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The Positive Side: ...The opening theme song was nice, right?

The Negative Side: Skelter Heaven is not a So Bad It's Good show. It's boring, obnoxious, hollow and inane. There's relatively little here that you can have fun mocking, so if you're looking for a show to dunk on with your buddies while having some drinks on the couch, you're better off with Mars of Destruction or Garzey's Wing. There isn't a single element of Skelter Heaven that conveys the slightest amount of effort or talent on the part of creative teams.

Visual Design? We've got girls in generic fanservice ... body-suits piloting horrifically stiff CG mecha with illogical open cockpits that offer the pilot zero protection. One wonders why the air-resistance blasting the girls straight in the face doesn't blind them. The aliens are just floating giant squids colored beige and rendered in the same awful CG as the mecha.

Cinematography? A slew of jarring smash-to-black cuts and abruptly shifting camera angles with overly narrow framing that make nonsense of the action, topped off with ridiculous fanservice shots that make Code Geass seem reserved and tasteful. The editing isn't merely bad, it gave me a headache trying to follow what was even happening in any given scene.

Sound Design? Well, the opening song was fairly catchy and inoffensive, but the voice-acting is filled with shrill screaming and fails to convey what tepid emotion the dialogue has to offer.

Characters? I couldn't tell you a single character's name two minutes after finishing the OVA. Motivations are both shallow and cliche, explained directly to the audience with zero subtlety or grace, and yet never actually supported by the characters' actions. There's a grab at making the heroine more emotionally deep, with some slapped-together drek involving synthetic humans and a romantic subplot, but it's delivered through a series of rushed and jarring flashbacks in the middle of the fight scene. I'm tempted to say that bumping the run-time to 40+ minutes would have given these ideas more time to develop, but given the overall quality and how unbelievably boring the few distinguishable character traits are, I doubt the writers could have made the characters interesting if they'd been given nine hundred episodes to work in, let alone one.

Plot? Well... there isn't one. The girl mecha pilots are ordered to fight a space squid. They do. One side wins and the other side loses. There's a bland twist that suggests the fight was of relatively little importance to begin with, the anime ends, and you wonder what exactly you just spent the last twenty minutes of your limited time on Earth doing.

The only reason Skelter Heaven escapes a 1/10 rating from me is that it is thankfully free of anything disgusting or offensive like lolicon, rape fanservice and molestation jokes. One could argue that it glorifies militarism, but saying that Skelter Heaven has a message or political stance of any kind is likely giving it too much credit.

Conclusion: I might not agree that Skelter Heaven is the worst anime of all time, but it's certainly worked to earn that reputation. Sadly, that's the only thing it seems to have put any work into doing.

The Positive Side: Have you ever wanted to watch a cartoon version of Samuel L. Jackson kill the population equivalent of the state of New Hampshire while wielding a katana?

…What do you mean, ‘no’?

…Not even a little?

Afro Samurai is a post-apocalyptic western scifi samurai tale of vengeance, in which Afro, the titular samurai, seeks to kill the man who killed his father and claim the Number One headband, the symbol of Afro’s father’s former status as the deadliest man alive. Afro can only challenge the new Number One while wearing the Number Two headband. The catch is that the position of ... Number Two is perpetually up for grabs, and countless people attempt to kill Afro and take the headband for themselves. These people tend to fail spectacularly before being sliced open and producing enough blood to fill a kiddie pool, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.

The premise leads the audience to all sorts of interesting questions. Where did these headbands originate from? Do they actually grant any special powers, or are they only significant because of the status they convey? Who made them? Why is claiming them more important than attempting to rebuild society in the wake of nuclear holocaust? How the hell does Afro keep his hair looking so perfect when all the salons in the world have been wiped out of existence?

The answer to all of these questions is, “Look how badass Afro is!”

To be fair, watching Afro being a badass is fairly entertaining on its own. The striking, unique visuals and masterful animation are coupled with a gloriously shameless love of camp. At one point, Afro slices a rocket propelled grenade in half with a katana, and suffers no ill effects when it explodes directly next to him. At another, Afro fight an evil robot clone of himself, who, in the fight’s climax, uses rocket boosters to carry itself and Afro into the atmosphere before they both plummet back to Earth. This is a show that can seamlessly move between beautifully choreographed and animated sword-fights to a cheesy disregard for physics normally reserved for the kind of 80’s science-fiction movies you see at the bottom of a Walmart bargain bin. Afro Samurai has little going for it beyond sheer visual spectacle and style, but these are two areas it undoubtedly excels in.

The Negative Side: Afro Samurai is a series whose presentation is at odds with its own themes. The central message of the story, perhaps the only thing that might elevate it beyond the level of being highly stylish, violent and sexual fluff, is that a drive for vengeance and unchecked ambition are terrible forces that ultimately lead only to tragedy. The problem is, it’s hard to take that message seriously when 95% of the series is screaming, “Look how badass our hero is!” while he’s taking vengeance and murdering countless people on his quest to be the single baddest muthafucka on the planet.

The Kill Bill films (the other campy anachronistic samurai story of vengeance Jackson was in) struggled with the same problem, but the protagonist of Kill Bill was capable of running the full gambit of human emotion. She was capable of sorrow and regret and love, and this helped ground the vengeance story in spite of its gore and camp. Afro displays no such humanity. He is a blood-stained power fantasy with all the emotional depth of a can of Axe body-spray. When, as a child, his quest for vengeance leads to the death of his foster family, he simply writes it off as the cost of avenging his father. Not only is Afro seemingly incapable of recognizing the consequences of his actions or considering redemption, he never does anything that could make us like him on a level other than, “What a badass!”

There’s a particularly gross sequences of events in which an enemy spy falls in love with Afro, then sacrifices herself to save him from an ambush. Why does she fall for a man who rarely says more than three words at a time? Because Afro is a badass, of course. He is the most badass badass of all baddasses, so it goes without saying that in addition to being ridiculously good at killing people, he can also make every woman he meets wanna screw him by doing literally nothing. In fact, he’s too badass to even bother changing facial expressions during their lengthy, gratuitous and utterly unsatisfying sex scene. You’d think the death of this poor woman would have some degree of emotional fallout, but Afro never expresses guilt over being unable to save her, never considers seriously pursuing a relationship with her instead of continuing his quest for vengeance, and never mentions her name again. In fact, none of the women in the series accomplish much other than dying to motivate men or shaking their asses at the camera.

There’s a popular theory going around the internet to account for Afro’s seeming lack of depth that is worth addressing here. The theory posits that Ninja Ninja, Afro’s obnoxious jive-talking companion, is actually a figment of his imagination, or else a personification of his inner thoughts. The numerous times Ninja Ninja clearly interacts with physical objects contradicts this, but ignoring that, the idea that Afro is so emotionally damaged that he has literally cast out his feelings and conscience as a separate entity is a potentially interesting idea… an idea that, like the series’ premise and setting, receives zero exploration. As a series, Afro Samurai lacks the patience to give attention to anything but sex and violence, and once the thrill of the visuals wears off, this leaves it feeling hollow and forgettable.

Final Verdict: Afro Samurai is all flash and no substance. While its visuals are strong, there are other series with visuals that are just as beautiful and don’t throw character development and pathos under the bus. If you’re not a diehard Samuel L. Jackson fan, skip this one and watch Samurai Champloo instead.

NOTE: This review applies to the first 2 seasons of Code Geass. I do not plan to watch and review Season 3.

The Positive Side: Code Geass takes place in an alternate future, wherein Britannia (Great Britain with mechs and Nazis, basically) has conquered Japan. Lelouch, an exiled Britannian Prince, seeks to topple the Britannian tyranny to avenge his mother and create a kinder world for his blind younger sister, Nunelly. He is aided by a mysterious power called Geass, which allows him to give irresistible orders and bend other people to his will.
Code Geass has an intriguing premise and some very strong ... portrayals of war, racism, colonialism and cultural disenfranchisement. One of my favorite details of the setting is that under Britannian rule, Japan and the Japanese people have been stripped of their name, and live under the designation, “Area 11.” It’s a brilliant detail that shows the lengths to which Britannia goes to destroy Japan’s sense of identity.
Through the first season, Code Geass exhibits strong characterization on all sides of its conflict. Lelouch’s friend and archrival, Suzaku, opposes him throughout the first season, and while we are inclined to root for Lelouch, given the horrific atrocities of the Britanian’s, it easy to understand why Suzaku is on the other side, and hard to blame him or dislike him. Another excellent addition to the supporting cast is Kallen Kozuki, a daring young freedom fighter and half-Japanese Britannian student who joins up with Lelouch’s rebellion on behalf of her abused and down-trodden Japanese mother. The brilliance of Kallen is that she is able to maintain a kind of purity of character when Lelouch begins to slip morally ambiguous behavior. While Lelouch embodies the duality of war—noble intentions with seemingly unavoidable, evil methods—Kallen embodies the courageous patriot, and as long she remains in the focus of the narrative, she ensures we have someone to root for.
War is an immense and difficult topic to handle in anime, and it’s rare to find a Shonen series that doesn’t reduce it to a conflict between obvious heroes and uniformly sadistic and irredeemable villains. Code Geass refuses this simplification, and for that at least, it deserves a little respect.

The Negative Side: Like its protagonist, Code Geass starts off full of promise and blazing ambition, but loses its path, and ultimately, seems to forget what it was trying to achieve in the first place. Code Geass should have been one of the greatest anime ever made, but its faults are so numerous and distracting that it’s often irritating to watch, and ultimately, very hard to take seriously.
Let’s begin with the artwork. While the mecha are well-drawn and have intriguing designs, and most of the action is very fluid, the artists flounder any time they’re required to draw a person. Nearly every member of the cast is suffering from Terminal Anorexia, Chihuahua Head Syndrome and Early Onset Yaoi Hands. Even the girls have yaoi hands. There’s a few martial artists and soldiers in the cast, but the quality of the mecha fights makes every fight not involving a mecha look even more ridiculous. Everyone moves like they’re filled with helium instead of blood. Supposedly human characters leap five times their height, defy gravity and inertia and spontaneously spin with nothing to draw traction from but thin air. If this was explicitly a supernatural martial arts anime like Ranma ½ or Fist of the North Star, I’d have no problem with this kind of silliness, but Geass’s efforts to feel grounded and real are shattered in nearly every hand-to-hand fight.
Even more irritating is Geass’s insistence on cramming fan-service into scenes where it has no business being. There’s a moment late n the first season where Kallen and Suzaku become mysteriously stranded on a tropical Island. Kallen, in a complete defiance of the concept of logical priorities, decides this is the perfect time to take a shower. Suzaku stumbles on Kallen while she’s naked and bathing in a waterfall. Kallen immediately recognizes Suzaku as an enemy, draws her knife and charges him.
This should have been one of the tensest and most dramatic scenes in the series. Kallen and Suzaku have both been built as sympathetic and complex characters, and without a moment’s warning, both are thrust into mortal danger. In that moment, I was afraid that one of them was surely going to die, and I was unsure of who I was rooting for. Sadly, the animator’s insistence of baring Kallen’s breasts, coupled with Suzaku’s subsequent take-down (which puts Kallen in a position far too reminiscent of being raped) ruins the tone of the scene. Instead of witnessing two noble characters in a struggle for their beliefs and their survival, we witness a display of the creator’s own bad taste. The fanservice is almost invariably of the creepy variety, either nonconsensual ‘accidents’ or used as a point of shaming the girls. Roughly half the battle-scenes are ruined by pointless close-ups of the girls’ breasts and rear-ends. There are moments when Code Geass feels like it was created as a guide on how not to use fan-service.
Despite the writers’ knack for characterization, Code Geass degrades its strongest women to a disgusting degree. Kallen, a fearless revolutionary who has been fighting against Britannia even longer than Lelouch, is forced to wear playboy bunny suit, to her own shame and humiliation. She is later captured and strapped to a table with what is quite obviously bondage gear, forced to wear a dress that exposes a solid fifty percent of her breasts, and is nearly raped by one of her captors. C.C. spends most of the series as a stoic, mysterious ally with her own agenda and desires, and is one of the only characters in the series who calls out Lelouch on his stupidity and immoral hypocrisy. Following a convenient memory lapse in Season 2, C.C. is reduced to a cringing slave-girl, perpetually terrified of being beaten and eagerly subordinating herself to Lelouch, even when asked to remove her clothes.
Code Geass often uses chess motifs to support its themes of clever planning and manipulation. This would probably be a lot more effective if anyone who worked on the show had ever learned the rules of chess. Every time a characters busts out a chess board, you can count on hilariously stupid and illegal moves. At one point, a character moves his king into check. Amusingly, his opponent is horrified.
Speaking of clever planning… despite the fact that Code Geass puts focus on tactical intelligence, many of Lelouch’s decisions are mind-blowingly stupid. He walks into obvious traps even he knows they are traps, and is unnecessarily hostile and paranoid towards people who ought to be his allies. Britannia is not exempt from this, as we see in Season 2, when they dismiss the idea of multiple countries working together in a military campaign laughable, and claim that the result would be ‘an unruly mob’.
…Hey, Britannians? Remember that whole “World War 2” thing? You know, the one that both Britain and Japan fought in? Turns out countries can actually work together pretty well when they have a common enemy.
Despite the strength of the characters, the dialogue is frequently hammy and ridiculous. Sometimes this is justified by Lelouch’s fondness for theatrics, but sometimes, it’s just plain stupid. There is no context in which the words, “Attention, people of Japan. Could you all just die, please?” will not be ridiculous.
I really wish I could separate seasons 1 and 2, because season 1 is vastly better, but unfortunately, season 1 ends on a total cliff-hanger that demands I take both seasons as halves of the same story.
Code Geass’s death blow comes near the end of Season 2. I will refrain from giving spoilers here, but will say that the strong characterization given to the main characters is wasted, as they seem to forget their own defining motivations. When characters stop behaving in a way that makes sense for who and what they are, it’s simply not possible to believe in them the way we believe in all the characters we love most dearly. Where there were once compelling and complex characters, there are now puppets, spouting nonsensical monologues about vague ideals and coldly marching through whatever actions the writers thrust upon them. No matter how many convoluted schemes or dramatic twists Code Geass hurls at you, the entire effort ends up feeling hollow and pointless.

Final Verdict: Code Geass is riddled with obnoxious faults in taste and style, but beneath these faults, there’s artistic ambition, moral insight and a cast of memorable and exciting characters. It’s truly a pity this show was less than it could have been. If you’re curious as to why this anime is so highly rated, feel free to check it out. Otherwise… I, INKSPIDER VI BRITANNIA, COMMAND YOU… to go watch something better.

The Positive Side: Jormungand follows the travels of Jonah, a child soldier with a hatred of weapons, as he serves as body-guard to an eccentric and playful arms-dealer, Koko Hekmatyar.
One of Jormungand’s greatest strengths is in the way it handles its sprawling cast. Each member of Koko’s motley crew of bodyguards has a different set of skills, a distinct personality and a different philosophical perspective. Almost everyone is given an episode or two in the spotlight, and in just a short period of time with any given character, you can get a very strong sense of who they are. It’s difficult ... for a series with a cast this large to achieve this kind of distinction, but character development is one area where Jormundgand shines. Even the villains, however briefly they appear on screen, bring with them unique quirks and the remnants of their personal histories.

The most memorable character of the lot is easily Koko. She grins and jests her way through the tensest of situations, her skylarking and casual demeanor betraying her brilliant coordination of her team. She’s the perfect blend of silliness, wisdom and charm, like an albino, gun-slinging Willy Wonka.

Given the market saturation of supernatural/scifi Shonen series, Jormungand serves as a refreshing reminder that you don’t need super-powers to make an action-scene sizzle. Fights range from chaotic, urban gun-battles to smooth sniper-executions to a beautiful knife-fight set in a secluded clearing of a snowy forest.

The story is primarily episodic, each new episode setting up a new antagonist for Koko, Jonah and the rest to overcome, and it is not until the end of the series that it becomes clear what all this has actually been building up to. Like Cowboy Bebop before it, Jormungand proves that an episodic structure can work wonderfully as long as each separate story is well-executed.
Thematically, this is a story about the reconciliation between killing and morality. Koko strives to prove to Jonah that simply because she and rest of the group are in the moral grey by the very nature of their business doesn’t mean they can’t have fun and mess around on their days off. Koko repeatedly proves that she truly does care about her team, that she wishes to avoid killing when it is unnecessary, and that she has principles she refuses to violate.
The English dub is very well-acted, thanks to the talents of Funimation, and while the music can be a bit grating and synthetic at points, the opening theme really grew on me after a couple of episodes.

The Negative Side: While a fairly intelligent show in terms of theme and the impact of war, Jormundgand’s greatest failure comes from backing itself into a philosophical corner. It’s difficult to talk about the ending without giving spoilers, but I will do my best to keep this vague for the would-be viewer’s benefit.

In short, when we learn of Koko’s ultimate goal, we find that she is about to do something morally horrifying for the sake of what she believes is the greater good. It’s supposed to be a huge moral quandary, but the flaws in the plan become obvious when given the slightest degree of consideration. In fact, Koko’s own brother points out the faults in what she’s doing not long after she unveils her grand plan. The problem is, by the time her plan is revealed to be grossly philosophically imbalanced, the series is out of time, and has nowhere left to go. While the ending is nowhere near as bad as a few other series I’ve watched (The Big O, Deadman Wonderland), it’s still rather unsatisfying, especially compared to the show’s stellar Season 1 finale.

Final Verdict: Despite its lack-luster ending, Jormungand boasts strong characterization, action and plotting. It’s definitely worth watching, especially if you’re a fan of Seinen and war stories.

The Positive Side: Mars of Destruction is the very definition of “So Bad, It’s Good”. It is not mere inept, it is hilariously inept, surprisingly inept, uniquely inept. Its badness surprises and delights at every turn. Is it objective to rate something highly based on its level of entertainment value when it is so incompetently made? Well… probably not. What I can say is that I laughed harder watching Mars of Destruction than I did watching most shows that were intentional comedies.

The story begins with a space-craft returning to Earth with a biological alien sample from Mars. Upon re-entering ... atmosphere, the ship burns up due to some unknown malfunction, and we get our first glimpse of Mars of Destruction’s glorious animation. The ship inexplicably speeds up, crumbles into fragments that resemble cigar-ash, and then—in complete defiance of the Earth’s gravity—these framents fall towards the bottom of the screen.

I cannot overstate how much I love the fight choreography of Mars of Destruction. In the first fight scene, three high-school girls in knockoff Gundam body-suits are pointing machine-guns at a pair of aliens. The girls stand there, not shooting, for a full twenty seconds, at which point a third alien shows up an blows off one of the girl’s heads with a laser. Interestingly, despite the fact that the girls are standing no more than thirty feet from the aliens, the lasers take five seconds to reach their target, begging the question as to why the girl didn’t move out of the way. Are the girls all sent into battle heavily sedate? That would certainly explain their complete inability to emote.

After being decapitated by laser, the girl in question slowly falls over backwards, without changing her pose even slightly, or letting go of her gun. To top off absurdity of the whole scene, the girls then take their fallen comrade to the hospital where the doctor confirms that, indeed, getting one’s head vaporized is fatal.

The sound-track is hysterically inappropriate. At one point, the “Barber of Seville” inexplicably plays in the middle of a battle-scene. Yes, people are swinging laser-swords at each other to public domain opera music.

The voice-acting is so bad, it may actually out-do Dub Piece for the Worst Anime Voice-Acting of All Time. In the middle of a fight-scene, a woman hands the protagonist a dangerous experimental weapon, and then explains, as calmly as possible, that he must use it…(twenty second pause)…or everyone will die.

There is not a single aspect of Mars of Destruction that is not hilariously and bizarrely stupid.

The Negative Side: You will never be able to say you like this anime without instantly being labeled a troll.

Speaking seriously, if I were to rate this anime on technical competence, I would give it a 2/10. It’s entertainment value is directly reliant how awful it is, and it take a sense of humor to appreciate this work.

Final Verdict: A must-watch. Mars of Destruction is a laugh riot, and is only 20 minutes long in its entirety. Not only that, it sets the standard for low production value. You don’t know what bad animation until you’ve seen Mars of Destruction.

The Positive Side: K-on! Is often cited as the definitive “cute girls doing cute things” show, and on that end, it certainly delivers.
The show follows four high school girls who form an amateur rock band and learn to play. The four main characters all have distinct personalities and quirks, and it can be a lot of fun watching them goof around. Yui is an over-grown child, fun-loving, naïve and easily distracted, but in the rare moments she manages to focus, her energy and passion is inspiring. Mio is the brains of the group, keeping the less dedicated girls on task, but her ... authoritarian attitude is at odds with her self-doubt and constant fits of panic. Ritsu is the cavalier and irreverent tom-boy, perpetually teasing Mio. Mugi, the rich girl, is the most soft-spoken member of the group, but she has an inquisitive nature and a desire for personal accomplishment that separates her from the cliché of the rich, spoiled brat. While the characters are exaggerated, they each have a certain emotional depth, and play off each other quite well.
While there is quite a bit of slapstick, some of the comedy is surprisingly subversive and original. The series opens with our heroine running late for the first day of school. I flat-out rolled my eyes as she dashed down the street, obligatory toast in mouth, facing numerous delays before bursting into school… and immediately realizing that she misread the clock, and wasn’t late at all. Realizing how badly my own cynicism and knowledge of clichés had misled me, I had no choice but to laugh, both at the cleverness of the gag, and at myself.
The central goal of the rock band the girls form gives the show more direction than some Slice of Life series have, though this also can make it a bit frustrating that more time isn’t spent on the advancement of the band. Appropriate to a series about a band, the music is very well done. The opening theme has a peculiar blend of heavy metal and J-POP, with a driving, energetic beat that is sure to get stuck in your head.

The Negative Side: While the comedy is usually pretty solid, the show makes a running gag of Mio having constant emotional break-downs, and this is honestly more uncomfortable to watch than it is funny. There are also a few rather Haruhi Suzumiya-esque molestation jokes, but these are kept comparatively mild and infrequent. While the music is catchy, the lyrics are pretty vapid, and the soundtrack is rather limited. None of these, however, are the biggest problem I have with the series.
The biggest problem I have with this series? No lesbian make-out sessions.
…I’m being serious. Wait, don’t close the review yet, I’m going somewhere with this, I promise!
There’s something supremely unsatisfying about a show where everyone is obviously gay, and yet no-one is allowed to have an explicit gay relationship. There’s little excuse for this kind of timidity when Sailor Moon gave us an out-and-out lesbian relationship all the way back in the freakin’ 90’s.
If the series’ homoerotic overtones were played purely for comedy and fanservice, I think I’d be able to forgive the lack of relationships, but K-on! tries to have it both ways, playing lesbian attractions for drama without actually admitting that said lesbian attractions exist. Episode 11 centers around Mio spending time with Nadoka (a girl in her class) and Ritsu becoming jealous as a result. Ritsu tries to hide her feelings, playing around and teasing Mio as usual, but her jibes are noticeably more mean-spirited and unnatural. The other girls notice that something is wrong, and make anxious, desperate efforts to lighten the mood and continue their practice session. Ultimately, these efforts fail, and Ritsu leaves in frustration and disgust, claiming she can’t play today. After getting to know the characters, this is a genuinely painful scene to watch. It’s obvious that Ritsu has feelings for Mio, and equally obvious that she needs to come out and express those feelings. And at the end of the episode, she just, sort of… doesn’t. Her feelings of jealousy magically go away, and the show continues like nothing ever happened. Mio spends some time with Ritsu caring for her while she’s sick, which is sweet, but neither of them makes any kind of meaningful approach towards the other.
So… why not? Why, after the obvious emotional turmoil and build-up does the series fail to deliver any kind of meaningful emotional climax? Are the writers simply afraid of screwing up the show’s dynamic by introducing a romantic subplot? It seems a bit odd that they would display that level of attachment to the status quo when they introduced a new major character half-way through the series. It almost feels like the show is fetishizing homosexuality, portraying homosexuality as something too taboo and naughty to be portrayed openly.
While K-on! succeeds as a slice-of-life comedy, it squanders its own potential by refusing to admit the relationships it teases. While I enjoyed the characters and came to care about their struggles, I couldn’t help but feel that they emotionally fenced-in by their own writers. While it’s not a bad show, I don’t recommend anyone rush it to the top of their “To-Watch” list, either. If you want a light-hearted comedy about cute, gay schoolgirls, go watch Sakura Trick instead. The music isn’t as great, but it also doesn’t keep its lesbians suffocating in the closet for thirteen episodes.

The Positive Side: It isn’t difficult to see why Hellsing Ultimate is popular. The artwork and action are superb, with loads of stylish characters duking it out with unique magical weapons and powers. As a horror series, Hellsing isn’t shy about pouring on the gore, and the gruesome deaths and gleefully sadistic villains—not to mention the monstrous protagonist, Alucard, himself—are sure to haunt your dreams and make your flesh creep.
You’d be forgiven for brushing the show off as simply a blood-soaked thriller, but Hellsing is quite a bit smarter than it looks. As the show transitions from an action-horror to a war ... story, more vulnerable, mortal characters begin to take the stage, and we get a glimpse into the nature of honor and morality in times of war.
The show tends to shift art-styles during comedic moments, which can be a bit disruptive, but the jokes have a way of catching you off-guard that makes the humor much more effective.
Hellsing is sometimes accused of lacking a sophisticated plot, but personally, I’ve never felt these accusations ring true. There’s a lot of political tension between Hellsing and Escariot, the rival undead-hunting organizations, and there’s a delight in the creativity and thoughtfulness the main villain exhibits in his plot to slay the seemingly unslayable Alucard.
The exciting visuals and inventive fight scenes are supplemented by a solid soundtrack utilizing both classical music and heavy metal. The show also uses authentic Nazi marches during a gruesome attack on London, to chilling effect. In the visual and auditory departments, there is no doubt that Hellsing is a success.

The Negative Side: While Hellsing certainly has its virtues, there is a lot wrong with this anime.
The dialogue is some of the worst I have ever heard or read, with nearly every character spouting melodramatic diatribes and incoherent mixed metaphors at the drop of hat. It’s bad enough that the eccentric Nazi leader talks this way, but why the hell do a bunch of ill-mannered mercenaries sound like they’re cribbing lines from a 15-year-old girl’s poetry book? Not only is everyone’s dialogue painfully corny and pompous, but nobody in this show is capable of shutting the fuck up. Once a character starts talking, you can expect them to keep going for the next ten minutes, repeating themselves in every way imaginable, making vague statements and stalling for time until the director is confident the episode will reach its required fifty minute length. I ended up hating the Major more for his tendency to monologue than for the fact that he was a Nazi.
The protagonist, Alucard, spends half the series stuck on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and the sad part is that this half of the show is vastly better than the half where he’s actually on-screen. When your protagonist is so overpowered that you can’t create dramatic tension without side-lining him, something has gone horribly wrong.
While the artwork on its own is great, the camera has an annoying tendency to flash between perspectives, abruptly focusing on weapons or facial expressions before jumping back to the original shot. It feels like this was supposed to seem cool and dramatic, but it doesn’t accomplish anything other than giving the audience a headache.
Hellsing is a decent show if you like horror or action series, and despite its horrendous dialogue, it has more than a few emotionally powerful moments. It’s definitely worth a look, but don’t expect it to live up to its reputation.

The Positive Side: While I am reluctant to speak in absolutes, I think I can safely say that FLCL is the greatest surreal coming-of-age-story to ever be told in six episodes.
The story follows Naota, a boy of twelve who longs to become a man in the wake of his older brother’s departure. Naota is attacked by Haruko Haruhara, a violently energetic young woman who assaults him with a bass guitar, then french-kisses him, causing a fleshy, erect protuberance to sprout from his head. Sex, drugs and rock and roll, anyone?
The characters around Naota are not only quirky and memorable, they are unspoken personifications ... of the various traps he encounters in his journey towards manhood. Naota’s goofy, sex-crazed father is a perpetual adolescent, too obsessed with perverse sexual activities to be taken seriously as an adult, and Naota recognizes this even as he feels envious of his father’s confidence around women. Naota’s friend and love interest Mamimi is an inadvertent temptress, comfortable with Naota remaining a child (and thus, dependent on her) forever. Haruko herself is likely the biggest threat of all, an embodiment of the worst aspects of adolescence: emotional instability, impatience and unreasonable selfishness, all neatly glossed over with an alluring veneer of power and sex appeal.
The richness of symbolism is supported by consistently great action and animation. The fights scenes blend the bright color and dramatic angles of Mechame with a kind of elastic fluidity and comedic exaggeration of gesture, creating fights that feel unlike anything else ever animated.
The comedy mixes old-school slapstick and cartoon-reactions with forth-wall breaking meta-humor and surrealism. Top it all off with a pulse-thumping original soundtrack by the Pillows, and you’ve got a masterpiece that’s guaranteed to hold your attention from start to finish.

The Negative Side: FLCL is not meant to be watched on a literal level. What do I mean by that, you ask?
I mean that if you take the characters and events simply for what they are, FLCL is most likely going to feel like an extended acid trip: vibrant and exciting, but mostly incoherent. FLCL doesn’t really start making sense unless you pay attention to what the events and characters represent symbolically. Plenty of audience members miss that and write FLCL off as a “random” comedy like Bobobo-bo-bo-bobo (not that I dislike that show). FLCL challenges you to look at the story as more than the literal events it presents. The work’s meaning isn’t plopped down in your lap for your convenience. The meaning is something you have to work towards through your own interpretation.
Even if you don’t think the effort of interpretation is worth it, I strongly recommend that absolutely everyone watch the show at least once. The humor, dub, action and music are all top-notch, and besides that, it’s only six episodes. Don’t tell me you don’t have the time.
Shout-out to KazamiSan, who requested I review this series. Sorry I misspelled your name last time. Derp.

The Positive Side: The first thirty seconds of the opening theme tell you precisely what kind of show this is. This is a show about cute girls being hilariously and adorably gay. Boobs will bounce. Tongues will wrestle. Fingers will intertwine. And if you’re the kind of person who likes cute, fluffy Yuri shows, you won’t be disappointed.
There’s a nice balance of romance and comedy that keeps the show from getting too sappy or too wacky and obnoxious. One of my favorite scenes comes in the first episode, where the main characters, Haruka and Yuu kiss for the first ... time. The lighting gets appropriately pastel and sparkly, and both characters start giving sweet internal monologues. They keep kissing, and the monologues keep rolling, both getting more and more aroused until they hold the kiss so long, that they forget to stop and take a breath, and they both pass out. It’s over-the-top and wacky, but in a very sweet, goofy and endearing way that makes it clear that the two really care about each other, and that they’re also very inexperienced. It’s a gag that not only takes the edge off the cheesy sentimentality of the scene, but also neatly captures the nature of Haruka and Yuu’s relationship. Neither of them actually knows what a romantic relationship is supposed to be like, and they hit plenty of stumbling blocks along the way, but the show ends every episode on a nice make-out session that reaffirms their feelings for each other.
While the characters certainly aren’t the deepest I’ve ever encountered, Haruka and Yuu have a nice dynamic. Yuu’s childish whimsy and frequent pettiness have a way playing off Haruka’s possessiveness and overly sentimental nature, frequently driving Haruka to feel jealous or otherwise distraught. At the same time, Yuu has moments of vulnerability and caring that keep the relationship from becoming too one-sided.
A lot of screen-time is devoted to Haruka, Yuu and their friends screwing around and being cute, but there are much appreciated moments of tension. In addition to the general relationship turmoil between Haruka and Yuu, there is also Yuu’s older sister Mitsuki, who frequently serves as the series’ antagonist, insisting on protecting Yuu from Haruka’s advances. While the Hyper-Protective Family Member trope has been done to death in romance, Sakura Trick plays with the cliché by having Mitsuki develop—and furiously deny—feelings for Haruka. Mitsuki gradually morphs from being an authority figure attempting to stand between Haruka and Yuu to a love rival to her own sister, but she remains a source of tension whether she is lurking around spying on Haruka and Yuu, or preparing her confession.
While there’s plenty of fan-service, it never really gets in the way of emotional development, and feels like the natural result of the characters feelings for each other rather than something forced in. Haruka and Yuu make-out a lot, and Yuu comments on Haruka’s big boobs more than once, but that’s what girlfriends do. It only makes sense.
I particularly loved a bit of fan-service delivered in an after-episode bonus. A secondary character is taking a bath, and the camera is making the expected zoom-ins on her body, when abruptly, she looks over her shoulder into the camera, smirks, and says, “Fan-service Scene”. At first this seems like she’s just randomly breaking the forth wall for giggles, but there’s a deeper meaning to her awareness. This isn’t the typical voyeuristic camera-angles that Harem series so often employ. There’s an aspect of consent here that a lot of fan-service misses; the girl knows full well that the audience is checking her out, and she’s perfectly fine with that! So many Ecchi series rely on accidental groping, walking in on distraught girls naked and ogling camera-work, it’s refreshing to see an affirmation of consent accompanying an erotic moment. I wish more shows had this kind of awareness.

The Negative Side: There’s a part of me that’s tempted to give this series a 10 out of 10 purely by virtue of being the first romantic comedy I’ve reviewed that doesn’t have any rape or vengeance fantasies in it. Speaking seriously though, I’m not about to pretend that Sakura Trick is some kind of mind-shattering literary master-piece.
The relationship between Haruka and Yuu is sweet, but it isn’t incredibly deep or complex, a fact the show acknowledges in the final episode. While Mitsuki does wrestle a bit with her feelings for Haruka, this isn’t the kind of Yuri that’s going to show us a lengthy, emotionally-tortured journey from self-loathing to acceptance and happiness… and that’s perfectly okay. Not every Yuri needs to deal with bigotry and homophobia, and not every show ever produced needs to deliver a thoughtful commentary on some massive, societal issue. Sometimes, you just want to watch a show about cute girls making out, and Sakura Trick is that show.

The Positive Side: If Rosario + Vampire has a redeeming quality, it’s self-awareness. The fight scenes are laughably short and one-sided, but the show actually turns this into a pretty funny running gag by having a character break the forth wall, telling the audience how many seconds the last pitiful excuse for a fight took up. In one fight, the heroes pause to have a lengthy, emotional conversation with each other, and moments later, the screen zooms out to show the villains staring dumbfounded and wondering why the heroes are suddenly ignoring them.
Rosario + Vampire manages to be so skull-poundingly inane, that sometimes, ... the only thing you can do while watching it is laugh. A scene from early in the series has a succubus named Kurumu attempting to seduce the hero, Tsukune. So what brilliant and Machiavellian ploy does Kurumu, a demon who was literally born to seduce, come up with? She claims her breasts are cramping up, and then immediately begins grinding her tits against Tsukune while he just stands there, freaking out. It’s one of the absolute dumbest things I’ve ever seen, even in a Harem series, and when that scene played, I laughed my ass of, because I just couldn’t get past how stupid it was.
Also, while the series is very fan-service heavy, the panty-shot frequency is nowhere near as intense as other harem series like Maken-Ki!, and there are actually hints of characterization and plotting that are not completely overshadowed by fan-service. Of course, watching Rosario + Vampire because it has less fan-service than Maken-Ki! is like pouring a boiling pot of water onto your own crotch because it’s less hot than the surface of the sun.

The Negative Side: A stupid show that admits it’s stupid is still a stupid show. And Rosario + Vampire is indeed a very stupid show.
The show makes a recurring plot-structure of having a monster (usually a girl) try to kill Tsukune or the main girl, Moka, before the heroes defeat the monster and befriend them. The first time they do this, with Kurumu, it kind of makes sense because Kurumu’s nature as a succubus requires her to seduce every man around, leading to her conflict with Moka. The fight was nothing personal, so it’s not completely unreasonable for them to become friends afterwards. The more often they do it, however, the more ridiculous it becomes. A peeping-Tom werewolf attacks Moka (presumably with the intention of either raping or killing her—or, ya know, both), and after she kicks him off a roof, he shows up the next episode and is now friends with her and Tsukune, with absolutely no explanation, or even an acknowledgement of his past misdeeds.
Apparently, the moral of Rosario + Vampire is that if you don’t have any friends, you should try to murder someone. There is an 80% chance that you will become friends with them, and even if you don’t, it’s no biggie, because in the world of Rosario + Vampire, attempted rape and murder have absolutely no consequences.
Still not convinced? In another episode, a Naga teacher physically abuses and sexually molests Tsukune, and is only stopped by Moka. Obviously, she’s going to be fired, thrown in jail and have her teaching license permanently revoked, because that’s what happens to teachers who try to fuck high school students… right? Ha, no. She gets a cameo in a later episode and its revealed that she’s still works there, and she’s still abusing students.
Of course, no idiotic Harem Series would be complete without a Token Loli, also known as, The Character Who Exists to Pander to Pedophiles. Rosario + Vampire gives us Yukari, a witch who looks like she’s 14 going on 8. Within ten seconds of meeting her, Tsukune pictures her naked and clinging to Moka. In the beach episode, Yukari gets a special close-up of her swim-suit-clad ass while on all fours. You know, in case you felt too comfortable about watching the show and needed something to trigger your gag reflex.
If you like incredibly stupid and occasionally pedophilic Ecchi comedies, you’ll probably like Rosario + Vampire. That’s literally the best endorsement I am capable of giving it. If you want a romantic comedy that isn’t disgusting and idiotic, go watch Princess Jellyfish or Ouran High School Host Club.
I’d like to end this review with a shout-out to KazumiSan, who has been very complementary and supportive of my reviews so far. Sorry I just shat all over an anime you enjoyed. Again.