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Mmmh...
"...based on an Otome video game for cells...". Got it.
So I put my finger on the "drop" button and I started watching the show witlh little to none expectations.

If any, I thought it wasn't impossible they managed to display some good OST, just as Yume Oukoku to Nemureru 100 Nin no Ouji-sama did (-did I tell you before that moumoon's Afureru Hikari OP was liter than lite?-) deserving at least one episode of pain and boredom.

The show started (nice Opening; nothing to write home about) and I blinked once.
Then, I blinked twice.
And thrice.

With a lot of prudence, I risked a rapid peek under the Reverse ... Harem cotton's mini-skirt...
... and I got a glimpse of Historic Anime's steel pants.

I was amazed.

And delighted.

No idea how that Otome game originally was. I dare to say it was designed by someone who loved the history of Meiji Period (or at least somewhat respectful for it).
They gave the husbandos some personality and circumstances fitting properly with what we know about those real historical guys.

Mori Ogae, Lafcadio Hearn, Otojiro Kawakami... they managed to breath them some life beyond art and design topics to end up as individualized and even funny people by itselves and when interacting each others. Dialogues are far less offensive to intelligence than usual in this genre.

You may say Mei is a boring "eternally blushed" cliche type and you get reasons to think so.
To my eyes, she's a nice and funny girl. Her naivety doesn't look like empty or merely decorative. She looks like a kind person with little social skills, natural charm and a big heart.

Besides, the ambient music during the show is a far better than average job and the different EDs (sung by the seiyyu) are pretty good.
That "Yaiyo, Yaiyo" (Jun Fukuyama/Kousuke Toriumi) is one my preferred this season's Endings.

The plot?

Mmmh...

Ok. You're right. If we should judge this anime just by its plot and narrative, we'd throw it directly into the garbage can (Otome video game intensifies).

But, hell... they put rhythm, good humor and imagination in a silly story and makes me feel reasonably amused from the beginning to the end.

And that Mei's Electricity Rap is cute as faq.


On the verge of being my Season's Hidden Gem.


A humble, tiny and not that expensive gem, but gem nonetheless.

There must be some bug...

No matter how many keys I press, I'm totally unabled to display the "Options" menu and start the game.

All I get is a bunch of cinematical intros not particularly brilliant but heavily long; more than 20 minutes each one.

I guess it's a sorta fight tournament game or maybe an RPG... hard to tell.

I wonder why are they referring that much to the glorious 80s' "Fist of the North Star" (they even cutandpasted Ken's face over the 3D body of one of the characters you can choose to play with) when there's no similatiries between the game and that old anime nor ... in form neither in content.

I get some vague memories of a fist part of this video game with same issues to start playing... unsure if I finally figured it out.

It's a shame 'cause, if not else it has a wonderful BSO. The first musical theme of the intros (the tantamount of what would be an anime OP) is brutally lite.

Soul Seeker / Crossfire

Mmmh... all in all I'll probably give myself up and search for another game.

Or maybe I'll watch some anime.



Mmmh...?

Well, no. I'm not specially overfond of CGI animations.
How could you guess?

Are you expecting some detectivesque story, focused on fighting against crime or solving whodunnit stuff?

Well, I am sorry. Wrong door, here.

Kyoto Teramachi Sanjou no Holmes is nothing of this.

It' s a touristic anime intended to promote the Kyoto-fu Prefecture; Its monuments, history, popular traditions, streets and towns, hostelery, Tv programms and culture: the art, specially.

How we do that?

We imagine the most unprobable and unrealistic Pawn Stars guy, we name him Holmes for basically no reason (I got the joke with your surname, Kiyotaka... please, stop repeating it) and we couple him by "hazard" (ha!) with the most generic and plain tweenie girl we're abled to ... think of.
I'm amazed we didn't dare to name her Watson instead of Aoi.
But everybody else's doing it in our behalf, so...

If that's not enough, let's add some facepalming "artistico-ethical rivalry" with some random bald guy (I miss you so bad, Saitama-senpai).

We'll display all of this with a cheap hentai-related animation over a more than decent art environment and we will lamely draw some of the middle chapters into the purest "chinese studio sub-hired to refill DragonBall GT's holes" style.

And finally, let's permeate the whole thing with a thick loop of "unsolved romantic tension"...

...between Holmes and Watson, I mean, not with the bald guy.
... or maybe yes, who knows?

Now, you may feel yourself apparently ready to appeal tourists to Kyoto.

This damned sh*t shouldn't work!
It shouldn't, for Tolliver's sake!!
In any possible manner!!!

(sigh)

But it does.

It works.

More than average, it works.

Amazingly fine, it woks.

To my dismay, it works.


Elegant, classy, fairly narrated, with memorable characters and ironic sense of humor about its own flawless.

Do you know some of those girls who are not that pretty, they don't regularly use make-up, seem unabled to dress fashion and don't show any brilliant wits...
... but, for some unknown reason, you never forget about them, you unintendedly smile when you think of them and feel a confusing sense of warmth?

This anime is a bit like those girls.

A bit like Aoi.


Addendo: The way this Holmes works has nothing to do with Conan-Doyle's style. That Ghibli's Meitanei Homuzu at the '80s was far closer.
If any, we should compare Kiyotaka's modus operandi with another literarian well-known detective: kinda thin, tall, young, dismoustached and sexy Hercule Poirot.

Good OP.
What a song!

"Afureru Hikari" (Overflowing Light) by Moumoon goes straight to my Top-3 this season's OP (struggling at the podium with Tonegawa and Banana Fish ones).

They are a Pop duo (guitar player/other instruments man and vocalist/percussionist lady) highly influenced by international folk and Jazz with astonishing artistic skills (miss YUKA is a heck of a singer; powerful, elegant and with a lovely tesiture) and an undeniable good taste for composition.

The song sounds neat and polished, yet spontaneous... the word "delicious" is not too much to qualify this melody. Apparently fragile though solid in the inside.

If you are abled, try to listen the acoustic live ... version Moumoon displayed during an online show at their own SSMM (SELF-SPAM ALERT: I excerped a clip from it in my own accounts -I'm too polite to link them here-).
I wouldn't dare to say that version is better than the official OP song, with its arrangements and post-production and stuff.
But by no means it's worse.

If you dislike this song, we cannot be friends.




Addendo: Mmmh... I feel kinda I was forgetting somewhat...


Addendo2: Ah! I remember it now! The anime!
Well... it is based upon a phone video game with puzzles and cute chibi guys and sh*t...
I mean... What you reasonably could expect from that?

Too good they managed to generate a not-that-terrible Isekai world out of it, too good they're holding the inverted harem's ground against the obvious mc's urges to start fujoshing as if tomorrow never comes.
So far they are holding her, I mean (those Fujoshi gals... you kow, they are unbeatable).

They even had stomach to put some decent self-parody gags here and there and did a re-interpretation of Alice in Wonderland not worse that the Tim Burton's ones...
.. wich is not exactly talking big, I'm aware of.

All in all, I'd like to see some of the artists and technicians involved with a better primal source.
The original ONAs weren't that bad, as well.


Addendo3: But what an OP! What an astonishing and delicious and wonderful song!

We will never say this too many times.

This season brought us a nice triplet of adult anime. Please, don't you take "adult" by sexual".

Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa.
Banana Fish.
... and Angolmois: Genkou Kassenki.

Most of anime tell us what we want to listen.
These three ones don't give a fuq what we want or want not be told to us.
They tell us the truth.

... 'Course they make some compromises in order to scratch the greatest piece of that pie so-called "teen audience target" they can(comical exaggeration at Tonegawa, simplistic cool action in Banana and epic embellishment at Angolmois).
But they don't allow that to mingle with the main purpose of stories they are telling us.

I can imagine the marketing producers' desperation in front of these projects:

-"O Lord!! Why we can't get a regular 3rd Kaiji season??... Boys will not buy this satyrical black comedy about business men!!"

-"...but please, make the main characters less gay!! Or at least put them into some regular Yaoi scenes, beg you!!. Nowadays fujoshi will be confused with all of that tense 80s seinen violence!!"

... or, in this Angolmois:

-"Actual Ancient History?? You mean with real events, historical characters, true localisations and all of that boring stuff that school guys hate that much??... Are you sure wouldn't be better to introduce it as a boy who travels along time, with power-up skills and we sell it as an Isekai? Ok, ok, don't you look at me like that... it was just an idea... (a good one, I bet)".

At least, Angolmois is abled to summon traditional national japanese "humble chauvinism", wich helped to impose its vision.
Kadokawa Anime is making a point to display an accesible background for the serie through a set of videos and articles... tryin' to make Old Japanese History more appealing for young generations.

They are not the first to try this during history of anime.
Probably, this is best shot made, so far.

They tell us the truth about what happened in those remote ages, so far I know about it.
How people thought, the way they valued life, death, social classes, religion and the sense of what they were and what they were fighting for.

Even the hatred enemies (the Mongols), are presented as human beings, so right or wrong about what they did as same japanese characters.

There's someone deeply moved about Classic History behind this anime (yeah, the mangaka... but not him alone).

Trust me... I know my own kin when I smell them.

Sure, animation should be better but the way they tried to sustain a regular quality each episode with none of those "1st and last astonishing episodes + lamely animated middle chapters" so often seen most of today's anime, makes me guess it's more a question of lacking budget that a bad production planning.

Ambiental music inside episodes is not the type I'd choose for that kind of work but I'm not complaining: It works fine enough.

The OP "Braver" I unusually liked it; Straightener has never been my rock band cup of tea. I can't deny the good level of this song, though.
"Upside Down" (SHE'S ending) I positively adore it.

This anime is realist, thrilling, charismatic, inmersive and relatable.

It may have unconditionally my axe.


Addendo: I'm proud of myself: I displayed a huge brick of a review without even mentioning that filter effect.

Addendo2:...oh, wait...

Season after season I end up following some serie for unknown reasons and I finally regret.

It's by no means a bad anime...
Not specially good, tho.

Plot (as most of Slice of Life animes) almost intangible, characters kindly unidimensional displaying super-nice but irrelevant dialogues and BSO so charming as forgetable.

Art and animation are regularly fine; comfortable to see but sorta plain.
Kudos to its realistic respect for body-head and face-eyes proportions... they look natural enough to be a relief over so many big-headed, body-stretched and gigantic-eyed figures we're bearing in other series ("Kawaii!", they say... "Physically discombobulated mutants!", I say).

It managed to hook me and I watched it, ... so something good must be there.

Maybe the relaxing ambient they get.

You don't need to put many neurons at work while the episodes go on. You'll not feel like emotionally moved. You will not relate.
Dafuq, you don't even have to read the eng subs... you will miss nothing that important if you just listen it in japanese.

This anime requires no effort to be watched.
So, prepare some tea, put down heavy lights, adjust the volume 'til you can't hear it three meters away the baffles and get ready to an experience similar to be indolently floating in a boat on a well tended garden lake.

Fair enough.

Addendo: The Seme and Uke stuff goes far away beyond the limits of this review.
All in all, the whole thing could well be nothing but ill-disposed gossip.

My favorite underachieved jewel.

Forget about the plot. It doesn't matter. In fact, it's the only part of the show distintictively lame... who cares?
It's all about the people. How they relate each other, how they think, how they feel.
They are human.
Trust me; they're neither ink over a paper nor pixels into a screen.

Human.

Take all of the ecchi characthers' design cliche one after another:
... ¿Whimp main characther?
¿Uninhibited gal regularly getting naked for no reason making his nose to bleed?
¿Secretly in love bossy lady always accusing him of perversion?
¿Shy-hot chick, eternally rubbed?
¿Sexually obsessed Mc's friends pack?
¿Exhibitionist and ridiculous alphomega-senpai?
You name it, you get it. You saw them before infinite times, replicating themselves with different wigs and different coloured contact lenses anime after anime after anime after anime...

Now, turn them to human beings... that's almost impossible; you'll need more than a legit writer to do that.
You'll need an artist and not any kind of artist will do the job.
You'll need an honest artist.

I don't know nothing about the author (googlein' is unfair). I'm just making educated guesses:
He knew each one of that characters in his Real Life. They were beloved friends. They used to swim together, go to school together, party together, wake up to sex together.

There's a recognizable sense of nostalgia permeating the whole serie. It may pass unnoticed under all of the hilarious gags, the boobs, the asses and the pranks.
But again, trust me: it's there.

You can easily imagine the artist as an innocent tweener, sitting in a corner of the swimming pool, being vaguely aware his eyes are staring more and more into girls' swimsuits for unknown reasons and feeling mixed emotions; shame, arouse, fun, sadness...

Sounds like us.
Sound like me.

Furhtermore, is funny as hell.
Furhtermore, I consider Tolliver must be re-signed.

I wasn't intending to watch it... I didn't watch first season, so I just wanted to take a look at episode 1 of this 2nd, to see if it was worth go fot the 1st...

...and then, that "Fake Town, baby" OP got me from the throat and brains and now I'm here.
I saw the entire "& Beyond" season before even a glimpse of season 1 or mangas.

... so, my opinion is based almost entirely on Season 2 itself. I'm barely reachin' ep. 3 at Se01, by now.

And here it is:


... Nightow is a genius.
Nightow is nuts.

I didn't think so in Trigun ( I haven't watched Gungrave) ... here he has made that very clear to me.

HellSalem's Lot is the most absurdly immersive city than I have experienced in an Anime exceptis excipiendis Otomo's Neo-Tokyo; practically another character of the plot with a greater weight than most of the human/demoniac ones.

This serie is like a Garage Rock song performed by the London Philharmonic under a bipolar Bushman producer ...
... and I'm falling short...

He managed to integrate 3D in a way more subtle fashion he did at 1st season (so far I saw it) and worked on light and environments 'til obsessive levels.
There are scenes I must replay 'cause I was so caught up in the ambients I barely knew what the characters were doing

The endless mix of multicultural meta-references permeating art, music, dialogues and even "extras" walking the streets is soooo exhausting ... I am unable to follow them all or remember them all ... my poor wits utterly fail.

In addition; dude enjoys getting the audience into rhythm and emotion roller coasters using narrative ways odder and weirder than a purple dog with Balrog horns.

In the 1st season looks like everything was more linear; here we got a bunch of autoconclusive OVAs, alternatively starred by each one of the Libra (including the butler and some-guy-that-happens-he-was-around-there-for-no-reason).
Not too clear where anything is goin' on; more alike the original manga, I've been told.

The polyglot battle techniques (originally spelled in Japanese, English, German and Spanish)... they are perhaps what I like the least ... my bad; action is dynamic and spreads adrenaline until splashing the 4th wall.

OST easily into my Top-3 of the Year:
Each song and theme has been specifically composed, played and delivered just for a precise moment of the show.
Each song and theme goes from "More than Average" to "Great!"

Bizarre, asymmetric, chaotic, plain, lisergic, delicate, raw, world-wider, stupid, genious...

Say more; you'll probably be right whathever the adjective you choose.

I could go on for several more pages, but I am a compassionate man and we are at Christmas Times.

So Happy New Year to all of you.

Try to complete this sentence:

"Hoozuki no Reitetsu is an anime similar to..."
See?
I cannot.

This is a totally original, personal, unique and untransferable show. There are no antecedents and I hardly believe it will get heirs.

I'm neither always aware of its japanese folkloric references, nor I get all of the jokes.

... Minor issues.

It' s a fascinating diorama displaying the myths and legends that shaped the whole japanese culture during millennia, presented with a border-genious mix of traditional art (based on ink art, mostly) and modern anime drawing style far more accurate than usual.

Tone is both didactical and burlesque, with a sense of humour maybe somehow dark but seemingly functional for any age target audience (not a small bit of ecchi here).

But, of course... Hoozuki no Reitetsu is not a blockbuster; too unlabellable for that.

Just an underachieved jewel.

Addendo: The OP is but a new energetic version of the 1st season one, "Jigoku no Sata mo Kimi Shidai", singed as well by the same show's seiyū, with Hiroki Yasutomo (Hoozuki-sama's voice) deserving a special mention.
The guy is kinda Japanese James Earl Jones.