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For a long time I'd thought the importance of the original Gundam anime Mobile Suit Gundam was mainly due to its founding of the Real Robot genre as well the huge, sprawling Gundam franchise that's still going strong today. Having actually sat down and watched the show though, I realised that I seriously underestimated the influence of this seminal series: not only did it make its mark in anime history, many of its ideas remain relevant to this day.

It always seemed a little strange to me how Gundam series often recycle the same elements over and over. What became obvious once I started Mobile Suit ... Gundam was how these traditions were inherited directly from the original series. Even the opening shot was a spine-tinglingly iconic one, with the sun peeking out behind Earth and the sunlight tracing a circle around the outline of the planet. The backstory exposition immediately introduces a few other familiar elements, including the war between the Earth faction and the space colony faction with a name beginning with Z - in this case Zeon - and their infamous cyclops mech designs, as well as the notorious colony drop event, which I was surprised to see occurred only in the backstory and not the main one.

The original Gundam series begins in the middle of the war, during a lull in the action. It doesn't take long to see this lull broken, as Zeon forces led by Char Aznable, the original blond, masked maverick (whose doppelgangers are a staple of later Gundam series), finds a newly deployed Federation warship White Base picking up a batch of secretly developed weapons from a space colony. One of these weapons happen to be … drum roll please … the mobile suit (aka robot) Gundam. The action ramps up quickly as Zeon attacks the colony, and 15-year old prodigy Amuro Ray gets caught up in the conflict and ends up piloting the Gundam against Zeon forces as White Base tries to escape the colony, salvaging what they could of the newly developed weaponry.

Mobile Suit Gundam impressed me immediately with its watchability. For a show hailing from the 70s, just about the worst you can say about its production values is how amusingly dated its opening theme is. Having struggled through other 70s shows like Space Battleship Yamato, I was relieved to discover this 40+ episode series would not require nearly the amount of effort to sit through.

The early episodes consisted of mostly military tactics/action fare, and showcased some impressive battles despite the clearly limited animation budget. I found myself more engrossed in these primitively animated battles than many modern, better animated action sequences, which made me realise that well thought through tactics and clean choreography often trumps flashy, fast paced animation. One of the things that stands out about the battles is the importance of ammunition and energy: someone is always running out of one or the other, often changing the course of battle. These kind of detail clearly establish Mobile Suit Gundam as a new breed of mecha show - these are not super robots in action with their seemingly infinite supply of Thunderclap Groin Rockets and whatnot.

The highlights of the early battles are the repeated run-ins between Char and Amuro. The clash of styles keeps the contest interesting: one is an experienced, supremely talented mecha pilot; the other is a rookie with deep potential piloting a mecha with vastly superior technology. Another reason why these encounters are so enjoyable is due to Char himself. He instantly comes across as an anti-villain with a fascinating personality and bundles of charisma. What's more, his complex relationship with other Zeon commanders adds a layer of political intrigue to the proceedings. No wonder his is the only name I'd heard of prior to watching this show.

Beyond the tactical elements, the early story plays out as a bunch of rookies getting to grips with a powerful but unfamiliar space ship while engaging in continuous skirmishes with Zeon forces. It reminds me of the early episodes of a certain show called Macross (you may have heard of it) that aired several years later. This shouldn't come as a surprise though, when you learn that several of the creative minds behind Macross graduated from the same Gundam fan club in university.

The second part of Mobile Suit Gundam takes place on Earth. This stretch lasts for a while, and it certainly feels like it too; they exhibit both the strongest and the weakest aspects of the series. On the plus side, there's some impressive character developments, with Kai's growth from a selfish shithead to a sympathetic character elevating him as an unexpected highlight of the series. In addition, there's more meat to the story, which showcases an astonishing number of ideas which would resurface and be further explored in later anime. Certain political and aesthetic elements would return in force in Legend of the Galactic Heroes (you may have heard of this too), and, perhaps more significantly and certainly more obviously, the mini storyline that illustrates the toll war exacts on a child civilian soldier germinated an idea that, well over a decade later, would grow and form the backbone of a little series called Neon Genesis Evangeleon (you probably hear-- nah, this is one series you probably haven't heard of).

To give Mobile Suit Gundam its due, some of its ideas were executed with surprising amount of nuance and emotional weight, making for compelling viewing even today. But as often is the case with early pioneers, at least as many ideas had too many rough edges. What made things worse was that, as much as Mobile Suit Gundam broke away from the super robot genre, it couldn't do so completely. Despite the attempted serialised storytelling, the series rarely thinks about more than two episodes at a time. As a result, romantic subplots would surface then get forgotten; minor characters get introduced and killed off within a couple of episodes like clockwork; side stories and ideas mostly resolves within the same time frame, even the more complex ones desperately in need of fleshing out. On top of this, the format of the episodes are rigid, and after a while the obligatory battle of the week begins to resemble the monster-of-the-week format so omnipresent in the show's super robot predecessors.

Hampered by the short-termism of the writing and the pseudo-episodic format, the series soon began to drag, in spite of the semi-regular short bursts of quality. Even the initially thoughtful military engagements peter out into mostly paint-by-numbers affairs thanks to the sheer number of battles exhausting the limited supply of good ideas. In addition, due to the children's toy tie in (unsuitable though it may be considering the content of the show), the show regularly gets hijacked by toy manufacturers keen to sell merch, so we're inundated with Gundam specs and battle configurations that aren't detailed enough to satisfy those (like me) who enjoy getting into the nitty gritty details of combat, but at the same time more than enough to bore those who don't care about such things.

The show also suffers from other flaws symptomatic of the times. For instance the comic relief kids, looking like they came from an entirely different type of show, whose greatest contributions were that of annoyance - and as a parent of a toddler going through the terrible twos phase at the time of watching I don't say this lightly. Then there's the smattering of casual 70s sexism which jars especially when placed next to the strong roles given to the female characters who aren't just damsels in distress. A few years later, Macross would take the strong women characterisations further, but here we're very much in the early stages of these ideas.

As the Mobile Suit Gundam limps into the final stretch with a return back to space, it gets an injection of renewed energy, and the meandering overarching plot appears to suddenly rediscover a sense of purpose. Unfortunately this is counterbalanced by a palpable shift for the direction of the plot. If it feels like the story's been redone, that's probably because it had: series creator Yoshiki Tomino's original story draft differed dramatically from what eventually got made. In addition, the series got cancelled due to low ratings, and the writers had to tie up the series sooner than planned. This left the show's home straight feeling invigorated but disjointed: ideas and concepts that went unmentioned for the first 30+ episodes are suddenly everywhere and on all the characters' lips ("newtype" anyone?); the new concepts predictably remain underdeveloped; characters forge unconvincingly deep connections practically over night; character motivations went through 180s (sometimes multiple ones). Char's character in particular suffered, and comes across as borderline split personality disorder towards the end. These gripes aside, the last few episodes were sprinkled with some of the most exciting battles and well directed scenes in the series. It really felt like team worked hard to pull out all the stops to end the series on a high. Alas, I found its deus ex style ending a bit of a let down.

So, how does the show hold up today? Probably better than I expected. It's a bit of a mixed bag for sure: it features a serialised story constrained by the episodic narrative mentality; it contains some fascinating characters along with some dubious character development; it exhibited some great military battles early on only to run out of steam under the relentless rigid format. While far from unwatchable, I'm also not convinced Mobile Suit Gundam has enough to keep most modern audiences engaged. There is one group for which this show is an easy sell though - those with an interest in anime history, especially of the mecha genre. It's no exaggeration to say that you can trace visible, direct lines from this show to other giants of the medium that came out years and even decades later. It's one of those shows where I came out feeling like I'd grown as an anime fan just by having experience it first hand.

But for all its obvious influential clout, personally I think Mobile Suit Gundam was eclipsed by another legendary - though perhaps less influential - anime that started airing just half a year later: The Rose of Versailles. The two shows provide a fascinating contrast: while at first impressions the hilariously dated production of The Rose of Versailles aged far more poorly than Mobile Suit Gundam, as The Rose of Versailles goes on the story gained more and more momentum (perhaps due to having the unfair advantage of adapting an existing manga); it took full advantage of the serialised format and spun a superbly engrossing yarn that won me over completely by the end. Now there is a show I'd still recommend to a lot of audiences today. Mobile Suit Gundam? I'm not so sure.

Personal rating: +0.5 (decent)

The original 1998 anime adaptation of Trigun is one of those rare beasts that grew big in North America after flopping in Japan. In fact, it became so successful in America that it spawned a side story movie more than a decade later. Even more surprisingly, after another decade, we're getting this reboot, with the source material having sat finished on the shelf for over 15 years already.

One quick glance at any of the pictures related to Trigun Stampede is enough to tell you that the makers have struck out in a completely new direction in terms of aesthetic. I can't say I was too ... keen on the new style, but since the 1998 adaptation was one of the first anime I watched and enjoyed as an adult, I decided to check it out despite my reservations. For old times' sake.

The resulting experience was … interesting, to say the least.

I'll be honest, my impressions of the 1998 version is etched deeply, and perhaps because of this, I couldn't help but compare this new version against the original at every turn. Unfortunately, Trigun Stampede does not hold up well in these comparisons, at least not for the first half of this season.

First, let's get the elephant out of the room and into the open: the CG. I'll preface this by saying that I did not think much of character designs of the original, with their blush lines making them look like children's sketches; nor do I consider myself as someone anti-CG who would shudder at the mere thought of using CG in anime. So it's as much of a surprise to me that I soon found myself yearning for the hand drawn look of the original that I felt lukewarm towards to begin with! The CG has polished away the rough edges of the original design, but it's also over polished away a lot of the visual flair that gave the original personality, as well as the aesthetic that so suited the dusty, grimy wild west feel of its world. Beyond the art style, movements such as how hair sway and how the characters move feels too smooth and so deeply rooted in the uncanny valley that they distracted me from focusing on the story. The CG is especially ill suited to the goofy antics and over-the-top gunslinging action inherent to the franchise. Even Vash's red trenchcoat - so iconic in the 1998 version with its plethora of straps and buttons - becomes just an unremarkable looking red trench coat in Stampede. The only place I can think of where the CG does well is in animating Million Knives' weaponry, as it had the effect of giving them an unsettlingly alien and phobia-inducing creepy quality.

It's obvious that Trigun Stampede was deliberately made to distinguish itself from its predecessor, and the visuals was just one of the ways that signalled this intention. One of the producers even said that they wanted to attract new audiences with Trigun Stampede, but to me the show actually does the opposite. The backstory involving Rem was perhaps THE major emotional climax as the 1998 Trigun entered its final straight; here, it's revealed in the opening episode. Moreover, the major players all appear early on with their ulterior motives laid bare as the outline of the plot is sketched out. That takes a lot of the tension out of the story, meaning there's no sense of mystery; no hook in the plot to reel the audience in; the characters haven't even been built up enough to make you care about their backstories yet! The only way I could see it working was if Stampede was intended for people who've seen the original and are just here to see the characters they know and love in a retelling of a story they're already familiar with. And even in this, I think they fall short - I'm pretty fond of the original Trigun, but I spent disappointingly long stretches of the first half of Stampede feeling bored.

The characterisations also mostly misses the mark: Wolfwood, who was so effortlessly cool in the original, just comes off as someone trying too hard to be cool here; the newly introduced Roberto de Niro fits so snugly inside the archetypical jaded senpai mould that the only remarkable thing about him is his name - and most disappointingly, he's not even voiced by Robert de Niro in the dub! One of strengths of the 1998 Trigun was how well it juggled the goofy humour with the pathos; in Stampede, the balance feels out of whack as it discarded most of its goofy side and ramped up the angst instead, and the little goofiness that remained feels forced and out of place. It's not even very good angst: there's a lot of shouting but the lacklustre character chemistry and the unremarkable script meant that it felt more annoying than anything else in my emotionally detached state.

The strongest emotion I felt while watching the first half of Trigun Stampede was nostalgia, and not in good way for this new instalment. As the series touched upon familiar characters, familiar references and familiar features of this imaginative world, it evoked in me an appreciation of how well conceived the original concept was, and how much better it was done in the 1998 adapation. Almost the only improvement Trigun Stampede makes comes from the writers realising that, as much as "Knives" makes for a badass antagonist name, it's a ridiculous one to give to a child. So here, they made the main antagonist's birth name "Nai" instead.

To its credit, Trigun Stampede eventually gets its shit together and finally came into its own for the second half. With the caveat of it being so long since I last saw the original that I've have forgotten a lot of the finer details, I felt that Stampede aimed for and succeeded in fleshing out Vash and Knives' origin story a lot more. Most notably, Knives was simply a coldly logical and blood thirsty killer in the original, and here he becomes a much more sympathetic character, with his contrast against Vash feeling rather like that between Magneto and Profession X. One particularly harrowing scene of plants in their "last run" is one of many that makes Knives' case against humanity quite damning, and they provide especially poignant food for thought in this current era when climate change and living off the planet sustainably are such hot topics. I kinda wished we got to see more of Rem though, especially when the prolific Maaya Sakamoto lent such an experienced, star quality to her voice that she stole almost every scene in which she played a significant part.

The final part of Trigun Stampede wasn't without issues, the most glaring one being the technical aspect of the plot descending into incomprehensible, gobbledigook jargon jungle. That said, the ending provides an intriguing twist (one that I might have guessed had I re-familiarised myself with the original adaptation before embarking on this one), but you'd have to have seen the original to appreciate it. Yet again, this was an instance of the series throwing a bone to a familiar crowd that the newbies to the franchise would miss.

Before I finish up, I want to give a nod to the music production of Trigun Stampede. While the series abandoned the snarling electric guitar solos and the twanging sound of the blues of the original, what they replaced it with is at least as good. The opening is a modern, stylish chiller of a song with the auto-tune effect serving as a fitting parallel to the CG laden visuals; the ending is a melodic soother, gentle like a summer drizzle. Combined, they represent one of the best OP/ED combinations I can think of in recent anime. The background music is also good, serving up an array of distinctive styles to suit distinctive sceneries. This is one anime for which I want to check out the sound track!

So, how do I feel about this new adaptation of Trigun? Try as I might, I can't extricate myself from my impressions of the original to give an independent assessment of Trigun Stampede, different though it may be in both style and substance. My best guess though, is that newcomers to the series will find it underwhelming. But for existing customers, it's not bad, with a strong second half salvaging the mediocrity of the first. The more in depth origin story makes it a worthy supplement to the 1998 adaptation. At the very least, it has sold me on the next season, and I'm feeling just a little a spark of excitement about how they'll continue the story.

Personal rating: +0.5 (decent)

Watching Chainsaw Man feels like engaging with the work of some pervy, twisted genius who spends all his downtime trolling in the dark depth of the sweaty armpits of online forums like 4chan.

Set in a world inhabited by devils which appear to be the manifestation of people's fear of things that includes everything from everyday objects like guns and katanas to supernatural beings such as ghosts and fox spirits, the main character Denji is a 16 year old downtrodden bum whose life gets turned around after he befriends and fuses with a chainsaw devil, allowing him to transform into a devil himself with the head ... of a chainsaw (not to mention chainsaws coming out of his arms too).

The premise is either bizarre, brilliant or stupid depending on your point of view. Maybe a good dose of each. There's a certain barrier to entry with this anime: Chainsaw Man isn't just unabashedly shounen with all its questionable shounen logic, it also at times resembles the wish fulfilment wet dream of someone who fits the profile of the protagonist. The lewd humour is excessive when it misses the mark, and stuff like Denji becoming Makima's dog just feels like it's taken straight out of someone's twisted fantasy. On top of that, the horror and action elements in the early episodes comes across as toothless. There is little tension to the horror, just iffy CG animation and extravagant amounts of blood and gore. Meanwhile, the most interesting thing about the unimaginative action sequences is the stupidity of Denji repeatedly punching devils despite having chainsaws for arms. Overall, it's as though the staff went all out crafting the incredibly stylish opening and per-episode endings and didn't leave enough in the tank for the show itself.

But somewhere along the series I suddenly realised that I was having a pretty good time watching it. While not all the jokes worked, but many of them are outrageously funny. But it's the particular brand of humour that makes the show stand out - the entertainment value you get bears a similarity to that of watching a high calibre troll in action (as long as it's not you being trolled). The epic shithousery, the willingness to completely trash a serious build up and the constant, easy banter between the characters all contribute to a fun romp of a show.

Speaking of the characters, they beat at the very heart of the Chainsaw Man. The series is filled with characters with personalities: Denji and Power as a couple of idiotic two-bit punks, Mikima with her cold blooded manipulativeness, Aki's earnestness, and Himeno with all her messy psychological baggage. The interactions between these characters is effortlessly delightful and the chemistry between them natural. Despite the series general sense of irreverence, these characters sneakily attaches themselves to your heart, and then ... BAM! Shit hits the fan with the force of a bullet train.

But just as Chainsaw Man succeeds in drawing me in, it finishes on a whimper rather than a wham. When it comes to shounen, I think everyone's familiar with the trope of long running shounens flowing with all the urgency of a viscous turd. However I'm beginning to think that single-cour seasonal adaptations aren't the answer either. The pacing feels completely unbalanced by what I suspect is the restrictions of the low episode count. Even during its finer moments, I sometimes have the sense that the show is moving too fast, for example the disconcerting way the devil powers in the show jumps from what feels like 10 to 100. And following the explosive climactic highs in the second half, Chainsaw Man wraps up too quickly and too neatly. The payload feels hollow after what came before, and I'm left with a strong sense of "is that it?" at the end.

Despite the weak ending, I'm definitely up for watching more of Chainsaw Man. In addition to exceptional character writing, it has this irresistible, lovable rogue kind of charm as well as an awesome sense of style (did I mention those openings and endings kick so much ass?) ... I just hope the next time out we get a two-cour season.


Personal rating: +1.0 (good)

Although I'm aware of Rwby's origins as a popular anime-inspired web series, I know very little else about it and approached this anime version with a clean slate. Though Rwby: Ice Queendom feels rather uneven, it's turned out to be a pleasant surprise overall.

The premise of Rwby feels incredibly generic: the world Remnant is constantly under threat by evil creatures called the Grimm and there are people with superpowers who can fight them. A prestigious school called Beacon Academy trains talented fighters into hunters that go after the Grimm. There also exists magical dirt that everyone seems to want. Be warned that the show is ... quite jargony early on but to its credit Ice Queendom avoids huge info dumps and instead fills in the details piece by piece as the story unfolds.

The series can be considered in three parts: Episodes 1 - 3, 4 - 11, and the final episode.

The first part introduces and brings together the four main characters as part of a new crop of students starting at the Beacon Academy. These are: Ruby and her older sister Yang, Weiss, who is the rich heiress of a mega corp that manufactures magical dirt, and Blake, who seems to be some kind of persecuted furry.

In the early episodes, the characters' personalities are archetypical, and their development feel rudimentary and transparent. The bigger problem though, is that the series is dominated by a long second arc with a story line that requires foundational relationships to be established amongst the main characters. Unfortunately, Ice Queendom rushed into this arc soon after bringing the characters together, so the required foundation wasn't actually built yet and the strength of the characters' feelings for one another just feels unearned. Ironically, the arc does end up driving some pretty good character development later on, but it really should have been done upfront.

If you can suspend your disbelief and pretend the character relationships were more established than what was shown prior to second arc, then that arc can actually be very enjoyable. The action scenes and the special effects are generally nice looking, the plot has plenty of twists and turns and the pacing is excellent. Almost every episode ends on a cliff hanger and it's addictive to watch. As the tension ramps up, the characterisations undergoes considerable refinement, particularly in exploring the psyche of Weiss. It was great to see the characters grow beyond their simplistic moulds and I could even start to feel the chemistry between the characters for real.

Alas, I found Ice Queendom's last few episodes disappointing. I wasn't really sold by the last major plot development or the deus ex moment that resolved one of the final battles. I also found the ending to the second arc a bit too saccharine and cringey. The entire last episode is like an overly long epilogue and it made me realise something: the main characters are kinda annoying. It wasn't as bad when serious business is going on in the foreground, but once all that is stripped away, it's clear that the girls simply cannot carry the show on the merits of their character interactions alone.

Presentation wise, Ice Queendom contains copious amount of CG, possibly in keeping with the original source material. For the most part, this looked fine, particularly the flashy battle sequences full of dazzling lightworks - there's even a gloriously animated food fight! The colour use of Ice Queendom is noteworthy, as the four main girls all have their own colour themes going on and these colours dominate their costumes and special effects. Another nice stylistic touch is the use of split screens which, along with the cliff hanger driven pacing, made me think Ice Queendom's dramatic flourishes took its cues from the TV series 24.

Outside of the action, the layering, colour shading and animation sometimes can appear cheap, and the attempt to reproduce the effects of camera focus and blurring looked strange to me. I watched all the episode on an iPad with the exception of one on a PC, and that one episode didn't look as good, which makes me wonder whether watching this on iPad flattered the visuals.

I must say I'm surprised by the apparent frosty viewer reception for Rwby: Ice Queendom. Not having seen the source material, I don't know whether this was due to the backlash of a hardcore fandom against an unsatisfactory adaptation, but as a standalone series I thought it was good on balance. The anime suffers from some serious flaws for sure, but the stylistic production, nice music and the riveting middle stretch of episodes won me over.

Personal rating: +1.0 (good)

"Memories Falling Like Tears" - this is a more literal translation of the title of Studio Ghibli's classic anime "Omoide Poro Poro", better known as "Only Yesterday" in English. Having finally got around to watching it, I was left with a couple of burning questions: "why the heck did I take so long to get to this" and "how did they manage to pick such a lacklustre English title?"

While the Japanese title comes off as a tad overdramatic, there are obvious cues that could have been taken from its encapsulation of the narrative structure of the film as well its potential to ... pain a vivid, poetic image which "Only Yesterday" completely fails to capture.

What this film should have been called is "Memories Falling Like Raindrops".

"Omoide Poro Poro" drops in on the life of Taeko Okajima who remains unmarried as she approaches her late 20s. She decides to take a trip to the country side, away from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo where she works, to visit family and help out with the safflower harvest. During the trip, she starts contemplating how her life is going and becomes increasingly nostalgic as memories from her childhood begins to surface.

The narrative weaves between the flashbacks of Taeko's early life and her trip in the present time, making use of contrasting art styles to distinguish between the two timelines: the style of the present timeline looks normal, while the past uses a washed out colour palette, like an old watercolour painting with its colours faded by the passage of time. It's hard to overstate just how ingenius this technique is for illustrating the scenes from the past, as it creates an incredibly fitting visual metaphor for the nature of memories. What's more, the fading isn't applied discriminately: it's only the scenery that's fading out at the edges of the shot - the people from Taeko's memories remain substantial.

At first, the frequent flashbacks to Taeko's childhood may seem a little scattered, with topics covering everything from her relationship with her sisters and her parents, to her yearning for the countryside as a child, to growing up, hitting puberty, and the changing dynamics between the boys and girls of her class. But taken as a whole, the vignettes begin to resemble a real-life autobiography, a minute examination of who Taeko is as a person while also providing the context to give the story of her present life an overarching sense of purpose.

And in her present life, Taeko finds fulfilment working alongside farmers, friends and family, forming strong bonds with people around her, particularly with a young man named Toshio. There’s a palpable sense of disconnect between the path she has trodden so far as an adult and the direction in which her heart tugs at her. The persistent trickle of her memories throughout her trip seems to coalesce into a torrent, carrying her inexorably towards a crossroads in her life where she would have to make an important decision.

The present timeline showcases one of the many unusual things about "Omoide Poro Poro": the music. It is one of the very few anime to feature Eastern European folk music, which it uses to great effect to accentuate Taeko's time in the country side. (Amongst the artists featured on the soundtrack is Gheorghe Zamfir, whose music has graced big Hollywood movies such as Tarantino’s Kill Bill.)

In case it's not clear yet, "Omoide Poro Poro" is not a typical anime; it's not even typical Ghibli fare. The film is full of oddities, from its adult woman protagonist to its introspective subject matter to the understated execution that's the antithesis to the loud and flashy style that people often associate with anime. No wonder the film rarely gets brought up in the same breath as the likes of "Spirited Away".

Despite the quiet, unassuming style, "Omoide Poro Poro" possesses a hefty emotional weight. For anyone who cares to listen, it whispers resounding truths about the period it's set in as well as the growing pains and human nature relevant to any period. The stories told by the film feels effortlessly believable, and the characters portrayed lifelike - the latter elevated by some remarkable voice acting that's bursting with personality while remaining naturalistic. And so it came as no surprise to me to learn later that the original source manga was semi-autobiographical in nature. Many of the story elements are rooted in the era the story is set in, and the anime doesn't always hold your hand. One particular episode from Taeko's past involving her father puzzled me (as it did many Japanese viewers too, apparently), but I felt compelled to google for an explanation as I found myself so emotionally invested in the story.

I was expecting "Omoide Poro Poro" to be good, but I must admit I wasn't expecting to be utterly blown away. The film contains plenty of impactful moments, but saves its best till last. Just as the anime is winding down, with the ending credits starting to appear on screen, it delivers one of the most emotional endings I've ever seen. Set against the achingly familiar strains of an old American song - but given a fresh breath of life by the Japanese lyrics - the last scenes powerfully bring to life the central message of the anime: there are times to let your past guide you, and there are times to just let it go.

I watched "Omide Poro Poro" at a turning point in my own life, and was deeply affected by the film; it may even be my favourite Ghibli film to date. Or at the very least, certainly the most underappreciated one. If you're looking for something a bit different, if you're in a mood for a mature, reflective drama, then "Omide Poro Poro" has my full-hearted recommendation.

Personal score: +2.0 (great)

Aharen-san wa Hakarenai is quite a strange anime that's hard to place in a genre. Drama? It's not very dramatic. In fact it's about as far from dramatic as can be. Slice-of-life? Perhaps, but most of what's happening on screen is so stupid it bears little resemblance to anything that can conceivably happen in everyday life. I see some sources have it down as "comedy" but I think that must be some sort of mistake as there's hardly any jokes in the show. Most of the time it just lumbers along lethargically while the main character Raido provides monotonous, droning commentary about what's going on ... - which, for the most part, is nothing.

What is Aharen-san wa Hakarenai about? Well, it starts off with a boy-meets-girl template set in highschool. The girl in question, Aharen, suffers from the triple threat conditions of Age Stunted Syndrome, Emotionally Challenged Syndrome and Facial Paralysis Syndrome. While these are common afflictions for anime characters, for some reason no anime ever comments on them

The typical Aharen-san wa Hakarenai episode comprises a series of sketches, the majority of which are extremely formulaic and come in a three-parter like this

- Act 1: Aharen turns up looking strange, or she does something strange (and unfunny).
- Act 2: Raido's imagination runs wild as he cooks up some ridiculous (but unfunny) speculations, which are illustrated on screen.
- Act 3: The extremely predictable (not to mention unfunny) conclusion is revealed! In addition to the anime showing it, Raidou also describes it in a deadpan voice. In case you didn't get it.

This look almost like an archetypal joke format, which is perhaps why people have tagged this as comedy, but with an actual joke you'd expect a punchline to be delivered in act 3 and most of the time here there is none. It's like seeing a street with rows of scaffolds on either side but hardly any actual buildings within the scaffolds. Very strange indeed. Did the writers forget to write the jokes? Was this generated by an AI?! I don't know. I guess it'll just have to go down as one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time (cue Raido-esq exaggerated speculation imageries involving pyramids, aliens, illuminati symbols etc).

To be fair to Aharen-san wa Hakarenai, funny moments do exist, though sparse they may be. Occasionally the anime turns its usual narrative formula on its head which provides a rare moment of surprise; the sketches relating to a bunch of local kids can also be quite cute and good for a chuckle or two; also the shipping teacher makes an amusing first appearance but she turned out to be a one-trick pony and the same punchline was practically copy and pasted into all her scenes.

The show also sometimes reaches for emotional poignancy, but it took a long time for me to scrape together enough of a fuck to give. That said, I did eventually warm to a few of the characters, and some of the relationship dynamics shifts unexpectedly quickly towards the end, which made things mildly interesting.

If that sounds like I'm damning the show with faint praise, then, well, that sounds about right. The writing is not witty enough; the stories are not varied enough; the visual gags are not good enough to be funny. Almost the best thing I can say for Aharen-san wa Hakarenai is that I didn't end up hating the characters. Though considering the titular character's half-her-age appearance and clingy, helpless mannerisms are designed to pander hard to the moe crowd, that in itself can probably count as an achievement.

Personal rating: 0.0 (meh)

Island is curious specimen of anime. It's one of those shows where the overall score does little to inform you of what the show is like. Despite the middle-of-the-road score I'm dishing out, very little of Island is middle-of-the-road: most of the time it's either bad or good.

Island is about a guy who wakes up naked on the beach of Urushima Island with vague memories of being a time traveller who's supposed to save and kill some people. For generation after generation, the same three powerful families shared control over the island, and our amnesiac soon gets himself tangled up with the current heirs of ... those families as he tries to figure out his mission.

Rather trying to make a good first impression, Island audaciously starts off by throwing its bad foot forward. Within the first five minutes or so, the show treats us with a scene of a school girl tripping and falling face first into the naked protagonist's groin. Then it follows up on this hallmark of quality by serving up course after course of bad tropes. Within about 15 minutes, our adult male protagonist cosies up to three school-aged girls who look and act half their age; he nearly makes out with one, comments on the breast size of another, and moves into the mansion of the third.

By this point, I strongly suspected that Island is an adaptation of a visual novel (which I later confirmed,) where the source material allows the player to romance the three girls.

As the episode continues though, Island manages to show it's more than just a pedo-harem bait. The second half started dropping tantalising hints of a dark mystery and a strong emotional core at the centre of the story. A chilling note was found, a mysterious disease revealed, and there was also this music-related scene that radiated such emotional intensity that not even the squeakily saccharine singing could quite smother its effect. Despite the bad early impression, I found myself intrigued.

The downs and ups of the first episode turns out to be a blueprint for most of the rest of the episodes. All these episodes start off badly with some terrible character interactions. Innuendos and brief risque scenes abound, Island likes to show glimpses of pedo fantasies before quickly pulling back with a playful wink. I get the sense that this anime is trying to have its cake and eat it; it panders to those who would enjoy the ickniess while holding back just enough to make a buffet of plausible deniability salad: yes, these girls may look/act/sound young, but they're actually nearly adults; yes these dialogues often contain sexual content, but they're just for the lolz, nothing serious; yes, it may look as if the girl is throwing herself at the guy, but she has an ulterior motive - there's no real substance to it!

And then just as I get a headache from the amount of facepalming moments, the second halves of these episodes would almost inevitably manage to salvage the wreckage into something almost respectable. The series has a knack of turning the atmosphere on a dime, flipping it from cute-girls-doing-cute-things mode into something darker. The character development isn't bad either. While it follows the typical formula of main guy going around fixing the problems of his moe blob harem, these problems are actually convincing enough to lend a certain depth to the moeblobs. There's one girl who's whole self worth and identity is tied up to being the saviour of the island; another girl feels understandably suffocated by life on the island and wants to get out and visit her estranged mother.

In fact, the focus on slice-of-life-esq character development almost puts the mystery elements in the back seat for large portions of the first story arc. At one point I even began wondering whether there really is a mystery worthy of note or whether it's all just smoke and mirrors hiding a platform for the character development. Turns out there is indeed a mystery, and from about the half way point the series finally turns its main attention upon it, leading to the "Never Island" arc.

While episode after episode of the first arc blend moe-pedo-harem trash with intrigue and decent character development into a soup of mediocrity, "Never Island" mixes ham-fisted narratives and interesting plot points - and some moe pedo harem trash thrown in for good measure - into much the same overall result. The story telling seems rather hurried, as though the creators suddenly realised they leisurely spent rather too many episodes meandering through the first arc and now didn't have enough for the second. As a result, most of "Never Island" feels lacklustre; the narrative pumps out (at times ridiculous) plot developments and tragedies as plain beats of "this happened, that happened" with very little emotional impact. In spite of this, the central thread that runs through the series never lost that interesting quality that kept me on the hook wondering what the heck is going on underneath it all.

The concluding arc of Island is only two episode long, but I have to say they were very good, perhaps even great. In fact they are the only episodes in the entire series that I would score positively. The story wrapped up with a jaw dropping bang and left me trying to work out the intricacies long after I finished watching. Only afterwards did I realise that Island had been misdirecting my attention like a magician while leaving some of the clues on the table right in front of me.

I had a little trouble giving Island a rating. The show can't consistently hold together a good narrative, but manages to pull off some powerful moments; the characters have crappy foundations, but shows bright glimpses of humanity to win my sympathies; the central romance has a completely unconvincing build up, but undergoes such epic trials that by the end had attained an almost mythical aura. The last arc very nearly pulled Island into positive territory, but ultimately didn't because of a very distasteful contrivance that was used to make the plot work. For all the pretences that Island had put up for most of its run, it ends up showing its true colours. Still, it's also kinda fitting that the show on balance left me with an almost perfectly poised middle of the road impression. So don't be fooled by the score: with all its downs and ups, Island is a lot of things, but boring it is not.

Personal rating: 0.0 (perfectly mixed)

The second season of Attack On Titan goes up and down like a rollercoaster; not just in terms of story but also quality.

The story of the original season began with titans breaching Wall Maria, and the second season opens with a mirroring storyline about titans appearing within the confines of Wall Rose, and the Survey Corps are forced to investigate the breach.

And that's far from the only similarity between the seasons. While Studio Wit bizarrely waited four years before attempting to follow up on their incredible success with the first season, the second season turns out to follow quite closely in its predecessor's footsteps. ... The strengths and weaknesses of the second season feels largely similar to the first (with perhaps a couple of major differences which I'll elaborate on later), so anyone familiar with the first should be able to guess pretty much what they're getting into here.

I'd rate the first few episodes to be pretty middle of the pack compared to the first season - mostly very good with the occasional wow moment thrown in. I was expecting it to get better as the story gains momentum but instead it gradually began feeling formulaic and actually started to lose steam. Half way through the season, the series drops what was for me an incredibly stupid twist that brought the franchise to a level that's easily as low as it's ever been. This was followed by a few pedestrian episodes which did little to improve the situation. However, the season then finishes on three immense episodes which salvages it at the end.

Apart from the twist that I found incredulous, the major differences seem to stem from single cour nature of Attack On Titan 2. While I thought the first season had pretty great pacing, I can't say the same for the second. There's just so much going on in this short season, and the solution Attack On Titan 2 relies on over and over again to compress the narrative into the time available is flashbacks. There are loads of plot points coming into fruition and they need to happen in a certain order in order to make sense, but the timing also needs to be impactful, so the anime solves this by using just-in-time flashbacks to drop the important reveals straight into the places where the information is required. There are also previously neglected characters that needs to moving into the spotlight due to the requirements of the plot, and again, the anime reaches for the flashback button to crowbar in a backstory or two for some quick and dirty character building. I'm not saying the technique can't be effective, but when it's over used and in this kind of hurried manner the story telling can feel too artificial and it leads to the formulaic feeling I complained about earlier.

Given the tight time frame the Attack In Titan 2 is trying to fit everything into, it's a bit strange the second half also had a couple of episodes where it felt like it was stalling for time. Perhaps it's a side effect of trying to time the climactic last few episodes right. The pacing even affected some pretty good Titan UFC action which would have been even better if the flashbacks hadn't put a drag on the action.

Still, it has to be said that the second season covered a lot of ground in terms of plot. While more mysteries have presented themselves, I feel like franchise is either reaching or has reached a tipping point where it no longer feels like each reveal raises at least two more questions. A couple of notable movers in the character stocks are Erwin and Eren. Erwin's has risen thanks to some incredible badassery, but Eren's has fallen in my estimation: he displayed moments of great emotional depth, but there were also times when every one of his lines in a stretch of dialogue would be delivered in a monotonous, outraged screech, which made him annoying (more than usual, I should say).

The music is as great as ever. I'm impressed by how the creators managed to consistently find catchy, energetic, hot-blooded opening anthems that you can easily identify as coming from the same show. The opening animation gets a little strange at one point as the screen fills up with a bizarre stampede of animals including (but not limited to) an elephant, a giraffe, a gorilla, and even at least one dinosaur and a fricking WHALE! What all this means I have no idea, but I can testify that only the gorilla turns up this season, and a part of me hopes we'll see the whale flopping along in a later one. The ending is rather experimental and features what sounds like a chorus of zergling and ultimately doesn't quite work.

That's pretty much all I have to say about season 2.

Personal rating: +1.5 (very good)

Cute-Girls-Doing-Cute-Things slice-of-life anime usually comes in two flavours. The first one focuses on the Cute-Girls-Doing-Cute-Things bit, smothering the viewer in moe candy floss that offers little nutritional value beyond the saccharine. I call these the K-On Klones. The second type actually gets what the slice-of-life genre is all about. These anime use the Cute-Girls-Doing-Cute-Things merely as a premise as they go about bringing into focus the sublime facets of life through the lens of the mundane.

The question is, which category does Akebi's Sailor Uniform fall into?

The show follows Akebi Komichi as she enters the all-girls middle school Roubai Academy. Growing up in the countryside, Akebi ... graduated from her elementary school in a class of one, so she's looking forward to attending a school where it will actually be possible to make friends.

The first three episodes of Akebi's Sailor Uniform is not that great. The characters designs may not be particularly off-putting, and the girl's voices may not be on helium, but I found the shenanigans between girls at the school to be rather inane. Worse thing is, the creator seems to be someone with a leg/foot fetish. And it's not as though this only results in the odd foot shot: you get bizarre scenes like a girl sniffing her own toe nail clippers and a whole storyline about Akebi admiring someone's legs and harassing her victim about sending her a selfie of them. When you consider the target of all this fetishisation is a bunch of middle school girls, the whole thing honestly becomes a little creepy.

However, after that the show markedly improved, with the foot fetish mostly relegated to a few shots here and there. But by then the damage was done, as I found myself viewing all the foot-related scenes with all the suspicion of a parent who's spotted a convicted pedo lurking near a playground. Perhaps in a different anime, a scene about an embarrassing hole in a sock wouldn't raise an eyebrow from me, but in this anime it reeks of yet another excuse to satisfy someone's foot cravings.

But like I said, the show does get better, and I should mention that even though the first three episodes weren't great, they were terrible either. A few moments of magic caught my attention: a dramatic reading of a book; an often absent father's struggles with connecting with his eldest daughter … these scenes hinted that Akebi's Sailor Uniform belongs in the second type of anime I mentioned at the start.

Character development wise, Akebi's Sailor Uniform manages to introduce quite a few different characters while focusing its efforts on a Akebi and a few of her closest friends. I'd say the show fleshes out most of the characters to the point where they feel like real people and not just objects with feet attached. Even the characters who only got a single episode of focus time mostly feels real, and in fact my favourite episode is about one of them. The episode in question involves this slacker student wanting to learn the guitar. This kind of episode is like a litmus test for the pedigree of a slice of life show, most notably one that K-On spectacularly failed on. Well, Akebi's Sailor Uniform not only passed the test, it knocked it out of the park, producing a believable story with the kind of attention to detail that an anime about music would have been proud of. Having briefly messed around on the guitar myself, I found the anime pinpointed the exact pain points that I discovered as a complete beginner, and the progress of slacker student strikes me as realistic. And all this is just a framework for a character study of a slacker who's learning the joy of throwing herself into something for the first time!

This kind of attention to detail is a strength of the series. Akebi's Sailor Uniform understands the value of subtlety. For example, details like the peeling window panes and leaky roof of Akebi's house suggests that her family isn't very well off, even if the anime never explicitly states this. In fact the whole premise of Akebi's attachment to the sailor uniform of Roubai seems silly until you consider the likelihood that a large part of her appreciation for clothing comes from the fact that her mother makes them herself. Likewise, the anime never tells you why Akebi's elementary school only contains Akebi and her sister, but you can make that connection if you know about the hollowing out of Japanese rural communities due to urbanisation and low birth rate. When you join up the dots, the slow demise of Akebi's old school isn't just sad, it's tragic, and the sight of the Akebi's classmates briefly breathing life back into the old gym becomes all the more bittersweet.

Despite Akebi's Sailor Uniform's eye for the provocative details of every day life, it sometimes struggles with finding enough meaningful material to fill entire an episode. When it fails those episodes can be quite dull for large stretches. The guitar episode is interesting throughout but for me the series only hits that kind of height once. Another episode about a girl learning to get comfortable with her body through its growth phase only really gets good towards its conclusion. The last episode is also surprisingly weak. Interestingly, the penultimate episode is much better and contains all the elements normally reserved for a slice-of-life finale: an re-iteration of one of the anime's main themes of friendship, the encore for all the characters etc. Unfortunately the story hasn't wrapped up by that point, so instead we're left with a montage-laden, overly sentimental last episode which rehashed the revisited themes from the penultimate episode.

Another element that drags Akebi's Sailor Uniform down is that, in addition to the foot fetish elements, the yuri baiting and the presence of tired tropes like one girl falling into the breasts of another signals to me that the show is primarily aimed at a male audience rather than one that resembles the main characters. This adds to creepiness although, to be fair, the show also had scenes which could have turned more fanservicey in a seedier series but didn't in this one.

Overall, I did rather enjoy this anime. While parts of it's a bit cringey, Akebi's Sailor Uniform does enough of the important things right for me to say for certain: this show really does get it.

Personal rating: +0.5 (decent)

Humans have reigned at the top of the food chain for a long time now. Other predators like sharks and bears might rip us apart if we have to engage them in a fist fight, but in reality we kill far more of them than they do us. But! What if that's no longer the case? What if something replaces us at the top and start preying on us? This is the conceit that "Attack On Titan" builds upon, and does it so compellingly that it became one of the few shows to break through the walls of anime fandom into mainstream consciousness.
...
Set in a world where unintelligent, man-eating titans suddenly appeared one day and snacked humans almost to extinction, the story picks up with Eren, who lives in an outlying city on the edge of a civilization protected by colossal walls that could make Trump envious. The walls have kept the residents safe for a hundred years. But one day, a titan several times the normal size appears out of nowhere and kicks a hole in the wall. With the walls breached, titans flood into the city and Eren's life is thrown into chaos.

While the whole unintelligent human-eating-humanoids idea isn't exactly fresh - the zombie apocalypse scene having been done to death already (or should I say undeath har har) - "Attack on Titan" adds a twist to the formula: it made the humanoids huge. The change seems stupidly simple but the effect is drastic; all of a sudden, the odds become so much more stacked against humans: this is not a case of buffaloes being hunted by lions, but of mice hunted by cats. The size mismatch naturally makes the titans formidable, and "Attack on Titan" hammers this home right from episode one by graphically capturing the result of titans descending upon a human settlement. In addition, the titans' appearances, humanish but with creepy facial expressions and strange skin tones (the latter of which might be the unintended result of subpar CG but it works), serves to make them even more unnerving in an uncanny-valley-esq way.

So how do humans fight back against these grotesque mountains of flesh? One of the main methods involve "vertical manoeuvring equipment" which, via some gas-powered piston-shot grappling hooks, essentially allows humans wearing them to move around like Spiderman swinging through a city. This in turn gives them the ability to evade titans and attack their weak point on the back of the neck. It's a pretty cool concept that lends itself to some spectacular battle choreography.

Despite being a shounen, "Attack on Titan" immediately distinguished itself in both its brutality and pacing. The action often feels raw and gory in its violence, even though it often doesn't display everything in full graphic detail. One gruesome scene might be animated in shadowy outline, another might cut away in a shower of blood just as someone gets pulverised underneath a giant stomping foot. The anime shows and implies enough to achieve a stronger effect than what could be done through fully animating the violence. That said, the early episodes contain a few odd scenes where the action cuts-away in unexpected places (and in a way that left me confused over what happened) and inserting in its place a few seconds of jarringly placid scenery. It makes me wonder whether these were production fuck ups or whether the scenes were censored (which would be strange given seemingly more horrific sequences were animated to some extent).

The plot of "Attack on Titan" rarely stands still, with events constantly unfolding and bombshell twists exploding with regularity. While there's a good amount of lore and background information woven into the world, the show is economical with its world building. It does a good job of not letting exposition drag down the plot, and uses opportunities like commercial bumpers to convey across tidbits of info that enriches the world. (Though it's worth noting that the last commercial bumper info dump was like a whole essay so I've no idea what those who are watching it live on TV without the benefit of a pause button was supposed to get out of it.)

Despite the fast pace, "Attack on Titan" doesn't feel hurried for the most part. The training arc is exemplary: occupying just a single episode, it conveys across the difficulties of using the vertical maneuvering gear, then uses that as a representative for the rest of the training and moves on without dragging the whole event out. Contrast this to the likes of "Girls und Panzer" where the training feels too easy and other shounens where training could take up most of a seasonal arc.

Still, the minor characters do suffer a little from the pacing. With the show being so ruthless, characters often drop like flies around a toxic turd but it's not always easy to give a fuck. Or even remember who they are. As "Attack on Titan" goes on, the show does get better at juggling the character development while driving the plot at a clip, and the later deaths do feel like they hold more weight.

If I have one main complaint about the story, it would be that some of the scheming isn't entirely believable. The overarching plot often has a battle of wits feel where a few players are manipulating events far above the ground level that we see. But it's as though some of them cheats on occasion by reading the script a few pages in advance before making their move. Superhuman levels of deductive reasoning often possessed by fictional characters doesn't need to be realistic, but it does need to come off as believable, and "Attack on Titan" doesn't always manage to sell its leaps of logic to me as convincingly as, say, "Death Note".

Thematically, "Attack on Titan" ends up on a path well-trodden by shows involving humans vs monsters. To quote Nietzsche: "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster." Like "The Walking Dead", "Shiki" etc, the more you watch the more you start to question: who are the real monsters here? The show's emphasis on the needs of the characters to make sacrifices and become monsters aren't exactly unique, but the ideas are naturally compelling enough to not wear out their welcome. It's rather fitting that the show's main character is in his own way a bit of a monster. At first Eren comes across like a typical shounen protagonist: a screechy, spunky try-hard who's rather annoying. As the show continues though, it becomes increasingly clear something’s not quite right about the boy; he's a bit unhinged, a bit too much on edge, and I find him kinda fascinating to watch as I'm never quite sure when and how he'll snap.

Given the story of "Attack on Titan" is so full of tragedy and twists, the dramatisation pretty much handles itself. For the most part, the series also does a good job on the executing the drama. I particularly liked the music production. "Epic" is an overused word, but the music of "Attack on Titan" fits the bill. Choral heavy and possessing an exotic, middle-eastern twist, the music would ebb and flow, swell and diminish around the events happening on screen, complementing story tension and release with melodic counterparts.

However, "Attack on Titan" also makes a few mis-steps when it comes to dramatisation, and those often devastate the grim atmosphere. A few moments in the story seems contrived purely for the sake of laying on more drama and as a result come across as silly and unnecessary. Some of the art style of "Attack on Titan" also doesn't sit well with me. The show frequently uses shading and parallel hatching on characters' faces to convey dark moods, and, combined with the ultra-serious facial expressions this often yields an accidental comedic effect of similar style to "Cromartie High School". And there's also this wonderfully animated sequence of Eren swinging through the air, dual wielding blades and yelling out battle commands, then executing an epic aerial spin as though about to unleash a climactic whirlwind of attacks. Alas, the dramatic weight attached to the scene was not matched by the actual ending which saw Eren simply land on top of a wall.

Additionally, I also found the series' comedic sensibilities rather dubious. Not that the comedy isn't funny (although it is hit and miss), but the show likes to peddle in a sort of dumb humour that does not mesh with the more sombre parts. I mean, some of the characters feels like they're auditioning for Wacky Races or something.

These problems are a bit too numerous for "Attack on Titan" to hold a spot on my personal favourites list - for now at least. I also wonder how much of my enjoyment got hampered by having the first major plot twist spoilt for me. Still, in its finest moments, this series blazes on all cylinders, and can certainly make a passable impression at being on par with the all-time greats. It's not hard to see why it whipped the fandom into a frenzy back when it aired. It's still early days in terms of the overarching story though, and this first season has, for all its plot twists and reveals, left me with more questions than answers. Will the the myriad mysteries of the plot click together and resolve into a triumphant conclusion? I don't know, but "Attack on Titan" has certainly launched into a solid start.

Personal rating: +1.5 (very good)