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Gankutsuou stands alone as an anime where I hate every single character for the right reasons, and still hate the anime as a whole. Every character is bad in a good way, but the plot still didn’t do anything worth watching.

Before I delve more into why the plot is terrible, I do want to mention that Gankutsuou is the worst looking anime I’ve ever seen. This vector style texturing borderline hurt my eyes just looking at it. Absolutely disgusting.

Now to the plot, but don’t worry I won’t spoil anything, not that there’s anything to spoil anyways. I feel like Gankutsuou was going for Monster ... style vibes, shrouding itself in a lot of mystery and having the climaxes be these grandiose revelations. This would’ve been amazing if the writing was any good or if the plot made any sense. It feels like a 10 year old wrote this plot. The plot twists seem pretty cool as you’re watching, until you give them any kind of thought. Every plot point logistically dissolves in a very impressive manner if you even think about them. It’s really a shame because they were able to write some almost interesting characters, but they only appeared interesting on the surface and ended up being flat and baseless.

I don’t have much more to say other than that I’m sad I wasted the little bit of free time I have watching Gankutsuou.

Princess Tutu may well be one of the best classical-style stories ever told. I wasn’t really sure what I was getting myself into when I started Princess Tutu. It had been recommended to me in the same light as things like Revolutionary Girl Utena so I had some expectations going in but Princess Tutu did not disappoint.

Without any spoilers, I want to use this review to talk about the literary progression of the series. I want to talk about what impressions each of the three major arcs left on me.

Princess Tutu is as classical of a story as it gets. There’s princes, princesses, good ... and evil, knights, some hero’s journey elements, the whole shebang. And it doesn’t try to be more than that, ever. It’s not like Revolutionary Girl Utena where they have a fairy tale style of story as a means of deconstruction for greater themes. Princess Tutu is simply an incredible fairy tale.

Princess Tutu has 3 distinct arcs, as any good classical story will have:

The first Princess Tutu arc is mostly exposition. Princess Tutu deliberately spends a lot of screen time world building, character building, and fairy tale building. And though there is a bit of narration and inner monologues in Princess Tutu, it uses those complementary to more robust visual and literary world building. Most of the first arc in Princess Tutu is spent simply watching these characters interact with each other and with the story; we get to know them primarily by what they do, not what we’re told about them. This is something I value immensely in fiction. I’m not a fan of exposition by monologue. So as far as world building goes, Princess Tutu gets an A from me.

The second arc of Princess Tutu is spent primarily setting up the major conflict of the series and progressing the story. It’s a decently heavy story-building arc where we get to slowly unravel the fairy tale and see what has really been the driving force of the story. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this arc, other than that it really began to confuse me at this point, in a good, mysterious kind of way. I felt like each episode, Princess Tutu gave me more questions than answers and it really set up the final arc brilliantly.

Princess Tutu’s final arc is where the series really shines. You get absolutely everything, which is mostly insane plot twists non-stop. Every episode felt like an epiphany and I found myself literally with my mouth wide open for a lot of moments. I want to point out that the artistic direction absolutely stands out in this final arc. Princess Tutu as a whole is a very beautiful anime with very beautiful characters but seeing the artistic design choices made at the end of the series took my breath away.

That’s basically the review but I do want to talk about my scoring for Princess Tutu. This is the first review I’ve ever written where I do nothing but praise the series and then give it a relatively low score. I seem to have a massive reviewer flaw where I primarily give high scores to complex, serious, darker, more adult-themed series. Things I have above Princess Tutu are Evangelion, Utena, Fate/Zero, Texhnolyze, LotGH; these are very serious, very complex series that delve with psychological or philosophical themes.

So now I’m running into a scenario where I loved Princess Tutu, but I’m going to give it a 7. It makes me a little sad. I’m placing it above all my other 7s, but right below my lowest 8, which is Stein’s Gate. And I can’t place it higher because there’s just no argument; Stein’s Gate is simply a better series.

Having said all that, I am very comfortable saying that Princess Tutu is one of the most beautiful, simple stories ever told and everyone should watch it.

Evangelion 3.0+1.0 (Eva 4) is the epitome of disappointment. To be honest, I’m not even sure why I watched it, I knew all I would get out of it was going to be anger. Eva 4 is empty, baseless, dry, and fruitless. It is exactly what anyone would expect after watching the first three movies.

I was trying to have low expectations when it came to Eva 4, but somehow I was still able to be disappointed. I think a small part of me was hoping that Eva 4 would offer some sort of redemption for the movie series and that was enough for Eva ... 4 to leave me disappointed. I’ve talked at length before about how much I hate this movie series for soiling the Evangelion name so I’ll refrain from talking about it further.

Eva 4 is empty. There’s just nothing there. I think there might have been some sort of effort put into the writing but it’s so hard to tell considering it didn’t have much to work with following the atrocity that was Eva 3. All characters continue to be empty shells of their tv series counterparts. No character has a visible drive, not a single character has anything going for them. And I’m not talking from a narrative perspective because sure, they do force these ridiculous, completely unrelatable narratives onto every character from Rei understanding humanity to Genji wanting to be with his dead wife; but, there’s no drive for the viewer to latch on to. I don’t have a friend whose head blew off right in front of me, you know. I know that’s a little extreme but what I’m saying is that the movie series doesn’t do a good job of establishing or nurturing any relationships between the characters. Those couple minutes that Shinji spent with Kaworu playing piano don’t really mean much to the viewer. And considering that that’s the most meaningful relationship portrayal in the movie series says plenty about all other relationships. The movie series does nothing but waste time.

Eva 4 is baseless. You can’t base the entire series on small flashbacks here and there. The entirety of Asuka, Misato, and Genji were built on things that happened off-screen. Shinji, Rei, and Mari are complete flops. It’s amazing how such a long movie series was able to even survive from a storytelling perspective with not a single meaningful character.

Eva 4 is dry. In the movie series, 90% of the time nothing is happening. Character’s actions and words don’t really mean anything or go anywhere. The only 10% of the time something is happening or progressing the story is through shounen-style mecha battles or run-off moments of silence where characters senselessly have some self-realization moment.

Eva 4 is fruitless. This is the ultimate sin of the Evangelion Movie Series. Not only does it destroy all these immensely deep and interesting characters from the tv series, but it then goes to do nothing with them. This is the textbook example of how not to do character development. In Eva 4, characters change, but they don’t grow. This is such a classic mistake that I love how well they do it in Eva 4 because it makes it easy to study. I won’t go into it to avoid spoilers, so you’ll see for yourself if you watch this movie.

In the end, I really don’t see someone watching the first 3 movies, reading this review, then deciding not to watch the 4th. If you’re reading this review having watched the first 3 movies, I don’t think there’s anything I could say to make you not watch the 4th one. I hated the first 3 and I still watched the 4th one. If you haven’t watched any of the movies, you can read my reviews of the first three movies to see the methodical disappointment that is the movie series. I regret having watched this movie series from Eva 2. All this movie series has brought me is anger and disappointment. I hate seeing what it’s done with my favorite tv series and the best movie of all time (End of Evangelion). It’s saddening to have this beautiful image of my favorite characters from the tv series and have it stained with the abominations that this movie series spat out.

If you haven’t seen these movies yet, please don’t. This studio should not be rewarded in any way for putting out such terrible content, for destroying such a beloved franchise. They don’t deserve your attention, your money, or your time.

It should go without mentioning that the most something like High School DxD could hope to get from me is a 5/10. Having gotten that out of the way, High School DxD is about boobs, so this review shall too, be about the boobs.

[Tig o bitties]

If anyone ever told you that High School DxD was an Ecchi Harem with a good story, they lied. The story is horrendous, come here for boobs and boobs only.

I have a really big beef with the boobs in High School DxD: there is not a lot of variety. All the boobs are the same color and the ... same shape, just different sizes. They're even all drawn the same. When I see more than two sets of boobs, I want them to be at least slightly different. I want different shapes, colors, and tones in my boobs.

[The failure of High School DxD]

Here is my issue with the fan service in High School DxD: it's not sexy. I would call it perverted at its best and boring at its worst. Don't get me wrong, I'm the last person that will ever be ungrateful for boobs; every boob has a special place in my heart, but it's not the size of the boobs that matters, it's how you use them. And, High School DxD does not use its boobs well. Though to be fair, 99.9% of ecchi anime does the same thing; they use boobs as decorations and not as devices of sexiness.

Another major problem with the fan service in High School DxD is that the ecchiness is forced and not incidental. What I mean by that is that ecchiness should come from convenient directing and natural circumstances. Forcing out nun boobs through perverted magic spells is less impactful than having sexy characters in sexy scenarios.

[Ending thoughts]

High School DxD is bad, ok? Let's not kid ourselves here. I only recommend it if you're really thirsty. If you want to see fan service done well, go watch some Monogatari Series and my reviews for it.

P.S. I watched the English dub, that's why the sound is 1/10.

Imagine a domino set up where you start by knocking down one domino and before you know it, there are a thousand dominoes down in the shape of the Mona Lisa. That is what it feels like to watch Perfect Blue except that instead of ending with the Mona Lisa, you end up with such a distorted image that you are not even sure you're still looking at dominoes at the end. You start by knocking down one domino and you end up questioning your own existence.


[Ok, ok... wait, what?]

Perfect Blue is the kind of story that begins innocently enough by making sense and ... slowly makes less sense as time passes by. The only thing I know for sure that happens in Perfect Blue is that the main character is a singer that decides to go be an actress like the synopsis says. Everything that happens afterward is up for debate whether it is real or not. I assume things happen afterward, but I can not tell you definitively if things actually happen afterward.

Perfect Blue is abstract in a similar fashion as something like Fight Club or Serial Experiments Lain. However, in something like Fight Club, only the psyche of the main character gets brought into question, not the psyche of the narrative itself. Where Fight Club has an identity crisis, I would say that Perfect Blue has an existential crisis. Imagine something like Inception but done well. Inception fails in that the narrative makes sense whether anything real or it is all a dream. The questioning of reality becomes trivial in this scenario. Perfect Blue does this concept correctly because nothing makes sense. Whether any event in Perfect Blue is real or not is significant because it impacts the narrative: what you perceive Perfect Blue is trying to tell you.

[But in the end...|

It doesn't matter if anything in Perfect Blue is real or not. The only thing that matters is what the audience takes away from the narrative.

We can debate all day about what actually happens in Perfect Blue, but at the end of the day, that is not what Perfect Blue is asking of the audience. Perfect Blue is not a puzzle. Perfect Blue is not meant to be deciphered. The idea of distinguishing the real from the abstract IS in itself, the point of Perfect Blue.

[Let's bring it back]

This review is starting to get too abstract now, let's come back to reality.

Perfect Blue is a master course in abstract storytelling. However, due to how abstract Perfect Blue is, I can not bring myself to give it a higher score. When you have such an abstract narrative, how is the audience supposed to come to any meaningful conclusion or themes? Perfect Blue is abstract enough to be really good, but too abstract to be brilliant.

I think the most abstract you can get while still being great themes-wise is something like Serial Experiments Lain. You need to use your abstract narrative to convey complex ideas, not just for the sake of being abstract.

[Ending thoughts]

Though I did not give Perfect Blue the highest score, I highly recommend it as a study on abstract storytelling. If you want to see a story slowly descend into madness, Perfect Blue is the anime for you.

Angel's Egg is uniquely brilliant in that what it set out to do, it accomplished masterfully.

Subtle imagery is often held with high regard as it adds nuance and a level of detail to storytelling that is invaluable. Angel's Egg uses a similar technique that is the literal opposite. Instead of using subtle imagery to enhance the telling of a story, Angel's Egg uses a towering amount of imagery as its form of storytelling altogether.

In this review, I want to contrast different viewpoints on Angel's Egg's method. I was not the intended audience of Angel's Egg, but former internet personality Sudostef was. I will ... describe his ideas, with solemn remembrance and respect giving full credit to him, solely as a contrast to my ideas. I don't have anything to cite as he has removed all of his work from the internet.

[The Masterpiece...]

Sudostef describes this blatant imagery as a means of establishing an atmosphere. He then describes this effective use of the atmosphere as inciting strong emotion and nostalgia. And primarily because Angel's Egg is triumphant in this matter, it is a masterpiece, albeit an abstract one.

If you have a deep appreciation for artistic films and masterful imagery, you too are the intended audience of Angel's Egg and you probably won't find anything better anywhere. I am not this person.

I value imagery as a means of storytelling and not as being the story itself. Sudostef says that when it comes to abstract art like Angel's Egg, you either hate it or you love it. I'm here to be that happy medium. I don't hate it, but I don't value it highly either. That doesn't mean I can't see its genius.

Angel's Egg, being abstract art, will have a different meaning depending on who is viewing it. To me, it set out to do one thing: make me feel hopelessness. I have never felt more overwhelming hopelessness as I did watching Angel's Egg. 10/10 in that regard; I will express it in my art score.

The other thing the art did for me is ingrain itself in my brain. I watched Angel's Egg about an hour before writing this and I can recite every scene in order. I can tell you already that I will never forget certain scenes like the weird flying eye spaceship thing or the military-looking dudes hunting the shadow fish. Images like that stay with you forever. Angel's Egg is a master at creating such images.

[...That Wasn't for Me]

Appreciating the brilliance of something isn't equivalent to valuing it. I want a compelling narrative. I want compelling characters. Angel's Egg gives me neither. And though being as abstract as it is, one may go searching for meaning indefinitely in Angel's Egg, on a surface level, it's not there.

Sudostef goes on to analyze the religious and identity-related themes in Angel's Egg. And though the imagery to support a religious narrative is there - the title, the bandages on the hands, the cross, the bible monologue, etc - this narrative is not particularly deep or valuable to me. Even if everything is there as he describes, it's still not notably good. It's creative and innovative, but not good.

[Conclusion]

Angel's Egg, at what it does, is a masterpiece. There is no doubt in my mind about that. If you watch it, you will never forget it. But to me, as a form of literature/film/anime, it's not quite there.

I don't think I've ever seen a more average anime than Cells at Work. The art is average, the sound is average, the writing is average (from a literary perspective), the characters are average, the themes are average, just everything.

Obviously, I wasn't expecting Legend of the Galactic Heroes when I started watching Cells at Work though, so I can't complain about its average-ness. I didn't watch it for the plot. The highlight of Cells at Work is its educational content. Cells at work entertainingly teaches you microbiology. It should win a Nobel Prize for doing that.

Cells at work teaches the viewer the essential ... functions of the body and the immune system. I don't think I can say this about another anime, but if everyone in the world watched Cells at Work, the world would be a better, safer, and more educated place. And I'm not just saying that because the world is dying from the coronavirus right now (way to date my own review lol), I mean it.

So I have a problem with Wolf's Rain. It is often compared to its younger brother Texhnolyze. Texhnolyze is in my top 10; Wolf's Rain is in my top 50. What happened?

[Movie Announcer Voice:]
From the creators of timeless classics like Evangelion, Lain, Code Geass, and Cowboy Bebop... comes a dark, dystopian, atmospheric fantasy-sci-fi series that is bound to sweep you off your feet. Wolf's Rain, 2003.
[End Trailer]

"OMG, every anime the announcer mentioned is in my top 10!" - me

Again, so what happened? Wolf's Rain has the right formula, the right people, and the right feel. They had the technology, but it's just not Texhnolyze. ... I finished Wolf's Rain months ago but I just couldn't pinpoint why I didn't like it. It had the atmosphere and philosophical plot just right, but I couldn't handle how boring it was. You could do Wolf's Rain in 3-5 episodes, but it's 30. Oh yeah, don't get fooled by the 26 episode count on here, the OVA is part of the series.

Most episodes, nothing happens. Not plot-wise, not thematically, no significant character development, no significant worldbuilding. In the 3-5 episodes worth of plot in this series, some cool things do happen with green hair guy and white wolf. I'd tell you their names if every character here wasn't so forgettable. And that's the two characters that impact the plot whatsoever or have any kind of meaningful character development. Flower girl in the cover has the character and emotional complexity of an actual flower.

Through that criticism, I still can't say that it's bad bad. It's in my top 50, not my bottom 50. The plot and premise force everything else to be at least somewhat decent. It's very awkward.

[Recommendation]

If you're here without having watched Texhnolyze, first, how did you get here? second, go watch Texhnolyze, don't waste your time here. If you want a dark, dystopian, nihilistic sci-fi, it doesn't get better than that. If you've watched Texhnolyze and are looking for something similar, this IS the closest thing I've found so far, but it's not good. It's good when compared to all of anime, but if you're looking for a dark sci-fi go watch Lain or keep looking.

What happens when you take the epic plot of Code Geass and replace it with a generic action plot? You get Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re:surrection (R3 for short).

I don't want to call R3 a cash grab, though I'm sure there's plenty of people calling it that, but it was missing that special spark that made Code Geass so great. The plot wasn't, "let's save humanity from the instrumentality project" like R1 and R2, it was, "your sister was kidnapped, come and rescue her." Very different. One's Evangelion, the other is Taken.

I don't even want to get into the Lelouch being alive ... controversy. It's obvious C. C. has him at the end of R2; I thought he was alive when I watched it. Plus, they spend the first half of the movie trying to explain this. If you think this is a big deal, get some suspension of disbelief and just enjoy having more good Code Geass.

[Recommendation]

If you've watched R1 and R2, I would recommend R3. It is more of that without the cool plot. I liked it.

[Preface]

Revolutionary Girl Utena is exactly what I want from an anime. When I'm starting a new anime, I generally go into it with three levels of expectations: what I fear it is going to be, what I think it is going to be, and what I want it to be. I can count on one hand the number of anime that have been what I wanted them to be. Revolutionary Girl Utena is one of them.

In this review, I will avoid spoilers to the detriment of the review itself. The defining moment of the series is the climax and I will not say anything ... beyond that about it. Whatever you take from this review, it will only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Revolutionary Girl Utena. My hope is to simply plant a seed, incite an itch.

[Introduction]

Revolutionary Girl Utena brings about excellence through allegory. I know this illustration is overused, but Revolutionary Girl Utena is like a form of storytelling onion. Revolutionary Girl Utena tells you a large number of stories through a single narrative. This density, depth of complexity, is something that I value immensely in fiction. Revolutionary Girl Utena is the second 10/10 I've ever given, Evangelion being the first. Both landing their spots there, now thematically, by their complexity in storytelling and meticulous study of abstract themes. Revolutionary Girl Utena manages this through inversion, subversion, and deconstruction.

[The Storytelling Onion]

What I find most impressive about Revolutionary Girl Utena is that it finds a way to tell you multiple stories at once. At the top lies a story of a middle school girl's daily exploits. Secondly comes a fairy tale of a prince saving a princess. Then the inversion of that, being the princess wanting to become a prince, dissecting gender roles and personal image. Below that comes the subversion of the fairy tale, dealing with purity, illusion, and idealism. Lastly comes the deconstruction. This deconstruction does not simply deconstruct the fairy tale, but it deconstructs everything else in the process, breaking down themes of identity, individualism, determinism, existentialism, and nihilism.

[The Fairy Tale]

Even in this top layer, there is more than meets the eye. The fairy tale of the prince saving the princess is incorporated repeatedly throughout Revolutionary Girl Utena, rhythmically, as though projecting an image that everyone is a damsel in distress waiting for their prince. And when the prince comes and saves us riding his white horse, it becomes our noble obligation to be that prince ourselves for someone else.

[The Princess Becomes the Prince]

"inversion noun
​the act of changing the position or order of something to its opposite, or of turning something into a position in which the top of it is where the bottom of it normally is" - Oxford Learner's Dictionaries

The princess becoming the prince forces a study of image. What is a princess? What is a prince? What is weak? What is strong? Revolutionary Girl Utena challenges not only these images, but is itself open for interpretation, becoming a medium for discussion. Whatever you perceive, whatever your values are, they will be challenged.

[Does the Prince Exist?]

"subversion (of something)
an act of changing something to its opposite, especially when this challenges fixed ideas or expectations" - Oxford Learner's Dictionaries

Revolutionary Girl Utena then subverts both the original fairy tale and the inversion it proposed. It begins picking at them: Will your prince ever come? Will he save you and love you unconditionally? Will you be able to become a prince? Will you succeed in saving your princess? And philosophically investigates further: What is purity? What is corruption? Can you hang on to illusions? Can you hang on to ideals? Should you try?

[Tear everything down!]

"deconstruction noun
a theory that states that it is impossible for a text to have one fixed meaning, and emphasizes the role of the reader in the production of meaning" - Oxford Learner's Dictionary

“A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its laws and rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception.” - Jacques Derrida, Dissemination

This is where Revolutionary Girl Utena transcends anime and fiction as a whole. Revolutionary Girl Utena is not a story, it is an idea. It is a disservice to say "Revolutionary Girl Utena is about [blank]" but I will do so in context to our fairy tale and the theme of this review. As I've already pointed out, Revolutionary Girl Utena is about an imperceptible number of things. And though this fairy tale is a big part of the story, if you read the background section below the synopsis, it mentions Revolutionary Girl Utena is also about ambition, adulthood, abuse, and incest, to name a few. I told you avoiding spoilers would hinder this review, it just so happened to shorten it substantially as well. All I've discussed is the fairy tale that is introduced in the starting moments of the series, truly, the top layer of the onion.

Back to the point I was trying to make before the themes oversimplification disclaimer: Revolutionary Girl Utena is about more than the story, it is about you, it is about identity. Who are you? What do you believe?

[Conclusion]

I've analyzed some of the themes of Revolutionary Girl Utena and expressed what they've meant to me. Through all of these countless hours, episodes, seasons, series that I've watched, I've always been searching for Revolutionary Girl Utena. I'm very glad I found it, and you will be too.