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I think I preferred having Genocyber be the pinnacle of strange and grotesque anime to me!
I sometimes felt that there was no real message to the film, that it was only a series of bizarre and cruel images-- but then, Un chien andalou and The Persistence of Memory have entered the artistic canon on the basis of that merit, so why not this?
The art was very good, although lacking in range of motion-- it's similar it what we now call a motion comic.
I would like to have seen more of Kanabun, the crossdressing boy-- he was cute.
Lastly, and perhaps this is a nit-picking point, I ... wondered why, if she hated the circus so much, she didn't just get on the fucking train and leave. I suppose if she did that we wouldn't have such a delightfully sick anime.

I was originally going to give this series an eight, because of some of the more blatant flaws in its plot, but any anime that can reduce me to sobs by the penultimate episode deserves at least a nine.

I won't bother explaining the plot, because if you're reading this you probably already know the gist of it. I will instead highlight a few of the plot elements that I thought were particularly inventive/touching.

It seems to me that Kouta is not so much a full-fledged character as he is a vessel for his sexual desire. Indeed, several major plot elements are influenced at least ... marginally by the influence of his libido. For example, Lucy's rage is quenched only because Kouta showed her forgiveness. Would his response be the same if Lucy wasn't a supermodel? Impossible to say, but I love how the plot is moved by the serendipitous, arbitrary qualities of emotion and desire. In this way, Elfen Lied shares much with the Alien franchise; just as, in a series of freak accidents motivated only by chance, the simple freighter crew-woman Ripley is inexorably tied to the grotesque Xenomorph race, so Kouta is enveloped in a bizarre government project as the result of his emotions and libido.

In this series were a few majorly tear-jerking moments that rank among my favorite in television and cinema. A line of dialogue that has been received quite favorably is Lucy's "Kouta, you were but a passing dream I could barely see in this hell." I was profoundly touched to hear that. It has the same staying power as some of the greatest lines in cinema, up there with "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown," and "No, I am your father."

Additionally, as has been mentioned by other reviewers, "Lillium" is a hell of a theme song, even though it's a bit overused within the series itself. And the opening animation is a little pretentious and silly, a mish-mash of Latin and Germanic themes as it is.

As aforementioned, Elfen Lied has a few pretty blatant plot holes. It's, sadly, not very convincing that Lucy became murderous because of being bullied as a child; the gravity of the response doesn't match that of the stimulus. If she was institutionalized because of the school incident, that would make more sense, but such a distinction isn't made in the anime proper. Also, the ecchi and male wish-fulfillment elements are rather pronounced, and could be distracting to someone not entirely convinced of the story.

I enjoyed Elfen Lied immensely and was willing to overlook some of its obvious flaws. The show is a hell of a tear-jerker.

The fluid and vibrant animation of this film is of special note; even though it was made the same year as the last episodes of Devilman and Mazinger, it far surpasses them both on a technical level.
I wouldn't mind having Sirene destroy my Tokyo, if you know what I mean ;)
And General Zannin is the man, as always.

When the promotional video for Mazinkaiser SKL was released I was ready for some seriously revolutionary shit. It looked fast and bloody, with crisp animation and a stirring classical score. Now that I've watched the first OVA, I can say that it's very far from revolutionary; closer to Rabelais than to Chateaubriand.

Thankfully, most of the episode sticks with mech combat. As obvious as that may sound, plenty of mech series try to shoehorn some plot with humans. There was so much mech combat that it was a bit jarring to transition to Kiba's brothel scene. Which is a good thing. ... It feels good to see humans when there are so many robots beating the shit out of each other. I thought I'd never say this. Usually, with mech anime, I'm screaming for the humans to get off the screen. But in Mazinkaiser SKL they're well-acted, well-animated and written with character, so they're a welcome change from the cold shriek of battle.

Some other observations: I love Captain Scarlet. Too bad she died ten minutes into episode one. "Every last one of you looks like you want to run home and suck on your mom's' tits!" Great. Classic. Reminded me of Full Metal Jacket.

Just like Nagai's anime from the 70s, this show is very light on plot, which is both a positive and negative quality. It's cool that no time is wasted on the way to the fighting robots, but if Mazinkaiser SKL (that's the skull mech, right?) is so notorious and shit there really wasn't much of a precedent to indicate that.

Also, there was too much CG. I hate the current trend in anime which involves sparkling rays of sunlight coming from every angle. I wish more of it was hand-drawn, like the original Mazinkaiser was, and brilliantly so.

That's all. Good mech shounen with a cool soundtrack. Definitely worth watching if you like that sort of thing.

Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 is a bit of an anomaly, and when one looks at its contemporaries in anime, it's no wonder it was a flop at first. The late 70s was the era of Leiji Matsumoto's dreamy space fantasies and Go Nagai's bombastic, cartoony Mazinger franchise. Yoshiyuki Tonimo's creation of Mobile Suit Gundam was a bold move. It was essentially a military drama, with minor science-fiction and action/mech elements. The story diverged from the popular Monster of the Week formula and instead featured an overarching plot with a focus on character development and military intrigue. It is to 0079's ... credit that some of its very best episodes ('Time, Be Still' comes to mind) barely feature the titular mech at all, instead focusing on ground combat between humans.

MSG0079's strong points include good character design, an excellent cinematic score, and the new ways it showed an action anime could be produced, but it has weak points, too. The background landscapes are quite bland; earth is mostly represented as a hilly brown wasteland. The english dub is also so-so, with Bright's actor a high point and Frau Bow's a major low.

MSG0079's most glaring flaw is the way some episodes become a 22-minute chunk of confusing exposition. Most of 'Hand to Hand Combat' is devoted to the characters explaining the plot. We see Amuro recuperating in his quarters, Ramba Ral preparing an invasion of White Base and Ryu, Hayato and the others set out on a buggy to scope out Zeon. One gets the impression of a fragmented and unfocused plot. As Ryu astutely says, "Why is everyone on White Base running around doing whatever they feel like?"

All in all, a landmark anime with some flaws, as landmark anime will often have.

For a reason I will never understand, cute things getting punished is a common trope in anime. For this reason, Oruchuban Ebichu breaks my heart.

Ebichu, the adorable (one might say sickeningly so) hamster of the title is mauled and abused in every episode, after having only lovingly cleaned her master's home. Reality check, eh? This shit happens in the real world, people.

Another reality check? Office Lady, although she is constantly taken advantage of by her lousy boyfriend, always comes back to him. A pretty typical unhappy romance, all things said!

Oruchuban Ebichu succeeds because it seeks to destroy the bubble of ... safety that other anime wish to sustain. Anime like Spirited Away and Mind Game wish to teach us that there is magic in everyday life, there for the taking. Ebichu shows that there is no magic, only a cruel world that punishes innocents for doing good.

Cute, huh?