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Whilst these simple shorts would likely have been an interesting watch for the time, in the 21st century, they are four of the most boring things you could choose to watch. It's essentially some shapes moving about. A proof-of-concept that would have been mind-numbing enough to watch in 1940, let alone the 2020s, it'll at least help the next anime you watch seem that little bit more impressive. Attack on Titan...Death Note...Legend of the Galactic Heroes...surely you've got better anime to spend your time on than some black and white shapes moving across grainy film?

At the very least, by focusing on shapes, this anime avoided ... the racial stereotypes that permeated early anime.

Since it's a music video...

Music: the song is amazing. The singing is celestial, and the beat complements the animation, being fairly slow-moving and simple towards the start, hasty when the animation starts to speed up, and droning towards the end.

Video: although the art style is fairly simple, the art is still good, and the animation is extremely fluid The way outlines and shadows constantly change colours is mesmerising. That being said, I didn't like how gross and, more importantly, nonsensical it got towards the end. It really just explodes into chaos, even though the first half definitely could have lead to an ending more grounded ... in reality.

Overall, it's worth watching for the song, just turn your brain off towards the end of the video.

The is easily one of the best anime ever made.

The story is a masterpiece. The battles, the royal politics, and the insane ending (notwithstanding the unfortunate cliffhanger) all build the relationships between the characters (namely Guts, Casca, and Griffith) in a dynamic and believable way. Even though this anime covers but a fraction of the Berserk storyline, there is tons of character development, and the anime always keeps you on the edge of your seat (especially when it delves into the realm of the supernatural).

On the one hand, the animation is fairly poor. Even considering how old it is, there were still obviously many corners ... cut. The action is sometimes far too close up, obviously done so that the bare minimum had to be animated. They probably spent more time animating the burning flower in the opening than they did the rest of the series. On the other hand, the art is beautifully done, and lives up to the precedent set by the manga.

The music is easily the best I have ever heard in an anime. Susumu Hirasawa's work is impeccable, and Forces is probably one of the best songs in existence. The only issue is that there aren't that many tracks for a 25-episode anime. Oh, and the opening song is, to put it lightly, out of place.

The drawings themselves aren't too bad. That's pretty much the only positive thing that can be said for this anime, which isn't an anime, it's just a music video.

There's no message conveyed here. It's just a few sequences which don't really aim for anything other than grossing out the viewer. And they definitely succeed at that, with weirdly-sexual-at-times body horror. But this isn't a good thing - it's just grossing people out for the sake of grossing people out.

As for the song, well, some of the guitar riffs are pretty cool, but more often than not they are drowned out by the senseless screaming which ... probably would have ruined the visuals had the visuals not already been pretty bad.

It's basically a person sipping from a cup, which later turns into a series of surreal drawings. Frankly, the "sipping from a cup" part goes on way too long.

That being said, the artist is clearly talented. The artwork is impressive enough to warrant a watch, especially given it's only a 5-minute short, but don't expect to be blown away.

There's also music, but it alternates between being bland and being annoying. If there was some underlying message, it was conveyed too pretentiously for me to notice, but I'm pretty sure it was just a way for the artist to flex their talent.

It's essentially a 17-minute comedy with Black Butler characters. It's definitely full-on, so if you prefer more subtle humour, you'll probably leave with a concussion. Personally I found it all right. Some of the jokes translate...weirdly, to say the least, but if you're a Black Butler fan, it's probably worth watching. And you obviously are a Black Butler fan because this picture drama is extremely difficult to come across, even if you're a diehard fan of the series.

As for everything else: the animation is non-existent since it's a picture drama, the art is fine, and there really isn't much sound apart from the voice acting ... which is decent.

To be frank, Key the Metal Idol isn't a great anime, nor does it get anywhere close. Conceptually speaking, it definitely had potential, but this would go largely unrealised. Given the fact that Key's final two episodes are each an hour and a half long, it's possible that scheduling and/or finances are the reason/s for this squandered potential.

Key's story is a fairly obvious criticism of the idol industry in Japan. As a Western viewer, it's hard to deconstruct this aspect of the story in any meaningful way since idols (in this context) are a cultural phenomenon exclusive to Japan. That being said, it is interesting ... in the way it depicts idols as robots/puppets, and how a human's life force is drained controlling these idols. Having the titular protagonist Key struggle with the ambiguity of her being either a human or a robot also gives at least some reason to watch through to the end. Her naïvety also leads her into some...interesting situations, to say the least. The tense moments towards the end, as well as the painfully long build-up, make the ending satisfying enough in the moment, but certainly not worth the slog that precedes it - especially episode 14, which just dumps a bunch of information on the viewer.

The characters are bland. They mainly act as a medium for the story - each serves their purpose, but you probably won't end up caring for any of them, even if the Japanese voice acting is decent. I doubt many people would get excited seeing any of these characters in another story, or as merchandise.

Whilst the art is OK, the animation is terrible. In almost every situation the bare minimum is done to make it watchable. At one point, they don't even bother to properly animate a group of people sitting down, they sort of just awkwardly fade downwards. A lot of people put this down to its age, but there were plenty of anime at the time that looked leagues better. Key is far below average. As expected, the exception to this is the opening, which looks cool, if a bit awkward at times. The ED is just credits on a black background. Unfortunately, these issues with the visuals are compounded by the poor DVD quality of the anime. Anime DVDs looked bad in the 90s. This isn't a problem for the more popular ones (see: Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop), since they got Blu-Ray releases. It's definitely a problem for Key, which didn't receive nearly enough attention to warrant a Blu-Ray version. The footage is jittery, a bit unclear, and the subtitles are a bright yellow, which would have helped legibility when watched on the CRT TVs it was designed for, but is a complete eyesore nowadays. (Oh, and I counted 11 typos/mistakes in the subs- but I'd be interested to see if anyone could find more.) Come to think of it, it's probably not a good sign when the part of an anime you feel the most strongly about is the visuals.

Sound-wise, it isn't anything to write home about. The opening song is good, but nothing else - not sound effect nor song - sticks out as good. Or bad, for that matter, so it at least doesn't actively harm the experience. That being said, I like how they used the full version of the opening song to start the final episode off, combined with footage from previous episodes - an early AMV of sorts.

Overall, Key the Metal Idol aimed fairly high, but ended up an unimpressive bore - one fated for obscurity.

Most people probably won't have a need for this since the anime is a mere 12 episodes, but it's nonetheless a good summary of the first 6 episodes. As someone who didn't take a break but watched the summary anyway (for some reason), I can say it definitely gives the right amount of detail to get you up to date if you take a break around halfway through the anime.

That being said, it doesn't have a dub version (on YouTube/AnimeLab, at least), so it can be a bit jarring for dub watchers. Also, unless you're a fast reader, you'll have to pause at times, since ... the chunks of text summarising the story appear and disappear a bit too quickly. It can also be a bit confusing whether the recap expects you to pay attention to the character dialogue, since much of it happens whilst the summary text is still on-screen (it might be possible for Japanese viewers to read the summary and listen to the dialogue simultaneously, but English viewers get left behind).