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Excellent cross-over! If you love one or the other series (or even both), you'll love this movie! The characters are all there with their humor and crazy action and they work very well together. Lupin dominates a bit with exposition, but we get some heartfelt and long awaited lore extensions with the Cats. The action scenes are wonderfully directed and if you have a 5.1 surround system, the mayhem combined with jazzy music will blow your head off!

Yes, the 3DCG is bad, but it's not that jarring, at least not most of the time. The characters look weird from some angles, but good for the ... most part. Cat's suits could have been better too, they looked a bit uninspiring. Not necessarily their staple leotards, but Fujiko did look like a bomb, so I don't see a reason to go more modest with the Cats lol.

Lupin is up against an all-woman terrorist organization. The villain cast is catastrophically badly designed - just everything from their character, features to their motivation is appalling and they're horrendously voice acted to boot.

To make matters even worse, someone decided to sprinkle random gore and death scenes on top. This wouldn't be so bad if it was a stylized, properly bizarre Go Nagai kind of movie. But not when it's your regular happy-go-lucky kind of Lupin special! Imagine eating a chocolate cake with rat poison in it and that would still be preferable to watching any minute of this abomination!

The only redeeming features are ... the wonderful music, somewhat serviceable visuals and the interactions between the main cast, but all of it is wasted on this dumpster fire.

I wish I could love and be loved by someone the same way Chiyoko loves the Painter. Eternal love and friendship, how absolutely beautiful and romantic! Why, oh why does life have to be so unfair, why does there need to be pain and suffering? This movie always makes me cry. But, a bond that will never be forgotten, that's something worth living for!

Satoshi Kon made something that can only be appreciated with time. He put movie into life and characters into fantasies and it all creates a story that needs to be followed with eyes, ears and feelings. I only wish he didn't spite ... us with an apparition that keeps repeating the same message. Other than that the movie is perfect, you can't take away or add anymore to it.

Chiyoko herself is excellent. Her movements are dynamic and the combat scenes are very fluid. The two interviewers provide a decent amount of comedy and tie things together. The color palate is subdued and brown-ish, which works well for the real life parts, giving them a rustic feel, but could be livelier for the movies. Susumu Hirasawa's music is transcending as always, it surrounds you and doesn't let up for a second.

Undoubtedly, this is Satoshi Kon's masterpiece that will stand the test of time and can be enjoyed by just about anyone.

This was an exceptionally well done movie in terms of directing. It's simple, but it flows so well - the visuals, the music and the characters are engaging and they never stop for a moment.

It's the kind of movie you need to see through the eyes of a kid. Like they said, one of their best quality is they never give up on what they think is right. It made me remember my childhood, all the things we've done together and some of then may have been stupid, but we never once doubted that we're right and the grownups are not.

An important realization, which they ... didn't say out loud, was that Honjou was wrong when he said the internet exposed the truth about each of them. Under the circumstances, those were lies and the real truth came out through the bonds they formed together.

The picture with Tamasurade, which I assume was from the student protests from the late 60's (she didn't look that old though), was a nice touch. Especially in today's apathetic world it's important that young people fight for what they think is right. They might not achieve what they set out to do, but they can still change the world in some capacity.

The only place this movie stumbles in - and unfortunately falls right flat on its face - is the romance department towards the end! To pull off this kind of bait & switch, the movie would need to have an entirely different structure and a longer runtime. I'd really love to rate it higher, but I had to call bullshit at this point.

At just over 2 hours long The Dagger of Kamui is a historical epic most people can enjoy, although it will feel a bit more rewarding to those that have experienced a decent amount of anime and manga beforehand and know a few things about the Japanese history and folklore.

The first thing of note is the outstanding soundtrack. It's a unique mixture of electro rock and funky synth tunes, merged with traditional instruments and spoken sound effects. If you've seen Miyazaki's highly acclaimed The Wind Rises, you'll remember the amazing train scene with spoken sound effects. Kamui uses a lot of that and it sounds ... cool. The music also blends in perfectly - when Jiro is with the Native Americans there's even a pan flute in there.

The second thing that woos the viewer is the animation. There are a number of impressive scenes, but arguably the best ones are the ones where characters and objects dissipate into colorful particles that fly around and glitter like in a kaleidoscope. All of this is not that surprising when we look at the production list. Made by Madhouse - one of the oldest studios that constantly puts out high quality content. Directed by Rintaro, also behind jaw dropping visual masterpieces like the Adieu Galaxy Express 999. Key animation by Kawajiri and Takashi Nakamura, whose hands touched a number of extremely cool and stylish animated works.

The third thing is historical accuracy and here we get to the part that seasoned viewers might appreciate a bit more. By no means is Kamui hardcore accurate, but the environments of 19th century Japan and America are pretty believable. The Ainu and Native American tribes are a bit romanticized of course, but it's quite pleasant to observe their habits and attires and compare them to the Japanese.

Another interesting thing to observe is the clash of ideology, culture and religion of the time. The main clash is obviously between the Shogunate and the rising imperial forces that happened during the Boshin war. A more subtle one is between the Japanese and the indigenous Ainu tribes. This being portrayed at all is kind of a big deal, because the Japanese are a bit shy and embarrassed when it comes to depicting their native tribes, because of the complicated ways in which they were "assimilated" (unlike Americans who like to flash around with the heritage of their natives).

The religious clash is kinda connected to the cultural one - Buddhism VS the worship of local deities. It's a common theme, often present in anime and manga too. If you look closely you can draw the following parallels: Tenkai's face = Buddha = the Devil's incarnate. It's not uncommon to see in Japanese literature the tales of Buddhism spreading from Korea or China and violently trying to phase out the local deities. One of the most fascinating depictions of this clash can be found in the Sun chapter of Phoenix, a most influential manga by Osamu Tezuka.

The Dagger of Kamui is a pretty interesting work indeed, although it's not as well defined and polished as let's say Princess Mononoke, on which Miyazaki worked meticulously to atone himself for Nausicaa (which he was forced to do a quick adaptation when the original manga was just starting out). Neither is it as striking as works like Ninja Scroll, but even action fans shouldn't be disappointed as there is enough slashing and slicing to go around.

What Initial D is to car fans, Bari Bari is to motorbike fans. And that's the greatest compliment a racing series can get. Hell, the manga was supposedly so good that people started to join the Bōsōzoku (Japanese motorbike gangs) in droves! Strange?
Not really, since the same guy, Shuichi Shigeno, created Bari Bari Densetsu and Initial D - two holy grails of the petrol-heads. He also had assistance, in the form of his prominent student Jyoji Morikawa - the guy behind Hajime no Ippo.

You know a racing movie is good when it starts with a shot of an idyllic road. The morning sun is ... gently fondling the scenery and the birds are chirping. Suddenly the comforting scene is ripped apart by a raging motorbike noise. Two riders blast into the scene, taking the corners at a mind-blowing pace. They turn, they twist, they lean almost vertically as they literally eat the road.
The camera zooms in, shifting gears, the parts move, the engine shakes, and the bikes roar like furious wild beasts. The riders become one with the road, the lines they take paint a work of art and the sound from the bikes, revving up insatiably, creates a symphony of destruction.

When a movie conveys all this feelings, you know it's made by a driver, for the drivers. And Shuichi Shigeno is one of the rare people with a godly talent to make this right. The detail put in his work is insane, right down to the point, where you can hear the air getting furiously sucked into the intake.
And not just the bikes, great care was also put into making detailed surroundings. You will actually recognize segments of racing tracks like Tsukuba and Suzuka, if you're familiar with them.

Now this being a racing movie, you shouldn't expect a great story. And it really isn't, but by no means is it bad or boring. It's a tale that never gets old. About a young, fast but reckless, prodigy that wants to push his limits, and a rival, who challenges his skills and helps him transcend to the next level. There is also a girl, of course, who likes to stick around the fast boys.
It's a very down to earth, relate able story and you'll be rooting for everyone involved by the end. It all builds up to one of the greatest races ever, with intensity hotter than any fire.

This is all wrapped in a distinct 80's production, with the catchy music of the time. Fear not, there are plenty of moments where you'll be listening to just pure sounds of motorbikes being pushed to the limit. Also, this being partly a motorbike gang movie you'll get to see some action moments too. The most glorious one has to be where the main protagonist punches someone trough a closed car door (it's as awesome as it sounds).

Speaking of motorbike anime, it's strange that so few were made, since the Bōsōzoku were quite a popular theme in the 80's Japan. Sure, biking is present in many of the classics of the time, like Akira, Megazone 23, etc., but only Bari Bari Densetsu seems to be fully devoted to it, besides Bobby's In Deep, which is a bit short and experimental, but also a great biking movie.

Just like with Initial D, I can only end this review with the following words. If you're a racing fan, you'll scream with enjoyment while watching this. If you're not, you will become one.

Whoa, radical dude! Look at all the explosions, bad ass mecha and the totally naked girl that’s running around! Is what I would like to say as an 80′s Sci-Fi fan, to make it sound, like this OVA is any good.
But it’s not.
Actually, it’s pretty bad. Not cheesy bad, just bad. In fact, they’ve really trashed it over at the Colony Drop website. Nevertheless, there is some good stuff in the details.

Althea sets out quite ambitiously, as a hardcore action packed mecha, but gets destroyed by the awful direction. The story is all over the place, and it’s obvious that the creators wanted to ... cram in too much in such a short OVA. That’s not the biggest problem though.
I don’t know what the production team was smoking, but some scenes look like they were glued together by an amateur. You’ll get a scene, where Althea is talking to Galory, which suddenly gets interrupted by a scene where she is staring off and then a scene cuts in with the end of the dialog, interrupted by some other event. Uh, it’s quite obvious that some stuff is missing here, people!

Every now and then though, you get a scene that’s actually fluid, and those are kinda nice. For example, when Nikolai’s friends get blown up and he falls into a bad ass frenzy. Spidy-insectoid enemy mecha designs sure make for some interesting fights.
On the softer side, you have a Macross-like singing moment or two, a dab of romance and even a message of interracial friendship. And let’s not forget the bare naked scene with Althea, which is probably the longest one in the anime history. Yep, she just stands there, flashing her boobs.

Don’t get your hopes up though, because the animation isn’t really all that good. Sorry to disappoint you, but any decent quality image you might find on the net is probably from an animation cell and not actually from the video source. Most of the scenes are very dark and badly directed anyway, and because there’s only a poor VHS-rip available, you’ll have to struggle a bit to decipher the pixels. I really wish some of these older titles could get a remaster, if not for anything else than for the artistic value it presents to the lovers of 80′s animation.

Bad animation and production aside – the music score: it’s awesome! Seriously, I’ve only been able to find one OST CD (out of supposedly three), with 9 songs, and I’ve been listening to it all day. Yeah, the music consists of 80′s electronic tunes, but it has a general appeal and it would sound so grand, had it been done with real instruments instead.
There’s a wide variety of different melodies. Some are serene and tranquil, like you’re just cruising trough a solar system and enjoying the view. Others are adventurous and all hyped up, suited to accommodate an ace mecha pilot in a heated fight. And some are just plain grandiose, painting the story of a war that rages over galactic proportions.

If for nothing else, I’ll remember Althea for the few nice scenes and definitely for the music. Oh god, that music!

Bobby's in deep is certainly a very interesting work - short and experimental, but it holds a lot of content, animation and background themes wise. Which is a bit surprising, considering the fact that the anime was largely produced to promote a young pop idol, who voiced the main character.

Bobby has a pretty plain personality and he's also a man of few words. This somehow rubs off on many of the anime's characteristics. It's interesting, that most of what we get to learn about Bobby is not from him personally, but through the girl that is writing him letters, trough his father that's scolding him ... and through dialogs between other characters. This kinda fits Bobby's simple, carefree character and creates a care-free mood for the anime. At the same time, it projects the genuinely increasing boredom within the youth in those (and todays) times.

Some viewer might complain about the fact, that we only get to know as much about Bobby as he interacts with other people (almost nothing). On the up side, because of this, we are put into an interesting perspective of a random observer and all the other pieces, like in real life, are left to our own judgment and assumptions.

Another interesting case of this perspective of a random observer appears in the fact that we only get to see a silhouette of Bobby's secret admirer. This way, her looks are left to our own imagination and we don't get to know about her any more than Bobby does. It certainly is an interesting technique, which lowers the cost of animation and at the same time it maybe even feels more rewarding to the viewer than the classic character presentation.

If you've got a sharp eye, you'll soon notice that Bobby's in Deep contains a few social critiques. Bobby's mostly indifferent character (except when it comes to his bike) is a way of criticizing the important Japanese belief, which pushes the youth to educate themselves as highly as possible and land a job in a respectable company - at all costs.
The school system is also criticized, when Bobby says: "The school only knows how to send the notes to home, because it's the cheapest." In truth, no one really wants to bother with the problems of youth and lend a helping hand, which sadly mostly holds true even today.

The animation in Bobby's in Deep is quite special and it would be unfair to write it off as cheap. It's true that the story is often represented through a slide show of hand drawn pictures and the animation is abstracted. But I like to imagine it's a representation of Bobby's slightly confused view of the world, and in this way the viewer experiences it through Bobby's eyes.

Most of the second half of the movie will be greatly appreciated by the biker fans, as it includes a few sunny scenes with the motorbikes in their element. Towards the end, there is an exceptionally unique riding scene, where the camera switches to first person view and the picture falls apart into simple black & white lines and sketches. There is no music, just the sound of the bike and the tires screeching. It's awesome and definitely worth a watch.

The ending is debatable and a bit provocative. Some people may be disappointed and state that it falls short. I, on the other hand, find it quite catharsic. Bobby is a rebel against the norms of society, the strict tradition, the school system and the whole anime is dipped in his beliefs. But, as no one in the world is perfect, the ending represents the other pole, which favors the general rules of society and the system.
All in all, Bobby didn't do anything wrong, he lived by his beliefs and acted as he saw fit. After all, there is a thin line between a carefree and a careless attitude which, in a series of unfortunate events, can result in a fatal outcome. Even so, the ending is quite open. It just serves as a reminder, that life isn't always one-sided and compromises are often necessary.

P.S. You can read more about Bobby in this great article on ANN: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/buried-treasure/2007-05-17 .

People often remember their first love with a bitter-sweet feeling and this theme is mostly prevalent in 9 short tales from Kawaguchi Kaiji, adapted into short animations by 9 different directors.
The stories vary from touching and nostalgic, to cheeky and fun and some even develop into a rather bitter ending.

What they all have in common is the focus on male-female relationship in various interesting ways. You may be surprised to learn, that despite being short, these 10 minute animations tell just as much as a full featured movie, if not even more.

Some of them aren't fully developed, so I can't give the movie a 10 ... as a whole, but most of them are quite positive, imaginative and well-crafted. We'll get into details of each animation in a moment.

Sadly, I can't tell you anything about the general directors, art directors, the circumstances or the era the movie was created in, because there simply isn't any information available about it.

It's a shame, really, because besides Kawaguchi's charismatic storytelling, the animation is most of the time also quite intriguing and it would be interesting to know about the work process that was behind it.
I was especially taken aback upon seeing "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and "Let's Spend the Night Together". These two have so few colors, to the point of being monochromatic, and yet they are immensely expressive due to clever animation and fitting soundtrack.
Also, several times an interesting effect appears, when the animation switches to a sequence of photographs, overlapped with cells.

In short, about the 9 stories.
1. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" is named after a Beatles song, which plays in the background through most of the animation and also plays an important part in the story.
A boy wants to win the heart of a tough chick(she loves the Beatles), but is too afraid to even hold her hand and confess his feelings. It's an excellent story and together with music it brings a nice sentimental feeling.

2. "Hero" is all about a couple, once being a part of a high school rugby team, but never confessing to each other. Some nicely animated games in this one.

3. "Let's Spend the Night Together" is absolutely fantastic, even for the lack of colors. The story is incredibly fun, shady and cheeky, as we're following an office guy who gets himself in bed with the girl of a local gangster boss.

The visual expressiveness is excellent. Is it even possible to better express the thoughts of a man, who, after a hot night, is asked by his female partner: "Do you love me?" To which he answers with a quick "Yes", while at the same time the camera shows how he closes the zipper on his pants. Brilliant, I tell you.

4. "Stop the Time" is a bit unfinished(10 minutes is just not enough in this case) and I didn't fully understand the ending. A man returns to his hometown after a long time, just to find his long lost love, who now has amnesia and can't remember a thing.

5. "Betrayal in the City" is another cheeky and clever tale about a man who devises a cunning plan on how to dump his girlfriend. The inner monologue creates a funny atmosphere, even though the theme of breaking up is serious.

6. "I Can't Stop Loving You" is possibly the most average animation in the set, since the story is a bit loose. It tells about a man who has second thoughts before his wedding.

7. "Those Were the Days" is a tad better, but it's also quite unpolished. A mafia boss wants to conquer a really brave woman, who wants none of it. The rough limit of 10 minutes also shows here, since there isn't enough time for deeper story and character development.

8. "Lion and Pelican" tells an interesting story about sacrifice and goodness of a woman, who is determined to support a famous sports star all trough to the end of his career.

9. "White Christmas" is the last tale and one of my favorite in this movie. It's entangled with a warm Christmas spirit, therefore I intend to watch it every year on this joyful holiday xD. What could be prettier than a combination of the famous tune "White Christmas", snowy evening and love (despite all differences).

If you are interested in mature romantic stories and unique animation, you'll love Ai Monogatari: 9 Love Stories. It's not a perfect movie, but it contains some fabulous short animations.

I've found Hikari to be quite lovely, both the character and the series. It's incredibly simple and straightforward, yet it's one of those uniquely lifelike series that just warm your heart. Most of the time you'll be staring at cheerful Hikari and her big blue eyes.

The story does not solely focus on Hikari's rise in the world of rhythmic gymnastics or sports. It also touches the thematics of growing up, overcoming the many obstacles on the path to the final goal, of love, rivalry and many other themes that pest any young individual.

The production is sweet, which is typical of many 80's anime of shojo ... genre, when the latter was most popular. The music stands out in particular, with piano inserts which range from very lively, positive themes, to starkingly touching melodies. The range of songs in OST is quite narrow, but compositions like Maihime and Yume Miru Koroni are simply beautiful.

There aren't many series out there quite so sweet and charming as Hikari no Densetsu. Therefore it is sad it's been cut from initially planned 26 episodes to just 19, since, despite high general popularity in Japan, the TV ratings were poor. It never reached US markets, because there wasn't any interest in the thematics the series portrays.

I'm very glad that atleast people here in Europe took a high liking to Hikari - especially in France and Italy, where the manga was also translated. The French have released it at least 3 times - the last time in a dual audio DVD release. But their dub can't compare to the Italian one which is really heart felt and on par with original Japanese voice acting.

Even though the anime was cut abruptly , the original manga continues well beyond and has a slightly different development in the love and coupling department. Hikari continues to Seoul 1988 Olympic games. Actually, if it wasn't for the latter, Hikari may have never reached the foreign markets. Tatsunoko Productions have decided to release it outside Japan, since there was great interest in rhytmic gymnastics at the time.