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I really disliked this movie. I merely thought it was disappointingly mediocre when I finished it a few weeks ago, but the more I've thought about it, the worse it's become.

Coming from someone who loves some of the previous works of the author (Tatami Galaxy, Uchouten Kazoku), I was pretty stoked for this. A more recent movie, The Night is Young, Walk on Girl wasn't my favorite anime movie of all time, but it had some decent pieces that was really just hampered by Yuasa's over indulgence in his artistic ego. I felt like a different director this time could really bring this movie to ... life. And I love penguins; they're cute!

Instead what I got was an incoherent plot, a vapid non-story that preys off people's inability to properly distinguish between an aesthetic story and a lousy package masquerading as such. It envelops itself with cute penguin art and good animation that laughably fails to mask its mediocre story and characters. The other parts of the movie are pretty unremarkable so while I wouldn't rate it any worse for its soundtrack or ideas, they certainly didn't add anything substantive.

But honestly, the worst part about this film isn't the fact that its characters are just archetypal cut outs, poor renditions of some of Tomihiko Morimi's better works, or that it was needlessly long for how little of a story there was, or that I even lost my fondness for the penguins over the course of the movie. No, the worst part is that the movie is littered with a very feeble and perfunctory "on the fence" optimistic sheen about life and its circumstances, excessively abusing this veneer of optimism to give it more substance than it really has. It doesn't help at all that the ending is a spoon fed moment where everything is left to one's interpretation, as if the movie didn't already need massive suspensions of disbelief to pass as a good film.

This isn't a knock against movies that attempt to be optimistic, mind you. There are plenty of great anime with a positive, comfy, and encouraging perspectives. Penguin Highway is not one of them.

It's just bad.

On a ship headed for unknown destinations, cast against ethereal clouds and a violet sunrise, a raven haired beauty reads aloud. Her voice echoes with a mixture of sobriety and apathy. Behind its ostentatious opening and impressive spectacles, it is this somber tone that reveals Bounen no Xam'd's profound humanistic elements and its trust in the resilience of the human spirit.

For Xam'd, the destination is often as important as the journey itself. While its story begins in the independent civilian center, Sentan Island, Xam'd brings our characters to foreign lands and war ravaged towns, cities turned into industrial waste and forest of stone creatures. Even ... without explanation, Xam'd's imagery brings to mind a very visceral illustration of the world our characters traverse, and manages to build a mysterious but enthralling place often quite different from our own.

It is within this world that Xam'd has an incredibly compelling story to tell, rich between the lines, while sparing its audience needless explanation. Many fault the show for having little to no plot, but Xam'd is challenging, and confronts us with a story from the perspectives of characters who are either unwilling to reminisce on the past or have not been alive long enough to experience it. In many ways, Xam'd "of the Lost Memory" is quite literal in its description of the show's approach to the story, but that is not to say that Xam'd does not adequately explain the questions that arise throughout. The origins of the Hiruko, the history of aggression between the North and the South, racism and the exile of the Tessikan people, all coalesce not just to bring the world of Xam'd to life, but to craft a set of resonant ideas and themes.

The characters are likely what will stand out to most people. For one, the cast is rather large, but there is a great variety of interesting faces, many of whom get their fair share of attention and detail. While their pasts are not often fully explicated, there is a strong sense of realism to these people. Be it their struggles or aspirations, many of them are brought to life purely by how flawed they are as people. Whether it's being stuck in the past or unable to speak one's mind, these simple traits turn out to be rather complex and make for great interactions between each other. Even if the story of Xam'd does not catch one's attention, the drama between the characters feel real and organic and are worth it for that alone.

Include an atmospheric soundtrack and great visuals for its age, and Xam'd is a great recommendation for a tough but captivating science fantasy adventure. The show is, at times, incredibly ambitious with the story it sets out to tell, so much so that it's fair to fault it for reaching too much. However, for all its imperfections, the show is both a gripping drama and intricate in its lore.

If you browse /lit/, you should watch this anime. If not, you can still watch it and have fun. Most of the comedy and cute moments are pretty accessible. As a bonus, at least the yuri ship is still alive after the last episode. Take that Euphonium.

Bernard-jou Iwaku is a short comedy series featuring essentially a memetastic representation of the average reader on /lit/, the kind of person constantly asking for what books to read, how to read, what lists to consult, and whether completing the holy trinity will ever allow her to amount to anything, all while never summoning the motivation to finish the ... vast repository of literature that the show manages to fit into tiny three minute segments.

In many ways, it's quite likely that the mangaka for this show is a frequent visitor to /lit/. Some of /lit/'s most valued traditions, from degrading the literary merits of Haruki Murakami, to acting aloof from the intellectual depths of our favorite hermit, Thomas Pine Cone, to pretending that we read "some" of a top 100s list in order to hide the pathetic quantity of material we actually read this year, are featured in some form in the show. All we need now is some John Green, debates about translations, William Gaddis, and a book club trying to get through Zettels Traum and we'll basically have 2016 /lit/ in a nutshell.

To be kind of serious for a moment though, I think Bernard-jou speaks to more than just readers trying to get into the continentals. It's a sort of twelve episode celebration on reading (and not reading), one where I think everyone can identify with the obsessive science fiction fan, or the arduous task of finishing novels like Moby Dick or Remembrances of Things Past or feeling a bit smug about having read a book long before it was turned into a movie. Bernard-jou, in many ways, is both a cool little inside joke for ardent readers to feel good about the idiosyncrasies of their hobby, but it's also a cute and refreshing self-parody of the idea of reading and the small little ploys, habits, and tendencies that others see in readers that can make them seem ridiculous at times.

The show also boasts a rather wide list of books to read, most of which I would probably recommend. To be honest though, if you watch this show to get a list of recommended books, maybe you're already beyond help. Start with the Greeks instead.

10/10, I fell for the meme.

This might be one of the worst things I have ever watched.

Let's get two things out of the way. Undeniably, this video looks good. It's well drawn, well animated, and is certainly eye catching with its colorful visuals and impressively imaginative landscapes. As music, this is not something that's suited to me, but I can at least understand people who think that Porter's music is palatable to them.

My problem with this piece is not related to the audiovisuals but rather with the idea that this should be taken as a story or a music video that is trying to be something more than just ... Porter's music meshed with beautifully animated sequences. I understand that these criticisms are often held back by the difficulties of critiquing something that isn't overtly concerned with story, but in a piece so unabashedly attempting to draw sympathy, there's fair ground here to levy some serious concerns.

Shelter exemplifies everything that is wrong with storytelling in anime, namely that rather attempting to tell a real story developed with content and meaningful emotion, it takes the most abusive shortcut by designing a cute character, throwing her into a position of bittersweet melancholy, and using that as a means of manipulating our basest emotions into believing there is something meaningful and tragic to be said.

People are praising the emotional resonance in the story and its ability to bring out the loneliness lost in the profundity of memory. Yet, consider a world where the main character is not a beautiful teenage girl, lost and confused in a world completely foreign to her. When you remove that physical appearance that makes us so inexplicably attracted to her stake in the story, there is ultimately no reason for us to feel sympathy. It is completely superficial.

One might say that it's only a six minute short, but the fact that Shelter goes out of its way to show for a split second the main character's letter from her father, to invoke the community to spend time and read it on a second watch, tells me that there is a serious intent to manifest some semblance of a meaningful story. However, that is undermined precisely by the video's own neglect of that story. Much like many other anime designed purely for cheap tears and easy pity, we are given not substance, but rather a montage of a young innocent girl cherishing sweet memories with someone we barely meet.

Sure it can be cute, but that does not preclude it from being utterly trite. Shelter offends its audience by presenting us with its fascinating visuals, the ostensible undertones of a post-apocalyptic world, the perceived loneliness of being potentially the last human in the universe, but gives us nothing more than the lowest common denominator of a story, one that galvanizes its sympathies out of the most mundane and pathetic tricks in the book, and half-expects us to take it seriously. I cannot in good conscience, recommend this music video to anyone.

Note: Spoilers for Ergo Proxy. Written for people who have watched the show and want an analytical review. You have been warned.

An echo, a heartbeat pounding in the eye of the storm, Centzontotochtin sails over the earth, and the pulse of the awakening signals the beginning of the end.

Ergo Proxy aired over ten years ago and to this day remains an enigma to many. Its creative thought experiments and questions about our purpose in life have been just as mesmerizing as they have been easily dismissed. But whether it’s thoughtfully ambiguous or frustratingly obtuse, what’s consistent is Ergo Proxy’s mystique beneath its decrepit and artificial ... landscape, a captivating blend of the real and the surreal that reveals how easy it has become for us to mistake the double for the authentic.

Throughout, we are presented with illusions, smoke and mirrors, dream worlds, and nightmares, where reality and truth has been distorted by the agents of a lost civilization. Think of supple fingers curved in Shakespearean fashion or a bookstore of forgotten memories. As the Proxies roam their respective domed cities, searching endlessly to satisfy their raison d’etre, what tethers us to reality are Vincent and Re-L. They are equally confounded by the mysteries they confront in their quest for answers about the Proxies.

We are led to believe that outside the dilapidated dome cities and noxious caves, aboard Centzontotochtin in a vast swath of desert and frozen seas is the real world in the aftermath of some environmental catastrophe. Here is where Re-L spends her time logging her experiences, taking dutiful care of personal hygiene, and complaining about an upright toilet seat. It’s where Vincent and the AutoReiv companion Pino play in the snow and act unsuspectingly of the dangers ahead. Here, in the supposed real world, with nothing but dead landscape and a chilling wind on the horizon, is where our characters can introspect and consider the world as it is.

Yet, for all their artificial and mundane characteristics, the domes appear much closer to a tangible description of human reality. Be it Romdeau and its aristocratic bureaucracy, the empty residential fields populated by outdated AutoReivs still performing their quotidian responsibilities, or a commercial shopping mall home to a mad doppelganger, many of these domes symbolize and, more importantly, simulate some element of human culture. It is necessary to note that these are all images of what Earth used to look like, which systemically break apart without order. Still, these last vestiges of a biologically engineered society engender that moment in time; it precedes the reality of the outside world. The artificial, in other words, has become the real, and to the good citizens of Ergo Proxy, indistinguishable from reality. The outside world has become in, Jean Baudrillard’s words, “the desert of the real itself.”

In The Precession of a Simulacra, Baudrillard also references Jorge Luis Borges’s “On Exactitude in Science.” An empire, so attuned with the art of cartography, produces a map of exact size and scale of itself. Succeeding generations, less enthusiastic of the map, discards it to the west, where it now lays in tatters. In similar fashion, the Proxy Project begins with a mass engineering of a worldwide experiment, which recreates pockets of human civilization in its old image. Inevitably, however, the very creators of the domes, many of them unsatisfied or driven by madness and self-loathing, discard their own works, where they now decay against the harsh winds of the wasteland. And thus, much like Borges ingrains in our memory not the empire, but rather the bizarre and ruined map of its territory, the domes of Ergo Proxy in all their systemic imperfections occupy our understanding of the end of civilization. They are, quite literally, proxies for reality.

There are two things to draw from this interaction of the real and the double. The first is to see how Ergo Proxy merges conceptions of dreams and reality to one meaningful abstraction. The second is to see how this relationship drives the show’s search for purpose and existence.

There is a pervasive motif about dreams or dreamlike sequences, where characters are ensnared by a Proxy’s powers. Many of the dreams feel real, and their contents often translate to the real world, as seen by the books in Anamnesis aboard the Centzontotochtin and the dome holding the animated characters from Pino’s dream. On one hand, Ergo Proxy uses these dreams to elucidate the consciousness of the characters. For Vincent, it’s his ontological question of who he is and if he exists in the world. For Pino, it’s whether she possesses a soul and a capacity for morality. For Re-L, it’s her timidity to approach the truth, in fear that it will upset the balance of her orderly existence.

On the other hand, these sequences attempt to break down the characters’ tenuous relationship with reality. The experiences of their dreams can overcome the experiences of the real. Vincent’s admission of his identity as a Proxy is only cemented after his ethereal travels through the misty City Lights Bookstore. Pino’s intuition from her dream overrides her companions’ needs to stop for supplies. In both cases, these dreams, initiated by Proxies, have merged the surreal with the real to become a new sort of reality. Many within the world of the Ergo Proxy do not see any meaningful distinction between reality and a simulation of it precisely because the two have become one.

An exception to this is Re-L, who identifies her own dream as such. In Ophelia, Vincent is in a seemingly never ending cycle with a Proxy taking on every appearance but its own. Vincent is grateful that in the end, Re-L is capable of telling apart the impostor from himself. However, he quickly discovers that Re-L manages to differentiate Vincent from his double because she identifies that the impostor does not possess a shadow. For Vincent, however, this lack of distinction highlights his inability to come to terms with his identity. This slippery grasp of reality is a central conflict in Vincent's mind and is culminated in the final dream of the series, where Vincent is able to identify a fake world from the real, thus confirming his existence and place on Earth.

This dynamic between the bizarre and the normal, the dream and the real, and how they merge and separate is what gives Ergo Proxy’s search for a raison d’etre such a powerful poignancy. The reason is because inevitably we discover each of our main characters are themselves doubles of an original. Vincent and Re-L are copies of Proxy One and Monad, respectively. Pino is an alternative for a child. In addition, all three are failures of their original intention. Vincent never lives up to his potential as a model citizen, Re-L rejects the boring order of her grandfather’s city and is cast aside for another clone of herself, while Pino is replaced by a newborn child.

Even so, each character transcends his or her original place and assumes an agency over their own destinies, which allows them to overcome the destruction of Romdeau. They reject the artificiality of the order, and in doing so, also reject the simulated reality forced upon them thousands of years ago, when the desert of the real first came into being.

It is therefore fitting that those who survive to face the progenitors of Old Earth are dysfunctional copies, never meant to survive in the original system of waste and good citizenry. In a world completely artificial, here we have three souls: an amnesiac, a clone of a goddess, and an orphaned child, all of whom abandon their original duties to discover their reason for existence.

The word ergo is Latin for “therefore,” while proxy refers to one who may stand to represent something. As the dark clouds recede from the heavens, and the light of a never before seen sun scorches Daedaelus’s crafted wings, Vincent Law looks up and remarks that “this is the world that faces us, a world called ‘reality.'” He declares himself Ergo Proxy, an Agent of Death, and therefore, a representative for a new humanity.

Angel's Egg, or Tenshi no Tamago, sits at the forefront of a list of bizarre and eccentric anime that includes Cat Soup and Iblard Jikan, while its niche but most enthused audience promises that its complex allegory is as beautiful and philosophical as the most serious of art-house films. Directed by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Jin-Roh, Patlabor, Sky Crawlers), Angel's Egg is perhaps Oshii's most personal and best work. However, as interesting and surreal as it is, beneath its murky surface Angel's Egg suffers from classical problems in Oshii's stories. Past the compelling mystical, spiritual, and psychological nature of the work, there is ... missing a profundity and artistry that keeps Angel's Egg from being anything more than a small sample at a Michelin star restaurant; it is rich and possesses depth of flavor, but leaves an empty feeling in the stomach and a hunger for something more.

From the start, Angel's Egg is not the most approachable work. In line with other minimalist anime like Serial Experiments Lain and to a lesser extent Texhnolyze, the film sacrifices dialogue and characterization in favor of atmosphere and visual storytelling. The very beginning of the story features a set of hands that move in near absolute silence. It is only when the childlike fingers transform into a pair of brown and calloused hands and we see and hear the knuckles clench and crack that we realize that the work was indeed intended to start without a sound. Lovers of action packed sequences and fleshed out characters will probably find themselves moaning at long drawn out walks and a pair of individuals who seem to be nothing more than the reflection of certain theological beliefs. Even those who can stand slow paced material might be confounded at scenes that, if not for the flickering of the flames, seem like stills that stretch on forever.

Despite its sluggish pace, Oshii comforts us with a wide array of intriguing and fascinating visuals to pass the time. One of Angel's Egg's strengths is its good looking art and Shinji Kimura(Akira, My Neighbor Totoro), who was responsible for the backgrounds, has drawn some really wonderful images that build a haunting atmosphere almost by themselves. The first descent of a large eye from a blood red sky has a rather sublime quality to it, especially when one realizes that its black surface is lined with a seemingly limitless number of ancient Greco-Roman figurines, stretching around a glimmering aquamarine center that gives the iris its luminescent and imposing appearance.

One could complain that the color palette of the anime seems a bit one dimensional even despite its beguiling visuals, as given by the dominating prevalence of different gradients of blue in the drawings. However, it's the use of colors in this fashion that highlights some of Oshii's control of visual storytelling. The use of blue, for instance, reflects the never ending motif of water, the melancholy, cold, and even lifelessness associated with the color, and the inevitable contrasts that appear in different points in the work demonstrates how one can change the impression and tone of a story with simple alterations. The girl in the story, clothed in pink and white, stands foreign in a dilapidated world, and it is by no means a coincidence that the one she travels with is draped with a blue cloak.

From the strange duck-like creatures that inhabit mysterious translucent shells to the foreboding appearance of a gloomy forest to the stoic and morose appearance of the city's fisherman, Angel's Egg possesses a number of great visual moments that unnerves us with their creepy yet alluring presence. From that perspective, these surreal moments may be reason enough to watch this anime.

In addition, Yoshihiro Kanno, whose only anime compositions have been with Angel's Egg, provides just the right balance of spiritual and ambient music that complements the uncanny images that we are confronted with. The lamenting chorus featured during the opening title echoes the scene's mourning and longing while the powerful and sharp notes of bass instruments complemented by booming timpani strike with the same intensity of fisherman hurling their long harpoons at the shadows of fish. The rarity of the music is another strength, as silence leaves us pondering the calm before the storm, piecing together fragments of the puzzle while the entrance of music causes us to briefly forget our speculation and draws us in and surrounds us with the intensity of the moments in which it appears. With both art and sound elements, I was surprised to find that I was rarely bored when trying to uncover what Oshii meant when he gave birth to the anime.

Oshii seems to have made this anime as a meditation on faith, one that eventually leads his audience to understand a supposed rejection of the deity he had worshiped for years. Oshii was trained in the priesthood from a young age and would presumably have pursued the life of a Christian priest had events in his life lined up in a different way. It would be foolish, therefore, to ignore the popular and purposeful religious symbols and allegories that exist throughout the film. Oshii's main influences draw from Noah's ark, but The New Testament is also featured prominently in different areas.

Oshii builds a world that is, ultimately, divorced from known biblical history, which is thematically consistent with his intention of slowly renouncing some of his theological foundations to embrace a new calling. The decisions made by the man are perplexing and leaves the audience wondering whether or not Oshii intended him to be a mirror of his own self-doubt about the existence of the deity and if this man fell on the side of moral good or not. There are numerous other questions as to the nature of the tree that the man describes, the man's perplexing motivations, the girl's final transformation. Most importantly, what great beast from within that egg is just waiting, waiting ever so patiently, to be born?

These questions are interesting and many answers can be found by evidence in the story, some answers stronger than others. Surprisingly, while some may be absolutely flabbergasted by some of Oshii's more esoteric and bewildering works (Mezame no Hakobune), Oshii definitely has certain thematic messages and a story that he means to drive home here. The plethora of interpretations that one can draw from various significant imagery, such as the tree, the fossilized angel, and the egg itself are plenty, but there is still a certain consistency and wholeness to the work that leaves us with a story that is, at the final moments, a complete experience. There is indeed a point to Oshii's work, one where a society rejects God, and God, perhaps acting according to Oshii's hopes and idealism, departs without a single word.

In despite of this praise, what is wrong with Angel's Egg? The anime has good visuals, complementary music, and even if its characters are mere belief systems personified, Oshii has provided us interesting themes that presents itself through a complex and subtle story.

Angel's Egg spends a significant amount of time building up to a critical climax, but before Oshii can deliver the final blow, he adds in the longest monologue in the film, where the man narrates the story of Noah's ark, with a twist to the ending, to the audience. This is a point of clarity that is not only unneeded, but ruins the subtlety that the work was building on. Whether it was from the times the ark was shown on screen or the overwhelming importance of water, one could have come to the reasonable conclusion that the story of Noah's ark was an important element. While it is certainly true that the man's story departs from the biblical event, telling the entire story diminishes the effort that Oshii made throughout the film to reveal bits and pieces of the world around him. At best, this was just a needless monologue that explained what the audience knew, and at worst it ruined the finer points of the story, reducing them to mere unnecessary components because all you needed to know about the world in Angel's Egg was to listen to that single monologue.

I will admit that such criticism is perhaps harsh and even elitist to those who may have not easily picked up on the religious allegory, but I think such criticism reveals something even more fundamentally wrong with Angel's Egg that prevents me from bestowing it higher marks. Make no mistake, Angel's Egg is a fine work for what it is, but ultimately the themes and the artistic execution of those themes are at a level rather average compared to works that have dealt with the same issues, which is why explaining such a simple biblical story when the rest of the work had already been suggesting its relevance hurts the work as a whole. It reduces the work to its simplest conclusions.

Oshii is tackling a work where a man and society is rejecting the deity, but outside of the fact that we understand that the man is intent on doing so, there is very little reason why. Are we to assume that this desolate world is the only reason, that he rejects God because of the destruction wrought upon this desolate blue metropolis? I don't think we, as an audience, can easily extrapolate and give Oshii that benefit of the doubt. Does the man lack faith? Perhaps, as his allegory so conveniently mentions, but not only does the scene provide nothing but the ordinary laments and complaints that underline the most common and prolific of atheistic complaints (the prolonged absence of God, the existence of worldly suffering, all of which can be poignant points were they to be expanded in a beautiful way), it is, once again, a scene that is bereft of any subtlety and complexity. There is little poetic language, little visual storytelling, and little insight. It is merely a word for word retelling of a biblical story with a minute presence of creative liberties. Again, we return to the monologue that I have criticized above, and again, its blatant exposition leaves me with the need for more substance.

The girl's representation is also incredibly simplistic. Her potbellied appearance with the egg underneath her dress attests to a pregnancy, which gives us the idea of a birth of a new life. There's an astonishing innocence to her, giving us the idea that this is a virgin birth, and harks us back to imagery of the Virgin Mary. But she is nothing more than a vehicle of blind faith. Perhaps it is Oshii's intention of exposing the ignorance of her position, by demonstrating her selfishness by holding onto the egg for her own devices, but this is once again, such a simplified perspective that despite its rich simplicity, the anime's unsubtle treatment of issues leaves one who has engaged in works of similar theological questions wishing for something much more substantive. The death of childish innocence is by no means a grand and unexplored message, and when the anime does nearly nothing with it, it once again leaves one questioning what substance does the anime really have to offer?

Perhaps it is in that simplification that Oshii believes he has developed something beautiful, and certainly those who see the beauty of Angel's Egg will speak to the pleasantness of such a simple story that sits above a sea of allegories, but an issue as complex as one's detachment from a life of religion is rarely a simple affair, and while I cherish a simple story as much as others, Angel's Egg is constantly evoking something that is more than simple and half-boiled ideas but we are left with nothing but a rather simple and soft-boiled egg. Its allegories and mysteries are difficult to piece together, but that is because of Oshii's obtuseness and not because the concepts in which he is trying to expound are intrinsically complex.

This is not to say that Oshii's themes are bad or unworthy of merit. There's certainly something to glean from the work, but a simple message that sits behind purposeful obfuscation are not the winning formulas of a masterpiece, and I can give Angel's Egg nothing more than the appropriate score to reflect that.

To leave this on a note that isn't too critical, I will say that despite my last few hundred words of criticism, Angel's Egg is still one of the better anime out there. It's the one work from Mamoru Oshii that I've actually enjoyed, and despite its simple conclusions, the work itself is still interesting enough that it's fun to figure out exactly what Oshii is saying. If you're into challenging narratives, minimalist anime and want to see one of Mamoru Oshii's underwatched works, definitely give Angel's Egg a try.

Mushishi meets Alice in Wonderland, is what I would probably simplify this story to. A very intriguing supernatural webtoon that kind of defies one’s expectations when reading the first chapter or so. I’m surprised this hasn’t gotten more reviews. I think it’s a great story with a few bumps here and there.

The story is about a gardener, Ajussi, who one day after a mass fire in his home (which is blossoming with all types of interesting fauna), is rendered unconscious and blind in a nearby hospital. While his niece looks after him, Ajussis’s consciousness is whisked away to a strange magical forest, where he is ... told by a young woman that he needs to escape from the clutches of Mua, who controls this place known as the hill.

What follows is a very action packed adventure as we discover the origins of this world, about the origins of the fire in Ajussi’s home, and the characters that reside in the hill. The story itself was really enjoyable, balancing itself really well with its pacing. The author sprinkled plenty of action in the story to keep the readers excited about the world, and he also added in a lot of very wonderful details about the hill that would later become very important in the later chapters. The suspense and drama are also used very well, and despite its relatively simple story line, I think the world in which the story resides is what it makes it special.

One bit of criticism is I thought the ending was a bit confusing. I think one thing that I see often is at the end of manga/manhwa there are often just a lot of images without many words or dialogue, and there are just some lingering questions that are kind of open to interpretation that could have been presented better without adding a layer of confusion.

The characters in the story are not particularly fleshed out, but everyone serves their purpose and there’s a sense of likability to almost all the characters. Ajussi is obviously the protagonist and while he doesn’t really exhibit much of a personality, his loneliness, love of nature, and just his character design makes him a character the reader can latch onto and understand his perspective.

There are a few other side characters too, but I think this is where the story gets a bit weak. For me, it was easy to sympathize and tag along with the characters but from a storytelling perspective there wasn’t all too many things interesting about them. There are a few characters who would be interesting, but unfortunately they end up not getting a lot of screen time. The back story of these characters are a bit weak, and Ajussi really is the only one that gets a bit more attention, and even he is not as fleshed out as I’d like him to be.

What’s more satisfying is how these characters end up playing a role in the ending of the story. The young woman, Ro, who warns Ajussi about Mua plays a very heart wrenching part as she desperately tries to save this man whose presence in the hill is her fault. Mua, the antagonist of the series, also has a few important moments, but again, I would’ve liked to see more from them.

Finally, the art. I’m not an art expert, but I think the style in which they drew the world of the hill and the characters was really interesting. Webtoons, unlike most manga, are usually in color, so that’s a plus side already, especially since the lush colors that are used throughout the manhwa complement very well with the forest. It’s a byproduct of such good imagination from the author, but the art really carries through a very visceral vision of the hill. Action scenes are drawn with clarity and it’s easy to understand what’s happening, and some of the more expository or beautiful drawings are pretty cool to look at as well.

Overall, I’d recommend this manhwa to anyone looking for a fun action packed adventure with a preference for the supernatural. It’s a fun short story that shouldn’t take too long to read, and I think it’s worth it.

“What are little boys made of? Frogs and snails, and puppy dogs’ tails. That’s what little boys are made of.”

The third movement of Debussy’s Bergasmasque Suite plays softly in the background as a strong gust blows hundreds of cherry blossoms in the night sky. It’s a fitting piece not only for setting such a tranquil mood, but also referencing Paul Verdaine’s poem, Clair de Lune, whose first stanza is a decently fitting representation of what may be one of the most beautifully written slice of life anime out there.

“Your soul is a chosen landscape
Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go
Playing the lute and dancing and ... almost
Sad beneath their fanciful disguises.”

Story – 9/10

Hourou Musuko is a story about Shuiichi Nitori, a boy who wants to be a girl, Yoshino Takatsuki, a girl who wants to be a boy, and a cast consisting of their friends and acquaintances as they navigate through the issues of puberty, transsexuality, and gender identity.

I usually state in my reviews that the anime in question has a simple premise, but Hourou Musuko’s is anything but that. The issues that the show tackles are complex and filled with varying perspectives and challenges. The show doesn’t sugar coat the current state of people’s views of the transgender community. Yes, there are many who understand one’s plight and predicament, but often times, he or she may be almost entirely alone, forced to don a set of clothes that may not echo with their true identity, and changing clothes when nobody is looking to feel more like themselves. There are characters in this story that aren’t very accepting, or uncomfortable, or have strange fetishes that just make things worse, or are confused and externalize their confusion into near bullying. There are many people, even friends, family, and loved ones, who are certainly not ready to accept Nitori for the person he wants to be. Hourou Musuko doesn’t offer a perfect world for our protagonists to live in and be happy. It’s a confusing and trying time, with just the right amount of help from great role models to push our protagonists towards understanding themselves and the growth they’re experiencing.

In this sense, it was brilliant to tackle them from the perspectives of children, who are not only innocent, but easily influenced, confused, and prone to unpredictable outbreaks of emotion and anger. I felt like such an angle gave a lot more depth, with the perspectives of children and their older peers and adults on Nitori’s cross dressing a major motif in the story. The story’s most powerful message is of personal acceptance and coming to terms with one’s identity and physical changes that are taking place in one’s body. I truly believe that taking the perspective of kids empowered this message, as it removes any potential fluff in high school dramas while pinpointing the most confusing time for some of us all: the beginning of puberty.


Characters – 9/10

I would imagine it’s really hard to write children, and as we’ve seen from many movies revolving around children (most recently the disaster known as Ender’s Game), children can really suck if not done right.

Hourou Musuko has no such problems, and while I have to fault them for having some children (predominantly Chiba Saori, ironically one of my favorite characters) that act way older than they really appear, at the end of the day Hourou Musuko is powered by a really strong cast of characters that each fit their own role in their story, no matter how small it is. It’s really refreshing to see a cast that’s so varied and each serving a variety of important purposes and aren’t just lifeless plot devices.

Nitori’s best friend Mako is a fantastic foil character, bordering on the line of supporting his friend and envying him. The bombastic and tomboyish Sarashina serve as surprisingly good comic relief and sort of early role model for Tataksuki, who is interested in wearing more boyish clothes. The little girl Sasa is a mediator, trying to keep her friends together despite various conflicts, and she might be one of the characters a good portion of the audience might sympathize with. There are too many others for me to cover, but for such a short show, Hourou Musuko gives life to these characters and give them purpose, though it could be said that they needed to be a bit more fleshed out.

But it’s the three main characters, Nitori, Takatsuki, and Chiba Saori that get the most amount of development, and I think the three of them played such an interesting dynamic. I think Nitori and Takatsuki speak for themselves as the show’s two main protagonists, but Saori is definitely one of the more complex characters in the show, and she played kind of an antagonistic role, always causing problems for her own selfish needs. She’s blunt, and despite her brutal honesty to other people about her opinions she is least honest to herself. Her inability to externalize some of her deeper feelings and get along with people meshed her romantic feelings made her likable despite how mean she was to everyone else.

All in all, Hourou Musuko has great characters, and I think despite the fact that many may act over their age level, I think that’s a small and irrelevant point in the long run. While it’s true that children should be portrayed realistically, the end goal is the thematic elements that are what makes the show really powerful. To that extent, the children are portrayed realistically. They may have lines that hint at more deep thought, but it’s their quirks, confusion with feelings of love, innocence and inability to process between what is socially acceptable and what is not, and unpredictability that makes them children.

Art – 9/10

Hourou Musuko is a really good looking show, and it’s unique too. I must admit that the watercolor-ish look at the beginning seemed a bit too bright for me, but it really grew as the show went on. The character designs are also nice. I thought both Nitori and Takatsuki were drawn really well to demonstrate that they could look both like a boy or a girl. I think they changed Saori from her original appearance in the manga, but I think that only strengthened her presence in the show.

Other than that, there’s nothing particularly spectacular about the animation. The art is where the main compliments are had, and ultimately the show is less about animation as it is about the writing, but I do think their use of facial expressions were really spot on. You could really tell people’s attitude from how they were drawn, the look in their eyes, their smile or apathetic frown. I thought that attention to detail was really important.

Music – 8/10

I’m not particularly impressed by most of Hourou Musuko’s music, but I think that was intended since it was a kind of quiet piece that really didn’t have a need for any kind of outstanding score. The soundtrack was mostly very forgettable outside of three pieces, which was their rendition of Clair de Lune, the opening, and the ending songs.

The songs are composed mostly of a piano and a guitar, and I think that those make for quiet and peaceful tracks. They have melodies but are mostly unimpressive compared to the quality of everything else.

Enjoyment – 9/10

I had a great time watching Hourou Musuko. I haven’t watched too much school based slice of life/drama/comedy (more than most people though), but Hourou Musuko takes the cake for the best and most powerful school/drama anime I have ever watched. Its messages are powerful, thought provoking, and long lasting. This is an instant recommendation to a lot of my friends who are looking for good slice of life, and all of my transgender friends have cried and have sung only praises for such a realistic portrayal of the struggles of the TG community.

The characters in this show, while I may not directly relate to, are very interesting and multilayered. They all have their own qualities and I’m sure many will be bound to find at least one character to really like and look forward to seeing. The show has a great balance of comedy and drama too, without forcing melodramatic scenes down our throats at all. The writing and dialogue was great and demonstrated a mastery of narrative and storytelling. Sometimes Hourou Musuko even read almost like a poem, with beautiful passages short and expressive.

So, as the ending of this show came around, and the sound of applause began to echo in my ears, I could only clap along with everyone else. This seems like an overlooked gem in the anime community, and I sincerely hope you take my words and give this show a chance. I can only imagine which expression you may relate with when those final curtains rise on this magnificent performance.

I’ve been meaning to describe my experience with Texhnolyze since I last rewatched it, but just like the ending to the show I found myself a bit lost for words and a little empty inside. I’ve since found that it’s very easy to write about things I don’t like in anime, but it’s difficult for me to give praise to fantastic shows in a way that gives them the respect they deserve.

Story - 10/10

Texhnolyze's story stands out because of the power of its narrative. The story of the Texhnolyzed Ichise is not one that progresses very rapidly, but the complexities of the world of Lux ... and its counterparts, the inhabitants and their allegiances, as well as the external forces that bring change to the city are all dealt with in full length, providing the viewer by the end of the show a wide and deep understanding of the world of Texhnolyze.

That being said, Texhnolyze shows way more than it tells, and while it's minimalist dialogue and slow pacing may be a turn off to viewers who were expecting fast action based off of the opening, to me it's a great change of pace and very fitting for the dark material that it covers.

As a result, Texhnolyze doesn't spoon feed you information, but instead tries to convey its story more stylistically through the use of different colors, drawings, scene construction, character expressions, and symbolism. And I think it does very well. The show is multi-layered, with religious, artistic, and literary references that enhances the show's already powerful messages but not so overwhelming that you're lost in an incomprehensible mess.

The themes of Texhnolyze are also thought provoking. From traditional cyber punk themes of the fusion of man and machine and the negative impacts of technology or post apocalyptic messages ranging from the fall of man to the meaningless of life, Texhnolyze gives the viewer a lot to think about when the credits rolls at the end, and it leaves up a lot to interpretation to the point where as dark as it is, Texhnolyze still offers a bit of hope at the end of the tunnel.

Art - 9/10

The art of Texhnolyze really does deserve a ten, and my giving it a nine is more of a personal snicker than anything else. The show's set pieces are very fitting for its content. There are few shows where the expression of a character's face or a camera angle or the depiction of certain buildings adds value and importance to the story. Whether it's the haunting perspective of Ichise where his view is now covered with details about his new robotic limbs or the apathetic expression from the show's deadly instigator, Texhnolyze offers up a lot of fine detail to analyze.

Texhnolyze manages to do that and more. While the majority of Lux is bound in grey and other colors that have been shaded with darker hues, the use of lighting is used very effectively when it comes to important and critical scenes or used thematically as a means of splitting characters in light or dark. In short, Texhnolyze uses all forms of visual storytelling to improve upon its already powerful story.

My only gripe with the show is that its cover art is kind of misleading. Ichise, Ran, Onishi, and Motoharu, some of the main characters in the story, are nowhere near as sexy (and for Ran...well she's still kind of cute) as they are in the cover art. Which made me sad. :(

Sound - 10/10

The opening and ending of the show are really interesting and I think they kind of set the pace for the show in a very noticeable way too, getting our bloods pumping by the beginning of the show and then gradually calming us down by the end with a peaceful melody by Gackt. Juno Reactor's Guardian Angel is splendid and I can't think of any better way to have opened the anime.

Its soundtrack is also a diverse mix of slow piano pieces, guitar solos, fast more trance/techno beats, and even the occasional rap. One wonders when listening to Texhnolyze's soundtracks how such a violent and depressing anime could have uplifting tracks, and I think that's one of the qualities of Texhnolyze.

But beyond the sounds, one must realize that Texhnolyze is still a very sensory experience. Just like how the art was used in a way to highlight characters, sound is used pretty extensively as a means of conveying the narrative. The ragged breaths of Ichise as his anger rises up and down, the soft sound of footsteps at a suspenseful moment, the sound of trains, gunfire , shifting of the legs, all these sounds are amplified and brought out in a way that creates such an intense atmosphere that wouldn't have existed with such good sound editing.

Character - 10/10

The characters in Texhnolyze are deeply flawed, but that's all part of their charm. I've heard many people say that they couldn't get emotionally attached to these characters, and while I disagree, I think that's still missing the point.

I'm not a big fan of the phrase "I'm in this show for the characters" because that implies an attachment to certain characters than a show might or might not really need to succeed. There are plenty fans of Eva who find characters like Shinji or Asuka or Rei revolting and still love the show for what it is. The same can be said with a show like Ergo Proxy (and that's not the only thing asinine about that show).

I happened to love the characters but even so, Texhnolyze offers up very human characters that all have plenty of development and screen time. We understand their motives, their philosophies, and they all add something important to the narrative. Whether it's Doc and her attempts at bridging the world of man and machine or Onishi with his steadfast sanity that kept the city from falling into utter chaos or Yoshii with an apathy that I have never seen since reading The Stranger, all of these characters have great characterization.

Enjoyment - 10/10

Texhnolyze is not a show for everyone. It's violent, slow, and almost downright depressing. It's also not a show where people just sit down and expect a fun experience. It's thought provoking and tries to create a narrative that's multi-layered and deep, and it definitely succeeds. It just happens to frighten away a good proportion of the anime fanbase in the process.

I personally thought that Texhnolyze was an intensely enjoyable experience. Every episode was filled with such great world building, characterization, atmosphere, and sometimes even action to admire and think about. I left every episode thinking about something new, and Texhnolyze was enough of an interesting take on cyberpunk that I would say that I came out kind of enlightened and thought about the genre in a different light.

The fact that a lot of the show was up to interpretation was also interesting. Plenty of friends cite how bleak it is, but I happen to think Texhnolyze has some uplifting moments. It offers up that mankind, even down in its darkest moments, is constantly fighting for survival, to live, to find one's meaning in life. It offers that while technology may be a bane on existence, perhaps there's something else there, that it helps us forge bonds or become more human than we were. Texhnolyze has these kinds of themes and messages for us, lying in wait. One just has to look for them to understand and enjoy what the show has to offer.

Overall, Texhnolyze is easily one of the best, if not the best, anime I have ever seen. I think I've found the words I've been meaning to say for a long time.

Texhnolyze is not for everyone, but if one is an anime fan, I highly recommend you give it a shot.