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Tamayura is a short OVA series by Studio Hal Film Maker. The studio adapted the manga into four 18-minute long episodes in 2010. HFM does not receive a lot of attention lately, but Tamayura is mainly a Slice of Life and since this studio blessed the SoL fans of this world with the famous Aria series, I thought I look into Tamayura as well and see what´s going on.

The Anime is about a clumsy and shy girl named Fuu Sawatori who recently moved to her late father´s hometown where she makes new friends and memories together with her new friends and her little brother. As ... she is into photography like her dad who passed away five years ago, she captures the memories she makes with her camera and tries to get closer to her father through this hobby.

Now this anime does not keep you in the dark of what it´s all about for very long. Right from the start, director Satou Junichi makes clear he wanted to produce a little feel good anime. Indeed, it is a perfect show to watch after a stressy day. It´s calm, slightly melancholic and cute…a little too cute to be honest. While overreacting to whatever is going on is very common in anime, Tamayura goes a bit over the top in this regard, turning the girls into annoying human beings at times (Beware of the Cake eating scenes!) Anyway, I did not mind once the story developed. This takes a while I have to say as nothing is going on at all in the first episode. Things get more enjoyable as the series progresses though.

As for the characters, I wished the other girls would get more important roles, but they are treated as supporting cast only and their only job is to help out and accompany Fuu. This is a shame as at first sight they seem to be at least as interesting as our main girl.

Better parts of this anime are definitely the beautiful sceneries. While the animation itself is average, a lot of love for details can be found in the nature and the places the group goes. Those are always accompanied by the most laid back and quiet music playing in the background, creating a very relaxing atmosphere all the way through.

But the best part of Tamayura is that there are many sequels with full length episodes! The whole series consists of much more material then just those four OVAs. They basically just serve as a teaser while still managing to conclude the story of these OVAs at the same time, giving you a chance to spend an hour to see if Tamayura is for you or not.

While it is not the greatest Slice of Life ever, it has its highlights and it is definitely not bad. Just go watch it and then decide if you want or need more!

Allright, it´s time to check P.A. Works´contribution to the Winter 2016 season, HaruChika. It´s a School/Mystery anime with a musical theme, so this sounded promising to me. Unfortunetly, it could not live up to my expectations...

As the title implies, our main heroes are named Haruta and Chika, who are both members of their schools brass band club which at the beginning of the show only has five members. The duo tries their best to find new talented musicians to join the band and get involved in random mysteries along the way to achieving this goal.

Unfortunetly, this anime gets off to a bad and slow ... start. The mysteries are not very interesting and Haruta is nothing but an anooying smartass solving everything by himself while Chika just tags along. This changes for the better from episode 6 onwards when they start to work more as a team finally. However, only a few mystery cases were really interesting and executed good. So storywise, this anime is not the highlight of the season, that´s for sure!

Another weakness of HaruChika are the supporting characters. Not a single character apart from the name-giving duo leaves a lasting impression or adds something great to the anime.

A saving grace besides the general improvement in the second half is the Artwork which is beautiful as always when P.A. goes to work. You might have to get used to Chikas´ weird eyes though o.O
It´s a shame music plays such a minor part in this show as the Opening song is in my opinion the best OP of the season and the performance the club gives at the end is amazing.

All in all, this is not the greatest anime ever, but i has some good points to avoid it being a complete waste of time. It is still a little disappointing, especially if you go into this with high hopes of a Hyouka/Hibike! mashup kind of thing which could´ve easily happened given the genre tags.

I ended up giving it a very gracious 6 as i am a huge P.A. fan and couldn´t bring myself to rate it lower. I have to admit a 5 would also be a justified rating for HaruChika!

Girls und Panzer (lit. „Girls and Tanks“) is the most successful anime so far of the comparatively unknown studio Actas. It was released in 2012 and pretty much offers exactly what the name indicates.

It´s about a fictional sport called tankery and centers around Miho Nishizumi, who tries to lead her academy to victory in a big annual tournament and not much else. If you expect mainly a Slice of Life with cute girls doing cute stuff, than you will be surprised with what this anime actually does. While cute girls are indeed all you will see for the whole show, the producers focused ... very heavily on the fictional sport of tankery. Almost the entire series consists of the matches as well as the preparations for the matches.

This makes Girls und Panzer a comedic action show, and it is actually one worth watching too. The story moves along at a nice pace and despite the heavy focus on the sport itself, you also will see some nice character development too. The supporting characters are highly entertaining and funny, especially those from abroad.

If the various stereotypes surrounding the other academies are funny or just annoying is probably completely up to the viewer. Personally I had a good laugh about all these clichés thrown at me (like the English team drinking tea all the time and so on), but it might be a turnoff for others.

The biggest flaw of this series, apart from the easily predictable outcome of the matches, is clearly the animation. Actas tried their best but they do not have the budget bigger studios have and it shows. While they put a lot of love for details in the tanks themselves (which are all after real tanks used in world war II), the same cannot be said for the backgrounds, and the faster scenes stutter a little bit too.

However, I honestly don´t think this should keep anyone from watching this anime. It´s highly entertaining, it´s only 12 episodes and hey…most importantly it´s girls driving tanks and blowing stuff up! Which guy wouldn´t wanna see this?

If you like the TV series, Girls und Panzer also offers you quite a bit of bonus material and extras. There is an extended episode on the match against Anzio (which is the only one not fully shown in the TV series) and also six OVAs for those who would like to learn more about the tanks featured throughout the series. Also watch out for a two hour long movie coming out in November this year!

I give Girls and Panzer a solid 7 and also recommend to watch this subbed rather then dubbed.

--This is a review of the ENTIRE THREE SEASONS of Jigoku Shoujo--

After discussing the apparent absence of „real“ horror in anime in general in one of my clubs, I decided to look up a few so called horror series and finally stumbled across Jigoku Shoujo. This series definitely has a lot to offer on the supernatural/mystery sector with its 72 episodes distributed over three seasons airing between 2005 and 2009, but would it also offer the horror I was searching for?

In a nutshell, this series is about a mysterious girl named Ai Enma who, over the course of the whole series, fulfills people´s wishes ... to send another person they have a grudge against to hell with the help of her three henchmen. It is a very episodic show where every episode follows the same routines and patterns. We learn about a person suffering from torture, see how they log on to the internet to access the “Hell Correspondence” and then get to witness all the events leading up to the victim to finally decide to send his tormentor to hell for a costly price.

In the first season, the above described scenario repeats itself for the first eight episodes to introduce the viewer to all the characters. By episode 8, an overarching plot featuring a reporter and his daughter who get increasingly involved with Hell Girl as they try to stop her gets established, and this is exactly the point in the show where it gets extremely good. The way the story then builds up from there and increases tension until the epic climax in the last three episodes is just very well done and kept me on the edge of my seat. I marathoned the first season within two days and couldn´t wait to continue the rollercoaster ride.

The second season, Futakomori, manages to keep up the high level of entertainment without blending in an overarching storyline as it offers hands down the best and most cruel hell-sending cases of all three seasons. Futakomori also blesses us with episodes telling the story of Ai´s mysterious helpers, who by the way are all valuable assets to the show, and how they became her companions one by one until finally in the end, her own moving and tragic past is revealed to the viewer. “Hajime-chan”, the reporter from season 1 as well as his daughter are definitely missed on the other hand as their replacement Kikuri, a strange little girl, is no way near as interesting as the pair from the first season. Anyway, like in season 1, the build-up to the ending is simply amazing and in my opinion remains the biggest strength of this generally great series.

Season 3, Mitsuganae, unfortunately cannot keep up with the high quality of its predecessors. While I will not call it an atrocious show, it still is more than a little disappointing after watching all the amazingness that happened before over the course of 48 episodes. The main focus in this season is on a high school girl named Yuzuki who gets possessed by Ai. While this is not necessarily a bad idea, Yuzuki´s personality is as uninteresting as it gets and the same goes for Hell Girl´s new helper Yanawaro, who for some reason is introduced out of nowhere and is totally unimportant to the season. Not only is Mitsuganae a step backwards in the character department but the hell-sending cases within the high school are just completely ridiculous. While the writers were able to really tell superb stories that made the audience lose their sense for what´s wrong and what´s right for two seasons, it seems like they lost inspiration here as people are just going to hell for basically nothing all of a sudden. The only thing coming remotely close to the quality of the first seasons is the ending once again. Thank god they were able to remain the drama and close out Jigoku Shoujo well as this saves the third season to some extent along with the improved quality of animation.

Overall, I was once again not able to find the horror elements I was looking for and it seems like the ability to scare me to death will forever be an absolute monopoly to live-action movies. However, as a mystery/supernatural show Jigoku Shoujo does very, very well indeed and I totally recommend you watch this if you like mystery. The best thing about it is that the show does not require you to watch all three seasons. Each season has a satisfying ending to it that concludes the anime and the ending of season three is not more or less “open” then the other 2, so feel free to skip Mitsuganae. The first two seasons are definitely a must watch!

To close things out I also recommend you watch this series subbed unless you don´t mind getting used to new voices from Futakomori onwards as only the first season has been dubbed unfortunately.

I give Jigoku Shoujo an overall score of 7.5 points, but it would be a 9 for the first two seasons!

Shinreigari: Ghost Hound is a 22 episodes long Psychological/Mystery anime by Production IG that came out in 2007. After i finished it just recently, my first thought was: "Man, i can´t believe it took me so long until i finally watched this!"

However...this show centers around three high school boys with traumatic experiences in the past, who try to solve a mysterious puzzle in the small mountain village of Suiten.

I was mentally prepared for a brainf*** since Ghost Hound was created by the same guy who did Ghost in the Shell and a few important staff members also worked on Serial Experiments Lain. Nevertheless, despite ... being heavily influenced by psychoanalysis in the first half and a mix of mainly spirituality and a bit of theoretical physics in the second half, the story is actually not too hard to follow if you pay full attention.

It is a really fascinating story that completely drew me in right from the start with it´s somewhat dark and spooky appearance. The at first seemingly multiple plotlines come together to form one gigantic puzzle in a smart and sometimes unexpected way. Shinreigari also uses multiple "unpleasant" sound effects to add to the atmosphere and to get the viewer out of his cmfort zone even more.

The biggest strenght of Ghost Hound in my opinion are the many important supporting characters. Each of them are portrayed in such a way that they could possibly turn into a pro- or antagonist at any given point as it is unclear what their own interests and intentions are. The character development is simply brillant, especially that of our main girl Miyako.

The show also offers a few unusual but great "extras" as it calls the episodes not episodes but "focuses" and titles every focus after a scientific term. The preview of the next focus after the ending credits is always accompanied by a brief summary of an important moment in the history of science and/or psychoanalysis. What´s more, once you start this series you have a hard time to stop your session as Ghost Hound offers hands down some of the best cliffhangers i have ever come across.

The quality of animation is crystal clear for 2007 standards and shouldn´t really upset anyone who stumbles across the show eight years later like myself. The ending song is beautiful, the jazz-like opening is very different from most anime OPs but in my opinion does not fit the show at all.

Overall i, enjoyed Shinregari GHOST HOUND at lot. I marathoned it in just three sessions and i would definetly recommend marathoning this rather then watching it at a slow pace. So if you are in the mood for something darker, make sure you don´t miss this!

I give it a 9 out of 10.

During an uninspired Youtube session to pass some time, i decided to watch some anime shorts and was lucky enough to find Ryoutei no Aji.

That these two short stories, told in different lengths (between 15 and 90 seconds) and therefore making up six videos, are just commercials for a japanese instant food brand, simply amazed me.

The animation is great, the music beautiful, the stories heartwarming and there is actually so little focus on the touted products. I highly recommend you watch all of them. It won´t take you even five minutes and i´m sure you will just wish that, no matter where you live, commercials ... would look like this there too!

It seems like every single time Silver Link decides to go anyway near the slice of life genre, nothing good comes out of it. This studio is quite far down on my attention list, nonetheless I gave Girlfriend Kari a shot...and it backfired on me.

This show embodies the ultimate Slice of Life cliché of “nothing ever happens” and gives more fuel to those who won´t even try to watch the genre anymore because it is simply so unfathomably boring. In twelve episodes, it tells twelve stories without any deeper significance about the normal high school life of a bunch of girls who apparently ... attend a school where boys aren´t even allowed to say a single word, let alone participate in clubs. Why didn´t the writer just make it an all girls school??? Seriously, it takes Girlfriend BETA eleven episodes until a male person is finally allowed to speak. However, since this show is extremely episodic, I can´t rule out that you will find at least 2-3 episodes you will enjoy for some strange reason.

What´s bugging me the most though is the fact that at least half of the characters are actually pretty lovely and likeable. If that wouldn´t be the case, I would have dropped this series in the blink of an eye and rate it even worse. Girlfriend Kari introduces you to quite a lot of cute girls and you will for sure come to like one or two of them, but this isn´t even a good thing since you will just pump your fists in anger that these characters aren´t starring in a better show.

In my case, this girl was Chloe. I found her so adorable that I constantly wished she would be part of…let´s say a better harem show for example. But no, all her potential goes to waste in a totally meaningless series instead. Props to her voice actress anyway, it is not easy to speak your native language with a foreign accent. It sounds really cute.

At the end of the day however, Girlfriend Kari is just not a good anime even if you are a Slice of Life fan (like myself). So unless cute girls doing cute stuff is your guilty pleasure, stay the hell away!

Just when everybody started to think that all the gems of 2014 have aired, A-1 Pictures blessed us with Shigatsu wa kimi no uso, a bittersweet Romance/Drama with tons of amazing classical music.

The first thing i noticed when watching this was obviously the outright gorgeous animation. The artwork from A-1 is breathtaking and truly a masterpiece. Beyond that lies a tragic yet heartwarming story involving two highly talented young prodigies as well as their friends, who all in one way or another try to change each others tragedy-characterized pasts or presents for the better.

This is without any doubt the most beautiful tearjerker of ... 2014 and since it finished airing just recently, all Dramas of this year will probably be compared to the standard Your Lie in April has set. Good characters, a superbly and calmly told story and even a show able to make you appreciate classical music more. I wonder how they still found the time to include quite a few humorous moments as well, but they did...

I was, to say the least, moved by this and would recommend this to everybody who enjoys getting emotional while watching anime. I wonder how long it will take me to get this show out of my head...it is so so beautiful.

Today was finally the day when i wasn´t able to suppress my desire to review Joshiraku anymore. A show that fascinated me in a very unique way: Joshiraku is great by intentionally beeing bad. I know you probably already think i´m a jerk and stopped reading by now, but i will finish this anyway...

Joshiraku is a 13-episode comedy released by JC Staff in the summer of 2012. While i wasn´t expecting much out of this initially, it became one of the biggest pleasant surprises of the year for me. Every single episode made me laugh out loud while at the same time captivating me ... with it´s tremendous creativity. The writer´s bravery to take risks is also worth mentioning, as Joshiraku does not take itself serious whatsoever and purposely makes every single mistake that killed other shows in the past. All we get to see is five girls who are totally aware of the fact that they are animated characters in a TV show discussing the most uninteresting topics u can imagine while constantly breaking the fourth wall...and it is HILARIOUS.

Furthermore, the show openly states that it is "full of dialogue so the audience can fully enjoy how cute the girls are" (they aren´t cute...) and even introduces a new character in the final episode only for the others to
rant about how stupid the writers must be...

Overall, this is a wonderful comedy show because it does not try to be anything else but a comedy show. It´s a heavily dialogue driven, fast paced in your face gag firework with opening and ending sequences so annoyingly addictive that they will haunt you in your dreams. And which other show will introduce us westeners to the traditional japanese art of rakugo theatre? So love it or hate it...but watch it first!

In late 2014, Studio Feel managed to split the community by releasing In Search of the Lost Future, probably the least mysterious mystery show of all time. In fact, it´s so not mysterious that about fourty percent of all anime related web pages, including MAL, prefer to just list it as a regular school romance.

Undoubtedly, this show gets off to a flying (and indeed somewhat enigmatic) start and culminates in the last three episodes, presenting us with a satisfying solution to it´s “mystery”. This would make WareMete a magnificent anime…if it weren´t for all the episodes that lie in between.

Because for those eps, ... Writer Rie Kawamata for some reason decides to throw his own plot completely out of the window and unexplainably depicts an ordinary school romance drama I couldn´t have cared less for instead, making this show a frustrating watching experience to some extent . Whilst I never got into the middle part of the story nor into the characters, I also never considered to drop the show either. I never entirely forgot about the first episode, and I was just too curious how the makers would conclude it, and when they finally did (which happened just before I started throwing tomatoes at my screen), it was awesome!

So can I or can I not recommend In Search of the Lost Future? Well…yeah, kinda…if you are searching for something you can marathon, you should probably look elsewhere, but if you watch this just one episode per day to avoid getting bored in the middle part of the show, you will eventually get some enjoyment out of this.

Oh, and one last thing: watch this in English if you can, because otherwise a certain character named Kenny will make you angry…this guy with his stupid English catchphrases is annoying as f***.

Therefore, I give this a 5.5…5 for the Japanese version, 6 for the English dub. It´s just way too inconsistent for more, but also not very bad for an adaption of an eroge visual novel.