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The director and creator of Sing a Bit of Harmony and Time of Eve is proficient at what he does, but his past forays into AI/android-based sci-fi had more depth and inventiveness, even when I wasn't sold on his vision of the future. This new film is more along the lines of the typical blockbuster, meaning there is a little bit of everything in the family friendly sphere of fiction: coming of age, sci-fi concept and theme, romance, action, comedy, social commentary (gag), etc.

I might as well not even write about android-raising simulators, as I've said just about all there is to say across ... a wide-range of notes, for they can only be about two things if you're making a humanoid android: 1) labor and household chores. 2) sex. Well... there's also 3) pretending to be human, which would have applications for espionage, surveillance, or a goofy comedy premise, as we have here, though it turns to tedious drama before long. This world has sexless, creepy androids everywhere, and while the most degenerate fetishist might derive some pleasure from such things (hello, man who was arrested for having sex with a helicopter), those are functional and meant for completing rote tasks. But, let's face it, there's only one reason to make them cute. The director presumably found the sexual tension too high in Time of Eve, so he made the main a busybody FMC with a bad haircut and a Disney Moon Princess obsession, though there are a few curious males sniffing around as well.

The FMC's single mother girlboss is competing in a, as her daughter states, "patriarchal company," where you can tell the director is trying hard to get you to sympathize with mommy and tying together technological progress and political issues, with mommy being removed from her position indicating a "regression in AI research." I simply couldn't care less about this plot point and already felt like I were being spoonfed a Netflix film. The daughter is adamant about making whatever excuse necessary to deflect any possible inkling of incompetence on the part of mommy in relation to the AI project; although it's because mommy is family, there's the subtextual element of female integration and dominance in the work place. Mommy's boss is introduced with bad guy music, mannerisms to match the hammed-up portrayal, and a conspiracy soon develops to put mommy in her place. There's even a scene noting that mommy is neglecting her child in favor of her career. Get back in the kitchen, and you should be ashamed that your daughter grew fat on toxic baby formula instead of your teat. The five-year-old Touma, goofing off on a Tamagotchi, was more important to the plot than you'll ever be. Hilariously, it can be argued that the parents probably caused much of the FMC's dysfunction, but all is well in the end because of the healing power of the AI that mommy had a hand in developing. Thanks, mommy!

The characters are archetypal and cliche, and the dynamics are forced, with all the right (or wrong) moments padded with chintzy music. The cast is stale and not written in a way to even partially transcend their stock roots: the computer nerd, generic FMC, athlete, popular girl, handsome guy, etc. I can't remember most of their names, and they're forgettable as characters. About the only thing this ironically dated coming of age offers is moe and technical polish, for the android is a cute, unpredictable bundle of energy, with highly expressive animation and the perfect touch of wacky uncanny valley for fetish fuel.

Similar to ToE, this is another techno-optimist sci-fi film meant to present what could easily be rendered as a dystopia but slaps on a soft-focus sheen: robots that look like crash test dummies everywhere, performing the tasks most would rather avoid; AI is integrated into virtually everything, making everything convenient and easy; everything is surveilled to make sure you're nice instead of naughty. Admittedly, Japan would have an easier time presenting a clean, hopeful setup like this, whereas the U.S. would quickly become more of a dystopic hellscape than it already is. Nevertheless, Yoshiura is only interested in looking at the positives of this tech, which leaves his film feeling like nothing but a quirky comedy about an uptight girl who wants to make friends, and gosh darn it, mommy's sexy female android will make it happen, one awkward scene after another!

One must ask who thought this android was ready to blend in as a human at school and fool anyone. She's off the charts on autism, physically stronger than humans, stands out in every way, and bursts into song and dance at random to bluntly state the concerns and emotions of the characters, emphasizing the power of tech for fostering and maintaining connections, even if it's the opposite that has typically happened, whether we're looking at Japan or elsewhere; this quirk is sort of hilarious at first, but quickly becomes absolutely nauseating, especially during the solar panel/wind farm light show, where the entire cast act like they're at a Disney karaoke club, producing maximalist barf fuel. The AI doesn't even wear the proper school uniform, opting instead for a super-kawaii shirt with buttons! Somehow her handlers don't realize this mischief, as she works in tandem with other AIs and humans in zany hijinks. The funny thing is that the AI has the awareness to figure out how to cover her tracks at school expertly (when it comes to her handlers, anyway), but she's oblivious to it being a bad idea to hack the entire power grid for a laser light show and inspirational idol pop dance session.

For the second half, the pacing slows down, and the script enters the pensive piano drama realm, becoming whiny, boring, and entirely predictable, as idealistic high schoolers and mommy rise up against adults in three-piece suits at the AI corporation. The director returns to his thematic roots a bit, as the company was acting against regulations, the FMC declares that the AI "is not an object," there's a question of AIs being infected, consciousness, etc. The director implies that because AI can appear to approximate human behavior, then it is nearly inseparable or should at least be given similar freedom and rights and should not be thought of as a tool, in spite of why AI or androids would be created in the first place.

The way the film integrates the backstory of the AI in the second half adds a stronger emotional impact, but, for everything done well during this segment, there always seems to be something done poorly, so the experience never rises above mediocrity; one of the best (worst?) examples is how there is always a crappy Disney princess CGI video playing in a corner window for any scenes from the AI's perspective, which is one of the tackiest things I've ever seen, trying to generate emotion and falling back on ready-made corpo-crap. It reminded me of 86 in tone, when the machine goes through its vast data stores and relives the memories of the cast and those who had long since died, only the intent is different and pertains more to machine learning and sentimental persistence, as the roots of what turns out to be a rogue and well-meaning AI are crafted from the "pure intentions" of a child before there could be any chance of the little tyke being "corrupted" by society or some such pablum, so the film is naively Rousseaun in that sense. The worst is when they start insisting Shion was perhaps "more human" than they thought, her desire to make people happy couldn't have been an order, and must have "come from her heart." Please stop this syrupy nonsense.

It's probably the most positive portrayal out there of what could easily be a dystopia, for the loving, most pure of AIs is following Satomi around as if it were her guardian angel, and the staff do a fantastic job of selling this with the abstract depiction of a network, the AI zipping from one camera to the next, thinking only of how it could fulfill its role to make Satomi happy; sure, you might get swept up in the emotion, but, in the back of my mind, I think of who controls these apparatuses and an inversion of the sweet Shion. AI can be used for good or bad intentions, but the film confronts this reality in a childish manner, despite semi-realism. We're treated to an optimism so thick that deus ex machinas are popping up all over the place toward the end, like singing to restore wiped data or the other outdated AIs having "evolved" to assist everyone and being "good."

Yes, Yoshiura, we get it. The dull-as-cardboard character "Thunder," who is the rock-for-brains judo practitioner, is clearly a stand-in for you, because he asks out the AI with a blush and a stammer. All of your work is about sexy female androids and AI. In ToE, the whole setup was basically there for sexual tension to develop between humans and androids, with his dream scenario of being a high schooler who has a sexy female android fetching him tea but finding himself in the awkward situation of his parents and sister being around so he must abstain from having sex with it. You were so embarrassed by this insight into your life that you instead used an FMC to uproot the sexual tension (tbh, I'd probably give this anime 6/10 if there were a male protagonist, as it's indecent to star an FMC in a sexy female android film and make me power through the female empowerment plot point sludge), but I know you have a fetish for this. You don't want anyone to get in the way of your sexy female android incel revolution, except you want to liberalize it, making your AI girlfriend free to leave you and take the house and all twelve cats. Just admit it already.

Like Hell's Paradise, Dandadan gets a lot of attention amongst recent shonens because both authors were former assistants to Chainsaw Man's Tatsuki Fujimoto and there are some mildly novel touches: HP has an unusual setting and, yeah, that's probably about it; meanwhile, Dandadan, well, uh... is basically a battle shonen that takes the standard otaku-pandering incel romance you'd find in school-based romcoms and pushes it into becoming the ultimate piss-take snub of self-insert pandermancy and cuck romance shippers that has increasingly become the norm in anime. There's a lot of humor, and almost all the punchlines hit below the belt, which probably won't go well ... for those who aren't too keen on lowbrow jokes centering around, in this case, dick jokes—"Give me your banana" (please don't). The whole series is simply one humongous dick joke (likely a petite one, if we're talking about the MC and his 5 cm kintamas that just dropped), and there probably isn't any other kind of media that sorely needed this passionate kick to the nuts more. The series effectively plays a savage South Park-styled game of Roshambo with self-inserters, as Dandadan's motto when it comes to our MC is "Give us your balls, your dick, we'll make you a eunuch." If you're not "too mature" for a few dick jokes, it can be amusing, but other attempts at humor aren't as smoothly integrated, such as milking the "I finally noticed she's cute" trope.

What might appear at first to be a mere acknowledgement of the average anime functioning as a feel-good waifubait simulator for unwashed otakus who skitter about in the shadows, where a 10/10 moeblob who is way out of his league will throw herself upon him without any effort, for she has seen his true inner beauty and manages to look past surface details like BO, and he'll sweep her off her feet, whispering arcane lore into her ear about the intricate plot developments of the final arc of LotGH, becomes a surprisingly hilarious mockup of these kind of series. Instead of just making jokes about being neutered or spayed or presenting a pathetic low-t dweeb with his balls in the usual vice-grip, the series literally emasculates him by having almost the entire plot revolve around a high-speed chase to recover his stolen family jewels, with his dutiful gyaru love interest checking every nook and cranny, searching high and low, to recover his missing balls! In a way, it almost resembles a demented sexual misadventure version of Dragon Balls, with various characters vying for control of the protagonist's balls, which grant them power! One episode is even titled "Like, Where Are Your Balls?" The thing about a lot of shonen is that that's often one of my burning questions about the protagonist, but Dandadan does its own ball count, allowing one to save valuable mental energy.

While not especially deep and just as accessible as most shonen, Dandadan at least foregoes one of the mistakes of its mature™ seasonal peer, Orb: My God Heliocentrism, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?, a series so inept as to pose the question "DUUUUHHH, what be subtext?" and then proceeds to turn all of its subtext into straight-up dialogue and double down on making sure the audience doesn't miss a single thing. Dandadan doesn't feel the need to shamelessly go balls deep down that scandalous hole (kind of hard when they're missing), even if it's waving its influences right in our face in the same way an exhibitionist might flash his private parts. To get the balls rolling, there is blatant influence from the Egyptian Osiris myth (which also influenced Dionysus and various other repackaged gods and syncretized religions). The MC can be seen as Osiris and the FMC as Isis. Seth kills and dismembers Osiris, splitting his body into 14 pieces (in reference to the Orion constellation), leading to what could be referred to as the Mystery of the Missing Phallus (sometimes Mystery of the Missing Balls in the case of Dandadan, though the Phallus gets misplaced often as well). Each piece of Osiris has a partial amount of power, much as a few characters in Dandadan unlock dormant powers by fondling one of the MC's golden balls. Isis tracks down all the pieces of Osiris, except for the phallus, which was eaten by either a fish or crab, depending on which version of the story you read, with Turbo Granny being associated with a crab. Isis reconstructs the body, and there are different accounts of what happens: She usually uses her powers to craft him a new penis, fashions a foreign object into one, or even constructs a literal lady boner out of her own flesh and grafts it onto Osiris. Soon after, they give birth to Horus. Since she's a dickball stealer, Turbo Granny could loosely be seen as a Seth-like character, and there is even a part in the legend where Horus and Seth race each other on boats, much like how she challenges tunnel trespassers to a race; though she does have a more interesting dynamic with the main characters in this story, starting as an enemy, becoming a comic relief mascot, and maybe even something like a friend, though always scheming, not unlike Ekubo/Dimple from Mob Psycho 100. There's also, of course, the fixation on occultism and the sky (aliens), with the ancients being deeply invested in the sky and many of their practices now falling under what we call the occult. Anyway, this lengthy digression is meant to showcase that the author put a surprising amount of effort into presenting his NTR fetish.

Admittedly, some of the cuck pandering can become hardcore, even cringe-inducing. At first, it doesn't seem all that heavy because after the alien-obsessed MC and the ghost/supernatural-believing FMC send each other off on a dare, the series plays out like a balls to the wall boss rush for several episodes, as the characters try to harness their powers and are attacked by one enemy after another. But once we finally have some downtime, like in episode 5, the MC goes back to his pity party lines, hoping his mommy—I mean, waifu—will save him. When the MC transforms he'll do some kind of clownish self-deprecating rap, but then he'll be moping at school and dropping lines like, "Is it so embarrassing to be friends with me? WAAAAAAH!" There's also an over-reliance on downer internal monologues around this time, and during the oddly synchronized yin-yangish bit between the couple, she'll be thinking stuff like, "Ungh, I'm so bored. I wish Okarun would teach me all about aliens, especially the anal probing part. *____*" Feels ridiculously pandering and almost out of tune with the blue balls pit that the show tends to dive headfirst into otherwise. That aspect of the series feels better motivated or smoother in earlier episodes. Of course, once we realize his balls are missing, his pathetic behavior kind of seems justified. You have to wonder if the author planned it a bit where the MC is subtly more or less pathetic depending on those circumstances. Probably not, but using his balls as a plot device allows material that would be far more embarrassing in other anime to roll far more smoothly here. It's also worth noting that the MC is not a total doormat and will insult the FMC when she insults him, instead of just taking abuse, like too many MCs for me to name.

Thankfully, Crappa, the most hardcore corner-cutters in the industry, having churned out Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, Hell's Paradise, and many other extremely popular shonen in the last few years, didn't get their grimy hands on this series. I had read up to about episode 2-3 in the Dandadan manga back when it had first surged in popularity, and, while it seemed alright, there wasn't anything about it that kept me reading it over whatever else. Science SARU, handling the series instead, is a company that tends to have impressive animation or a distinct aesthetic but has put out a lot of mediocre or questionable titles and has been disconcertingly cozy with Netflix. One of their biggest manga adaptations a while back, Devilman: Crybaby, was a travesty for quite a few fans of Go Nagai's work or the earlier OVAs and probably not to the liking of those who were more interested in SARU for artsier titles either, like Inu-Ou. But SARU were actually a great choice for adapting Dan, appearing to be faithful where it counts, and featuring far more lively animation than we can usually hope to get from most seasons, with the first episode being quite inventive and even "trippy," and the chase with the crab having a frenetic energy, as they run around and swing across buildings, struggling to survive. There are some disappointing stills that are occasionally used and expected dips in quality from time to time, but how polished it generally is is an indicator that SARU might actually be able to pull off the dream of adapting decent commercial work with their own unique style to generate revenue, while creating more artistic and experimental work along the way, as seemed to be the intention back when Masaaki Yuasa founded the company. This is an adaptation that mostly elevates the material, though there is a dubious ghettoization habit on display, which SARU has likely developed from being so close to Netflix (see the oddly placed rap in Japan Stinks 2020 and Devilman: Crybaby), rendering the audio component less than satisfactory.

When it comes to fiction embedded in our world, with characters drawn into a fantasy realm, there used to be a different, more subtle approach emphasizing the fantastical. Nowadays, fantasy of this ilk tends to be about abusing a pretense of the incredible to mollycoddle characters who have some maladaptation that they resolve by accessing the unknown, which functions as a rite of passage, correcting their problems in the real world. The result is a dissipation of any sense of wonder because what might appear at first unknowable becomes tacitly knowable, rendered as a mere device for self-improvement.

My takeaway is always to ask what about ... those who don't get the privilege of having a fairy tale that resolves their problems conveniently? Doesn't it give the impression that we must resort to flights of fancy and nonsense to fix ourselves? What a perfect metaphor for psychiatry. Most decent fantasy features a character who is somehow changed by the fantasy world or otherwise develops, and these works often touch upon inner states. There's nothing wrong with a character resolving their problems in fantasy. Still, the most trite of these films present the fantasy component as more like therapy than anything else, which becomes embarrassing. Another fantasy film called Drifting Home suffers from a similar problem. For this paradigm of fantasy, I have to coin a term: "therapeutic fantasy" or "fantasy therapy." Would-be or "credentialed" therapists will seemingly spin anything into a process of healing, which leads to "art therapy," "pet therapy," and a whole bunch of bullshit. Yes, things we enjoy can reduce stress. Having a creative outlet is beneficial. Positive things have a potential to improve your quality of life. Nonetheless, therapatizing these things is a reductionist joke that fails to address the problems at hand and is no less escapist than anime.

KnK lifts its fantasy gloss from fairy tales, namely, Little Red Riding Hood. Fairy tales were, once upon a time, dark and troubling, and there is an undercurrent of that here, but the STOP BULLYING! PSA family-film tone spoils us from believing there might be a tragedy in the making. There's the suggestion of the castle's sinister potential, but it's a footnote until the end, when the atmosphere gets a tad darker. This aspect could have been doled out better; there's the concept of the "healing crisis," where you have to suffer through some pain to get better, and given that this is therapeutic fantasy, we would have benefited from earlier tonal shifts of this nature, as the characters' experience in relation to the castle is largely an easy-going iyashikei experience. Then, OH NO! Forced conflict, and FMC saves the day, pulling up her big-girl pants. All is well. Clap clap.

By the end, numerous seemingly disconnected plot threads are tied together. One twist involves the mostly unexplained nature of the castle and the strange wolf-mask-wearing-loli host; the revelation of her identity leads me to believe we either needed to know more about the fantasy element or less, for knowing her identity adds nothing to the film other than mawkish gut rot, coming too late to feel organic. Furthermore, the fairy tale tie-in is weird when you realize who the "loli wolf" is in relation to one of the characters.

While several of the plot twists range anywhere from maudlin to absurd, there's a great opportunity to explore further inter-generational connectivity through one of the revelations, but the idea is squandered. We don't get a chance to see any of these connections, except for the most important and obvious one. A person in the story helping the MC has the MC returning the favor via the fantasy component and without that, none of this would have happened. Had we been given a longer series, there could have been deeper threads woven amongst our seven main characters. Usually, the young cast is in a vacuum and only interacts with older characters as an occasional source of comfort, a plot device, or a wise man archetype, but what KnK does is a bit more interesting, albeit under-utilized and sloppily integrated.

There's too much time spent on the mystery of the castle, the key, how the characters are connected, the experiences of the MC in the real world, and all of her interpersonal warts and tribulations. It looked like we would have a crybaby psychodrama involving group therapy with the seven characters, but it turned out the only one to boo hoo and tell it all was the MC, who is showered with sympathy as comforting cake is shoved into her face. One kid mentions getting beaten up because he's a fat ass who never stops eating Twinkies, but the rest are tight-lipped. We eventually learn why they needed therapeutic fantasy through consecutively delivered flashbacks at the end of the movie, leaving the characters underdeveloped and distant. They range from goofy to extreme: the former best represented by an elder being like, "LOOOL, grandson, don't dye your hair blonde, you look like a retard"; the latter is best represented by a scenario involving a familial rape attempt. There's no way you can reach the end and not realize the movie's flaws. Had they divulged this information throughout, focusing less on cupcakes, strawberry tea, board games, and wandering around, we could have explored what ailed them and perhaps had enough development to lead to a more impactful finale.

While the film probably needed to be longer or expanded into a series, the slow pace and meandering scenes and dialogue could have been shaped even with the current running length into a more satisfactory film. By mere rearrangement, the film would probably be an easy seven. I'm not sure what to think about Keiichi Hara anymore. He's a talented director, but sometimes he embraces sentimentality to his detriment and has had many misfires. The crying scene with the MC had me laughing quite a bit, including the sappy music and the distraught expressions of the MC's companions, who licked her wounds. If the studio wanted to perfectly mirror the novel, they'd have to expand the length or episode number. If they wanted to make an effective movie, the best bet is either to cut or minimize certain scenes or to reduce the number of characters. There seemed to be some symbolic reason for there being 7 characters; however, the MC gets the bulk of attention; Aki and Rion have sufficient screen time or involvement, making them secondary; Fuuka and Ureshino are tertiary; the other two aren't even worth naming.

Studio Ponoc has thus far remained in the shadow of Studio Ghibli, with the founder of the former, Yoshiaki Nishimura, having been a long time staff member of the latter. Mary and the Witch's Flower (MatWF), their first feature length film, was constantly deemed ersatz-Ghibli by critics, and even the art books and merchandise were equivalent in design, representing their heftiest profit. Rudger is, in comparison, overlooked and struggling to find an audience amongst Japanese or foreigners. It seems to be something of a flop, probably most enjoying an audience more inclined to something like Pixarified Ghibli or a mild harkening to the darker days ... of Disney. A lot of the newer animators on here had staff overlap on a few of the same releases in recent years, like Sousou no Frieren, Bubble, Burn the Witch, Eiga Daisuki Pompo-san, and a few others, so there's a lot of great talent here. There are also many veteran key animators like Takeshi Honda, Shinji Hashimoto, and Atsuko Tanaka also being featured and having contributed to numerous Ghibli films. If you saw clips from MatWF without knowing what it was or any context, you'd probably assume it was a new Ghibli film from Goro Miyazaki or another director rather than a different studio.

Although Rudger owes plenty to Ghibli, the studio looks to be finally forming an identity of its own, with the blending of 2D and 3D elements giving it a unique dimensionality that isn't common to either western or eastern animation conventions. Anime often composites 2D characters or effects animation on 3D backdrops and camera movements, whereas it seems to be somewhat the opposite here, with Ghibli-esque painted backdrops much of the time and a blend of 2D animation and 3D models for the characters, making them look like a high-budget 3D western film with anime reskins, in what might be one of the more fascinating "2.5D" aesthetics in recent years. While I don't really want to make a reference to ugly modernist art styles, like cubism, and this is far removed from the multi-perspective abstraction of that style, there is a similar utilization of more figurative geometry and a rounded, full appearance to the shapes, so the film feels far less "flat" than 2D animation, but has less of that icky "plastic look," while keeping added foreground/middleground/background differentiation that a lot of 3D animation demonstrates more consistently. The two are blended with a lot of care, though there are a few blatant 3D segments with obtrusive and unfortunately dated jaggedness, such as the scene featuring a swarm of bats or the formation and opening of a door in a brick wall immediately after, but, other than a few hiccups, it's a pleasant aesthetic experience, with a great usage of color and shading.

An immediate deficiency of the film is its primacy as an appealing visual but not audiovisual experience; of course, the audio is as complementary as any reasonably well-made high-budget film in terms of its functionality, but the audio lacks the distinct personality and audiovisual synchronization found in the likes of Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Angel's Egg, Tree of Palme, the Monogatari series, Madoka, etc. The score we're saddled with is redolent of a children's Hollywood film or a further watered-down version of Ghibli's Joe Hisaishi's orchestral music. Most modern film classical is a perversion of more authentic classical music, lacking any of the bite, with electronic, ambience, and sound design tending to work as better tools to sculpt an atmosphere. Aside from the more sweeping orchestrations, there's the piano for the subtler moments, the occasional folksy twang of a string instrument, and odd one-time throwaway tracks like the electronic rock of the sleigh scene. It'll do, but I can't imagine anyone spinning the OST outside of watching the film, let alone getting chills because of how a piece of music enhances a scene.

The focus on the imagination is usually conflated with childhood, for the imagination is often retarded to focus solely on bland real-world concerns as one grows older, like paying the bills via some mind-numbing means that the majority of people would rather not do otherwise. Despite how fantastical the settings and scenarios that Amanda cooks up can be, the film comes across a touch darker than average, with the adult concerns of the future feeling more tangible. Nevertheless, I'm sometimes not sure if the creators misfired a bit when they were designing the villain, Mr. Bunting, ostensibly for a children's film, whose big, inflamed schnoze comes rearing around the corner, sniffing for children. Then there are his companions: 1) a ghostly pale Sadako-from-The-Ring-copy girl, coming across as a broken-shell victim of abuse and resembling an obedient slave. 2) a phallic serpent. Mr. Bunting comes across as a... I believe the word is, uh, p-p-podiatrist or, um, ah, maybe a My Little Pony fan? To cut things short, you don't want him anywhere near children. Sure, Mr. Bunting is not interested in the children themselves, preferring to devour the imaginaries derived from the child's imagination, but there is a gross symbolic touch to the notion and an intimacy concerning the contents of one's mind that makes this come across as unsavory in a unique way, which perhaps gives the villain a visceral quality to make up for his simplicity. Even Mr. Bunting's inevitable demise reinforces the latent creepiness of the whole ordeal.

A core theme of the film is spelled out early on whenever the villain lifts a book from the shelf of the Shuffleup (the heroine's surname) bookstore and references a revolutionary line from the incorrigible little rascal Antonio Gramsci: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters,” though apparently working in a variation specific to The Imaginary's needs (my subtitles mentioned between light and darkness rather than anything about monsters, though Mr. Bunting would certainly qualify as a monster in this sense). Although the quote has to do with change and ushering in a new world ordure, the old world, in this case, is obviously Amanda's past, when her father was alive and the family bookstore was in business. The new world is... to be determined by fantastical film conventions.

The director has detailed how the three floors of the house, where a majority of scenes take place in the first half of the film, represent different times in Amanda's life. The first floor, the bookstore is the past, which is the most obvious because it was quickly shut down not long after the death of her father. The second floor, where the family live, represents the present. The third floor would be the future, and I can see why this may seem peculiar because the attic is so often depicted as a respite from the drudgery of the outside world, growing pains, and perhaps even a retreat away from familial problems. I've seen the same thing in many films, where a child will spend hours in the attic with stashed toys and objects that might seem to hold a magical appeal in childhood but are mere junk to adults, all of which is portrayed in The Imaginary. In psychology, it's not too uncommon to symbolically look at different components of an object in this manner, for the top floor of a house can easily be envisioned as the head/brain/mind. To better visualize this, there's even an indie horror video game, called Anatomy, that depicts the various rooms of an eerie old house as organs of a body, with the basement being a harbor for deeply locked away subconscious thoughts, the bedroom pertaining to dreams, allusions to teeth and the stomach and the house devouring the protagonist and any other inhabitants, etc.

The primary reason I broach this motif at all is because I think it's easy to misunderstand the whole idea of the imaginary friend, a concept which does not pertain to psychosis or schizophrenia or anything of the sort but rather tends to be a mechanism for coping with loneliness or an outlet for creativity. It seems relatively common for imaginative introverts (or otherwise more isolated individuals) to conjure up an imaginary friend, but it's a phasal process, usually ending as the child matures and responsibilities are foisted upon them. If the attic is a wondrous place, linked to the future, and a stand-in for the mind itself, it's not just a place of escapism. Escapism and imaginary friends may occur in childhood, leading to the flights of fancy we see here, but the imagination is usually "sublimated" as one gets older into everything one does in life. When it comes to the arts, we have references to Beethoven, Shakespeare, Picasso (good ol' 'Asso), and a few others (did Hans Bellmer envision the disturbing sexy-legged gramophone with a pair of eyeballs and a massive grin? What kid would think this crap up!?). Since these artists have imaginaries in the film, the suggestion is that they similarly went through ordeals just as Amanda did while they were forming their identity. Imaginaries helped them through the process, then they poured their imagination into their creative work. Of course, even outside of the arts, the imagination is applied in many ways, but certain routines can be stultifying and deaden the imagination. In the case of Amanda, she's not so much escaping anything as much as she is coming to terms with the death of her father, as well as wielding her imagination to enliven her play, as all children do, and who knows what opportunities will be opened up in the future as a result? The attic isn't inherently escapist but has to do with identity formation. By contrast, Mr. Bunting is forever locked away in the attic in the most escapist sense, going a step further by metaphorically jumping into the attic of other children and gobbling up their imaginaries, effectively preventing them from forming a stable identity or rendering them as colorless drones.

One of my problems with the film is how random many of the imaginative scenes can be. The opening scene has a small connection to Amanda's personal life because the beast of burden she rides with Rudger is named after the beer her widowed mother drinks to quell hard times, but everything else about the frozen environment, the elves, Christmas ornaments, and a yeti with a banjo seems like oddball imaginings from a child. If you want to get into the mind of a child, perhaps this is realistic enough to envision the process of what they might imagine, but when crafting a film, the better bet is to connect the imaginative elements to something within the story, and the screenplay fails to do so. As a result, certain scenes can appear flashy and without much substance. A better approach would have been to weave more of the father's lingering influence into the fantasy elements by connecting him to a story that he read to Amanda years before, lending more cohesiveness to the imaginative realm of the film; an adaptation of this sort is sorely needed because the film is a clusterfuck of disconnected ideas and imagery, especially with the often bloated and meandering middle section. Such a device wouldn't have to be spelled out immediately, but later revelations would have everything clicking into place and creating more emotional resonance rather than quickly dissolving Ponoc eyecandy.

It might seem a bold or even questionable decision to separate Amanda from Rudger so early on in the film, shrouding her fate in obscurity. A film like the anime version of Metropolis is oftentimes criticized for not building a strong enough relationship between the human boy and the android girl, even in spite of a strongly emotional finale. A core part of The Imaginary is the chemistry and interaction between the two as well, but Amanda is always there, for an imaginary is nothing but a compartmentalized component of the self, divided to serve a function. The idea of following an imaginary may even seem tantamount to a reveal that everything is in the main character's head, "it was just a dream," or any other series of copouts acting as a rip in a tire and deflating the whole project. Yet Rudger is a distinct character just as much as any other we might find in a story, but he is Amanda's construction... That's why the scenes between Rudger and the mother are far more poignant than they might otherwise be in other films with similar scenes involving an invisible figure who is attempting to be noticed: Rudger is, at his essence, a part of Amanda that her mother cannot see. The sex-swap scene toward the end is probably meant to hint and reaffirm this connection rather than just being unexpected, humorous, or typical Japanese fetish fuel.

Another problem with the fantasy is the prosaic, even bureaucratic nature of the film. Instead of being magical and wondrous, once we get to the overflowing collective imagination that is the library, we're hit over the head with a litany of rules, explaining so many details and wasting the runtime. Minutia about the mechanics of imaginaries being forgotten, how the library works, and so on... This information would be better conveyed through suggestion and "show (or just cut out completely, as would be appropriate with a number of ideas), don't tell," and the great irony here is how the film should have left these details to the imagination. After all, the telling is humdrum and the world lacks sufficient complexity to warrant the pedantry. This is not a film in need of world building because the world it builds is a phantom house of cards, collapsing as the main character and other children grow up, ready to rise again, perhaps, as happens with a few adults in the story. The whole aspect of being forgotten should have been handled in broad, emotional strokes, and the "structure" of the imaginary society should have remained obscure. After all, the imaginaries are only sort of real, symbols of the inner self, and they're not real real, so this level of detail doesn't matter in the slightest. Unfortunately, this over-detailed tendency of the film wastes time to the point of feeling rushed and giving less time for the things that matter most.

Despite the wonderful visuals, many strong scenes, and as fitting of a conclusion as one would expect, the fantasy world could be described as one of those Frankensteined block towers one would construct during a game of Jenga, where the players stack a tower of questionable build and then strategically pull away blocks to attain an advantage over other players (stacking on another irony, one could also compare this messy world to the metaphor of the collapsing stone tower in Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron, which aired the same year). There is a lack of harmony to the slipshod arrangement of the various set pieces and characters this film has. While the core cast is fairly simple, many of the support characters are stitched together and lack charm and are either there to be quirky or as wacky as possible, act as a plot device, or deliver exposition dumps or elaborate upon the stuffy and ever-expanding rule book of the imaginaries' world. There is one tragic death, but the irony was how they must grapple with forgetting about those who fade away, yet the imaginaries are often so unmemorable as to be forgotten not long after finishing the film.

After coming to appreciate Silent Mobius, I rummaged through AIC's other OVA and movie credits, and this short, action-packed OVA is one that I've had my eye on for a while, though the art is much more muddy and dated but not without a degree of charm. Your average wimpy main turns out to be the "chosen one." He has sad sack syndrome and survivor's guilt from being a rejected siscon whom everyone hates due to a melodramatic string of deaths that he's loosely associated with and for being an adopted bastard. Everyone, that is, except his little cutie moeblob who is trying to pull ... up his big boy pants for him, of course.

A bunch of elemental clans—the individual members being called ELEMENTALORS! SUPER COOOOOOOOL!!!—crossover into the boring human world to wreck the place and engage in stylish and creative fight sequences because... that's just what they do. Gotta keep the balance or some other vague fantasy cliche something something or other, you know?

Speaking of balance: there isn't time for any natural development of anything, at only 48 minutes, so it remains a sketch of a formulaic shonen, complete with abysmal storytelling and shallow characters. At least it's not too much of a slog and thankfully has a few sequences of enjoyable animation and fight scenes. There are directorial touches that make it watchable enough, but one would probably be better off viewing the best scenes on Sakugabooru. The pacing is too fast, but if you were to expand this series, the aesthetic would suffer, and it would probably be too slow and boring. The eternal catch-22 of shonen and vintage OVAs.

Finally, the ending is garbage. MC just has the most absurd amount of power without even trying and corrects everything in what amounts to the blandest kind of I BELIEVE IN MYSELF ending, which comes right after the cucked line to his moeblob about how he can endure as long as she's alive. If you weren't the chosen one, she'd dump you in less than a week.

Hell Target is a B-movie horror OVA that is an odd mixture of Alien, The Thing, and Solaris, with a bleak cosmic horror ending. There's often an eye-roll-inducing debate when it comes to horror, whether to show the monster or not. Well, it depends. Showing or not showing has a different impact and neither is necessarily better, but not showing tends to be better when you have limited resources because showing can look laughable, which is actually the case for a few parts in Hell Target. The dream sequence in the beginning is decently effective for its silhouette and composition-based abstraction. one of the first ... deaths comes from some kind of large canine or feline creature, and the scene looks cheesy, and we would have benefited from not showing at this point. Usually the first few deaths, it's better to maintain suspense as to what exactly we're dealing with. Of course, HT has the advantage over a lot of horror that its entity is effectively formless, much like Solaris and The Thing. The former constitutes a purely psychological, perhaps even spiritual, horror, drawing from the fears, dreams, and ambitions of the mind, though the entity or force in question is not strictly good, evil, or even hostile. The latter is more materialistic in the way it is conceived and how the monster will incorporate various creatures into its body for all kinds of strange, twisted special effects.

The translation is clearly poor at a few parts, with one part in particular not making sense; there are two different translations I've seen, but both are quite similar at this part, leading me to believe the problem might be in the original script, but who knows? Something about telepathy and "They use brainwaves to create a virtual image, to confuse and kill us." How do they know this to be true? There doesn't seem to be much info at all to work with. And if that's true, how do they see the "virtual image" on the camera? Shouldn't it be something only the person affected sees? The cameras aren't directly connected to their brains. I wouldn't say this is a spoiler, and it's probably best going into this title understanding the kind of horror it is; incidentally, the synopsis on here hilariously reveals that everyone dies except the (sort of) MC and that his mission is to kill the entity before a third ship arrives.

What this title actually is is a psychological horror, where the thoughts of the characters affect the form of whatever entity (or entities) is roaming around the planet. Perhaps it's not even so much an entity as something pertaining to the atmosphere and nature of the planet itself. There is one scene where the entity takes a form, seemingly without the input of any human, but even that might have been from the character patrolling the hallways at the time, but it's somewhat questionable as to whether every person would see something different pertaining to their psychology, so I think a better, more coherent choice would be to create a little bit more mystery, removing the first death from being recorded on the camera and not showing that scene I referenced above.

The atmosphere in HT is quite strong, and the animation is surprisingly decent, given that so many people will simply say it's dated and bad. Not much of it is exceptional, but I was surprised to find that the aesthetic mostly worked out, and there was more enjoyment to be had than one solid explosion scene from the great Toshiaki Hontani. The valkyrie scene and several others were also decently animated, and there was rarely anything so poorly done from an art and animation standpoint as to elicit laughter, other than the slideshow animation of the "bird deity." There's even some okay background animation and simulated camera movements here and there. True to it's B-horror form, there are lots of cool gorey death scenes, a fairly bare bones, no-nonsense script, but punctuated by out of place scenes, such as one guy saying, "I hope I'll get a chance to take a piss before I die," or a couple suddenly ending up in bed, having sex in a pastel soft-focus scene with shojo sparkles, and sweet talking each other, right in the middle of the crew being massacred and a bloodthirsty entity wandering around. Enhancing the grimy feel of the OVA is the horrendous quality, with the production both greatly needing a remaster and perhaps being better for the lack of it, with everything a bit fuzzy and grainy, adding to the disorientation of the often crimson-monochrome and Martain-like hell scape they inhabit, along with numerous shaky closeups when they are running from or firing at the entity, the occasional out of focus shot, characters swallowed by the outer darkness, scenes lit by only harsh flashlight beams, and many minimalist composition choices. It actually doesn't look bad, with maybe the main detractor being fairly generic human character design and the various forms the entity takes maybe being too out there in some cases or not having a disturbing enough design.

What comes across as actually a fairly average film is most burdened by a painfully dull cast. Most of these characters don't even register as distinct archetypes, have few lines of dialogue, have no development, and hardly any characterization. The problem with this being a psychological horror is that you kind of need characters that resemble something above a husk for decent psychological elements. We have to known something about these characters and what makes them who they are. I don't remember any important information from the dialogue. We know a few people by their role, such as the captain and doctor. One guy is a flirt. One girl has a crush on a guy. The most Nordic-looking cast member sees the entity as a Valkyrie. Another character sees it as a "bird deity," probably in reference to Amerindian religion. Apparently, the MC is afraid of spiders. There's even a missed opportunity where one of the girls is being carried by the entity, and one might think the man who desires her might influence the entity in this respect, but he is not involved with the scene at all. The only effective toying with psychological states would be during the ending, when the MC sees something he shouldn't, and during a lengthy flashback scene for one of the characters. This flashback is intriguing but ultimately lacking enough context to be especially meaningful, serving to do nothing other than to confirm that the entity knows your every thought and can conform itself to match what will haunt you. Yet the scene is a fine example of what the film should strive to work with—memory and internal states—but seldom exploits it to any real depth. What made Alien thrive is that the characters were given more room to be distinguished, had firmer archetypes, better character writing, and the film was a decent length to explore characters and themes, running at 1 hour and 57 minutes, whereas we barely get even 50 minutes with our hollow cast in Hell Target.

In a certain sense, Death Parade is like a possibly better-written BokuraNO!, or at least somewhat more engaging in its attempt at a visceral—if not soap-operatic—appeal, made all the better since DP has a non-expendable core cast and an expendable secondary cast. Only there's a different manipulative psychological twist: "Let's play a game." This is almost the Saw franchise of seinentard realism, just without Rube Goldbergisms, fully loaded squibs, and gutter-Hollywood schlock. The first episode, though maybe not as complex as later entries, is among the better ones because we're thrown head-first into the game without any explanation.

You probably know what's going to happen from ... reading the synopsis, but there is a mildly sinister feel to the casual bar atmosphere, and we've yet to be acquainted with how the judgment process works. Now, take all of these dramatic twists and turns, and we'll repeat a back-and-forth morality play for nearly each episode with a new set of Bokuranos (meaning disposable characters who are around for only one or a couple episodes), exploring themes, situations, and moral conundrums more than characters. While some of the scenarios are more compelling than others, it's easy to get a sense of claustrophobia from being tucked inside of the bar for so many deliberations. The Bokuranos are either directly connected, have overlapping moral issues or situations, are complementary, or opposites.

Although an aesthetic nitpick, I wish this could have had a more Japanese aesthetic for the judgment process rather than these cheap bar games. Talk about degrading. "We're not sure what fate you should have, so maybe you'd like to play Street Fighter II, and we'll be unfair fucks and see how you react." Sometimes the games are a bit fairer, but they'll do things like pair a single mother and a shut-in and have them play video games; obviously, the latter is going to be better at this, which is going to cause frustration for the former because there is the presumption that they have to win the game or something terrible will happen. In this instance, the single mother has responsibilities like kids and didn't commit suicide, while the gamer shut-in offed himself, so here is an example where many characters have a lot to lose and others have no real concern (somewhat ameliorated by the selective memories at least). It also doesn't look at societal problems with any real depth, since our Bokuranos barely get 20 minutes to strut their stuff, though sometimes they might get two whole episodes. On top of that, the characters are disoriented and thrust into a world they don't understand. There is reason to be suspicious and afraid. Their memories are selectively inserted or removed. The setup will not be a good match for certain personality types and temperaments. Everything is stacked against all participants in such a way that you should expect them to not be on their best behavior; hence, it comes across as overly cruel and manipulative. Although anyone watching this probably already felt manipulated by the maudlin piano and downpour of tears and snot that occur nearly every episode. The bar needs to keep around a box of Kleenex, as it's disgusting to behold!

The system of judgments determining the fate of the characters is silly and based on minimal information for those handling the deliberations. The story does critique the arbitrary nature of the process and has a "We've got to change the system, man" subplot, which never goes anywhere because the series didn't get a second season thus far. This critique still doesn't make the concept any more palatable for a series, and the whole thing seems so overly asinine as to have been a practical joke to have ever been implemented as a system at all. Or D-g is just doing it for the lulz because it gets boring to play games of pool for eternity with lolibaba. As with most moralistic series, judgments are usually made in a preachy way. They take what is an abstract concept of how death is handled with the void or reincarnation and concretize it with bureaucratic autism. Something is lost in the process, rendering the series hollow in execution and wholly inorganic.

Now that I have more distance from the series. I have to imagine re-watching this, and seeing them play through the games again in each of these scenarios is a terrible chore. And that is a necessary evaluation of any media you consume. Would I be willing to rewatch it and does the formula it presents only work for one watch and would forevermore be monotonous and less appealing after the prior exposure? Sure, if I were a fan of a 1,000 episode series, I would probably only watch it once because that is a huge time sink, but that's not the same as it being worth watching again. Even at a measly and very bingeable 12 episodes, I feel Death Parade has minimal replay value. Everything about the way they work through the games is so artificial and boring. There are tonal clashes all over the place, whether it's the cancerous OP's undiluted barf fuel, the trashy game of Twister, the red-headed tsundere punk, the cheesy old man with the Hawaiian shirt and ratty top-knot, the sassy character design, the stinky comedy bits, or the "deep" exploration of the inner workings and subtleties of the death game system, which I couldn't care less about. Also, speaking of out of place, a fight scene between Ginti and Decim? What is the point? There aren't any other fight scenes and it felt like the series randomly decided to turn into a battle shonen, featuring flashy attacks that are completely useless for any other purpose.

The main and supporting cast aren't much better than the disposable Bokuranos. Decim is particularly wooden and creepy, just like his BJD collection. Most of them are one-dimensional or solely for forwarding the plot. The various arcs involving different characters are a mixed bag, with some being better than others, yet Onna's development and the emotions on display are often handled decently enough and probably the only thing that had a lasting impact, for she is pretty much a bewildered stand-in for the viewer, sharing the same repulsion to the system but being trapped inside of this hopeless box of a world and judged all the same. The world-building for the one and only area (along with a couple other big rooms) we inhabit is lackluster and has no real presence. Not much is explained, and what is explained doesn't really matter. There's no indication that there will be another season to complete the series, and the presentation of the story is rushed and unsatisfying in the same way as many of the sadly flawed OVAs of the 1980s and 1990s' era of anime.

As far as CGI anime productions go, Exception is no exception and has a fair number of hiccups and oddities. However, the way they've chosen to frame this project is more effective than the average CGI series, even amongst those with a comparatively vast budget. The frame-rate may be "off" compared to 2D animation, and there is still the unnatural computer game look and stiffness, especially the hair models, but the character art and set designs stand out. It's also probably worth noting that some people have found they enjoy Exception and some other CGI anime with frame-rate issues more when they upped the speed ... slightly to 1.5x. This is not how I experienced the series, but it may help smooth things out with minimal impact to the pacing or dialogue distortion, though this caveat not only places emphasis upon a serious aesthetic flaw, I doubt it's much of a fix.

This production is more concerned with a philosophical sci-fi plot and character writing, somewhat minimizing the awkward movements. Unfortunately, early episodes do have a few fights with the monster, and later episodes have more elaborate choreography and flipping around, with characters constantly shifting alliances and giving mercy, much to the detriment of their plans, over and over. Additionally, there are some silly elements when it comes to the lurking threat of the monster and any attempts to hunt him down. One character takes him on with a measly pool stick! Characters split up or wander around without weapons, despite the ease with which the creature could maul them. At one point, they 3D print a hammer to use as a tool, and the tension is heightened by the lack of real weapons and intentional design limitations of the 3D printer that prevents them from being able to defend themselves well. Many of these choices often forego the film's strengths and instead pushes the rough CGI to its limits. The series is a more philosophical Alien clone at first, but it quickly becomes a predictable Among Us whodunnit, then goes full-on-ecocuck suspense thriller, complete with the saboteur pulling a 180, cackling madly, like a scheming, unhinged Bond villain. This person had idealistic motives but is tediously framed as borderline insane and evil, having not really bonded with the other characters to elicit emotion. It's not even particularly hard to narrow down whodunnit. Although this is a thoughtful reboot of the basic idea with various sci-fi gimmicks to differentiate itself, the less convoluted Alien is the much stronger and more polished work, aging better than Exception could ever hope to say for itself in the coming decades.

For the sci-fi themes, we're dealing with consciousness and questions of what makes us who we are. There are existential questions about what it means to be human when you're effectively expendable and your next 3D-printed clone is right around the corner. If you're using genetic material to cobble together humans who presumably once existed and had memories, and you imparted those memories, are they the same person? What if you end up printing them again? Or if you have two copies but one is misprinted and so on. Alongside the main thematic content, there's also terraforming and an effort for humanity to colonize the galaxy or other parts of the universe, as well as corporate themes similar to Alien. Nothing too original or necessarily exquisitely executed, but it's interesting enough in tandem with a sort of striking but heavily flawed aesthetic.

The main reason the series got much attention was because of Yoshitaka Amano, who is famous for his character designs and artwork, but few anime have managed to truly capture his elegant designs. Angel's Egg is one of the few, but that was an oddity of the 1980's OVA boom and a short production. Quite a few other projects Amano worked on required the character designs to be simplified; notably, Gibiate listed him as a "character designer," but the final product looked nothing like his work, and that's because the studio was working on a low budget and couldn't feasibly animate Amano's designs. Most of the best commercial work Amano has committed to would probably be static designs that you would see in earlier Final Fantasy games, Kartia, novel covers, comics, etc.

Admittedly, Amano's designs might have gone too far, as some of them look more akin to fantasy characters or court jesters than anything you'd expect in a sci-fi, especially Oscar and Mack. I chuckled when a flashback had Lewis and Mack wearing suits, as they looked so out of place with the series' visual design! But from looking at the lavishly constructed and decorative corridors, vivid colors, and the organic-looking dragon junk (in reference to a Chinese seafaring vessel), which is similar to some of the old concept art for aborted film projects of Frank Herbert's Dune, one can argue that the character designs fit perfectly. The females, Mack, and the monster-version of Lewis are the most effective designs when it comes to portraying Amano's vision; Oscar's prominent jowls, lard-ass shape, puke-colored attire, and bulky-diaper crotch render him as almost too grotesque. Non-mutated Lewis is a little bland and looks especially goofy in the idyllic scenes, brimming with sunlight.

Other than the possibility of a high budget 2D animation, I actually think 3D is a nice avenue for Amano's designs and other similarly elegant ones that don't lend themselves well to traditional animation. The art direction and setting is strong, and I'd suspect Amano had a hand in that as well, or they were inspired by his past design work when it comes to establishing the setting, as there is a lot of similarity to what I've seen from his concept art and comics. For an easy reference, his Final Fantasy 6 concept art is similar, just less monochrome and intensely colored. Additionally, the recently deceased Ryuichi Sakamoto provides a fitting, though somewhat bland, ambient score, often synergizing well with the intended mood.

By anime standards, Orb: On the Movements of This Series into the Garbage Can has a unique story and setting. There are, unsurprisingly, not a whole lot of medieval European period piece mangas out there—set in 15th century Poland in this case—and even fewer of those get adapted, except for the more popular action-packed or fantasy-based ones rather than old school (a)historical fiction, with realistic situations, no magic or monsters, and plenty of moral quandaries and philosophical musings.

Certain characters or events seem loosely based on figures such as the Italians Giordano Bruno or Galileo Galilei, who are associated with astronomy and dabbled in a ... number of other things, with the former finding himself knee-deep in a grab-bag of "heresies" that put him at odds with the tyrannical church inquisitors and led to him being burnt at the stake. Here, too, there will be many heretics sizzling like bacon, a smell as sweet as charming quotes from the bible, such as "happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." The characters navigate through a society not at all dissimilar from a tattletale spook state like Soviet Russia, doing a convincing job of making Christianity look like a forerunner of communism.

The focus on proving heliocentrism in a world of geocentric orthodoxy, enforced by ruthless inquisitors of the church, makes for a fearsome clash of worldviews, and there are thriller, even quasi-spy, elements on display that could be plumbed for added tension, though the formula chosen by the author inevitably curbs what could be exciting and compelling. The ideas explored place this story within history, though many liberties are taken albeit maybe too few. However, emphasis must be placed on Orb as a science/philosophy-based drama series influenced by history rather than being historical fiction. There are already solemn tears being shed over "historical inaccuracies," yet the author seems to have set the series in Poland with no references to location or significant dates, doesn't feature any of the famous astronomers, and is using all original characters and events. The author realized there was a perception that the church heavily persecuted heliocentrism and saw an intriguing story to tell. While the church was prone to censorship or authoritarian measures in a number of ways, they were not burning people at the stake for heliocentrism. Yes, there were executions related to heresy, but they were usually theologically rooted. This is fiction, the basic dynamic and how it's influenced by history makes for a potentially good story, and critiquing it based on historical inaccuracies is simply poor criticism. Besides, the more important point should be how hard this series fails as entertaining fiction or as an artistic achievement.

Orb is, at heart, a Monster-like mature™ series in the seinentard realism school of anime: "Wow, no waifus, lolis, no cheeky tsunderes to treat me like a doormat, nor any other deres in sight (let alone women, so far... quite the sausage fest), no tropes, no rainbow hair, and no shonen shining justice fingering. The characters are contemplative and ask probing questions about existence. omg, omg, this is so deep." With the bland character art, blonde main in the first arc, the extra dopey character Oczy, and medieval European setting, I also thought of Crappa's near-slideshow Vinland Saga S2, yet Madhouse, apparently having tucked all their cash under Frieren's bra strap, is more stingy here with their seasonal budget, out crapping even Crappa!

To compare Orb to other series and give a better impression of what it's like, there's the red flag tone and philosophical nature of both Monster and Vinland Saga S2, but further aspects can be illuminated with the inclusion of the medieval manga Wolfsmund and the adapted Fumetsu no Anata e and Bokura NO More Cryporn, Mommy, Please! Orb is, of course, not cryporn by any stretch, as there is a way of engaging with death and the world that questions where meaning is derived from and whether or not there is an afterlife. There is often a detachment from the material world and the hope of salvation in the hereafter, with many characters questioning or doubting the potentiality of the latter and becoming nihilistic. From this state of despair, some of these characters, having bumped around like blind beggars, lost within the dark corridors of their copypasta medieval town, find the glorious light of our lord and savior Heliocentrism or some other truth, hidden away by the big mean bad men of the church.

The reason to address the last few series above is because they feature a large cast of barely developed characters who are killed off every arc, much like Orb. There's an inspirational quality to Orb, with the main character not so much being a human but instead an idea, a representation of the indomitable "spirit of man," yearning for truth. This "spirit" inhabits each rotating individual or cast of characters as if they were mere vessels, selflessly passing on knowledge and ambition to the next empty vessel(s) and filling them with the Divine Spark of Heliocentrism. There's a similarity to this setup that harkens back to Fumetsu no Anata e, which possesses a lot of the same problems.

Similarly, Wolfsmund is an apt comparison not only due to the medieval setting and backdrops, but there are a number of ways to interpret the often vague, skeletal stories, featuring numerous groups of characters attempting to make their way by various means of trickery into the lands beyond a fortified mountain pass. Why they want to do so or what is the significance of one plot of land versus the other is not clear, but the lack of information and the presentation of the author attach a sort of mystical fervor to risking life and limb for an unknown land, and Orb tackles the same thing in a more clear-cut, prosaic manner.

In fiction, it's not uncommon for there to be a tension based on your anticipation of whether a character will die or not, yet this tension is absent or greatly diminished in these titles because misfortune is telegraphed by design, and what we're shown in a preceding arc is foreordained in the subsequent arcs, unless the author later decides to subvert expectations. These works lack the poeticism of a tragedian, as one would expect to find in a "deep work" with so much persecution and death, and only echo hollowness. In some sense, Orb is worse than these other titles because it takes the characters to the formula's logical conclusion and depersonalizes them even further by making the main character, in essence, an idea. In theory, a conventional setup of a core cast that we follow throughout the series or one that has a "disposable" cast can both be emotionally resonant and serve as compelling fiction, yet the latter formula requires a much defter hand than is on display to be convincing and is the obvious reason why it's seldom used. The former is tried and true, but the latter can quickly become sterile, contrived in its determinism, and has a tendency to use the characters as barely concealed mouth pieces for the author's ideas, which might even work if those ideas are grand and the artistic vision lofty enough. Orb is a failure on both counts, acting as another knock against this formula, along with the other deficient works I have cited.

Many assume that the budgetary constraints are not an issue, for this is a title concerned with characters, story, and, perhaps most importantly, ideas and themes. It's somewhat true, for there doesn't appear to be a need for heavy amounts of animation to convey these ideas, yet the problem is deeper than needing better animation or sakuga showboating. Most artistic slideshows have a more creative use of imagery compared to Orb, so it's not a matter of animation alone. The aesthetic is the problem, and it's a severe one. Artwork and composition can easily make up for a limited but wisely used animation budget. Instead, we have lots of static frames and pans over bland artwork, like any other seasonal. They let you savor those super-stinky ultra-cheesy pans over Rafal, him being the talk of the town, shining against a star-studded backdrop, set to self-aggrandizing music, and sporting a flat closed-eye expression that renders the character art even shoddier looking than it already is. This type of vile stylization reigns supreme. Lastly, the cinematography and compositions are subpar. Animation is a visual medium, so you don't get a free pass for neglecting the visual component to the extent that it might as well be a radio drama. Nonetheless, there will always be a market and endless trumpeting for anything with the appearance of being "mature and sophisticated," especially if it quotes a couple famous people (hey, you guys heard of Socrates?) and asks a few questions about existence now and then.

I can hardly believe Madhouse, a company behind many excellent titles and co-founded by legends such as Osamu Dezaki and Yoshiaki Kawajiri, both of whom had a powerful visual style, could put out something so lifeless. Madhouse placed most of their animation assets into physical conflict, such as the sword fights with the duelists. The only images that come close to being effective are the night time sequences; there's minimal light pollution from the cities, so the sky teems with bright stars, indicating the author should have framed this work as a nocturnal mood piece or at least had a stronger contrast for day and night, lending the daytime scenes a harsh, oppressive, and well-calculated brightness. The closest this series came to possessing an effective atmosphere so far was when the duelists fought with the noble in episode 4 and wandered around the city. Once they set foot into the brightly lit bar, the flat lighting and lifelessness returned, the characters hamming it up. The day time scenes are just as bad or worse. Clearly, there was a missed opportunity for visual storytelling here, as the two times of day to some extent represent the status quo and the rebellious heretics.

The author may have been able to make this series function if he used a more conventional storytelling method, but there's an immediate "oopsie" by the end of episode 3. Orb is plagued by being too big for its britches with its tepid grimdark attempts at profundity. Yet it's not that deep. These are basic questions we've grappled with for millennia in art with more rigor and artistry. Just because this presents more philosophical musings than your average seasonal slop doesn't mean it's profound. Is there a god? If not, where do we find meaning? Is truth worth pursuing despite all odds? And there's a whole lot of ignorance and gas lighting that makes that pursuit of truth all the more difficult. This is a linear and simplistic infotainment story line with no replay value, let alone viewing value. While I wish I could say I enjoyed my weekly twenty minutes of hate against D-g and the church, dying for the sake of our lord and savior Heliocentrism every few episodes is not at all compelling. Honestly, reading about the history of astronomy from beginning to end is both more entertaining and enlightening.

Maybe the writing seems serviceable at first, but the execution of numerous scenes is horrendous and what could be compelling themes are rendered as ham-fisted by the ineptitude of the drama, with these "mature" series so often seeming to engage in hokier shenanigans than even many trashy isekais, made all the more obvious by the oh-so-serious, one might even say "edgy," nature. One character quote mines Socrates and numerous historical figures so as to justify a questionable sacrifice, as if the author were Urobutcher at his clumsiest. It's not at all a fantasy, but the way the author strings together his cornball contrivances, playing out like divinely inspired Heliocentric prophecy as the author connects the dots in a deterministic fashion, one might be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

The Heliocentrism cult, their symbol being the wood medallion, come across as creepy to the extreme and behave like mystical, know-it-all shamans, going against the presumed rational schtick they have going on in the series amongst many of the dissidents otherwise. One of them even abruptly rises from the dead as if he were a zombie, sacrificing himself for another character, leering at him like a deranged coomer as he does so, passing on the torch ("One of us! One of us!")! The author reinforces his dichotomy of truth and belief by juxtaposing the "peaceful" deaths of the followers of Heliocentrism against the tortured faces of D-g's followers upon death; this is dishonestly conveyed by a scene where one of the dueling dunces muses about the latter situation after having shish kebabed a noble in a duel and assigns meaning to it, yet who wouldn't die in agony during an adrenaline-soaked battle to the death? It doesn't prove any point at all, leaving one to think the character is a madman, yet, if so, the script corroborates his madness! Meanwhile, the Heliocentrism cult acts as if they've transcended death altogether, the author making them look so relaxed upon passing that one might mistake them for having wet their pants while asleep.

There's no subtlety or respect for the audience. There's even wince-inducing dialogue about the obvious passing of the torch or baton (subtext this blatant should be left as such) to the next person. In episode 5, There's a scene so heavy-handed as to be embarrassing in the way they use symbols and themes: That pivotal scene, another such passing of the Holy Light of Heliocentrism, resembles an absurd Rube Goldberg machine of crumbling architecture and various items used as symbols and reinforcing the themes, which the characters are directly grappling with; is this a comedy? Because the scene sort of reminds me of and is actually way worse than the old cliche of the guy putting a bible, pocket watch, or lighter in his chest pocket and surviving what should have been a lethal pistol shot to the heart. There are many such scenes, and Heliocentricism is a ravenous, Jealous God who needs to be renewed with the blood of its proponents, with Orb oddly resembling the deterministic horror of schlock like the Final Destination franchise over anything serious.

The most hilarious thing about this series is Christianity is known for having concocted a new form of writing, which one can call martyr literature, yet the oppositional IFLS crowd in this show all come across as having the same zeal. I respect the efforts of those who were persecuted by the church and tried to maintain or further knowledge, but this story has an awkward and preachy way of depicting the characters and events. Much knowledge was lost to the hands of Christian scribes, who often declined to copy many inconvenient texts that critiqued their ideology (made pretty obvious by how we often only have counter-criticism of writers like Marcion and Celsus, rather than their original texts, the horrible treatment and contempt for the ancient world, defacement of statues and pagan shrines, etc.), but I wouldn't be complaining if they tossed this turkey into the funeral pyre.

It's difficult to resist trying these films associated with long-running series, as many of them have great aesthetics, present interesting themes to tie the series together, or have exciting, well-animated sequences. I would never watch the TV series, for it looks like unwatchable 1/10 garbage. I skipped the recap film half of the other OVA, Eien no Once More, for my viewing of Long Goodbye, but I watched it afterwards and found the context wasn't especially necessary; the characters and story are unbelievably basic, and there's no need to torture yourself by prepping for this OVA finale by slogging through the dreadful TV series or ... even enduring the thrown-together recap film, though the latter should be more than sufficient, should you wish to be better prepared.

Probably this is only of interest for fans of Creamy Mami, animation enthusiasts, and for anime industry lore, as the screenplay was written by co-creator of the Creamy Mami series, Kazunori Ito, who worked alongside Mamoru Oshii for many of his most famous films and inserted the famed director into Long Goodbye to direct the film, with a variation on his name. The OVA focuses on filmmaking and one of the key characters is a scriptwriter, who could possibly be seen as a stand-in for Ito, and the few scenes featuring Oshii's doppelganger are quirky and possibly referential to his time working as a director at Pierrot studio, most notably for Urusei Yatsura.

The basic concept is fine, but the execution is less than stellar when it comes to writing and characters. The behind-the-scenes filmmaking is great for stringing together well-framed set pieces, wonderful and vibrantly colored animation, and one of the more riveting fantasy fight sequences of the 1980s, featuring excellent background animation and choreography. I don't have any complaints from an aesthetic standpoint. Despite many scenes being solid, the film is hollow in totality and doesn't have much going on. There's not even the heavy dose of nostalgia I would have expected for a closing film, and the themes circle back to the typical coming of age that must have defined the series, with a struggle between the identity of the middle school girl Yuu and her transformed state as the magical girl and pop idol Mami, their disconnect being represented by the film-within-a-film script's two worlds colliding in a battle to decide which world will be erased. It couldn't get anymore obvious, could it?

Yuu/Mami's crisis, where she can't control her transformations that correspond with the contrasting night and day, lack depth, and while I get that she's only 10 years old and probably a late teen with a much younger mind in her Mami form, she's such an uninteresting airhead of a protagonist. Shingo was infatuated with Mami while engaged to Megumi, but there is no sense of a love triangle at all, and it seems there wasn't meant to be. Megumi is the heroine of the film within a film, and Mami is the antagonist, in a nod to the coming of age anti-escapism themes. There is no conflict or interaction between them off screen, which renders the film as seemingly frivolous, no more than a symbol for the clash of fantasy against reality. The warmer scene where Yuu makes an attempt to bond with Megumi would have also been a lot more affecting if there was more tension between Mami and Megumi, as one would expect from the early portion of the script. Doesn't Megumi at least need to pussywhip Shingo and win her man? Not that Mami wants anything to do with Shingo, but he historically was interested in her.

Was this potential plot thread cast aside because of running time and Ito was more interested in focusing on his presumed self-insert character, Kidokoro, who is indistinguishable from being a Japanese Woody Allen, all the way down to trying to woo the ladies with his ghastly nebbish "charm"? The actual love triangle, oddly enough, involves Nippon Woody, Shingo, and Megumi. Though a woman would probably be certified insane if she had the choice and didn't pick Shingo, there's even a hint along the way that Megumi might actually be interested in Nippon Woody, but she's waiting for him to make a move, as so often happens in these films with the dorky character competing with Chad. It's hard to say, but her supposed interest might have even been an exaggeration of Nippon Woody's imagination, and the fantasy of his script subtly begins to overlap with reality. I'd say that fits in with the themes, but that's speculative, and the film doesn't do a great job of connecting the dots there, as far as I remember, should that be the case.

Due to the film tie-in in of this OVA and how much the character of Kidokoro and aspects of the production resemble the appearance and films of Allen, I think it's worth devoting a few sentences to the latter. The perpetually nervous Allen's favorite kind of film to make, at least earlier on, were nerdy romcoms where he played the lead role, with pretty women throwing themselves upon him. Though there was nothing fantastical about these films, they were quite fantasy-like in the way they depicted a creepy dweeb having his desires effortlessly fulfilled. If Allen's films are wish-fulfillment fantasy, the Long Goodbye takes a 180 and Ito pins the tale on the donkey and snaps him out of his pleasant dreams.

With that context out of the way, Mami's identity crisis is paralleled with Nippon Woody's subplot, which equally involves a feud between reality and fantasy, for Woody is in love with Megumi and knows he'll never succeed, but he writes his script as if to determine fate, encapsulated by the great line from Megumi about how films with a heroine usually have a hero to fall in love with, and the reason this film doesn't is obvious when you consider Woody's motives. The scene and the ideas brought forth are overlooked and fascinatingly prescient, given how they provide brilliant insight into not just developing trends within the mahou shojo genre but also tap into the popularity of CGDCT, a prime grazing ground for the herbivore man and his cautious plan. Thankfully, Nippon Woody fails to consummate his romantic aspirations and is cucked hard! Thanks, I needed that. Fuck Woody Allen.

In spite of many compelling ideas and a wonderful aesthetic, the film simply feels lopsided with all the Nippon Woody buildup only being there for a heavy punchline in the end, knocking him flat out with a much needed return to reality. The lack of decent conflict other than the simple one with Yuu/Mami also leaves this one feeling like throwaway fanservice more than a film. Many good scenes don't add up to an impressive whole, unfortunately. It's sad because I can see this being a minor classic with a director's cut and a more fleshed out script that considered some of my complaints.