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At first glance it's perhaps a bit weird that the Starship Troopers film franchise, which after the 1997 original had seen two direct-to-dvd entries in 2004 and 2008, would get a CGI anime sequel produced in Japan. But judging by the fact a 6 part OVA already aired before Paul Verhoeven even got to Heinlein's book, Japan has always enjoyed the universe to a certain degree, or at least producers see a potential market.

Because of this obvious drastic change in production, Invasion feels quite different from it's precursors. But is it any good?

The truth is that Starship Troopers: Invasion is just a well-animated and straightforward ... action story. It starts guns blazing and ends the same way, with a whole lot of dead bugs and troopers in the middle. There's no serious politics or satire to be found here, the plot unfolds pretty straightforwardly, and the action is consistently good though not amazing. The CGI is impressive, close to flawless whenever it concerns the combat, and without the skill on display here the movie would likely have been a lot harder to watch.

Most of the cast is solid, given just enough character to make the viewer care a little bit about their death or survival, and the overly macho atmosphere is the closest Invasion comes to the live-action movies outside of the bugs' design. The one weak spot is Henry 'Hero' Varro, who is set up to be the hero of the story but ultimately plays second fiddle to the live-action's main trio and the newly introduced troopers.

What also works in the favor of Invasion is it's simple but effective story structure. The action is never far off, the characters never get too much focus to the point it's boring, and the second half is mainly one giant unfolding battle. If anything it lasts a little too long with not enough turns to go through near the end, but since there's plenty of violence shown it's not too much of a bother.


Ultimately Starship Troopers: Invasion is neither terrible or particularly good. It has nothing to say but entertains decently, it's forgettable but not so much that it feels like a wasted watch, and kept a franchise alive that most everyone probably considered dead. For someone who likes some brainless military entertainment it's worth the time for the CGI alone, for everyone else probably not.

Armored Trooper Votoms: Alone Again is a bit of a weird entry in the already quite weird votoms franchise. After 2010's Phantom Arc was created to finally follow-up 1994's shining heresy and more or less cap off Chirico Cuvie's story, one of Votoms' trademark gaps was created by starting the first episode after Chirico had visited and left his friends already. Alone Again fills in that gap, but also manages to be one of the best entries in the franchise while at it.

The story itself is quite short and familiar. Chirico visits his old friends in their Oasis town, but violence looms ahead. Chirico's arrival ... doesn't exactly do anything to stop that, but it's clear our hero has grown somewhat over the years, and seems to be quite conscious of the fact death and destruction follow wherever he goes. It's this growth that makes Alone Again more interesting, as Chirico manages to show a more matured side of himself without losing his stoic attitude.

The CGI has stepped up a little from Phantom Arc again, but it's nothing more than just serviceable. Seeing scopedogs zip around the desert won't get boring anytime soon, but there's still some residual clunkiness in the way the fights are portrayed.

What makes Alone Again shine is the ending. It somewhat redeems a bad character while tying a more satisfying and fitting thematic end to the story than Phantom Arc did, ending on a balance that implies a better continuation than we already know is actually coming. It's the best way for Chirico Cuvie's story to end, and for him to move on from the past.

Armored Trooper Votoms: Alone Again is really made for a small niche of fans who have already watched Phantom Arc and were either wondering what happened beforehand or wanted an ending more in line with what we have come to know as Votoms. It manages this, but for a few brief minutes also reaches a peak higher than the franchise has ever achieved before.

Case;Irvine is a stand-alone spinoff from the mainline Votoms storyline, being one of the only entries in the franchise that truly has a self-contained plot. But is it any good?

The story of Case;Irvine is fairly simple and straightforward, drawing on several facets of the known Votoms world like the recent war, barely underground arena battling, and the acid rain seen in Woodo. There's not exactly enough time to tell a truly original or groundbreaking story, but a lot of background explanation can be skipped because the viewer is likely aware of the setting. This allows just enough time for the characters and arcs to work, ... even if there's a lack of depth or real originality.

Where Case;Irvine shines is in it's surprising animation. The votoms franchise swapped to CGI mechs in 2007's pailsen files with pretty bad results, though later entries were more acceptable. Case;Irvine goes back to regularly animated mechs with pretty decent results, giving us some of the best AT action in the entire franchise, even if the scale and duration remain limited. I don't know why this entry got special treatment, but i'm happy the AT action got at least one good non-CGI representation in the modern era.

Overall Case;Irvine is a short story that'll work for fans of the franchise, but it doesn't offer much else. Released shortly before Votoms Finder it appears as though the creators were trying to find out if a full spinoff was possible, but Case;Irvine will likely go down in history as an expected but decent entry in a very weird franchise.

Farewell to Space Battleship is a weird movie. Rather than being made to summarize a full season the way the first movie was, it's instead a sequel movie that was afterwards reworked into an actual series. And in a lot of ways it does feel like a too much story has been squished into too little time. I haven't watched the second season as of writing this review.

From it's start, Farewell is very much occupied with trying to recreate what worked in the original show. The additions to the cast are minor, Dessler is back from the dead once again to take a significant chunk ... of screentime away from the real antagonists, and there's even a new Iscandar- and a new Starsha. And it's perhaps most telling that only when a lot of these elements are dropped that Farewell actually starts working in it's third act.

And when it gets going, it gets going good. The original show was always a little too hesitant with using the Yamato as the military vessel it is, instead relying on a whole bunch of weird tricks and systems that are only used once. It's great to see the ship and it's crew truly bear their fangs without losing sight of the ingenuity and quick thinking that was emphasised before. Everything works because the first season gives the viewer insight into the characters, and gives every sacrifice and achievement worth.

The honest truth is that it doesn't save the movie. The build-up is simply weak, and some of the melodramatic twists just don't work because of how much they are forced onto the plot. It's worth watching for the finale, but other than that Farewell to Battleship Yamato doesn't live up to it's predecessor.

Gurazeni's first season went largely undernoticed and underappreciated, but it was a refreshing slice-of-life take on baseball with a likeable cast and very limited production qualities. With a break lasting only a single season, Gurazeni is back to...mainly do the same thing again, but ever so slightly better.

Production-wise, absolutely nothing changed. It's all passable but decent at best, including the CGI used for the (quite infrequent) action cuts during the baseball games, mainly Bonda's pitching. Even more telling is the fact that both the OP and ED have been recycled from the first season, albeit with different visuals. Now both of the songs are quite ... nice, but it goes to show that Gurazeni doesn't exactly have any resources to spare. Anyone making it past the first season will likely not mind that too much, but don't expect improvements.

That being said, story-wise Gurazeni only got better. While the first season perfectly got by with workplace slice-of-life, the second season builds on that and gives some payoff, though without any excessive fanfare or drama. Most characters from the first season make a return to build on their previous appearances, and usually they go a little deeper into the specific topic, usually regarding their future as athletes. Special notion should go to Yuki, Bonda's love interest that took up the entirety of season 1's ED despite only appearing in the final episode. This time around she's got a far larger role, and her perspective as an outsider is even cleverly used against Bonda's insider look a few times. On top of that she is cute as all hell.


In truth, Gurazeni season 2 really is just more of the same. It's a realistic look at the lives of athletes operating within a giant mechanism called baseball, with specific attention towards the monetary goals of it's cogs. It's neither overly optimistic or too cynical, and ultimately gets by on the down-to-earth and likeable cast. In a landscape filled with stories in which the athletes are heroes and their sport nothing less than their life, Gurazeni is absolutely a fresh, almost unique anime.

Phantom Arc starts off as a trip down memory lane. It has been 24 years since any of Chirico's friends appeared, and seeing their banter and hijinks is an instant reminder why they were so important to Votoms despite their minor relevance to the plot. To drive the nostalgia home even harder, the first two episodes deal with revisiting the planets of Uoodo and Kummen in search of Chirico, who we are told has visited them since the events of Shining Heresy but left, as is later portrayed in Alone Again. Gotho, Vanilla, and Coconna treat their return to the ground of Votoms' first arcs ... very much like the audience might, and the creators likely do, noting all the peculiarities of their old environments and the way things have changed or remained the same.

But from there the story picks up as the trio is driven into the background, and a curious mix of the old narrative with new elements forms the meat of the story in episodes three to six. While more votoms is never a bad thing, it's quite clear that the initial direction taken was judged to be a mistake, and that a more serious approach was necessary for what is currently the last chronological entry in the franchise. The fact that there's only about four episodes to execute this more complicated plot is simply a mistake. While the nostalgia factor continues throughout the show, the plot just doesn't really hold up even when it tries to do something interesting.

One net positive is that the creators have learned from Shining Heresy, by incorporating some elements from it without taking in any of the boring stuff. It doesn't make the plot better exactly, but by acknowledging that it happened Chirico's current status and journey feel a lot more valid. It's not inconceivable from a story perspective that Votoms could one day be continued, and Chirico's path has become one that is interesting just by it's sheer length both in and outside of it's universe.

The CGI has stepped up quite a bit from Pailsen Files. While it's far from flawless, it's never openly painful to look at, and there's occasional good use of what CGI has to offer in terms of quicker animation than hand-drawn frames ever could. That being said, Chirico himself doesn't get into all that much scopedog action for once, and with the limited amount of time the focus is much more on the plot.

When you get down to it Phantom Arc is a retread of old Votoms, and your enjoyment will greatly depend on how much you care about seeing Vanilla, Gotho, and Coconna again, as well as your interest in some of the ideas from Votoms' Quent arc. Anyone who is a fan of the franchise at least owes it to themselves to watch the first two episodes for nostalgic purposes, and perhaps the rest to see the current conclusion to Chirico's saga.

After 1994's Shining Heresy more or less failed, the Votoms franchise went quiet for over a decade. It's return further explores the familiar grounds of Chirico Cuvie's past, and serves as somewhat of a sequel to Red shoulder document: Roots of ambition. If this sound a little inaccessible that's because it absolutely is made for fans familiar with both the original Armored Trooper Votoms and it's follow-up OVA's. To make matters worse, the mechs are now done with CGI, and mid-2000's CGI at that. Pailsen Files really is just for those interested in the franchise, but past that it's quite a good show that scratches ... an itch no other votoms show does.

Coming off the conclusion of Roots of ambition, the titular Yoran Pailsen is in deep trouble as the full force of a military tribunal comes down on him. Intelligence undersecretary Fedok Wokkam is determined to further his own agenda with whatever knowledge Pailsen holds, and the interactions between them form the smaller half of a split narrative that lasts through the series. On the other side, Chirico Cuvie and his new handpicked teammates are used as pawns in Wokkam's game, and repeatedly forced into dangerous situations the same way Pailsen once tested his Red Shoulders.

Chirico's team ultimately gets the most screentime, even if their actions have limited impact on the larger picture. As is usual for Votoms they all have pronounced characteristics, ranging from a phlegmatic squad leader to a coward engineer. Much like Chirico's Kummen squad they continually have small squabbles and other things going on, while at the same time ploughing through hordes of enemy AT's. It's hard to call most of them great characters, but they're all grounded soldiers with positive and negative traits, and they provide the noise to counteract Chirico's quiet demeanor as other supporting characters have done before.

What makes the show work is that unlike most of the other OVA's following the original Votoms, Pailsen files has a proper 12-episode run, twice as long as any other sequel or prequel. This allows time to firmly establish it's cast and give them some development, have a plot that steadily progresses without feeling rushed or cut short, and allows for several long setpiece battles that end up being more diverse and interesting than anything seen before in Votoms. This is also the only entry in the entire franchise where Chirico's past in the Gilgamesh military is truly explored, something I had personally found to be extremely lacking in earlier OVA's.


The CGI.
It's impossible to talk about the Pailsen Files without getting into this. While most of the presentation like sound and direction are extremely similar to Armored Trooper Votoms, the CGI AT's are not. And it's hard to make a real verdict on the quality on display when it has to be compared to a TV anime from the 80's. Votoms hasn't always had amazing animation, but the show did quite well by making sure it's action was usually quick-paced and involved a lot of explosions. The later OVA's did a decent job of improving the quality while maintaining the spirit, but there was little chance a franchise like votoms could avoid joining in on the CGI-era. Pailsen Files tries it's best, but it's hard not to be a little disappointed that some of the best action setpieces aged as badly as they did. Especially some of the early bullet effects are simply sub-par even for the time, and while the quality slightly improves as the show goes on, it's not enough. The one big plus of using CGI is that the show is more or less free to display as many AT's as it wants at any point in time, and as such manages to have even more of them on screen than was possible before.


Ultimately your enjoyment of Pailsen Files hinges entirely on how much the viewer cares about the details of Chirico's past and that of the Astragius galaxy and it's politics, as well as one's ability to look past the questionable CGI at the ideas behind it. Pailsen Files isn't the most necessary or the prettiest of the Votoms OVA's, but it's probably both the smartest one as well as the entry with the most creative battles, and that makes it more than worth checking out for fans of the original.

Disclaimer: I don't usually like this kind of manga all that much. I don't usually read it. Why did I read it? I was bored and there were only 20 chapters up or so.

Quick synopsis: Rinosuke's dad was kinda shitty and now he's also dead and kind of shitty. Somehow, he got hitched to a hot college student, Marina, when he hit 40, by being in college for some reason. They get married but he gets sick with little hope of recovery and Marina decides to do timetravel and meet his teenage self. Why does Marina travel to the teenager Rinosuke, ostensibly grieving over ... his father's death, and not a 20-something Rinosuke, you ask? Because statutory rape is awesome when it's woman on boy, that's why!

Story: It kinda sucks. At some points I thought it would become emotional, and granted, Rinosuke does go through a lot of personal change throughout the manga....but it's mostly how a teenage boy would change when an adult woman pretty much forces herself on him. He does come to accept the situation and even starts thinking how he can become a better guy for Marina...but that's mostly because she's hot and has giant boobs.

Art: It all looks fine. Except for Marina's smile. For some stupid reason they decide that the hot girl, who looks sorta nice most of the time, instead gets a single thin line for a mouth when she's smiling. During the "cute" shots, this means she looks like some sort of :D smiley. The rest is average. Oh, there's actual nudity (boobs only) because this is Seinen. For those of you who don't know: Seinen is Shonen but with actual boobs.....well, almost.

Characters: There's two. And a whole lot of cardboard. I chewed on cardboard once. It was nice.
Seriously though, Rinosuke grows a bit but he's just an annoying ass for the rest. He doesn't know how to get away from Marina when her sexual lust for him freaks the shit outta him (which it should), and he doesn't know how to get close to her once he realizes he's got a pretty sweet deal. The side characters barely appear and Marina is just sorta there. All the time. Her personality is boobs.

Overall: I didn't like it very much. Maybe you noticed that. Maybe it's that I'm not someone for pure ecchi series. Maybe I don't like slice of life that much. Maybe cause I don't want smileys as love interests? Honestly though, I'm not that harsh on stuff, but the ending makes it that much more annoying.

"And thus, the boy would become king." - Pretty much every episode's tagline

Arslan Senki is one of those anime that really needs to get a second season. Not because it's that great, but because it's source material basically forces it to. Apparently, the novel series (not light novels, mind you) is still running with 14 parts published. No matter how many seasons the anime gets, it won't be enough to completely adapt the books.

But does it work as an anime? In short: Yes, it's pretty good. It's flaws prevent it from being anything great but if you like this kind of story it'll be a ... good watch and you'll be left wondering where things go at the end.

Story: [8/10]
It should be pretty clear to everyone watching after just a few episodes just how much this is part of a larger work. A lot of time is spent on worldbuilding and directly and indirectly setting up characters and plotlines for later, or at least that's what i imagine certain small scenes and lines to be. Now, the plot is actually incredibly straightforward. If you've read the intro before watching the first episode you can more or less see most of what's coming the next few episodes for the rest of the season. But that's not neccessarily bad. It feels like a lot of the plot will go deeper as it continues, and almost none of the developments feel cheap or unrealistic. And that's where Arslan senki almost shines: it gives us a glimpse of how this world operates without being too nice about issues like war and slavery without getting stuck in the potential angst. Aside from that i enjoyed the pacing, everything keeps moving steadily without ever rushing or dwelling on an issue. A rarity as far as anime goes, and it helps to keep one interested in the developments.

I have to be somewhat harsher on the characters. All of them work, they're all well-written, and they serve clear purposes to the story. Yet I can't shake the idea that some of them received too little time to properly show their colours early on. A priestess shows up a few episodes in and she's clearly important among the supporting cast (as her character design shows), but there is far too little time spent on her personality and motivation. Her subsequent appearances are devoid of much meaning, the same way her cool scene in the semi-final episode is robbed of it's charm. Perhaps I should just say that she's the only character whose name I flat-out forgot and I don't even care. The main cast does get enough attention, especially Arslan, though it's clear he has a lot of room for growth left for another 13 novels or so. Oh well, he's 15, i can cut him a break.

Special note for the villains: they're all pretty great. The character designs help, but each of them has a clear personality, motivations, goals and means. The exception would be Kharlan's son, who seems to be thrown in there just to have Daryun fight someone strong, and apparently that has to be a named character.

Art: [7/10]
The characters designs will look familiar to anyone who has seen anything made by Hiromu Arakawa before (basically everyone who has seen FMA, so yeah, everyone), and that's a good thing as far as i'm concerned. The designs are great, the animation in the fight scenes is convincing while balancing on the edge of realism (anime-level) and exciting, and i really like the way Pars looks, it genuinely seems like a country with it's own culture and customs, and good art is vital for that. None of it is genius, but none of it is in any way bad.
Except for the CGI. In these kinds of stories, the big battles are supposed to be a bit of a treat for those who care about them (like me), in which we get to see a lot of budget get wasted on a lot of gorgeous drawings and animations of armies gloriously stabbing the hell out of each other. The CGI takes the edge off of that, which pretty much sucks bigtime. It's not horrible, the opening battle at Atropene still looks appropriately horrifying, but later on the feel of the armies is really kind of hollow.

Further remarks:
I can barely remember any of the music, which is both a good and a bad thing. I suppose i'll listen to it when the ost comes out, but for now i'm kind of disappointed that the epic story of Arslan becoming king and reconquering his country didn't have a few cool songs that i remember right after watching the (season) finale. The second OP was really great, but even that was mostly just the first 20 seconds. Still, it got me hyped for the episode every time i heard it.
I can't compare this anime to the OVA because I haven't seen the latter. Doubt I ever will, but with 20+ years between them I don't feel like it's a bad idea to remake a story, especially with the new art.

Verdict: [8/10]
Honestly, this show has a lot of things going against it. It has to cram a lot of characters into a short amount of time, deliver huge amounts of exposition, and end on a somewhat unsatisfying note in the hope of a sequel. Or ten. Still, the one thing I feel after finishing it: I want more. I want to know how the battles go from here. I want to know how Arslan deals with the hard issues, I want to see him grow more. I want to know how Silver Mask and the Lusitanians go from here, I want to see how the characters on the side develop, and how Arslan reacts to his parents. The anime's biggest flaw is how it's based on a huge series of novels. But maybe that's also one of it's greatest strengths.

"Trying to make sense of everything is an exercise in stupidity" - General Smilas, being completely right.

Code Geass returns after a few years with a spin-off, and the results are mostly disappointing. Trying desperately to stick to the successes of the original series, it simply is a weaker version in the every aspect.

-The story
Akito basically has everything code geass had: A tyraniccal nation (2 now), a bunch of terrorists, geass, racial shmuck and a bunch of teenagers changing a war. Sadly, it all seems forced. The EU, featured very little in the original series, has been revamped to look like a clone of britannia, with ... hardly any difference. Somehow, they're also completely racist, referring to the japanese as elevens, just as the britannians do, and lock them into compounds. Being an enemy of the empire, you'd imagine they would hail the japanese as allies, even if just to spite the britannians. The ploy of japanese soldiers fighting for the EU is fairly weak, as simply enlisting them into the army should work too, seeing as their homeland has been destroyed by Britannia. Then there's the issue of the age of the characters. This didn't make much more sense in the original, but at least a big part of the cast was not actually employed by an official government, or were there in the position due to polical heritage (kaguya and tianzi). There's many more issues, such as Napoleon being a revolutionary (he came right after) and the fact that a Britannian force decided to retreat at the moment there was only one remaining enemy unit standing. Utter stupidity seems to occur when the Britannians begin closely circling enemies which they know use self-destruct tactics.

-The characters
It really seems like they needed a Lelouch figure. Perhaps they were right, the fanbase is expecting it, but they really did make a character way too similar to him in Akito. Listing traits they share would make a long list, and the only great difference may be that Akito is a soldier, not a general. He seems to have inherited the same traits of perceived moral superiority that Lelouch has. The other characters are not very original either. Leila is probably the only Britannian born, Eleven leading, 17 year old luitenant commander you ever see in the EU army, and she's already established as a damsel in distress, due to her forced marriage. Speaking of her, what was up with the self-destructing Alexanders? She claimed that she should've removed Auno earlier, does that mean she could've prevented the (very effective) self-destruction? That would mean she didn't care too much about the pilots, but she later expresses regret about their deaths. All EU characters are either dumb or just plain evil, but we already knew the series would center on Japan and Britannia, regardless of the actual location, because Japanese entertainment only seems to acknowledge two countries as significant.

-The mecha
A small issue, but an important one: why do the alexander knightmares move faster than anything else in the entire original series? One of the strengths of CG season one was the viability of knightmares as tactical weapons, but these streetfighting robots just don't seem to fit into the universe's technology. While there's some resemblance to the lancelot, these are far more atlethic, aside from being mass-production units.

-Sound and art
Both are simply solid. The sound is consistent with the theme of the original series, but with a new flair. The art is mostly the same, but i personally don't enjoy the CG knightmares, but that's just a personal preference.

-Overall
It's just trying too hard to be similar to the original series, without offering anything new. We've seen all of it before, but with more depth. There's resemblances to the original series everywhere, but if the series will be able to offer anything new, we'll have to see.