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While the first movie (Earthly Chapter, 1989) at least did well as a sort of "classic modern" Japanese fairy tale, incorporating a whole lot of the traditional Japanese folklore, this one failed to reach the same heights. It's not a good compilation, as it ends on a cliffhanger and is only meant to improve the sales of the eponymous OVA, while that OVA itself was also made to advertise the source book.
There's barely any point in watching this compilation instead of the OVA, as you won't know the full story anyway, and it very closely retells the first 5 episodes of the OVA, barely ... omitting anything (mostly the comedic relief scenes with Kijimuna), plus the OVA has an LD-rip, this is only available in VHS quality.
As for the story itself, it's also quite confusing and shōnen-like. While it doesn't ultimately descend into Naruto-tier anime, you can quite soon notice the familiar notes in this tune, like when the main character is only there to effortlessly kick the asses of the obviously overpowered, literally god creatures, through the power of friendship / firing up.
Interestingly, this part of the book was a bestseller in Japan, standing out even against the other parts. My bet is that it's thanks to the close integration of so many folklore and historical figures, who would be close and familiar to a Japanese viewer, but are completely alien to us, with their weird Buddhist monikers and inscrutable biographies.
In turn, the first movie / book, are a lot more down-to-earth and easy-to-understand, it's mostly ordinary humans against less ordinary humans, hence it fares a lot better as a fairy tale. But in this part, the magic is gone, the whole pantheon enters the scene, and the actually adult themes begin showing up. The show itself also takes a turn to more cruel and gruesome.
I will finish the OVA after this, of course, but I already know I won't like it as much as the first move.

This show is a very well calculated work. Separate stories within episodes last for no more than 15 minutes, which is a perfect timeframe for the purposes of the show - enough to get to know the characters, not enough to overstay its welcome. Overall, it has the same feel to it as "Tales from the Crypt", but without a charismatic host and with a genuine intention to scare you.
I personally found the live-action sequences more touching than animated ones, but a lot of those felt sincere and dramatic too.
Another thing that earned this show my respect is that they knew when to ... stop. It had good ratings, so they probably could do more than 6 episodes, but it's at the 6th one when their crisis of ideas becomes apparent - they reused the same story as in one of the previous episodes, virtually unchanged. Again, fortunately it only happens once.
But that also brings me to the only drawback of the show - its novelty wears out rather fast. After a certain point, you start to realize very soon where the story is going and the intrigue is gone. Still, I was moved by a lot of stories from here even after there was no longer any mystery in the plot.
Unfortunately, because it says "school ghosts" in the title, the stories are limited to school / school students, which shows, like the mountain lodge episode where the characters could be just about anyone, but they introduce themselves as Higashi High School just to put down this checkmark. I also remember another story where the actress looked like she was in her 30s, but still wore a serafuku and pretended to be a high schooler. It's also quite hilarious, thanks to the live action sections going back to back with animation, to observe as the schoolgirls' skirt lengths go from mini in animation to "you can barely see her socks" in live action.

I spent inexcusably long watching this one. I don't know why, it was just utterly frustrating and downturning. At one point I just decided to move it to the side and finish the manga translation by Viz first, so as not to torment myself with wondering. It worked. While I didn't like the ending one bit, I could regain my momentum.
Gotta say, the manga gets pretty wild in the later chapters. Which is not to say it gets good. It's a concentrated mediocrity, masquerading as a stoical and philosophical love story. Sorry but no. Yamamoto Naoki clearly just wanted to draw porn doujins but ... wound up at a "normal" magazine. The plot is superficial and banal, which wouldn't have been so bad by itself if it wasn't also trying to pretend to be something more.
But most importantly, it doesn't feel real. This manga is too sprinkled with jokes - though many of them are not bad, it robs the story of its immersive aspect - you can no longer empathize with characters quite as well. Not only that, there are too many characters to empathize with, none of which deserve it. The point I'm trying to make here is, we need fiction to read about people and events that are not real - that are better than those we meet in real life. Here, everyone (save for Freddie) is spineless, unscrupulous, unsympathetic. The characters are just hanging in the middle - they're too unreal and irrational to be evoking empathy, but not unreal enough to entertain.
In the end, it's just an extremely depressing and unrewarding manga, that's also unreasonably long for what it is trying to convey. A comparison with another odd show Orphan did, which actually has more in common with Asatte Dance than what meets the eye - Okama Hakusho. There, I was actually excited to finish the manga and wasn't disappointed by its later development, despite the story and even the whole premise being way cheesier and sketchier. Okama Hakusho was resolute and to-the-point with resolving the unavoidable love triangle, it never pretended to be a highbrow story about love, it consciously followed its groove as a sketchy anti-pro-gay-manga. In turn, Asatte Dance completely forgets its raison d'être by the time you make it to volume 3.
You could also make an argument that I'm just salty over this manga due to not being laid nearly as often as Suekichi does, which would be completely legit too.
Another odd comparison that came to my mind is Koi Kaze - I haven't read the source manga for that, but from the TV series I've seen I got the impression completely opposite to that from Asatte Dance: Usually, you'd start Koi Kaze (if ever) with aversion from just reading the synopsis. I personally grew extremely fond of it over the course of TV series, genuinely impressed by the touching, benign, and humane way in which they disposed of the initially degenerate concept - it's a deep and moving story about love and real, alive people under the veneer of doujinshi. Then there's Asatte Dance - a complete opposite of that, a doujinshi under the veneer of a romance manga.
It's good the OVA omitted the most irritating characters, but I still don't understand why it was made. Seems like the most ordinary "gold digger" story to me. Perhaps it was still a novelty at the time? At least it's relatively short and dynamic for what it's worth.

Heart Cocktail. A cocktail of bold and unassuming. Unconventional and earthly. Rapid and placid.
As you can see from the score below, this is one of the animes of all time for me. But how come, despite my numerous gripes against the episodic shows and romance genre in general?
Well, the thing about HC is exactly that it doesn't try to be anything special. Now, make no mistake, this show makes a very bold statement by its very existence, yet it remains faithful to itself and to its original premises in a manner, inspiring appreciation, respect, and admiration. It remains mature, devoted, touching, and moving ... all the way through, without losing that mellow old-fashioned mood.
The writing in this is remarkable, certain 4-minute sketches are filled with more creativity and inspiration than an entire season of your average isekai. The attention to detail is reminiscent of that of good literature from the beginning of the 20th century, to the effect of making the series feel very vibrant and alive. More vivid, in fact, than any 4k 60fps Unreal Engine 69-produced anime, as it lets you feel the stench of character's cigars, the chilly ocean breeze with the nearest bagel store 500m away on your skin, the man's spiky bristle, the woman's obnoxious cologne, the heart's tumultuous high school years. One could say it makes up for the rather primitive animation, but that'd be missing the forest for the trees. It's this very primitive animation that gives HC this book-like feeling, this incredible advantage of being able to exercise your faculty for imagination, when combined with great writing. Make no mistake, I love a good-looking anime just as much, but most of the time, the fancy graphics are used as a cheap appeal for the wide audiences, ironically, becoming anything but cheap in the process, resulting in budget cuts for the actually mattering elements of production. Meanwhile, I have an enormous respect for shows that prioritize good scripts over good looks.
BGM is also majestic here. It's hard to believe how well it fits the big picture sometimes.

Among the few downsides I could find, the propensity of stories being told from a man's point of view, due to author being a man himself.
Some of the sketches also feel underdeveloped and cut short, but well... That's kinda the whole point of short novels like that. They're cut out to squeeze the best part from a simple love story of two. If they were longer, they'd inevitably exhaust themselves in no time.

Overall, it's supposed to be an excellent anime (with excellent subs to boot) for someone with an attention span as short as mine, but ironically, such people would hardly ever stumble on it, with all those strange premises, age, bland visuals and unfamiliar concept.
9 cyclamen pots on a woman's windowsill / 10

I came here expecting nothing, but I found the second best long-running OVA in existence, only ever surpassed by the LOGH.
I would have liked to say something about the plot, but... it's effectively a documentary, so you cannot exactly judge it with your usual fictional story scale. It's just a story from the real life, which is exactly what makes it so beautiful. No actual plot to speak of, but just a story of a Buddhism branch. Realistic, not blown out of proportion, not feigned, not infatuated, simple, homely, earthbound story. And a great story at that, with a heartwarming finale as the icing ... on this cake.
Before, I was as far from Buddhism as you can possibly be. This OVA had me doing an independent research on the matter which I don't think ever happened before. I can understand why it's unsubbed. I actually prefer it unsubbed, but what really brings shame on it is the existing raw video - 240p VHS(?)rip with episodes sometimes being cut midway and one of them missing altogether, if I'm not mistaken. Considering the price tag on the DVD set, it is kinda understandable, but still a shame. Should a proper video pop up, I wouldn't hesitate to translate it myself.
Another pleasant surprise this OVA had in store for me is the visuals - despite the latter episodes coming out as late as 2004, eg deep into digital era, they look absolutely the same. If there was any stupid CGI in those, it has been woven in perfectly (then again, it's not so easy to tell when you're watching it in 240p), but I wouldn't be surprised to know they filmed this ova entirely with hand-drawn cells, because it goddamn deserves this kind of devotion and effort.
Another interesting trivia - this ova was coming out since 1995, which is the tragic year of a sarin gas terrorist attack by another Japanese branch of Buddhism. I wonder if that event affected the sales in any way, or is it perhaps the reason behind this OVA being so obscure to this day.

A rather commonplace 90s delinquents/bosozoku anime. Nothing more, nothing less. Pretty lackluster and vapid ova, both compared to OG Shounan Bakusozoku and as a standalone project. While ep1 was still somewhat faithful to the spirit and tried to maintain a straight face, ep2 went places and, well, lived up to the title. The whole OVA is basically one old school biker (that may have or may have not appeared in OG OVA *smirk, smirk*) saving the bacon for the younger seedlings. But well, unlike the OG OVA, this has nothing original to offer and is pretty shallow in general. One gang beat up the other, ... the other comes back in larger numbers and with said old school bosozoku. Sometimes because of a girl, sometimes out of whim, just cause we're 90s delinquent ova. Rince, sleep, repeat. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Only slightly better than the rest of the series. I mean, the entire chapter is built upon the insane series of very profound coincidences and contrivances, yet it is trying to throw the dust in your eyes with artificial pathos and forced tragedy. Unfortunately, this story cannot work in such a cramped format.
Compare it to another good anime about separated twins finding each other - Futari no Lotte. "Lotte" used one and only coincidence to get the story going, so it didn't feel contrived at all. Accidents are the myth, yknow.
I don't feel that this movie made me in the slightest a better ... person than before. What are the morals, really? Don't make kids? Don't be yakuza? Don't do other stuff normal people won't do? Well thanks a great deal for your care there buddy, but you'll need something more substantial to get my attention.

Finally finished Futari no Lotte, something that has been burdening me ever since Ziu's cue to it misled me to thinking he refers to Lucy-May, but I decided to check out this thing as well just in case. While the premises are there, this series is not officially recognized as a part of WMT. But it deserves the title by merit. This and one other thing renders it akin to Versailles no Bara: Futari no Lotte only gets fantastic from the second half, where it receives its first multi-episode arc. Yeah, the show's pacing is limited, yet it may become lovely if you don't rush ... it.

The place and setting are rather unusual, but methinks the show only owns it to the original book.
The underlying idea tho — twins getting separated after birth — even though I can't recall any other anime with a similar story, the very concept feels rather shallow, you need some heavy Dezaki duty to attach any significance to such a trifling premise. As the series progresses, the twins do exactly what you would expect them to do, seldom catching you by surprise. Although eventually, the show acquires a certain own comedic/dramatic charm and inspiring value, it sometimes wanders dangerously close to drooping into a lackluster, like some other shows do, content with occupying their specific niche without ever aspiring for unwarranted risks. I wish I could say it had a potential for being more imaginative and original, but I myself can't see a way how it could have been improved. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
No, actually, the ED song can be considered a fly in the ointment. At best, it's just tone-inappropriate and corny. At worst, it disrupts completely the mood of an episode that had just ended.
Or, again, the pacing could be much better. Had the full series been packed into something like the usual 13 ep format, it'd probably have been a solid 10/10.
In the first half, there are a handful of episodes, which are basically "my twin sis was good at doing this particular thing that I can't do for toffee" and vice versa. Albeit further down the series, particularly in a Munich piano concert arc, it gets actually gorgeous, I had to wait a hefty half of the series to finally find myself at the edge of the seat. Ep17 in particular had me. It was some fine quality comedy, the one that'd make Leslie Nielsen quit snuffing glue in heavens.
The actual story ends in ep. 28, so 29 is like one big after-the-credits-scene, and it's a really confusing one at that. This episode serves no purpose whatsoever, feels like a wagon's fifth wheel, and only exist for the sake of one scene and one generic moral. I really don't see the point of making it. This episode alone was almost enough to knock my score down to 8/10.

This show has Kodama Kenji's usual hand and vibe to it — while his shows staged in Japan are majorly a lowkey disappointment, his shows staged in Europe blow me away.
This series had made me a better person on so many levels. Although for me, it originated from a mistake of misunderstanding, that's the kind of mistake I would gladly make again. I can't believe how intimate and kindred I grew with characters in those 30 episodes.

The art style and designs are obvious hommage to night on the galactic railroad, or, rather "Because it worked once for Miyazawa, let's not reinvent the wheel." The problem is, as always, they just copied the approach without ever getting into why it worked.
I, personally, don't mind any design as long as it doesn't get in a good story's way, but in this particular case it's rather irritating and distracting. It's like they're saying in your face, "You can't enjoy a story intended for children as an adult, because we enforce childish designs over it for no good reason." The same can be said ... about those greeko-something runes used in Budori's world. There is no point in adopting those, it's just distracting. Though these runes might also turn out to be some hommage or justified by some hidden motives, I'm writing this from a neutral clueless viewer's pov.
Corners are smoothened here, and any even slightly traumatizing experience is reduced to zilch. It's apparent from minute 15-on, there would be no upfront plot turns to the worse, no violence, no openly admitted tragedy — everything that makes drama a drama is censored.
The music is disingenuous and generic, too. No more mind-blowing scores of the 1994 movie, only amogus OST here. The occasional 3D CGI is also ugly as always.
Generally, this movie does everything Osamu Tezuka's studio always does. Everything I detest about Tezuka's studio. After the thief scene, the movie went completely bonkers, because, "We already have anthropomorphic cats as characters, might as well get away with some more made up psychedelic bullshit."
The problem with the surrealistic nature of Miyazawa's stories is, when you read the psychedelic bullshit in the book, the details are omitted. It's left for your imagination to conjecture how it would look, why it would have happened, what are the motives and consequences. Thus, the events look more consecutive and reasonable, gaining a cement footing and a flexible filling. When a movie shows that, the events, peoples, things, actions all have a predefined shape, because that's what movies do — visualize. But now that you can see those events, not just read them, with so little left for your imagination to make this work, they look like straight up psychedelic bullshit and a movie creators' fault for being so lame. Well, you won't be completely wrong thinking this way. But that's kinda what the old movie suffered from a little, too.
You can, in fact, make psychedelic bullshit look cool, like in mind games, or make it make sense, like gegege no kitaro, or at least pretend it makes sense, like evangelion (albeit this option is hardly anything good either), but here it's just cringe. After the arrival to Ihatovo, this movie is just an extremely awkward and uncanny chimera of every techno-magical story you've ever seen, not excelling in anything and without any idea what it intends to be, shallow and insubstantial.
The 90s ver, though, made every effort to not resort to magic or even fiction. It knew exactly what it wants to be, perhaps even much more so than I can comprehend, was gleefully inspiring when intended, as well as utterly gloom and despairing at other times. While this is just soulless.
Even now, having finished this movie, I can't say for toffee what was it about: Well... there was a catboy... He attended the school and uhh... liked poetry, I guess? Then they had zeppelins and monorail, I guess? So he kinda wanted to fight global freezing so he, uhh... Lit a volcano...? — This story has no purpose whatsoever, it feels like just some disparate short sketches compiled into one big animated blob.
In all fairness, however, the old movie has also made a mistake of omitting the second silkworm factory chapter altogether. It was pretty fascinating in the book, and both adaptations messed it up.

Came here from
[1988] Maria Kawamura - The Five Star Stories (CD Mini Single) - MartyMcflies v2 • 1.6K views • 87 likes
Found none of that soundtrack in the movie.

Stunning imagery, yet utterly lazy composition. Kinda sad such animation effort has been wasted on this generic kind of story about ~true love overcoming your superiors' will and even the mind control~ which, if you think about it, also would make no sense, had characters been driven by at least a smidgen of rational thinking.
This is even more stupid a loss if this was initially intended to just promote manga/game/whatever is was based ... on; i.e. if they knew from the start it's bound to become an unfinished stub.

A bit of every 80s cliche in here. It's as though they have been randomly picking the pieces of papers with overused cool tropes of the era from a hat, then glued it all together into one big hotchpotch in a fancy big-shouldered cauldron.
Because of the douchey introduction, very painful to watch if you pay attention to the story. For starters, the universe is introduced through several minutes long spoken summary. Not only that, the said summary is overly convoluted, cumbersome and confusing. I think I had to rewind every line 3 times or so to make sure I'm up to the lore. The Byzantine-Engrish names, titles, concepts, etc. All that is ultimately redundant for the purposes of that simple a story and only serves to somehow tie together all those cool things the animators wanted to show off, without caring much for a consistent storyline.

The entire fatima idea though... I have no words for how blissfully stupid it is. It has no rational seed in it whatsoever and, again, only serves to put together the motley crew of characters who would be seen acting utterly weird otherwise.