's overall tone quite well. Animation isn't always about having great artwork or having the biggest budget, but being able to bring the characters to life, and I think the animators who worked on this pulled that off wonderfully. It helps that the background art is very pleasing to the eyes, filled to the brim with color and detail, and consistently excellent all around. The soundtrack is no slouch either, with no shortage of great tunes and a whole variety of instruments like saxophones, oboes, full on-orchestras, and every single piece of background music absolutely rocked. Also, the movie contains a much slower, more melancholy version of the first TV anime's opening theme, "Ojamajo Carnival!!" and the TV version is much more peppy, fast paced, squeaky, and akin to stuff you'd see on a Saturday morning cartoon. Honestly, I'm probably going to commit blasphemy for saying this, but...I actually like the movie's version of it better than the original, because I found the original to be way too obnoxious for my liking. The movie's slower, low-key version with its acoustic guitar, lovely piano tunes, and softer vocals is more my jam. Sorry!!

Of course, the heart and soul of this movie comes from the characters, especially the main trio. Not gonna lie, I love all these precious beans. Every single one of them is perfectly likeable and three-dimensional even with the movie's short run time, all displaying their strengths, flaws, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and the things that make them who they are. They're a fun bunch with their own eclectic personalities and different approaches to life, making them the kind of people you know you want to root for. Even the minor characters they run into have more to them than just one character trait, with plenty of subtle nuances to their characters that make them stand out from the usual archetypes associated with them. The fun in the movie comes from seeing how these characters deal with and overcome the various adversaries that make up the roadblocks in their lives, and seeing them help each other through their hard times. Also, seeing Mire judo-throw Reika's awful boyfriend and tell him off was satisfying as hell. Best girl right there. Everything from the way these girls carry themselves to how they connect over their shared love of Ojamajo Doremi makes them all feel like people, their actions throughout the story are realistic, and the movie really wastes no time in showing what these girls are like, actually giving you good reasons to care about them. I can wholeheartedly say that Looking For Magical Doremi did a bang-up job in making me care about this loveable trio, and I want all three of them to be happy!

With all the praises I'm singing for this movie though, as far as flaws go, I can really only find two, and IMHO, they're pretty inconsequential. One is that Mire and Reika get into an argument about how the latter dealt with a recent event, and while I can understand where the other girls were coming from, I don't think they should have tried to paint Mire as completely in the wrong about what she said to Reika, because she's actually right. Could she have said what she said more delicately? Sure, but Mire is technically right about Reika's inaction during said event, and in some way, Reika did have a right to be told the truth. The second one is the scene at the very very end, just before the credits, as it comes across as a little too magical for an otherwise grounded story. But that's really it in terms of drawbacks, and even then, they didn't kill my enjoyment of the movie one bit. Actual hardcore fans of the Doremi franchise are bound to take issue with how different this movie is compared to the other ones, especially with it not being about the Doremi girls at all, and I can understand where they'd be coming from. I did read that the creators did originally want the movie to be about the 20-year-old versions of the Doremi girls finding a time capsule that they buried during their graduation, but had concerns that doing that would alienate viewers who weren't in that generation and figured the best way to go would be to appeal to a more general audience than just Doremi fans, so that newcomers could have an easier time watching the movie without feeling lost, if they hadn't watched the show. I personally think this was a good decision on their part, because it helps the movie stand on its own without relying too much on simply cashing in on the nostalgia, something other movies have a hard time doing. Plus, the story of the original Doremi girls is over, and they don't really need to overstay their welcome. Who says you can't try something new once in a while?

Whether you're a fan of Ojamajo Doremi or not, this is an absolutely amazing and wonderful movie that really deserves more love. Please watch it!!

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today, and I guarantee you that you've never even heard of this anime before.

I give this moving short anime about two lovers caught in the Civil War...an 85/100!

Some time last year, I decided to hunker down and read the massive novel that is Gone With The Wind, an epic romance taking place during the Civil War and the reconstruction period that followed. To be honest, I'm not a fan of it. If you've read my review, the tl;dr version is that it goes on for way too long, the characters were all either annoying, useless, or outright reprehensible, the plot never seemed to go anywhere, and the authoress really went out of her way to romanticize the South and make the case that slavery of people of color was good for them. Yeah...I think anyone can see how that wouldn't go over well nowadays. But the reason I bring up Gone With The Wind is that I found out that a fansub group I follow randomly subbed an obscure anime from the late 70s called Kinpatsu no Jeanie, which has a similar premise. Being a fan of old anime in the style of the World Masterpiece Theater, I decided to give it a try, as I wanted to scratch that WMT itch I hadn't had in a while. Seriously, I did NOT expect this anime to turn out as amazing as it did! And keep in mind, this anime was made in 1979, when the medium was still fairly young in Japan, and it's amazing to think that even in that time period, the anime industry already managed to churn out its fair share of masterpieces and great stories.

Now, for anyone who might get confused by the English title, Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair (Which makes no sense to me because they made Jeanie's hair blonde), this is nothing like the 1992 anime that's basically an animated biopic about Stephen Foster and his wife, Jeanie MacDowell, whom the titular song he wrote is based on. This 1979 anime does use the title for the show, and has a cover of the song used for the opening theme, but other than those two things, this iteration tells an entirely original story out of whole cloth. The story goes as follows: 15-year-old Jeanie Reed lives a nice, happy life with her family in the town of Agatha, Virginia. Five years ago, she met a nice boy, Robert McBee, and the two fell in love. But due to circumstances involving his family, he was forced to move to Pennsylvania. Robert does promise that once his situation is stable, he'll return and they'll get married. Even now, Jeanie still waits patiently for him. There's just one big problem though: The Civil War is afoot, and the two lovers find themselves on opposite sides of it: Jeanie and her family live among Confederates, and Robert is a commanding officer in the Union Army. This in and of itself is bad enough, but to complicate matters further, Jeanie discovers that her family has kept secrets that completely shatter her worldview forever. In light of these revelations, both Jeanie and Robert have to make hard decisions just to be able to survive the Civil War.

Seriously, where the hell has this anime been all my life?! This anime seemed to go out of its way to address every single issue I had with Gone With The Wind tenfold. The anime only has 13 episodes, so completing it isn't hard for people who want to watch something short, and Kinpatsu no Jeanie really makes optimal use of its short run time. It leaves no moment wasted, it never drags on for longer than is needed, the story is always moving forward, and it's always developing all of its characters and fleshing them out whenever possible, delivering the perfect combination of drama, humor, and heart. It helps that while the anime is limited by the confines of, well, being made in the 70s, with plenty of animation issues that hold it back, along with overly theatrical acting and sound effects that were common at the time, all of the drama it does manage to show is meaningful and brings out the best in the characters, giving them far more depth and nuance than other stories of this caliber. Continuing onto that, unlike Gone With The Wind, which is very heavily biased towards the South, Kinpatsu no Jeanie makes absolutely no attempt to present one side of the war as being wholly in the right. It shows that both the North and the South make their fair share of bad decisions and do their fair share of bad things while not presenting either side as being outright villainous.

On the subject of animation, it's clear that this anime was made in the late seventies, complete with shoujo-esque character designs, limited character motion, rough linework, and painted backgrounds. The animators really tried hard to make this anime look as good as they could, and even with the occasional goofs here and there, it's clear there's a lot of care put into this. But Kinpatsu no Jeanie does have some pretty glaring animation flaws. For one, the backgrounds are beautifully painted, but during scenes where characters are either running or riding horses, when the background is scrolling past them, it often looks like the animators just looped the same backgrounds over and over again while making no attempt to make the transition look seamless, almost like a gif. Plus, there are times when the creators outright spell English words or names wrong. At several points, there are saloon signs that spell Agatha as Agata, and even Jeanie's last name is spelled as Leed instead of Reed, even though the latter is the correct spelling. Other anime did this as well, even the various World Masterpiece Theater anime, but yeah, they could have tried a little harder with that. On the other hand, the soundtrack is very pleasant to listen to and really captures the feel of old timey America, complete wit harmonicas, trumpets, saxophones, banjos, and ukuleles. At one point, the anime uses the instrumentation for Camptown Races during a saloon scene, and the only reason I even know about that song is because I heard it in an episode of Hey Arnold.

Returning to the characters, the show makes great use of them even with its short run time. Every character, from Jeanie and her family to even minor characters who only appear in one episode, are all amazingly well developed and fleshed out, given multiple sides to their personalities, and all serve their roles perfectly, with all of them feeling fresh. Jeanie herself is a great main character, who grows as a person throughout the course of the series from a naive, sheltered, lovestruck girl to a brave, open-minded, caring young woman who is much more aware of the things going on around her, but she also has enough flaws and weaknesses to make her feel like a three-dimensional human being. The other characters also get the right amount of time in the limelight, and even the characters who look like they could be villains at first glance are not only surprisingly competent, but are given plenty of depth and nuance so that they feel like regular people just doing their jobs in a bad situation, or feel they've been wronged by the other side, rather than just incompetent villains who are evil just for the sake of it. Take note, Gone With The Wind. Of course, the series makes no attempt to portray Jeanie and her family as being paragons of good, as they don't hide the fact that Jeanie's family does own slaves and make plenty of dubious decisions in the wake of the war, Jeanie included, but given the time period, I think it makes some degree of sense, and I'm glad the creators didn't try to whitewash history or make the main characters pure paragons of goodness. Seriously, the people who wrote the scripts for this series are incredible, as every single episode was solid, engaging, had great build-up, delivered excellent characterization, and a conclusion that was believable, intelligent, and pushed the characters even further in terms of their development, even if it still left some things unresolved.

However, as much as I really want to praise this anime to high heaven, and believe me, I really wish I could, this series does have another glaring flaw holding it back, alongside the limited animation. There are times when the anime really wants to make things more convenient for itself in order for the plot to happen, so it often contradicts things it did in previous episodes, forcing the viewers to really stretch their suspension of disbelief. What do I mean? Here's an example: In one episode, Jeanie, a nun named Elizabeth, and a group of orphaned children try to strike out on their own when the war starts getting violent. The journey is shown as being very dangerous, and they almost lose their lives on multiple occasions just getting to a certain location. But after they get to said location, the series just forgets that the first way of getting there was perilous, and the characters always manage to find their way to and from that location no matter what, often within minutes, even though the episode showing how Jeanie and friends got there showed that said location was not easy to access. Secondly, one character is shot and falls down a ravine, only to somehow not only survive, but climb out of said ravine with zero explanation as to how he survived and got out of there. A third example, and I'm going to keep this as spoiler free as I can: Near the end of the series, a character commits suicide by shooting himself in the head with a gun, but he's shown completely unharmed, with no blood or brain matter whatsoever, and there isn't a single mark on him even though he's explicitly confirmed to be dead. For this one though, I can only assume that the creators weren't allowed to show the character with a hole in their head and leaking out blood, since Kinpatsu no Jeanie is considered a children's series, and I heard that graphically depicting suicide in a children's anime is considered taboo in Japan in recent years due to the country's high suicide rates...though how they're allowed to actually show characters outright dying, along with showing small amounts of blood at all, is beyond me. Not that I mind, as I respect Japan for having higher, looser standards for their kid's anime and not being afraid to show frightening content. Oh, and for anyone wondering: There is a person of color who dies for the purpose of advancing a white character's development. So yeah, even back in the seventies, Japan was still far behind in terms of non-racist portrayals of minorities, even though the character of color in question is treated with respect and given a reasonable amount of development, and not a stereotype, but I know plenty of people will still take issue with it in regards to the racial implications. But I'm not the best person to speak about this in detail, as I'm sure there are others who can go into this in more depth than I'm capable of doing.

For what this series is though, I can wholeheartedly say that I'm glad I decided to take a chance on this show. I would never have even known of its existence had I not randomly stumbled across Old Castle Fansubs' announcement that they subbed the whole thing, and since before then Kinpatsu no Jeanie had never received any subs ever, I think it's good that it finally got pulled out of obscurity. It's easier to find now if you want to check it out. To me, this is what Gone With The Wind should have been like: a short, moving, romantic epic about flawed but good people just trying to make their way through a terrible time. It's shows like Kinpatsu no Jeanie that remind me that children's anime can be refined and mature, and not just silly entertainment for the sake of it. If you ever want to scratch that historical fiction itch, please give the 1979 Kinpatsu no Jeanie anime a try!

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

I give this movie about a girl in a wheelchair finding love and a purpose in life...an 81/100.

Media about disabled people are a dime a dozen these days, and their portrayals are equally varied. Some manage to portray the struggles of having a physical disability very well, while treating the disabled characters in question with respect, never reducing them to just their disabilities or making them into inspirational props. Others...not so much. There's plenty of movies, novels, shows, and games depicting people with disabilities and the lives they live with varying degrees of sensitivity, with Josee, The Tiger, and The Fish being yet another addition to that growing pile. Based on a 1985 short story by Seiko Tanabe, this isn't the first time Josee has been adapted into film. There was a live-action movie in 2003, which was the only movie adaptation until 2020, when not one, but two new films adapted it as well: This one, the only animated version, and a Korean live-action one, both released late in the same year. Guess it's gotten popular nowadays, hasn't it? I read about the 2003 movie, and have no interest in seeing that, as it contains some elements that really turn me off. Upon having heard that the anime movie doesn't have those particular elements, I decided to watch it. How do I like it? Let's find out!

The story centers on a young college student, Tsuneo Suzukawa, who works as a diver and dreams of going to Mexico to study oceanology. One day, he saves a disabled girl, Kumiko Yamamura, aka Josee, from her wheelchair going out of control. Their first meeting...doesn't go well, as she doesn't make the best first impression, but Josee's grandmother insists on hiring him to help Josee around the house when she's not around. The two find themselves growing closer, to the point where Tsuneo helps Josee get out of the house more, even though her grandmother wants to keep Josee confined to the house, thinking the world is all doom and gloom. But when tragedy strikes on both sides, Tsuneo and Josee find themselves at their own impasses, unsure of how they can keep moving forward.

One thing about adapting a slice-of-life story into an animated movie, as opposed to just using real people and actors and settings, is that animation allows people to do more with the material than the limitations of live-action can do, even though modern technology has helped the latter make new filming techniques possible in order to achieve certain things. I will say that the animation is very well done. The characters are expressive, the movement is smooth, and although the linework isn't all that polished, with a few empty spaces every now and again, it's much more subtle and harder to notice than, say, Granblue Fantasy season one, which had the same problem but that one was much more jarring and noticeable. The movie makes fantastic use of colors and fantastical sequences conveying the characters' thoughts and feelings. Even what little CGI it uses is well-integrated and blends almost seamlessly with the 2D animation. Good on Bones for making use of their good animation as always, as their productions are usually top notch. Not too big a fan of the soundtrack though. I mean, the background music is fine, though some pieces bordered on being kind of cheesy and making big, emotional moments come across as more melodramatic than necessary. The rest of it was okay, though the singer for the vocal songs...kind of needed to restrain himself at times.

I'm conflicted on the characters though. The main cast receive the appropriate amount of development, and their struggles are relatable and grounded. Tsuneo in particular stands out, as he isn't just yet another milquetoast male lead character with the personality of a slab of wood. He has a layered personality, a dream he wants to pursue, and we get a full look into his likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, and what makes him tick. Josee is the same, and with Tsuneo offering to let her see the world outside her home, she gains the courage to push herself out of her comfort zone and sees that the world isn't all doom and gloom like her grandmother said it is, from how she presents herself to how she relates to other people outside of her grandmother and Tsuneo. The movie uses a lot of mermaids and ocean metaphors to reflect how Josee's disability affects her life, i.e. being a mermaid on dry land, and how she blossoms upon receiving proper support and accommodations. In that aspect, the movie really goes out of its way to show that people with physical disabilities deserve to be treated with respect, and can do things they want to do with the proper tools and support. That being said, there are times when Josee has moments where she's rendered helpless and needs immediate assistance, and some give it without her express permission (I don't use a wheelchair, but from what I've heard from others who do, touching someone's wheelchair or helping them without their permission for both is considered a big no-no), so as far as portraying Josee and her disability sensitively, I would stay it's above average: Doing a lot to treat Josee with some degree of respect and giving her some agency, but still stumbles on some ableist cliches on occasion.

However, my conflicting feelings for some of the characters come from the fact that the movie still relies on tired cliches in regards to the female characters. For one, Josee starts off as a real bitch in the beginning. Tsuneo saves her from her wheelchair going out of control, and how does she thank him? By biting his hand and accusing him of having groped her, which he never did!! On one hand, it is established that her grandmother is so overprotective of Josee that she not only tries to keep her confined to the house, but tries to convince her to react negatively to anyone that's outside her home. However, even with that, she continues to treat Tsuneo like crap when he's forced to help her out, at least until he manages to connect with her and help her in ways that'll actually benefit her. I'm not saying she needs to be some sort of saint or anything, as doing that contributes to plenty of other ableist tropes in and of itself, but would it have killed her to actually thank Tsuneo for all he did for her, or even apologize for how needlessly bitchy she was towards him in the beginning? Plus, the movie also plays the whole "Two girls hate each other because they like the same guy, and one of them is jealous and mean to the main character just because he's around her even for non-romantic reasons" cliche straight as a nail, and to be honest, I wish that trope would just die already. Granted, the character in question, Tsuneo's friend Mai, is slightly better executed in regards to how this trope is usually played out, even compared to the live-action movie, where their confrontation escalates into violence. But honestly, that whole trope is just a rotting corpse of a dead horse that really doesn't need to be rehashed yet again. Girls can be friends with the same guy without being constantly mean to one another, producers! This is also one reason that I don't find myself liking a lot of romance movies, as they play this trope a lot, and it's cliche, stupid, and even kind of sexist, because the guys are portrayed as more sensible than Josee and Mai are.

That being said, from what I heard, the producers for Josee, The Tiger, and The Fish deliberately set out to make their movie different from the live-action movie that came before it. I don't know how true this is, and I don't have any official sources confirming this, so do feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I have no desire to see the 2003 movie, but from what I've read about it, it has elements that aren't present in the anime version, with the ending in particular being much more bittersweet and tragic. The final half of the anime version veers in a very different direction from the live-action one, even to the point of giving it a happier ending and changing a lot of things. I won't spoil things here, but I do appreciate the creators of the Josee anime for trying to do something different with the material they're adapting. Plus, now that the Josee novel has three different movie adaptations, all with different ways of telling the source novel's story, viewers can choose which adaptation they prefer from a wide selection, and you never feel like every iteration is exactly the same as the other one. As a movie, I like Josee, The Tiger, and The Fish for what it is and what it chose to do. And thank God they at least got rid of some of the creepier sexual elements the live-action one had! (And by that, I'm referring to a part where Josee mentions that she's forced to allow a man to sexually assault her in exchange for him taking out her trash. I'm so glad the anime got rid of that, along with making Mai less of a jealous harpy than her counterpart Kanae was in the 2003 movie) Also, I really wanted to see more of Josee and the librarian Kana getting along and being friends. Their interactions were the absolute best part of the movie, no cap!

It doesn't quite hit the landing, as it's held back by some tired cliches and the main character making a very bad first impression, but Josee, The Tiger, and The Fish is perfectly nice and serviceable if you want something nice and uplifting to watch. And now to wait for the upcoming English dub that FUNimation is going to put out in theaters next month.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on May 9th, 2021.

I give this cute comedy about a demon girl trying to fight a magical girl...a 69/100.

Ugh, I really wanted to like this one. I passed it up when it first aired, but after learning a bit more about it, I thought I'd finally give it a try after I finished some shows. But let me ask you: Have you ever watched a show that, even though it has a small number of episodes, took you months to finish in its entirety for whatever reason? But you couldn't bring yourself to drop it completely? The Demon Girl Next Door, Japanese title being Machikado Mazoku, is one of those shows for me. Basically, a girl named Yuko Yoshida finds out she's descended from a family that serves a demon, Lilith, and they've been constantly defeated by magical girls over centuries. When her demon powers awaken, her family wants her to take on a local magical girl, Momo Chiyoda, so they can break the curse that another magical girl put on them long ago. But Yuko is weak and tiny due to being sick and living in poverty, and Momo, seeing how pitiful she is, would much rather be friends with her, though decides to train her anyway.

This show is mainly a comedy, and comedy can be very subjective. A lot of the show's humor comes from pointing out, lampshading, and poking fun at typical magical girl tropes, along with rapid-fire dialogue that never seems to slow down, bordering on parody. Normally I tend to like this sort of stuff, but MachiMazo really pours it on really thick. I watched this in Japanese first, and even with the subtitles, I found the dialogue to be really hard to follow. All the characters speak really fast save for some, and it felt to me like the actors were struggling to get their lines out as quick as possible rather than talking naturally. Many of the same jokes are constantly reused over and over. Hey, Yuko is so weak she can't punch anyone hard enough! Hey, Momo is a stoic magical girl who's super strong and thinks Yuko's weak attempts at villainy are cute! Hey, Yuko's sister Ryoko idolizes her big sister so much she constantly misunderstands everything she does! Hey, Yuko's demon outfit is skimpy and revealing!

It doesn't really help that the story meanders a lot, and often times, it felt like the show was struggling to give the characters something to do throughout each episode. A lot of it just consists of misunderstandings between Yuko and Momo, the two leads, or just them messing around and not doing anything to progress the plot. The characters don't really fare much better, as they're all either generic or are just made up of one gimmick and nothing else, with Shion and Mikan being the worst offenders, as the former is defined by her weirdness and obsession with the occult, and the latter is defined by the fact that she has a curse that causes bad things to happen when she gets anxious or flustered. That's it. The final two episodes try to rectify this and inject some genuine storytelling that does work, but unfortunately it doesn't do enough to save the show, as it comes so late that by the time the series ends, the audience really doesn't have much of a reason to care anymore. The show really should have tried harder to flesh out and develop the characters more.

For what it's worth though, the animation, while nothing noteworthy, is pretty crisp and sleek-looking, and the music is fairly good, too. But again, they're both nothing special. One thing about the animation did bug me, though: For some reason, the tops of all the characters' hair are a different color than their usual hair color. For example, Yuko's hair is brown, but the top of it has purple shading, and Momo's hair is pink, with the top of it being yellow. Everyone else has this weird quirk too, and I don't know if this was deliberate, or part of the art style, or something else, but it really bugs me to no end. It really says something when I find myself liking shows like Sleepy Princess over this. Oh, and the series doesn't really end, as it sets up plot points that are not gonna go anywhere because the anime is just a commercial for the manga. In all honesty, I found this show kind of boring.

Not one of the better comedies or magical girl parodies out there. But if you want something sweet that'll make you laugh, knock yourself out with MachiMazo. It may not be for me, but I'm sure it's someone else's cup of tea.

 

[Juliko]

Oh look! More mini book reviews!...and a lot of them are stinkers. Greeeeeeat.

Halfway to Harmony by Barbara O'Connor
Rating: 4/10
Uugh. Normally I like Barbara O'Connor's works, but out of the ones I read, this one was not one of the better books she put out. The entire story hinged on the characters being complete idiots and doing things they should know better not to do! The main characters are as bland as wheat toast, Banjo is a complete and utter asshat who is constantly simping for Posey's mother while forcing the kids to partake in his outlandish schemes without any consideration for their safety, O'Connor's prose seemed more concerned about telling events rather than actually showing them happening most of the time, and the story makes zero sense whatsoever. Yeah, I still like Wish way better. That one had a more coherent storyline and didn't make the characters act like fools who had death wishes!

Don't Judge Me by Lisa Schroeder
Rating: 5/10
Ehhhh...I wanted to like this one, as I really liked Schroeder's previous book, See You on a Starry Night, and it has a decent cast of characters and a good storyline and message. But it's completely marred by the fact that it's preachy as all hell! Every single page seemed to be beating me over the head with its morals and messages, "Women deserve to be treated with respect! Boys need to learn to respect women! Women aren't objects to be ogled over! Bullying is bad! Girl power! Down with toxic masculinity and the patriarchy!" over and over and over again! I think I would have liked this better if Schroeder made an attempt to approach the book's subject matter with more subtlety and toning down the preachiness so it wouldn't feel so much like an after school special. Trust your audience! But this is SLIGHTLY better compared to the book right below this one...

Dress Coded by Carrie Firestone
Rating: 3.5/10
Don't even bother with this one. It's another schmaltzy after school special style book that beats you over the head with its ham-fisted message and morals constantly. None of the characters are interesting or well developed at all, the book is littered with subplots that never really go anywhere (Particularly with one girl named Ashley), the writing felt very disjointed and haphazard, and the antagonistic adults were little more than comical Saturday morning cartoon villains with how utterly obsessed they were with enforcing the dress code. In all honesty, I felt the subplot about Molly's drug addicted brother was way more interesting. This is apparently the authoress' debut novel, and it really shows. It really felt completely unpolished all around. Here's hoping she writes better books down the line.

Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse by Susan Vaught
Rating: 8/10
This one I did like. The main characters of Jesse and Springer were great, and the side characters got some decent development as well. But...the prose and the way the story was structured felt very disjointed. The authoress decided to just randomly spatter chapters where Jesse's town gets involved in a tornado all throughout the main plot involving her father getting arrested, making it feel very jumbled and disorienting. I feel like the story would be better if the author had just written everything in their linear order, giving it more flow, though even the main storyline was often vague in terms of what was happening at points. Eh, I liked it okay.

Alpaca My Bags by Jenny Goebel
Rating: 7.5/10
This was cute. I liked it well enough, but I feel like more could have been done with it. The prose was believable, I liked Amelia as a character, and the conflict was relatable as well, but it just felt like there was something missing. I know some characters were just there to be one-note antagonists and not much else. But I really don't have much to say about this one.

Starfish by Lisa Fipps
Rating: 7.5/10
Now this is a good one! This is what Fat Angie should have been: The characters are actually well developed, it isn't relentlessly mean-spirited, Ellie isn't made into yet another fat person stereotype, and the book actually calls out a lot of stigmas and toxic attitudes about obesity and the ways people try to get others to lose weight without perpetuating them itself. I admit I'm not used to reading verse-novels, but I found it easy to get into. It does sometimes feel like scenes get cut off before they can get any real resolution, making the transition between some chapters feel jarring at times because of it. My only real gripe I have with the book is that we never find out whether Liam realizes the error of his ways or apologizes to Ellie or not. I wish the authoress had followed up on him. But yeah, this is an ACTUAL novel that ACTUALLY encourages body positivity.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on February 5th, 2021, but just finished today.

I give one of Makoto Shinkai's shorter movies...an 84/100!

Makoto Shinkai is a director who has made a name for himself in recent years. He started out doing short movies before dipping his toes into longer feature length films, and then his movie Your Name came out and basically became the most popular anime movie ever. I've been following some of his work since Children Who Chase Lost Voices, and I only just now saw a short movie he made in 2013, The Garden of Words, thanks to Netflix. Now, I did see Your Name, and I have yet to finish my review of it, but I found it just...okay. It had some good ideas, but it suffered from trying to be too big for its own good and combining ideas together that mix like oil and water. I find that Shinkai is at his best when his movies aren't trying to be big and ambitious. As far as his movies go, I think this is his personal best and my favorite Shinkai movie (Though my favorite short goes to Dareka no Manazashi, which I need to rewatch one of these days).

The story centers on a young high school student, Takao Akizuki, who knows what he wants to do with his life but feels alienated and stuck. School hasn't done much for him, his mother isn't around, his brother isn't the most supportive of his dream of being a shoemaker, and he regularly skips classes whenever it rains. He wants to become an adult as fast as possible so he can make his own living. One day, while skipping school, he comes across a young woman, Yukari Yukino, at the gazebo he frequents. Although Takao isn't very fond of authority, the two of them form a friendship over the course of their rainy day meetings. Yukari has some problems of her own and sees her meetings with Takao as an escape from her own hardships.

I admit to only having seen a few of Shinkai's movies, not all of them. But one thing that many anime fans know about Shinkai is his penchant for absolutely breathtaking animation, especially on the backgrounds and environments. There's no denying that his production team really goes all out on the backgrounds. Every frame is packed to the gills with detail, from the ripples in rain puddles to sunbeams through glass, it really feels like the world Shinkai makes for this movie feels alive, even down to the sound mixing and usage of ambient noise to set the atmosphere. It also really goes for "show, don't tell" at every possible time, like conveying how Takao wants to be a shoemaker by showing how he always sketches feet and shoes. I don't have as much to say on the soundtrack. It's good, though I can barely tell you anything about it except that I didn't like the ending song. I found the singer for that to be too obnoxious for my liking.

I like the characters well enough. The main two are pretty good, and they both have aspirations, strengths, and weaknesses people can relate to. They're not going to bring the house down or anything, but with the setting being as realistic as it is, and not trying to make them big and bombastic, Takao and Yukari fulfill their roles pretty well. The side characters on the other hand...really don't get to shine as much, as many of them are just there to either dump exposition or cause the main conflict in the movie, not much else. We only get one line of dialogue in regards to Takao's mother and she's only in the movie for one scene and that's it. I feel like if the movie had been longer, it could have gotten the chance to expand on them a lot more, as they shouldn't be relegated to just props to move the story along. But the main two really carry the movie on their shoulders, and I liked them perfectly fine.

Now, people who aren't huge fans of Shinkai often point out that he often either rehashes the same story over and over in different ways, or bites off more than he can chew. Considering this is a 46-minute long movie, he opted for a more realistic setting here, which is fine. Having seen some of his work, I can understand where some of his detractors are coming from. I saw Your Name, and I feel that it tried way too hard to be too many things at once when it could have just stuck to one plot and made the most out of it. Garden of Words is just that, a simple story of two people finding solace in one another in the face of their own personal hardships...but there is one part of the narrative that I'm sure people are going to have an issue with: Takao is a high school student, and Yukari is a teacher, and the story implies that Takao is in love with her. Japan has a...weird fascination with age gap romances (CardCaptor Sakura is one of the more egregious titles in regards to this), and I totally understand why people would be put off by it, as this kind of thing would absolutely NEVER fly in countries like America. If a teacher or a student got together romantically, the teacher would get arrested for sure. But without spoiling anything, I think Garden of Words handles the subject very well. It doesn't try to condone or encourage a romance between a teacher and her student, and the way the plotline is resolved, while not upfront about its answer, does subtly imply that any romance between them would never happen, something I greatly appreciate. The movie doesn't necessarily end happily ever after, but it does still have a sense of hope that things will get better for Takao and Yukari in the future.

That being said, the actual ending does, unfortunately, come across as very cheesy and melodramatic. Again, I won't spoil how it plays out, but it does involve a lot of dramatic yelling and crying, overly triumphant music, and usage of light rays that make the ending feel like it came right out of a sappy Hallmark movie. That's really the only dark spot I feel the movie has is how cheesy the final scene before the credits played out, and Shinkai does tend to go for the melodramatic when he feels like it. But yeah, that's pretty much it for my feelings on Garden of Words. Is it a perfect movie? No, but how do I like it? Out of the few works of his that I've seen, this is my favorite of his movies. It stumbles near the end, and at other points, but the things it does well, it does really well, and any person looking for a low key, somewhat realistic, relaxing movie should definitely check out Garden of Words at least once.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on June 21st, 2021.

I give thus cute anime about girls in a pottery club...an 85/100!

Not gonna lie, the only reason I even learned that Yakunara Mug Cup mo, or Let's Make a Mug Too, is that I lurk on the website Anime News Network like a madwoman. This is yet another "cute girls doing cute things" anime which surprisingly flew under the radar this past season. There is one thing that made me decide to watch it though: The fact that Nippon Animation animated the series. Nippon is primarily responsible for producing all the anime for the World Masterpiece Theater back in the day, along with shows like Future Boy Conan, Fantastic Children, the 1999 Hunter X Hunter anime, and the Haikara-san ga Tooru remake movies. But they hadn't done much in the way of TV series since 2008, coming back with...this. Yeah. It's easy to think that Nippon Animation has fallen from grace from their glory days, but...after having watched this, I don't think they've lost their touch. For the sake of convenience, I'm shortening the title to Yakumo.

So what's this anime about, anyway? The story centers on Himeno Toyokawa, a young girl who just moved to the town of Tajimi with her father and grandmother. She transfers to a new school and makes new friends. One of them, Mika Kukuri (the blonde girl), tries to recruit her into her school's pottery club. At first, Himeno isn't too sure about joining, but when she learns that her late mother, Himena Tokigawa, previously made a lot of famous ceramic pieces for Tajimi, Himeno decides to join the club and try her hand at it. Gradually, she learns more about the ins and outs of pottery, the impact her mother made on the city of Tajimi, and more about herself in the process.

For a show that's just about girls in a pottery club, Yakumo is surprisingly well animated. Character movement is smooth but not overly so, the backgrounds are detailed and full of life, and from what I can tell, the animators really tried their hardest to replicate the city of Tajimi in animated form. But I do have one quip with it: Why does Himeno have pink hair but purple bangs and shading? Other than her mother, none of the other characters have this, and I find it kind of jarring because it looks like she dyed parts of it. I've seen weirder, so normally I'm not put off by this design choice, and it is in the manga as well, but it feels jarring because none of the other characters have dual-colored hair and they look more realistic. The music is definitely one of the stand outs, as it makes use of a lot of unconventional instruments like ukuleles and acoustic guitars that give it a sort of country music feel to it at times. It's especially prevalent in the opening theme song, though the soundtrack is much more varied and versatile than other CGDCT shows similar to Yakumo.

One thing you'll notice about Yakumo is that all the episodes are 12-15 minutes long, including the opening and ending themes. This is because for some reason, the creators decided to shoehorn in live-action parts showing the voice actresses for the characters going to Tajimi, practicing pottery, and other shenanigans. I skip those, as I don't think they add anything to the story. That being said, I think the shorter episodes were to the show's benefit, as even though Yakumo is rather slow paced and low key, it never drags on longer than it needs to, and gets whatever it needs to get done without meandering or trying to bite off more than it can chew. This also forces the creators to really flesh out the characters in that short time frame, and I think it works here. All four of the main leads are fairly interesting and nice, even if they may seem like archetypal moe characters at first, and they do get fleshed out over the course of the series. A lot of the series focuses on Himeno learning more about her mother's legacy and trying to make something that her father will genuinely like on its own merits, and not simply like it out of superficial obligation as a father. I can definitely see Kukuri getting on people's nerves though, as she's the hyperactive genki girl with a screechy voice that you've seen in pretty much every moe anime at least once. I wish more had been done with Himeno's friend Nao, though. All we know about her is that she's Himeno's friend and that she likes Godzilla/Sentai movies, that's it. That'll probably change when the second season comes around.

In all honesty, the only real critique I have for this show is that episode 8 was kind of a weird episode. It's basically a dumb filler episode where Kukuri falls asleep in a restaurant and has a weird dream based on things people next to her are talking about. It did nothing to advance the story and seemed mostly just there to shoehorn in some pointless comedy. It wasn't a bad episode by any means, but it did feel very out of place in an otherwise grounded show. Plus, the title is rather misleading, because even though it implies the girls will make mugs, they never actually do so in the show. Again, this'll probably be rectified when the second season comes out, and yes, as of this writing, a second season has indeed been confirmed. And I'm super stoked, because I really like this show and I wish more people gave it a chance! The story, conflict, and characters may not seem like much on the surface, but there's just enough nuance, subtlety, and little details that make it stand out from all the other CGDCT anime out there. It's not ambitious like, say, A Place Further Than the Universe, nor overly sugary and saccharine like Kiniro Mosaic. It strikes a fun, heartwarming balance, and I think after this, I can say that Nippon Animation is still as good as it's always been.

Not something that's going to bring the house down, but Yakunara Mug Cup Mo is a nice, laid-back, heartwarming anime that deserves way more love and recognition than it gets.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on April 24th, 2021.

I give the very first game in the Fire Emblem franchise...a 75/100!

The Fire Emblem franchise needs no introduction...if you live in Japan. Having started off on the NES in the year 1990, or in Japan's case the Famicom, it spawned a popular franchise that's still going to this day. It had a much rockier journey in America, though, as none of the games were localized early on, and the only way people even knew Fire Emblem existed was because some of the characters appeared in Super Smash Brothers Melee. Their exposure did convince Nintendo to finally localize some of the games for the US, starting from The Blazing Blade onward, though at the time, they weren't all that popular. The series eventually fell on hard times and was about to get cancelled until Fire Emblem Awakening gave it new life and saved the series from certain doom, establishing the franchise as a new household name. Later, in December of 2020, Nintendo surprised everyone by not only giving the very first game, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, its first official English release on the Nintendo Switch, but adding a lot of quality of life improvements, such as a bookmarking system, turn rewinding, and fast forwarding, to make playing it easier. Though for some reason, it would only be available on the Switch eShop until the end of March 2021, and this really pissed off a lot of fans. Seeing as this is the case, even though I admit to having never played an FE game before this, I decided to buy it to support the release and at least try it out. And hey, what better way to begin my Fire Emblem journey with the very first game in the franchise?

Being a late NES game, it has a fairly simple story. The land of Archanea is in chaos. An evil dragon, Medeus, has ruled over the land for years, intent on turning it into a land of his own making, namely having it be overrun with dragon people with the help of the country of Dolhr. Prince Marth of Altea has had enough of Medeus' tyrannical rule, and decides he and his friends are going to journey across Archanea, free all the settlements under Dolhr's control, and by extension the entirety of Archanea. But in order to defeat Medeus once and for all, he needs a special sword called Falchion, which is the only thing that can truly defeat a wicked beast like him. You have to admit, most NES games at the time rarely, if ever, bothered with trying to tell long-running, detailed stories with a large cast of characters. Fire Emblem not only pioneered the strategy RPG, but was one of the first NES games to really put in an effort to tell a deeper, more layered story than just "fight the evil villain and kill him," even with the technical, graphical, and hardware limitations of the time.

Speaking of graphics, it's pretty well known that most NES games ran pretty slow, with Fire Emblem being no exception, leading to a lot of grinding just so you can get what you want. On that aspect, the game's overall interface didn't age well. Instead of having characters continuously fight an enemy until they're killed, characters are only allowed to land one or two hits on them, and you need to deal as much damage as possible before they have the chance to kill your unit. Plus, every turn doesn't apply to each and every character individually, but rather, your whole army gets a turn where they move across a map at certain tile lengths, and they don't always involve battle. Sometimes they just involve getting closer to the enemy. But I will say, the game moves REALLY SLOW. It takes forever to move your characters across the screen and do what you need to do. Luckily, the Switch version remedies this by having a fast forward function, where you can either have the enemy move twice as fast, or the entire game. There's also the fact that in the original version, you could only save the game after you finished clearing maps, never in the middle of a level. Again, the Switch version remedies this by implementing a bookmarking system, which pretty much allows you to save your game whenever you feel like it, even in the middle of a level. The game even lets you rewind your turns if you made a mistake and want to redo a turn.

In terms of artwork, I admit I haven't played many NES games, and one I tried to play, Final Fantasy 1, had such bright, oversaturated graphics and annoying soundbites that they actually hurt my ears and eyes physically. The overworld sprites here are pretty cute, and the battle sprites, for an NES game, are surprisingly well animated given the hardware limitations of the time. I heard critics say that they felt the art style was ugly, but I honestly don't think so. The character animation is smooth and detailed by NES standards, and the characters actually have detailed headshots with varying color schemes, something that was probably unheard of for an NES game, even if many of them were just palette swaps of one another. I also like the map designs, as they really make the game's world feel big, and the fact that your army progresses slowly makes the game feel realistic in its pacing, even if at times it feels sluggish. Now, I heard that the Switch version's color and brightness level is dialed down, muted, and made slightly darker than the original version, and this is supposedly because the localization used the same emulator and code as the Wii U Virtual Console version released in Japan, according to this tweet. People are bound to take issue with this, and it is understandable, but I personally didn't mind it too much. Considering one NES game I tried to play had the opposite problem, being so bright and having such oversaturated colors that it hurt my eyes and exacerbated my sensory issues, I find the muted video presentation for Fire Emblem to be much easier on my eyes. That's just me, though.

As far as characterization goes, Fire Emblem fares better than most NES games of the era. Now, games back in the late 80s and early 90s couldn't handle doing the huge, sprawling stories that allowed for deep, multilayered characterization that modern video games can do now. Many games made for the NES cared much more about gameplay and graphical design than character development. Plus, hardware limitations didn't exactly allow anyone to give characters more than a few lines depending on what kind of game they were making. Fire Emblem makes a noble attempt to rectify this by having some characters talk to each other as you recruit them. For example, you have to have Marth talk to certain named characters in the overworld to recruit them, or have Caeda do so for others. Some characters require recruited party members to talk to them in order to recruit them. But the only time the game indicates that a character you need to recruit is to check their information while in the overworld and see if they have an actual name as opposed to just their job title. By modern standards, the characters were pretty bland, and you only get some inkling of their personalities or backstories via short lines of dialogue. I hear that the Nintendo DS remake rectified this somewhat, but I haven't played that, and am only commenting on the NES version's characterization. But considering the era this game was made in, I can give it some points for at least making an attempt to give the characters some characterization beyond what's just on the surface.

Strategy is very important in this game. Unlike most games, where you die but come back if you have enough lives, if a character in your army is killed by an enemy, they stay dead, and you can't use them for the remainder of the game ever. Granted, this re-release mitigates this slightly with the bookmarking system and redoing turns, but back in the day, this was revolutionary. Victory depends on the decisions you make and how you manage to use every member of your army. Seriously, I didn't complete my first run of the game at first because the second-to-last level was so hard due to the fact that I lost several units that really could have saved me a lot of trouble had I done more to keep them alive. Planning is key here, and any decision you make can either ensure victory or prevent you from progressing. I think this is where NES Fire Emblem succeeds here, because it really goes out of its way to give you a challenge, even with the new editions the 2020 re-release added in. But being challenging does come with its own drawbacks, with one of them being that many of the units are horribly balanced. You know how certain RPG classes like knights and mages have their own sets of strengths and weaknesses? Well, Fire Emblem kind of dropped the ball on that by going to the extreme. Certain classes, if you invest in them, can absolutely obliterate anything in their path, and others were flat-out completely useless, with the worst offenders being the clerics. In Fire Emblem, they don't level up by using their staves, and they can't even attack either, so how does the game make them level up? By requiring them to survive attacks! And considering clerics are well known for not being able to take hits because of how their stats are made up, this was a really bad move. Later games rectified this, but I wouldn't blame you at all if you just never used your clerics at all. The game is also known for having very stupidly easy ways to make tons and tons of money, but not having much in the way of inventory space when needed.

With all this being said, would I recommend this to people? To gamers who love a good challenge, yes, but to casual gamers who want something to relax with, probably not. I liked it well enough, though by modern standards, this game is stone age levels of primitive, and while the new additions make it more tolerable, they don't make it into the best game ever. The Nintendo DS remake exists for a reason. But it did jump start the franchise we all know and love, so Fire Emblem fans owe it that much.

 

[Juliko]

I attempted to review this on July 28th, 2019, but I only finished writing it out today.

I give this short OVA series about a group of anime fans...an 80/100!

For many people, anime was this super secret niche thing that nobody knew about, and you had to jump through hoops in order to find it, or go out of your way to some really obscure places to find it. I grew up during the 2000s, so this wasn't the experience I had with anime, but anime only started coming to the US in the 80s, and not in one piece if you know what I mean. Nowadays, we take anime and what it can offer us for granted, but back when you couldn't access it as easily as we could now, anime used to be this mysterious, awesome, amazing thing that anyone who didn't actively seek it out couldn't access. Liking anime and manga was a hobby most people didn't understand or appreciate back in those days, and even now, there's still a big of a stigma against anime fans. But if you love something and aren't hurting anyone with it, then what's the big deal? Such is the subject of today's review, a little two episode OVA called Otaku no Video.

Beginning in the year 1982, Ken Kubo, the main character of this OVA, is a college student who has a nice life. He's participating in his college's tennis team and has a nice girlfriend. One day, he runs into an old friend of his from school, Tanaka, who frequently hangs out with anime fans and enthusiastic hobbyists. Kubo decides to reconnect with Tanaka and get to know his circle of friends better. Soon, he finds himself more and more drawn into anime as a hobby, to the point where he quits tennis and starts to let himself go a bit, which causes his girlfriend to break up with him. Eventually, Ken decides to fully immerse himself in the world of anime, and starts to see why Tanaka likes it so much. And thus begins Ken's journey to become the ultimate otaku, or as he calls it, the Otaking.

Now, for modern fans, Otaku no Video might come off as a product of its time, because many of its pop culture references are solely on stuff that came out during the 80s, like Urusei Yatsura, the original Gundam, Captain Harlock, Macross, Nausicaa, Minky Momo, and so on. People who grew up during that time period will recognize those references immediately, but modern fans nowadays won't be able to figure them out unless they've seen those shows or have some passing knowledge of them. That knowledge isn't necessarily needed to understand what's going on, but it's a fun little bonus for those who do. But whether you grew up during the eighties or not, the OVA still manages to really capture what it means to be a fan of something and the absolute joy one gets from being able to share those hobbies with like-minded friends. Of course, the anime isn't afraid to show the downsides of it as well, showing the stigma anime fans receive due to untrue stereotypes and how some fans take their passions too far. There are live-action segments spliced into the anime called Portrait of an Otaku, which are said to be interviews with actual otaku and showing how being one affects them, both good and bad...though those segments are actually staged, parody mockumentaries with Gainax employees playing made-up characters as a way to make fun of both the stereotyped portrayals of otaku and themselves, with Hideaki Anno in particular playing the part of an otaku who loves Noriko from GunBuster. Considering Gainax was originally started up by a group of anime fans, that says a lot.

On the technical side of things, the animation is pretty good for something that came out in the early 90s. The character designs are distinct, the actual animation and movement is fairly good, the backgrounds are well drawn, and the animators really did their best not only to pack in as many references to actual anime as possible, but even replicate them down to their finest details. Although I did notice some characters' body parts were a bit off model at times. On the other hand, the soundtrack is absolutely amazing on all fronts. The opening song in particular is catchy, fun, and has no right to be as awesome as it is for an anime like this, and the soundtrack itself...I can only think of one word for it: energetic. From the eighties synthesizers to the saxophones, flutes, trumpets, and full orchestras, the soundtrack is just brimming with life, and every single piece of background music slaps so hard it's not even funny.

The show is only two episodes long, both about 45 minutes long, less if you decide to skip the Portrait of an Otaku segments. Because of this, the characters don't have a lot of time to really develop or be fleshed out, or do more than they're shown here. That being said, I found the characters to be fine. Nothing groundbreaking, but they serve their roles pretty well, Ken in particular is a cool dude, and we do see the main characters change and grow as a result of the decisions they make throughout the OVA. Otaku no Video really goes out of its way to show how being an otaku can effect people, both for better and for worse by showing how Ken deals with both the happiness he gets from connecting with these new friends and the discrimination he faces from people who only see otaku as overgrown manchildren who live in their parents' basements. I do kind of wish some characters got more screen time and development, such as the new girlfriend Ken gets in the second episode.

All of this now begs the question: What makes Otaku no Video special to begin with? It sounds like just a goofy slice-of-life anime. For one, Gainax, the company that animated this, was also made up of anime fans, so you could argue that Otaku no Video is the story of Gainax themselves and how they managed to succeed in fulfilling their dreams...that is until it all went to shit in the future, but that's neither here nor there. Another part of it could be its parodic, light-hearted satire of otaku culture in general that wasn't afraid to poke fun at itself every now and again. But I think the reason it continues to be revered as a great starting anime in general is because of its accepting attitude towards people who love their hobbies. Otaku no Video shows that being an otaku is not easy, but that there's nothing inherently wrong with being interested in things most others aren't, and if other people have a problem with it, screw them, they're likely not worth listening to anyway. Granted, nerd culture is becoming more and more accepted in the 2010s and 2020s, though it still has a long way to go, so Otaku no Video's message might be considered a cliche at this point, but since it's still very well liked even to this day, I think it's safe to say that it's influence isn't going to diminish any time soon. It helps that it's pretty easy to own on DVD and Blu-Ray now, though you'll have better luck ordering it on AnimEigo's website. It's also available to stream on the website RetroCrush if you don't want to pay for it.

While it may be considered dated nowadays, Otaku no Video is a must-watch anime for people who want to embrace nerd culture and appreciate it for what it has to offer.

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

I give this gripping one-shot manga...an 82/100!

I've started before that I've always had a big respect for Japan's more lax standards when it comes to the type of content they allow creators to make. Unlike, say, America, which has unnecessarily strict or even downright hypocritical rules for what they allow on cartoons (Like, cancelling Infinity Train while allowing Teen Titans Go to continue ad nauseum), Japan's looser rules allows creators of all kinds, whether they be comic artists or animators, to go buck wild with their content without much in the way of blowback from overzealous parents. Granted, Japan has its own issues with its entertainment industry, but that's neither here nor there. One of the most popular manga right now is Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto. I personally have no interest in it, as it doesn't look to be my thing. But the host of a podcast I follow mentioned that they recently published a long one-shot manga called Look Back...and when they mentioned it was based on a real life event, I knew I had to read it. Not only is this one of the longest one-shot manga I've read (It's at a whopping 144 pages. How many other one-shot manga have that many pages?!), it's also a very, very good, well written piece that absolutely deserves more love!

The story centers on a young girl, Kyo Fujino, whose 4-panel manga gets published in her elementary school's newspaper. Everyone loves her art, and they think she can be successful as a mangaka...but one classmate claims her art isn't as good as that of her reclusive classmate, Kyomoto. Angered at the thought of a shut-in being better than her at drawing, she decides to improve her art further by studying as much as she can. When a teacher forces her to go to Kyomoto's house and give them their graduation certificate, an awkward first meeting follows, and Kyomoto confesses that she's actually a huge fan of Fujino and wants to work with her. Touched by her kindness, Fujino lets go of her anger and the two of them make manga together all throughout their years in school. But when college is afoot, the two find themselves drifting apart, with their careers taking them down different paths.

There's no point in hiding this, so I'm just going to get this out of my system: Look Back has a plot point that is deliberately similar to that of the Kyoto Animation arson attack of 2019. If you think this is just a coincidence, there's a lot of evidence supporting this: In-story, an axe murderer kills people at an art school one of the leads attends, with said murderer's motive being that he believes one of the lead characters deliberately plagiarized their work, which was the motive behind Shinji Aoba's attack on KyoAni's Studio 1 building. Furthermore, Look Back was published on the day of the two-year anniversary of the arson. At this point in time, we don't know if Fujimoto has some kind of personal history with the arson attack (Maybe they had a friend who was injured or died in the arson), or if they made this one-shot specifically as tribute to it, or if they just happen to have really strong feelings about it. Whatever the case, Shounen Jump made a good move in letting Fujimoto draw and publish this, as this is a deeply moving story about grief, guilt, regret, and what might have been.

But even without that connotation, how does the one-shot hold up on its own? Surprisingly, really well. I admit I'm not familiar with Fujimoto's other works, nor have I read them, but I must say, the art is fantastic. The character designs are distinct yet realistic, the backgrounds are well drawn and full of detail, if bordering on a bit overcluttered at times, the paneling and page layouts really help the pacing, and since the manga is so short, it's always moving forward and never slows down. Plus, Fujimoto's line etching has a rough, scribble-like look to it, as if it's deliberately unpolished, similar to how A Silent Voice and the She And Her Cat manga look. I think it works here because of the nature of the story, and the manga even contains references to Fujimoto's other works, though more subtle than simply namedropping them.

However, the heart and soul of this manga are the two characters. I admit, I didn't like Fujino when she first appeared because I felt like her hatred for some kid she didn't even know came off as really shallow. Thankfully she grows out of this by the time she and Kyomoto actually become friends and start working together. Both characters, while not entirely fleshed out because of the manga's short page run, do have believable chemistry, and the manga takes great pains to make you care about this eclectic little duo, flaws and all. I do wish the manga offered more of an explanation as to why Kyomoto became a shut-in, as her being afraid of people doesn't hold a lot of weight. Does she have a mental disorder? Was she bullied to the point of refusing to go to school? The manga doesn't really go into detail, but I did like that Kyomoto tried to face her fears once she grew up. One thing that did throw me off was that Kyomoto's design made me think she was a boy at first, though later scenes confirmed that she is, in fact, female. Bottom line, the two main characters are flawed but likeable characters with their own strengths and weaknesses and stray far away from the usual stereotypes we've come to expect.

I guess if I really had to name one flaw, it'd be that this manga, even with having over 140 pages, which is far beyond the scope of most other one-shots, is still rather short and doesn't have time to really flesh out the characters more, along with one sequence near the end that may throw viewers for a loop even though context clues establish that it's a character's fantasy. The story is very simple but uses its simplistic setting and premise to deliver profound characters and messages. If you're not into the characters or prefer fast-paced stories where there's lots of action, this isn't the manga for you. Look Back is a character study first and foremost, and a damn fine one at that. Whatever the reason Fujimoto-sensei created this, I'm glad he did, as this is a damn good manga that everyone needs to read at least once.

 

[Juliko]

This review was also just finished today.

I give this short sci-fi webtoon...a 69/100.

Home! is one of many short one-shot anime created as part of Japan's animator training projects. In the year 2124, a man named Christopher (whose name isn't mentioned in-universe) is on a research expedition in Mars, but comes across a crashed spaceship. Unfortunately, he discovers there are no survivors, only the skeletal remains of those who perished. He decides to take it upon himself to gather the remains of the dead and send them to Earth so their families can have some degree of closure. But when the ghost of a little girl tries to communicate with him, he is understandably freaked out, though the girl continues to try and reach out to him. This anime is only seven minutes long, so you can complete this without much trouble.

But if you're coming here looking for a fun time, this isn't it. Home! is very dark in its atmosphere and imagery. Skeletal remains, including those belonging to children, are shown without censorship, often with hair and clothes still stuck on them. The ghost girl is shown with several body parts missing, another reason why Christopher is so scared of her at first. Granted, it still has a fairly warm and hopeful outlook, as Home! ends on a bittersweet yet optimistic note. I liked the story okay, though I wish it had been explored more, since we don't know anything about what's going on, and the characters aren't even given names, with Christopher's being mentioned in plot summaries and never in-universe. I did find the ghost girl to be a bit annoying, and I don't really get why she never actually spoke. All she did was laugh and pull pranks on Christopher.

The animation was done by Studio Orange, which is responsible for primarily 3DCG anime such as Land of the Lustrous and Beastars. CGI doesn't always work in anime, especially when trying to make an entire anime in that style, but Orange has proven to be one of the few studios that actually cares about trying to make its CGI animation look good and not like weird jerky plastic robots, unlike, say, Polygon Pictures or the animators that worked on the abomination that is Ex-Arm. The human designs here are...okay, but they're kind of generic and don't really stand out in any way. It does help that this anime only has two characters shown on screen, so the mininalist cast does help them stand out to an extent. I don't have much to say on the soundtrack, as I found it kind of bland.

Unfortunately, the characters are where the short suffers. Because Home! is only seven minutes long, it doesn't have much time to develop them, and often times, Christopher seems to change his personality without much rhyme or reason. He starts off calm and rational, but the second he sees the ghost girl, he turns into a spineless screaming wimp, and then goes right back to his original personality when he's out of there. Granted, the reason he does this is understandable, but I feel like had the anime been longer and took more time to develop him, he'd feel more like an organic character. The ghost girl doesn't have this problem, but her only personality traits are being cheerful and mischievous, that's it. Most anime can develop characters and show their personalities through animation, without the need for dialogue, and most of them pull this off well. But Orange's character animation is still rather stiff, and I never really felt like they did much to bring the characters to life.

Eh, Home! isn't really anything special. I like what it tried to do, and it has potential, but in the end, it's just a generic sci-fi anime that doesn't really stand out. But it's a nice watch if you want to kill an extra five minutes.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on June 17th, 2021.

I give this short anime about kids climbing a mountain...a 46/100.

So...I randomly stumbled upon this anime and thought it looked cute. It's apparently one of many short anime created by Toei and another company called Shinano Art and Culture Consultant, to promote children's books written by one Daisaku Ikeda. Ikeda is a famous philosopher and nuclear disarmament advocate who wrote a lot of books campaigning for peace. They can all be found on his YouTube page here in different languages., English included. The Rainbow Mountain is one of those short anime based on one of his children's books. But...I'm not gonna lie, having seen this, Rainbow Mountain is just...bad. The story is about a bunch of five-year-old kids who learn about a magic mountain that makes rainbows, and they find it and try to climb to the top to see if it can make a new rainbow while facing various adversaries along the way. That's it.

The animation is fine, as Toei usually does decent work on their anime, and the character designs remind me a bit of Ojamajo Doremi. But that show had far more depth and nuance to it than this...schmaltzy piece of fluff. The soundtrack is overly saccharine, repetitive, and sounds like it came right out of a cheesy Christian film aimed at kids. But those are the least of this short anime's problems. All of it comes down to the story, and...it's pretty much overly fluffy, saccharine children's fare, and it makes no attempt to even try to make sense whatsoever. For one, the movie's plot is utterly flimsy. A bunch of five-year-olds are somehow able to climb a tall mountain, and said mountain doesn't require them to use any climbing equipment. Oh, and they meet a fairy and a bunch of sentient rocks that try to make them turn back, with said fairy making it so that anything they need on their journey, they can just draw whatever they need and it'll magically come to life! Plus, any danger they face does little to create any tension nor stakes, as anyone above the age of six will know the trio will find a way through it via believing in themselves.

But surely the characters are interesting, right? Nah. The kids are just a bunch of kiddy archetypes: The adventurous boy, the girly girl, and the happy-go-lucky prankster. That's it. They're all as bland as wheat toast and devoid of anything that really makes them stand out, little more than cutesy-wootsy goody two-shoes kids that adults drew up thinking actual children will watch and relate to them. It doesn't help that their dialogue is also equally saccharine, with them constantly spouting and preaching about friendship and courage and never giving up and strength in your heart like crazy. The English dub, which was the only language I managed to find this in, really didn't help, as the voice actors were made to give forced, cheesy performances that sound like they came straight out of a bad eighties cartoon! Seriously, I've heard these actors give far better performances in other shows. Also, if I have to hear their mantra "Up the mountain let's go up! Onward, forward, to the top!" one more time, I'm going to explode, and the movie REALLY loves to have the characters say it over, and over, and OVER! It wasn't cute the first time they said it, and it never will be!

In all honesty, Rainbow Mountain just feels like one of those direct-to-DVD specials that you slap on the TV to babysit your toddler for half an hour. And no, it being a kids movie does not give it an excuse to be this overly preachy, saccharine, and patronizing. I can understand wanting to have kids learn good morals about friendship and courage, but this is not the way to do it. The whole movie just feels like brightly colored junk food that'll put you in a diabetic coma. It's not as bad as, say, My Little Pony: Newborn Cuties or anything, but seriously, don't waste your time on Rainbow Mountain. Kids deserve better than frothy pieces of cotton candy like Rainbow Mountain.

 

[Juliko]

The original review was written on June 12th, 2012, but I rewrote most of it yesterday.

I give the sixth Digimon series...a 58/100.

(This review applies to both this season and Death Generals)

Ah, Digimon. That name rings a lot of bells for people of the late 90's and early 2000's. What comes to mind? A group of kids who pair up with monsters who digivolve and save two worlds from a great evil. Sure it had it's cliche moments, but it really showed kids that anime was unlike anything that the American cartoons showed. For the most part, Digimon was daring, it took a lot of risks, and did a lot of things other shows wouldn't even dare to do, while still staying true to what it was: a great adventure featuring kids and their struggles. I'm definitely a Digimon fan as of right now, and I still remember seeing episodes when I was little. Unfortunately...I feel terrible for saying this, but I have to say it: as of now, Digimon has really fallen from grace. Things started to go a little off track with Digimon Savers (I really liked it), but things REALLY went awry with this new series, Digimon Xros Wars (I'll review Hunters separately).

Our main character is a boy named Kudou Taiki, our typical gogglehead who has a strong desire to help those in need. One day, on an outing with his friends, he hears a voice who claims he's dying, and the world starts to act weird. Taiki and his two friends find the voice, a Digimon named Shoutmon, and all of a sudden, he gets a device called a Xros Loader, a kind of digivice that allows him to fuse Digimon together and make them stronger. He and his friends get pulled into the Digital World, but it's not in the best state. An evil organization called the Bagra Army is trying to take all of the Code Crowns and take over the Digital World. Taiki, Shoutmon, and their friends form their own army called Xros Heart and decide to get the rest of the Code Crowns and defeat Bagramon. But there are other armies to deal with, like Blue Flare and Twilight.

Now where do I begin? Well, for starters, the animation...is kinda funky. One scene, it'll be really crisp and smooth, but other times it'll look like paint and gum arabic got mushed together weirdly. The animation's not the most consistent. Sorry, but Digimon Tamers looked a lot better than this in terms of the animation department, though even that had its errors. The music...by God, why does the OST have to be soooooo GOOD?! I really liked the background music for this, even though I have to admit most of the time it's rather generic. Not only that, most of the insert songs are great. I especially liked We Are Xros Heart and the terribly underused X4B The Guardian. Seriously, that song is BOSS!!! But one thing that really bugs me is that there's no ending theme! Yes, there are opening themes, but no ending themes. Just these dumb segments at the end which I never bothered to watch, and I have to admit, I feel this series uses too many insert songs in one episode. I just feel they were a bit too overused. Seriously, why did the creators use all of their budget on their insert songs and not use it to make an ending theme?! Come on! You can do better than this!

The characters...eh. Typical. You've got the kind but brash and happy-go-lucky gogglehead, the angsty lone wolf who hates everybody, the mysterious beauty, and two of the most useless and bland characters in the entire show, Akari and Zenjirou. Seriously, these two do absolutely nothing to make themselves engaging, nor do they even once contribute to the story (well, until the end, of course, but that's another thing entirely!). All they're used for is comic relief, and not the good kind! Watch the Jungle Zone episodes and you'll see what I mean. I don't like Kiriha, the lone wolf character. His angst is just really stupid and way too over the top, to the point where he just feels like a rip-off of Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh. Nene is just Rika but without her more overt bitchiness, and it doesn't help that they're both voiced by the same actress in the English dub. As for the Digimon...yeah, they were bland. Many of them are just there to be fused with Shoutmon whenever the situation calls for it, save for Dorulumon, Ballistamon, and Cutemon, who actually had their stand-out moments. The main character, Taiki, is just...really flat and shallow. His only real personality traits are that he's a good, helpful kid and that he occasionally pushes himself too hard, that's it. He rarely, if ever, has any moments where he grows as a person or makes really hard decisions, and the few times he has to do the latter, everything is made hunky-dory because of some plot contrivance which keeps him from truly changing as a character. He just feels like a mish-mash of other Digimon leads but without any real character flaws to make him feel more three-dimensional. It also doesn't help that at times, the writing is very inconsistent with him. At one point, Taiki will turn his back on someone who needs help because he feels they should do it themselves, but then he'll immediately go back on that and start helping people just because. Consistency, writers! It's not that hard! Shoutmon...I really don't like him. He's like a tiny robot dragon version of Naruto, always yelling and boasting about something constantly. Stereotypical power-hungry villains are stereotypical power-hungry villains.

The story just involves the separate armies trying to get all the code crowns while fighting amongst each other, and the quality of each episode varies wildly. Some arcs are very good (I really liked the Lopmon episodes), others are just flat-out bad, and some of them felt like they weren't even trying. I think where Xros Wars fails is that it tried to play things too safe. It thinks that by rehashing character designs, personalities, storylines, and not even bothering to develop characters who could really use it are enough to appeal to kids, but doing it the way it does just doesn't work. Everything feels too surface-level and lacking in real depth. And from what I've heard, Digimon's fall from grace has only gotten worse over the course of the next decade.

Basically, Digimon Xros Wars is a generic, formulaic kids show that plays it safe but doesn't try to be anything more than a surface-level rehash of what Digimon used to be. But don't even try going near Hunters, it's sequel. That's EVEN WORSE!!!

Original review under spoilers. Warning, some embarrassing ranting and fangirling over certain segments underneath.

Spoiler: Original Review

I give the newest Digimon series...a 58/100.

Ah, Digimon. That name rings a lot of bells for people of the late 90's and early 2000's. What comes to mind? A group of kids who pair up with monsters who digivolve and save two worlds from a great evil. Sure it had it's cliche moments, but it really showed kids that anime was unlike anything that the American cartoons showed. For the most part, Digimon was daring, it took a lot of risks, and did a lot of things other shows wouldn't even dare to do, while still staying true to what it was: a great adventure featuring kids and their struggles. I'm definitely a Digimon fan as of right now, and I still remember seeing episodes when I was little. Unfortunately...I feel terrible for saying this, but I have to say it: as of now, Digimon has really fallen from grace. Things started to go a little off track with Digimon Savers (I really liked it), but things REALLY went awry with this new series, Digimon Xros Wars (I'll review Hunters separately).

Our main character is a boy named Kudou Taiki, our typical gogglehead who has a strong desire to help those in need. One day, on an outing with his friends, he hears a voice who claims he's dying, and the world starts to act weird. Taiki and his two friends find the voice, a Digimon named Shoutmon, and all of a sudden, he gets a device called a Xros Loader, a kind of digivice that allows him to fuse Digimon together and make them stronger. He and his friends get pulled into the Digital World, but it's not in the best state. An evil organization called the Bagra Army is trying to take all of the Code Crowns and take over the Digital World. Taiki, Shoutmon, and their friends form their own army called Xros Heart and decide to get the rest of the Code Crowns and defeat Bagramon. But there are other armies to deal with, like Blue Flare and Twilight.

Now where do I begin? Well, for starters, the animation...is kinda funky. One scene, it'll be really crisp and smooth, but other times it'll look like paint and gum arabic got mushed together weirdly. The animation's not the most consistent. Sorry, but Digimon Tamers looked a lot better than this in terms of the animation department, though even that had its errors. The music...by God, why does the OST have to be soooooo GOOD?! I really liked the background music for this, even though I have to admit most of the time it's rather generic. Not only that, most of the insert songs are great. I especially liked We Are Xros Heart and the terribly underused X4B The Guardian. Seriously, that song is BOSS!!! But one thing that really bugs me is that there's no ending theme! Yes, there are opening themes, but no ending themes. Just these dumb segments at the end which I never bothered to watch, and I have to admit, I feel this series uses too many insert songs in one episode. I just feel they were a bit too overused. Seriously, why did the creators use all of their budget on their insert songs and not use it to make an ending theme?! Come on! You can do better than this!

The characters...eh. Typical. You've got the kind but brash and happy-go-lucky gogglehead, the angsty lone wolf who hates everybody, the mysterious beauty, and two of the most useless and bland characters in the entire show, Akari and Zenjirou. Seriously, these two do absolutely nothing to make themselves engaging, nor do they even once contribute to the story (well, until the end, of course, but that's another thing entirely!). All they're used for is comic relief, and not the good kind! Watch the Jungle Zone episodes and you'll see what I mean. I don't like Kiriha, the lone wolf character. His angst is just really stupid and way too Kaiba-ish. I have to admit, I really liked Taiki. I don't understand why people say he's a Mary-Sue. A Mary-Sue is a character used in fan fiction who is perfect and lacks any flaws, and are mostly created as a wish fulfillment fantasy for fan fic writers. Taiki may be kind of bland, but he's far from a Mary Sue. He has flaws. For example, in the beginning he was rather brash and dove into situations without thinking, and he pushes himself too hard. Doesn't that count? As for the Digimon...yeah, they were bland. Shoutmon...I really don't like him. He's like a tiny robot dragon version of Naruto, always yelling and boasting about something constantly. Stereotypical power-hungry villains are stereotypical power-hungry villains.

Basically, Digimon Xros Wars is still your formulaic kids show with lots of adventures and everything else. HOWEVER! I will give it credit for bringing back a lot of my favorite Digimon. In fact, there is ONE two-episode arc in this series, yes, ONE TWO EPISODE ARC that branded itself into my heart like no other. It's the NeoVamdemon arc. Why? Not only does it feature my favorite Digimon of all time (and with awesomely cute voices too), it has some of the saddest and most heartwrenching scenes in not just this anime, but all anime in general. I cried at it! This is why I started watching Xros Wars, because I wanted to see those two episodes and those two alone! They have a near perfect mixture of comedy, drama, suspense, and bombast. To me, those two episodes were just perfect. I love them!

Unfortunately...I still have to be a critic and rank this series VERY low...and I do so for a rather silly reason. Have you noticed that Toei has this REALLY WEIRD habit of giving the weirdest voice actors the weirdest roles? Something like that often happens, and it often leads to some really bad miscasts. With Toei, that's happened. A LOT. For example: take the seiyuu Tomokazu Seki. He's a famous voice actor in the anime industry, known for his role as Kyo Sohma from Fruits Basket and Shuichi Shindou from Gravitation. Get this: he was cast as a cute little animal mascot in the very first Pretty Cure series! Yes, a GUY as a cute little animal mascot!! I heard this role myself and...oh God, I hated it so much. Yes, I know it's been done before. Nyanko-sensei from Natsume Yuujinchou is an example, but that was done right! Why do I bring up this issue? Well...after seeing episodes 15-17 of this series, Toei has officially made me lose my respect for them. I do give them credit for bringing back one of my favorite Digimon and giving him a cuter design...but the voice. OH MOTHER OF GOD, THAT VOICE!!! WHY TOEI?!? WHY DID YOU HAVE TO CAST AGUMON FROM DIGIMON SAVERS AS A FREAKING GOD WHO LOOKS LIKE A LITTLE KID?!?!?!? I will seriously NEVER forgive them for this utterly disgusting and insidious miscast!!! This particular character should sound like a little kid, NOT Shun from Kimi to Boku! Yes, his voice fits when he goes into his adult form, and personally, I would have tolerated it better if the voice was JUST for his adult forms, not his kid forms! But NOOOOO!!! Why Toei?! WHYYYYYY?!? I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!!! He sounds so awful because of it!!!

So...Digimon Xros Wars has a plot that's generic as heck and...that's it in a nutshell. But don't even try going near Hunters, it's sequel. That's EVEN WORSE!!!

 

[Juliko]

I attempted to review this on April 14th, 2017, but only just finished writing it out today. Whelp.

I give this charming book about a girl dealing with her mother's prison sentence...an 81/100.

The thing about books is that even though there are guidelines for whatever age demographic you're writing for, writers are still given a significant amount of creative freedom over what they write. There's no real limit on the kind of content that you can write. For kids books in particular, as long as you're making the subject matter appropriate for the learning level of a certain age group, anything is fair game. It's not like TV, where there are strict broadcasting standards for children's cartoons, especially for dubbed anime, where you're not allowed to show blood or graphic death scenes. Something like Nora Raleigh Baskin's Ruby on the Outside would never have been allowed on TV, but with being a written book, it has a lot more leeway to tell its story in a nuanced, personal way without fear of censorship of any kind. I've read quite a few of Baskin's books, and out of the ones I've read, this would be my second favorite, just behind Anything But Typical.

Eleven-year-old Ruby Danes looks like she has a pretty normal life, but she has a secret that she doesn't want anyone to know about: Her mother's in prison. She yearns for her mother's constant presence in her life, but she can only visit her in prison under strict regulations, and only for 15-minute visits at that. She doesn't feel like she's normal even though she is on the outside. One day, a new family moves into the condo complex she lives in, and Ruby thinks she might find a new friend in Margalit, the new girl. The two get along swimmingly, but when Ruby hears some bits and pieces about Margalit's history, many of which are a little too close to the event that put her mother in prison, Ruby wonders what would happen if Margalit found out the truth. She fears that if she comes clean about everything, she could lose everything she cares about.

I don't know much about how actual prison visits work, as I've never been to one and most of what I saw was on shows like Law & Order, and I'm pretty sure those aren't accurate representations of it, to say the least. But from what I could tell, Baskin apparently did a lot of research on the correctional facility that was used in the book, and from what I can see, it seems pretty on-point. She's also really good at describing the insane restrictiveness and tedium that comes with the entire process of visiting someone in prison, like checking to make sure nobody's smuggling objects and the really long wait times. I mean, who hasn't had to wait hours upon hours just to talk to someone for only fifteen minutes? I may not have much to say about the prose, as it's simple enough for kids to understand, but Baskin definitely deserves credit for really diving deep into the subject matter and the main character's feelings about it.

Speaking of the main character, Ruby, I found her to be okay as a character. Not the most three-dimensional, as she's a child and all, but her feelings of yearning for normalcy and her conflicting feelings about her mother's actions and inactions definitely felt palpable and real. Baskin runs the whole gamut of emotions with Ruby: excitement, regret, guilt, the whole enchilada, and her angst about both her mother and the potential connection that Margalit's family has with the crime are fairly down-to-earth. She manages to carry the novel just fine. That said, every side character that wasn't Matoo was kind of bland. Margalit was fine, but she didn't really stand out to me, and the other kids they hang out with don't have much presence. The book is fairly short too, so they don't really get to do anything of real note other than introduce something to Ruby that she can use to connect with her mother on a level she can't normally.

I really like this book, flaws and all, though I can see some kids finding it boring. Anybody who's looking for fast paced action isn't going to find it here, and some may find that the story's narrative doesn't quite carry its fuel. I do, personally, but this is a character study through and through. I will say this though: Having read a good chunk of Baskin's novels, I notice that she often struggles with giving her books conclusive endings, and many of them often leave a lot of things unresolved or just have bad endings overall. Ruby on the Outside is definitely an exception to this, as while it doesn't try to wrap everything in a neat little bow, as doing that would come across as insincere, it actually does manage to feel cohesive and like an actual ending, so you don't feel like there are any plot threads left hanging.

Overall, Ruby on the Outside is a bittersweet but charming kid's novel, and it definitely deserves more love than it gets.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on May 25th, 2021.

I give this cute movie about one of Sanrio's most popular characters...a 64/100.

Show of hands, who here knows about Sanrio? Even if you don't know them by name, you've probably seen a character they made called Hello Kitty. She's pretty much everywhere if you know where to look. But Sanrio as a company has made many other cute, colorful characters since their inception, and continue to do so to this day. I first learned about Sanrio in elementary school, and one of the first Sanrio characters I really grew attached to was Cinnamon, the cute white puppy with long ears and a cinnamon roll shaped tail. I thought he was absolutely adorable, and still do! Yes, I know he's technically referred to as Cinnamoroll now, but I remember discovering him back when he was referred to as Baby Cinnamon, or just Cinnamon, so I'm going to keep calling him that. So years later, when I found out there was an anime movie about Cinnamon and his friends, kid me was ecstatic!...until I found out that nobody bothered to give it English subtitles. Fast forward over a decade, and somebody was kind enough to sub it via YouTube's closed captions system and posted it up there. I finally watched it, and...I love Cinnamon, but man, this has kids movie written all over it, and not in a good way.

One day, a pup named Cinnamon falls from the sky, landing in a young girl's bike. Anna, the girl in question, takes Cinnamon to the cafe she works at. Cinnamon meets the other pups that live at the cafe and they all become friends. But a mischievous demon, Chowder, thinks Cinnamon is a threat to Anna, who he has a crush on, so he tries to mess things up by casting magic spells. However, one of them spirals out of control, to the point of kidnapping Anna and trapping her in a warped world of its own making, trapping everyone inside. Cinnamon and the other pups must work together to save Anna from the being that Chowder's spell made sentient.

Not gonna lie, this is not one of the better children's movies. The whole thing just involves the pups going into this magic kingdom to save Anna from a monster, and they don't even really do anything on their own. The pups just scream a lot and the plot basically forces them to move from place to place just to get the story going, rather than actually having them do it themselves. None of the characters receive much in the way of development and are just a bunch of archetypes, and rarely do they do much of anything by themselves. It really says something when Mocha, the female fashionista puppy and a side character, winds up being much more proactive than the lead character, as not only does she frequently call out Chowder for what he did, she's often the first to take action. Plus, the movie doesn't really give the characters a chance to just sit, breathe, and show what they're like outside of the situation they find themselves in. Anna is just a damsel in distress who doesn't do anything but be saved by the pups, so she's flat-out useless.

The story is pretty shallow and trite as well, as it's just a rehash of a "save the female character" premise that's been done in many other movies before, and this does nothing new with it. The main villain is barely given much development, and the themes that arise from said villain's existence don't get explored to their fullest potential. There's also the fact that the movie takes huge leaps in logic just to make the story progress. For example, a character flies to save Anna, but the thing is, the character is small enough that he should not be able to fly carrying the weight of one whole person on them, much less be able to maneuver around moving tentacles. Add in a random Deus Ex Machina that comes out of nowhere to save the day, and the problem is solved forever and ever. Yawn.

It's easy to see that this movie was made solely for the purpose of just entertaining children and giving them something colorful to look at, without much in the way of actual substance and depth. Now, there's nothing wrong with kids wanting the occasional dumb entertainment for the sake of it, as kids can tire of stuff that's solely educational. I like my occasional dose of cheesy Lifetime melodrama movies whenever I'm in the mood for them. But don't go into this movie expecting it to be anything more than a 45-minute babysitter. I can at least say this though: At least it's not the travesties that are My Little Pony: Newborn Cuties and A Troll In Central Park.

 

[Nicolas721]

I liked Xros Wars when it came out, but now I can see that it hasn't aged that well. It feels like a mishmash of One Piece and Gurenn Lagann that (unlike those) puts plot and action over characterization, so it may feel empty at times. And yeah, Hunters is a disaster that wastes a decent concept.

Through if there's something that makes me hopeful for the franchise, it's Applimonsters. I enjoyed it a lot because of its characterizations and dramatic moments.

 

[Juliko]

I attempted to review this on May 22nd 2021, but didn't finish writing it until today.

I give this cute, enthralling fantasy book...a 89/100!

My philosophy on any kind of media—be it a book, game, or a TV show—is that every plot or premise has already been done before, but if you can execute it well and make believable characters that can drive said story, even the most cliche stories can work out great. But some creators really go the extra mile to make really creative stories with a lot of fun ideas. Such is the case for this book, The Star Shepherd. Now, I read one of MarcyKate Connolly's books before, that being Shadow Weaver, and I really liked that one, but I didn't have much to say about it. I did like it though, and I plan on reading the sequel when I can. But I rented this at my local library once and I really liked it, to the point where I bought a physical copy shortly after. Not gonna lie, The Star Shepherd is a really nice, fun, engaging book that's sure to scratch your wholesome sci-fi/fantasy kid's book itch.

A boy named Kyro and his father are Star Shepherds, whose jobs are to return fallen stars back into the sky by way of putting them in burlap sacks and catapulting them into the heavens. They live on the outskirts of the village of Drenn, but the townspeople don't like Star Shepherds, seeing them as little more than delusional glory hogs stealing good fortune from the common people, so they're basically outcasts, though Kyro has a friend in Andra, the baker's daughter. One day, stars begin falling en masse, and too fast for Kyro and his father Tirin to rescue. Tirin leaves to report the incidents to the Star Shepherd Council, but when he doesn't return, Kyro is understandably worried, more so when he sees dark monsters known as vissla consuming the remains of fallen stars. Kyro, his dog Cypher, and his friend Andra decide to journey across the world to unravel the mystery of what's making the stars fall, the dark monsters, and find Kyro's father before its too late.

I really liked this book, mainly because of all the fun ideas it has in regards to its story. The ideas of people shooting fallen stars back into the sky with catapults, with the stars themselves being used as magic to ward of dark monsters, mechanical giants that are so big they put stars in the sky in the first place, are a whole lot of fun, and The Star Shepherd really goes wild with the concepts that it has going for it. This is one reason that I find myself preferring to read children's books than stuff aimed at teenagers or adults, as the latter often have plots that are just carbon copies of one another. I'm not interested in characters having affairs behind each other's backs and starting pointless drama! The Star Shepherd really takes its time to weave its ideas into its story and allow them to blossom, often times mixing cliches with original ideas, and it really works here. It also helps that the prose is fairly engaging as well, descriptive enough but not to the point of being super purple prose-y.

I also liked the main characters as well. Kyro and Andra bounce off each other well, and the characters they come to meet throughout their journey are also fun and likeable, even if some of them are still rather one-dimensional (Looking at you, Andra's dad Bodin). I do find the dark monsters to be a bit one dimensional, as they didn't really have much motive behind eating stars and destroying them. I would have liked to have more explanation for why the vissla do what they do. Of course, as much as I want to praise The Star Shepherd up the wazoo, it's not a perfect novel. For one, the geography in its setting seems a little too compact and convenient, meaning that every place Kyro and his friends go to always takes just a day or slightly more to get to, even though they travel through vast expanses and terrains like forests, desserts, and oceans. There isn't a lot of tension if Kyro and his group always manage to make it to their desired locations within a day, as there isn't a whole lot of consistency with things like geology and the laws of physics. This next one is more of a nitpick, but one illustration makes Cypher, Kyro's dog, look more like a lion cub than a dog, and it's the illustration shown on the back of the book, at that! Hello, ever heard of consistency? There's also one twist that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and I wish it had been elaborated on a bit more in the writing.

Other than those flaws I mentioned, I'd still recommend checking out The Star Shepherd. It's a genuinely fun, engaging, entertaining story that's full of adventure and a lot of creative ideas. I bet kids would love this one, and even I, a 28-year-old adult woman, thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

[Juliko]

This review was originally started on July 14th, 2021, but not finished being written until today.

I give this novelization of one of Makoto Shinkai's self-made films...an 83/100!

I admit that I haven't seen a lot of Makoto Shinkai's movies. At this point, I've seen Children Who Chase Lost Voices, Your Name, Garden of Words, and the 5-minute Dareka no Manazashi short. I have, however, read quite a few of the companion novels he penned, such as 5 Centimeters Per Second, Lost Voices, Weathering With You, and the subject of today's review, the Voices of a Distant Star novel, called Words of Love/Across The Stars. Now, from what I learned, this is apparently the second time this particular film was adapted into a book format, but this particular version, the second novelization, is the only one that came out in the US, and fairly recently, at that. I might watch the short film for Voices of a Distant Star in the future, as it's considered Shinkai's first major work...but I have to admit that the art style isn't very appealing to me, even though I understand it was all animated by Shinkai himself, before he began working with a company that hired more experienced animators. I did read the manga before this, though a review of that will come later. I kind of blind-bought this novel, along with two others, on my birthday recently, and honestly, I'm glad I did, because I really like this one, as it expands on a lot of things that the short film doesn't cover.

In the year 2047, humanity is in the midst of a war against mysterious aliens called Tharsians and are in the process of recruiting people to fight them in mecha suits called Tracers. One of those pilots is Mikako Nagamine, a 15-year-old girl who was drafted into one of the space army's special squadrons, and has to search for the Tharsians in space. She leaves behind a friend of hers, Noboru Terao, but they promise to remain in contact as much as possible, usually by texting one another. But as the fleet goes deeper into space, text messages take longer and longer to reach Earth, to the point where years pass, and both Mikako and Noboru come to realize that they care more for each other than they realized, but now may not get the chance to even say so.

One thing about sci-fi that I found doesn't really appeal to be is that most sci-fi stuff I've seen rely on a LOT of technobabble and exposition to explain things, when some things don't necessarily need to be explained, thereby dragging the show down rather than letting things play out naturally. I can understand wanting to make the sci-fi world feel as rich as possible rather than make it into another bog standard sci-fi setting, but too much exposition and explanations just bog things down. Luckily, Voices of a Distant Star doesn't do that. Because the story centers on two kids and focuses entirely on their perspectives, it keeps its focus on the things they see, feel, and experience, rather than try to bite off more than it can chew by making the scale of the story bigger than it should be. Because of this, the sense of scale is smaller, but it feels more intimate and focused on the central conflict of the movie, which is the kids' realization that the farther away Mikako is from Earth, the more impossible it is for them to remain in contact because of the lack of faster-than-light correspondence and the regrets they hold because of not saying what they wanted to say to one another before Mikako leaves for space.

The prose is pretty good, too. I found it fairly engaging and descriptive when it needed to be, and while I don't recognize a lot of the names and locations that Mikako and Noboru reference, like their hometowns, or even some technological terms like Geodesic distance, the writing makes it feel seamless enough that I didn't feel lost. But if I had to name one flaw in regards to the writing, it'd be that at times, both Mikako and Noboru's thoughts come across as way too purple prose-y at times. I mean, teenagers don't exactly engage in a lot of overly philosophical navel gazing, and while the circumstances Mikako is in makes them understandable at times, I still found a lot of the kids' thoughts to be way too overwrought and self-aware for kids their age. There are other times when the prose is too blunt, with sentences like "I had a visceral sense of disgust," which to me is more telling than showing. Why not show Mikako being disgusted by having her express it with her face, like the scrunching of her nose or the contorting of her mouth and facial muscles? So the prose doesn't really strike much of a balance when it comes to showing when it matters and telling when it matters, telling things that could benefit from being shown and showing things that don't need to be elaborated on.

That being said, the novel does expand on both Mikako and Noboru's characterization, even developing them more than the film itself did proper. Since novels allow writers to really make an effort to convey their characters thoughts and feelings in more time than a half hour movie can do, the novel is able to go deeper into the kids' thoughts and feelings, giving them more development and nuance that was impossible to do in the film. It also shows why Mikako even chose to become a Tracer pilot in the first place, and how Noboru's life turned out to be like while Mikako is out in space, even introducing new characters, like one of Noboru's girlfriends (Who I wish had more page time! She wasn't even given a name, for God's sake!!) and Mikako's sick cousin Aya (Who I hate, by the way). So even with the prose making their thoughts a bit too overwrought at times, I still found myself liking Noboru and Mikako, and genuinely felt for them, even as they both tried to move on from their unrequited romance. The novel even explains a lot of things that the film left more ambiguous, and I think fans will definitely appreciate that. It's also interesting to read this having read the manga, as the novel and the manga have different takes on expanding the characters' and worldbuilding. In this novel, Mikako chooses not to socialize with any of the other soldiers on the Lysithea out of a desire to be true to Noboru and Earth, while in the manga, she does make one friend (Whose name escapes me at the moment).

As someone who hasn't seen the Voices of a Distant Star movie, I think the novel is a pretty good adaptation that really hit a slam dunk in regards to expanding on the characters, world, and Shinkai's vision. But your mileage may vary. In my personal opinion, I'd highly recommend this, especially if you want to experience some degree of Voices of a Distant Star but are put off by the animation of the original film.

 

[Juliko]

I tried to write a review for this on May 31st, 2019, but only finished writing it today.

I give one of the earliest, most famous LGBT books...an 82/100!

Hot take: LGBT books are all the rage right now! They have been since the early 2010s, and will probably continue to be so! When you go into a bookstore or a library, chances are you'll probably see a section dedicated to LGBT literature, or books focusing on characters who happen to be gay, bi, trans, pan, or somewhere on the spectrum. But before the 1980s, the idea of having any books about LGBT people in any fashion at all was considered little more than a pipe dream. While homosexuality was no longer wrongly considered a mental illness, people still didn't like the idea of people being attracted to partners of the same gender, and during the AIDS crisis, and long before even that, gays were frequently subjected to all kinds of homophobia and abuse, from snide comments, to getting disowned by their families, or even getting straight up murdered. Some books were even banned from getting published just for having gay characters, or even having them receive a happy ending. The only way some books about homosexuals even had a chance of getting published was if the characters were portrayed as evil, turned straight, or killed at the end, as writers were completely forbidden from giving gay characters happy endings (This was the reason why Maurice, E.M Forster's novel, written in 1913, wasn't officially published until 1971). Not exactly positive portrayals, as you can tell. Slowly but surely, homosexual writers began writing stories about people in the LGBT community, trying hard to finally show people that the stereotypes about gays being sick, immoral, and doomed to be little more than promiscuous sex fiends, or afllicted with some awful disease, were just untrue. Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden was one of the first novels that centered around a lesbian couple, published in 1982, during the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and it received both praise and backlash for its attempts at portraying lesbians in a sympathetic light and giving them a happy ending. But how does it hold up nowadays?

Before we get to that, let's get to the story. It focuses on a young woman, Liza Winthrop, and her budding friendship, later romance, with another girl, Annie Kenyon. They first meet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the two find themselves becoming close despite coming from different backrgounds. But the more time they spend together, the more suspicious the people around them begin to get, especially some of Liza's teachers and classmates at her conservative private school. When their secret gets exposed in the worst way possible, everything they built up threatens to get mercilessly torn to pieces. Yeah, not gonna lie, the book does contain a lot of angst about Liza coming out to her friends and family and fearing the repercussions that come from her being outed as gay. Nowadays, that kind of storyline is pretty much a cliche. For what it's worth, a lot of it is saved for in the second half of the book, and thankfully it doesn't take over the storytelling or detriment it in any significant way. Furthermore, my copy of the book contains an interview with the authoress, who said she tried really hard to make sure she didn't reduce her characters to being little more than soapboxes spewing morals every second. There's also a subplot about Liza's school suffering a lot of financial issues that takes up a good portion of the book, and I didn't really find it to be all that interesting. I was much more interested in seeing more moments between Liza and Annie.

Because, in all honesty, that aspect is the book's best asset. I was born in 1993, so I don't really know what life in the 70s or 80s was like, but the development the two main characters get and their chemistry throughout the entire book really shines here. Liza and Annie really feel like awkward teenagers who do silly things but grow closer throughout the book, and I genuinely cared about their growth and plight throughout the story. Of course, the majority of the story is told from Liza's point of view, and there were times when I wished we could have seen some events from Annie's point of view, considering she comes from a less privileged background than Liza does. The other characters are okay, especially the lesbian teachers Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer, who become allies to Liza and Annie later in the book, and Liza's brother Chad. Even the supposed villains, like the headmistress of Liza's school, isn't a cardboard cut-out villain, nor are other characters who are antagonistic towards Liza and Annie, as their behavior and homophobia is mainly a product of their environments. Remember, this was written during a time when LGBT people were still struggling to be accepted by society and didn't have the resources that they do now, even with the progress that had been made back then, and homosexuality was still viewed as some kind of mental illness. I mean, the characters in and of themselves aren't really anything new, but Nancy Garden does make an effort to convince readers to care about them. She certainly did with me.

As far as Nancy's attempt at preventing this from being one of those after school special problem books goes, I think she did a fine job on that one. Everything played out naturally in ways that made sense in both the story and the characters, and the moral wasn't necessarily beaten over your head. But there were times when I found the writing to be a little clunky. There were some points where a character would say something, and the POV character would repeat it right afterward, like how Annie tells Liza about a restaurant she went to, and the very next sentence is Liza narrating that the restaurant was indeed great, when Nancy could have shown it through her writing. Maybe like describing how good the food tasted or the general atmosphere. Also, considering the book takes place in the seventies or eighties, modern readers might be lost on a lot of the commonalities of the era, like how Liza and Annie have to constantly call each other with phones attached to the wall, as there were no cellphones at that time. I also respect that the book doesn't try to go for a completely happy ending, preferring to do what's realistic rather than make easy contrivances to resolve everything. Definitely mad respect on that one.

While nowadays a book like Annie On My Mind would be considered a relic, it's messages and importance to the LGBT community still ring true today, and is just a great, nice book overall.

 

[Juliko]

This review was just written today.

I give this cute anime about kindergarteners and their teachers...a 72/100.

I remember watching Hanamaru Kindergarten when it first came out, and while I liked it to an extent, I kind of forgot about it. I found it to be fun and cute, even if it never reached any highs for me. But I was bored one day and decided to rewatch it for the purposes of reviewing it, and...I'm honestly shocked at how much went over my head when I first watched this in high school. Yes, really. Anyway, the show is about a guy named Tsuchida who becomes a kindergarten teacher. On his way to his job, he comes across a little girl, Anzu, waiting for her mother, but Anzu thinks he's hitting on her. This isn't the case, obviously, but Tsuchida later finds out Anzu is the daughter of a girl he went to school with years ago. Anzu takes the whole flirting thing way too seriously and decides to become Tsuchida's wife...and her mother is totally okay with it for some dumb reason. And thus, the anime focuses on Anzu's day to day adventures with her friends and teachers.

Did you know that Gainax worked on this series? Yeah, I bet you never expected Gainax of all companies, directed by the guy who worked on Gundam 00 and Fullmetal Alchemist, to make a light-hearted slice-of-life comedy series about cute kindergarteners and their teachers having fun every day. I mean, I'm all for trying out new things, but this was unexpected, and in a good way. The animation itself is okay, and I like how every ending theme has different styles, genres, and soundtracks, with some bordering on parody. I do think the soundtrack can be way too saccharine and treacly at times.

My opinions on the characters are kind of mixed. Other than one character, the adult characters are pretty well written and nicely fleshed out. Tsuchida is pretty much your typical male anime lead, but he actually has a personality beyond just being a befuddled loser, actually has things he's good at, and his dynamic with the other adults allows his character to evolve rather than keep him as a stereotype. The other adults are great as well, and the series shows us why they decided to become teachers, their backgrounds, and their motivations, and they don't feel shallow at all. In that aspect, they actually trump the kid characters in the series...because let's face it, the kids in this show don't act like children. They're moeblob stereotypes shunted into toddler bodies, and they don't act like how four-year-olds typically act. For one, they talk way older than they should, are constantly harping about forbidden love, seem to understand concepts that no four-year-old should really know about, and while the fun role-playing and adventures they get into are entertaining to watch, Anzu in particular can really grate on your nerves. Also, why do the girls look like they're wearing oversized diapers? The kids aren't the only stereotypes in this, as Yamamoto, the female love interest, is basically a walking cliche amped up to eleven. I mean, how has this girl not sprouted wings and flown into heaven yet? Her whole character is that she's angelically nice and is such a ditz that she absolutely cannot figure out that guys are asking her out no matter how blatant they are about it. That cliche is overdone, and Yamamoto is the one dark spot among the adult cast, even though she does have her moments to shine here and there.

But those aren't the only issues Hanamaru Kindergarten has. For one, its attempts at drama come across as really shallow, mainly because they rely on stock cliches that have been done to death and it doesn't try anything new with them. Hanamaru also seems like it wants to have romance between two of the main characters, but puts this brick wall between them and doesn't even bother to do anything more with it, even at the end. However, my biggest issue with the anime is this: Much like CardCaptor Sakura, Hanamaru Kindergarten has a pretty accepting view of age-gap romances, almost to the point of idealizing and romanticizing them, much more so than the former does. Anzu's mother dropped out of high school to marry her art teacher, and is pretty okay with her 4-year-old daughter chasing after her teacher, even encouraging it, and the show doesn't make the case that she's just humoring Anzu either. But they really shouldn't be encouraging Anzu's behavior towards her teacher. I know age-gap romances are more accepted in Japan, but in America, if stuff like that happened, the guys involved would be arrested, and I have no idea why Hanamaru Kindergarten is trying to make age-gap romances seem like a good thing when they really aren't.

Of course, the series does succeed in being sufficiently entertaining, what with the show going buck wild with the kids' imaginations and showing off their crazy ideas, oftentimes using them for homages and parodies of Gainax's previous works. Hanamaru Kindergarten doesn't try to be anything more than what it is, and that's okay with me.