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This is a fantastic anime/vocaloid music video that tells a complete story about childhood friends, sudden trauma, the pain that follows from misplaced blame and the overwhelming desire to change your past mistakes. The music video has a run time of 4 1/2 minutes, but not a single second of that time is wasted, nor is any additional time needed - it is precisely as long as it needs to be.

In my opinion, this is both one of the greatest pieces of anime style art ever made, as well as one of the greatest music videos ever made. A must watch (over and ... over again) for everyone.

I cannot stress enough how bad this anime is - it took me months to get through it, watching just a few minutes at a time (all I could ever stomach) then stopping to do something, anything, else. I told myself (and my mild OCD) again and again that I would eventually finish it this way, and that I would never have to watch it a second time.

Let's start with the biggest problem this anime has: the characters. Namely that it doesn't have any characters. Instead it has numerous cardboard cutouts walking around that occasionally behave as though they were mindless, arrogant, ... manipulative and/or abusive human beings. If someone had claimed these 'characters' were taken from the work of a first time fan-fiction author, I wouldn't disbelieve them for a second.

The second biggest problem this anime has is the plot. Again, it doesn't have one. A plot is a *meaningful* series of events in which the characters act (or react) in such a way to build toward the climax of the story. In this story, that lacks any real characters, there was no possible way the handful of (almost random) events could ever build toward a climax that's supposed to be about the 'characters'. There are numerous attempts by the anime to sell the viewer that love triangles abound in the boarding school that functions as its setting; but all of the attempts are doomed from the start as (once again) there are no actual characters to take part in a love triangle. There are some story elements about being "The Etoile" and the climax of the story focuses on who is going to be elected the next Etoile; but at no point in the anime is a reason given as to why anyone (let alone these particular cardboard puppets) would want the title. The few described aspects of this position seem to include watering some plants in a greenhouse and a lot of unexplained paperwork.

The third (and least bothersome) problem is with the animation and art style. The art style was fairly typical for a 90s anime; which is too bad, as this anime came out in 2008 (a contemporary of shows like Haruhi and Index). The animation was more disappointing - many (perhaps even most) of the shots involved little to no movement of the character models, outside of the lip flaps that are necessary to convey who is speaking. When the story required more than just standing around, repeated walk cycles (or similar types of movement) were very much the norm.

I've glanced over the dozens of positive reviews this anime has generated - they are either written by aliens (unfamiliar with what a human being is and how one speaks/acts) or people who mistakenly watched some other anime then left a review here. There is no way that a thinking/feeling person could watch this show and evaluate it as anything but the lowest of trash.

A great masterpiece of a manga will have intelligent main characters that differ in their philosophies so that the actions they choose lead them unto an inevitable conflict, the resolution of which illuminates the main theme of the entire work.

But sometimes you just want to read about a fifteen year old fixing all the problems of the world using her OP bear suit.

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear isn't a manga that will go down in art/literature history as one of the greatest ever made, but it is a light fun read about fifteen year old Yuma who wants nothing more than to play VR games by ... herself. She gets isekaied in a fairly typical way and is given a lot of "in-game" money and an OP set of clothing/armor that resembles a cutesy bear fur suit. The main problem she ends up having is that few people take her seriously (due to the bear suit) until she lays the smack down on them or whatever monster is causing problems. This happens multiple times.

Overall this story isn't anything amazing or original, but it is a fun, easy and pleasant read. I'd recommend it for anyone who wants to just relax and feel good for a few hours. On the other hand, if you want something deep, thoughtful and/or life changing - you might want to keep looking.

I should preface this review with the comment that I am generally not a fan of films produced by Studio Ghibli. I find the majority of them to quite lacking when it comes to quality themes, stories and characters. That being said, I somewhat enjoyed this particular movie of theirs.

The movie is about a school girl (Haru) who doesn't quite have her act together and feels a bit unsure of herself. She rescues a cat from being run over and that starts her on a short fantasy based adventure during which she learns to have confidence. Not the most original theme, ... but a good solid one; and the individual story elements (involving the cats and their kingdom) are reasonably creative.

Now, it is true that the story and characters here are still a bit on the underdeveloped side of things, and I would have to classify it as a movie that would primarily appeal to children under the age of twelve; however, both story and characters have a certain simple charm to them that strongly reminds me of movies such as The Princess Bride. This feeling is reinforced by the fact that the part of Baron Humbert von Gikkingen (the gentlemanly, proper and polite hero of the story) is voiced by Cary Elwes in the English dub.

I note that many fans of Studio Ghibli's more famous works (Nausicaa, Mononoke, Spirited Away, etc...) seem to dislike this movie, or at least consider it a second tier entry in the Ghibli catalogue. I suspect this is due to the visuals.

While never bad, the visuals in this movie are far less spectacular than in most Ghibli films. This didn't bother me as I always consider the visuals to be of secondary importance when compared to whether or not I liked the characters and the story they're in, but it is worth noting that if spectacular visuals are the main reason you are an anime fan, then you won't find much of interest here.

In this particular movie, I do like the characters, and the story (while a bit simple) isn't bad either. My personal rating for this movie: a solid, 6/10.

I'm generally not as big a fan of short specials as I am of whichever main series they spawned from. Additionally, I didn't care for season two of Chuunibyou as much as I did the first season.

In spite of that, I did enjoy these specials.

They aren't amazing - they're just 3-minute long, comedic, slice-of-life conversations with the usual group of characters; but they are a little bit of extra fun from this series.

The art/animation is fine. This batch of specials doesn't have any of the fantasy battle sequences the show is known for, but the real life shots have the same level of ... animation the main show did.

A solid 5/10.

This is a short story about one of Rikka and Dekomori's fantasies. For some reason they split it up into seven 3-minute long segments - each one with the same 23-second long intro and 30-second long outro.

I think the story itself was fine, but nothing special. I would've given it a 5/10 if it had all been one 15-minute long video, but I took a point off for the unnecessary padding the extra intros and outros added. They really were quite annoying.

The art and animation in the fantasy was the best part; it wasn't movie quality, but it was still nice to ... look at.

I have very strong mixed feelings about Trigun.

On the one hand - the first several episodes are quite fun. Vash's attempts to stay true to his pacifist principles and goofy attitude (while defending everyone from everyone else in this sci-fi/cowboy/desert world) makes for some amusing interactions - at least at first.

After awhile, the show tries to become more serious and has the characters try to justify their various philosophical views. This is where the show doesn't just crash and burn, but also creates an acrid smoke that makes you want to vomit.

You see, the writers of this anime are so incredibly bad at ... rational thought, that their idea of intelligent philosophical dialogue is to have a character cry out, "Why?!! I don't understand you." This happens several times in the series (by various characters) and, sadly, yes - it IS the best philosophical dialogue you'll find in the entire show. If an eight year old were to watch this, I don't doubt they'd be able to poke holes in the philosophical "arguments" made by protagonists and antagonists alike.

On top of that, in order to make the main characters seem less like the morons that they're written as - everyone else they encounter has to be written even dumber. Many times, people blame Vash for things that he was *obviously* trying to prevent; and most of the people immediately jump to ridiculous conclusions about things being Vash's fault. Toward the last third of the show, even Vash gets in on the act - blaming himself for things that were clearly not his fault. Or if they were his fault, it was because he was stupidly holding to his pacifistic ideals well beyond the point where they made any sense (if a bad guy is telling you he wants you to shoot him or he'll brutally kill your helpless friends a few seconds from now, and clearly is about to do so - then f***ing shoot him!).

Unfortunately, the horrible attempts at philosophical justification and moronic episodic characters are present throughout the majority of the show. That's too bad, as the setting and (at first) the main characters seemed as though they could've made a fun anime.

The art, animation and sound seemed fine to me (it's not my area of expertise), at least by the standards of the late nineties - I didn't ever find them annoying.

Overall, I have to give this anime a 3/10 because of the horribly flawed philosophy present through most of the show. I wish I could've liked it more.