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2013's summer season was highly dominated by some big name series with vast popularity, so much so that more than a few series slipped under the radar. Uchouten Kazoku is one of those series, which I think is a real shame for everyone, since I truly believe that this was the anime of the season and not to be missed.

This anime is, in many ways, a truly unique experience. I honestly can't say that I've ever seen anything even vaguely like it, and that it in itself was a breath of fresh air. From start to finish, there's a definite sense of originality that strives ... to remind you that this isn't just another anime popped out from a genre mould. In fact, I'd struggle to even categorise this into MAL's genres of my own accord. As a result, I very much didn't know what to expect when I opened the first episode a couple of months ago and, in truth, the first episode caught me off-guard. When questioned about it, my initial reaction was "odd... but I enjoyed it". This feeling only managed to increase tenfold.

Our story begins with, and centres around, our protagonist, Yasaburo Shimagamo, and his "eccentric family" (as the title reads in English). The first immediately unique thing that comes to eye is the fact that this family, despite first appearances, is not made up of humans at all. They are tanuki, a subspecies of raccoon dog. They are portrayed here as magical supernatural creatures that can transform not only between raccoon dog and human forms, but also into an assortment of other beings and even inanimate objects of varying scales. In fact, our protagonist starts out this series shifted into a female form!

This is hardly something new in our anime's setting, though. Here we are thrust into modern day Kyoto, where tanuki and tengu (a Japanese supernatural creature sometimes revered as a god, demon or harbinger of war) roam openly. The humans there accept this as everyday life, seemingly unbothered by the odd goings-on around them. Despite this supernatural theme however, the setting's main plus is that it does a wonderful job of immersing you fully into Japanese culture. Even without explicitly turning around and telling you how Japan's society is, you almost feel as if you're actually there, even if your knowledge of Japan isn't the best.

The main reason this setting comes to life so easily is the beautiful precision with which this anime is made. A unique art style with astoundingly beautiful backgrounds really bring Kyoto to life in a brand new colourful way, with the sounds of the city and an astounding score really plumping things out. Everything seems exciting and new, even in the slower scenes, with every neatly drawn yukata and floating cherry blossom petal managing to catch your eye. The transitions from the colourful fast paced opening (which is matched with an incredibly catchy OP song) to the much gentler ED (which is paired with some very beautiful still art pieces) has the intense feeling of taking a journey with the characters, even if all you did in reality was watch 20 minutes of truly wonderful anime.

However, despite all these aspects, this anime would truly be nothing without its characters. Like all slice of life, Uchouten Kazoku relies on them to drive itself forward. Their main selling point is that not one of them is an archetype. The entire city of Kyoto is filled with three dimensional people with enticing personalities and conflicting goals. There's not much of a sense of right or wrong within them either, much like the real world, but more a sense of which point of view the anime is taking. From Yasaburo the fool, to Yaichiro the responsible older brother, to Benten the mysterious lilac-haired tengu's apprentice, there's a whole cast of people to fall in love with. Even those portrayed in a negative light aren't characters you find yourself disliking because they're badly written - in fact, it's because they're so well written that you find yourself feeling that you should dislike them at all.

Everything about this anime just feels right. I wish it had never ended, because it was truly the highlight of my week for its short one cour run. A good message, great characters, and an incredibly engaging storyline were fully implemented to realise their true potential here, resulting in an anime I'd recommend to absolutely everyone I've ever met. No matter what type of anime you prefer, I'm sure you'll find something special in Uchouten Kazoku - an anime that's never been more deserving of the "masterpiece" label that MAL attributes to the 10/10 rating.

Love Lab was an anime I pretty much only started watching because it was newly airing and, honestly, I probably wouldn't have bothered with it otherwise, but boy am I glad I did. It's a sweet hidden gem that performed well (despite a few problems I'll address) and is something that everyone should at least give a try, especially fans of "cute girls doing cute things" anime, which is exactly what this is.

This anime starts off, and remains, pretty simple. It gave me some Oniisama e vibes in the first episode, from the intensely shoujo ai vibes of the female cast to the gentle worship ... and admiration of some of the students to the light cherry blossoms flowing between sweet girls at a prestigious school. However, this did not turn out to be the plot-filled twists of drama that Oniisama e was and is very much a slice of life comedy from start to finish. It's light hearted and doesn't really need very much commitment if you're after something relaxing.

Our heroines, Maki and Riko, are both the idols of the all girls' schools they attend, Fuji High, although for very different reasons. Maki, the sweet and prim "Fuji's Princess", for single handedly running the student council and being utterly perfect in every way, and Riko, the "Wild One", whose disregard for uniform policies and paying attention in class catches the attention of the other very well behaved students. When these two idols end up being in the school council together, many people might've expected their personalities to clash. However, they bond immediately over a desire for love and their relationship grows as the school council and the love research it undergoes do too.

This format worked extremely well. It wasn't entirely plotless, but also never got too complicated. The characters and their gags blended together into a genuinely enjoyable storyline that felt very much like what a slice of life should be - nothing too serious, but also that doesn't just become the same things over and over again. It mostly worked so well because of the characters, who are very much one of this anime's strong points.

The main five of the student council are really the only ones present often enough to receive things like character development, but all of these girls are extremely likeable and watching them interact is a thing of joy. Their chemistry was through the roof, leading to the inevitable question of "will this be yuri?" - a question that they, perhaps deliberately, left mostly unanswered. This does lead me to the anime's main fault though, and that is the introduction of what can only be described as love interests.

Partway through the series, two boys are introduced and both as childhood friends of Riko. Their purpose is rather clear - Satoshi and Jan are there to entice Maki and Riko's development and probably eventually become their boyfriends. However, nothing about this scenario was particularly done well, especially for an audience continuously teased by yuri themes in not just this anime. The situation would've been fine if the boys actually had screentime and development, but they barely ever appear, and only ever to be shown as nothing more than love interests. They're not important to the plot otherwise and, despite adding some comedy, feel slightly obnoxiously and haphazardly flung onto the plot like an afterthought of "ah, yes, this has to be het!" that almost all animes resort to in the face of yuri, even though it was yuri the creators themselves put in place via the choice of having the girls constantly blush at each other and swoon over circumstances like Maki's crossdressing.

Overall, the boys mostly just felt pretty disappointing. It was incredibly hard to ship them with girls they spent next to no time with, in comparison with girls that literally spent the entire anime building their relationship together. There was very much a difference here between just ignoring the yuri suggestions and ending the anime ambiguously (as many animes did before them) and trying to tear these themes apart with shabbily lobbed characters. It was a real let-down and almost felt like it undermined the girls' friendships by brushing any suggestion of something more into a raging fire of "no, you have to ship them with these generic archetype boys we just flung at you".

However, despite these faults, the anime was by no means dragged down to being bad because of it - it really hardly affected my overall opinion at all, despite some disappointment. The art in particular was astoundingly beautiful and the characters had a real charm to them - it was definitely something about their eyes that drew you in. The animation was just consistently fluid throughout and it was incredibly beautiful to both look at and listen to. It was all very light hearted with bright colours, a very fun OP and ED and some good girly voice acting that felt like you were listening to real highschoolers.

It all lead to what was a very enjoyable anime. I looked forward to watching this every week, even though a highly predominant romance genre is not something I'd ever call my type of anime at all. Maki and Riko, and their genuinely beautiful relationship, were the anime's shining star, and if you enjoy what you see of that in the first few episodes then you should carry on to the end, because it really only gets better. I'd really thoroughly recommend Love Lab to pretty much anyone, whether they're in the for or against yuri boat.

I'm not even going to beat around the bush here - I hated this movie. I literally could not wait for it to end. I started it reluctantly enough as it was but it turned out to be even worse than I'd originally fathomed.

Really, taking this movie as it is with each separate component, it's not as bad as it could have been. The main fault was just how long and dragged out it was. The story itself is pretty simple and predictable, with nothing shocking happening... well, ever actually. If you wanted an interesting plot in terms of twists and turns then it's not ... going to happen here. The story could easily have been covered in half the time, though - a lot of this movie was just plain unnecessary.

To start off with, there's an opening narrative by Yuki, the main character (Hana)'s daughter. She introduces the story as being unbelievable. Really, the only unbelievable thing here is that her mum had sex with a wolf. Like, literally. They had sex whilst he was a wolf. That's the actual plot of this prologue. I'm pretty sure there's a line you're supposed to draw between fantasy and beastiality, but whatever. Her random spout of animal love produces two... well, not exactly charming children. Ame's sort of sweet, but Yuki's a brat. And then her useless bum of a wolf boyfriend dies. Antics ensue. So many antics. Dragged out tedious antics as far as the eye can see. Ugh.

Probably the best part of this movie was the animation. The background art was astoundingly beautiful, although I really wasn't a fan of the massively simpler character designs. They seemed so out of place in their environment, and all the characters' faces (Hana's in particular) just seemed a little... off. Her eyes were too wide apart and her face appeared as though it had been melted slightly like a candle. It bothered me, it really did. Yuki was pretty much the only character that seemed to suit the art style at all.

Although speaking of Yuki, I truly couldn't stand her voice. That irritating laughing she did constantly made me grimace outright. I was craving finding the English dub on the off chance that I could escape it all. The music was pretty nice though, so that definitely dragged the sound quality up a notch.

The characters, however. Oh, gosh, the characters. What a thoroughly dull group of people. Our protagonist is a very plain and mostly uninteresting woman. She doesn't really seem to have any desires or goals and just... goes with the flow. Literally. Everything else dictates her life, rather than her actually making a decision for herself. Her daughter, whilst being the exact opposite in the regard that she wants to make every decision ever, is also infuriating whilst doing so. Hana evidently has no idea how to discipline a child and just lets them run around doing whatever. Frankly, it's chaos.

Ame, however, I did like. He was, in many ways, the movie's only redeeming feature... at least for a while. He soon became a boring plot point. Boring plot point really does sum this movie up, though. It's just plain dull. It's so dull that it angers me. This movie COULD have been so much more, and it just feels so wasted.

I feel like I wasted my time.

I really do.

There were a lot of things in this movie that I had a problem with, though. I know this movie is about parenting, but really, the vast majority of the women in this movie seemed to do little but have love interests. Hana's actions? Due to a love interest. Yuki's actions? Wow, what a lot of love interest. Even secondary characters with a few scenes between them had love interest-dictated lives. It was stupid. Doesn't this movie know there's such a thing as being your own person and having a vagina?

I genuinely never want to hear another word about this stupid movie ever again, because it gets way too much praise for being such an uninteresting spectacle. Talk about overrated.

This OVA is definitely made for people that enjoyed Highschool of the Dead, which I can definitely say I did. This is one of my favourite anime series (I originally watched the entire thing and the OVA in one sitting because I literally couldn't stop) and rewatching the OVA now that the English dub has finally been released really reminded me of why I love this series and this little extra snippet we got.

Whilst this OVA doesn't necessarily have much of a storyline, and definitely doesn't continue the story from the original series, it does a great justice as a comedy short. It's 15 minutes ... long, what were you expecting? Fulfilling everyone's favourite cliché of the beach episode, we see our protagonists go on what is frankly a hilarious adventure in the sand. It's silly and ridiculous, but it's fun. Exactly the sort of fun that made the original series great.

The consistently good art of the original also continues here, seeing the protagonists in brand new beachwear (some pretty fabulously tight fitting beachwear too, I might add), with some really nice background art of the beach to go alongside it. It's just generally really nice to look at, especially in certain shots (I'm talking about the boob close ups). The ecchi in general is really high quality, which is pretty much what anyone watching a Highschool of the Dead OVA is after, let's face it.

The voice acting in this OVA is fantastic too, both in the Japanese and English dub. It portrays the humour well and keeps everything light, the English dub especially. There's funny references, good portrayal of the emotions, and you can almost feel that they had fun saying these ridiculous lines. It all just brings a smile to your face.

In fact everything about this is, frankly, exactly what I wanted from an OVA of this series. Yeah, there's not really any zombies, but who the fuck was watching the original for zombies? Go out and watch this OVA, have fun. But please, remember your tissues. No-one wants to have to clean that up off the carpet.

When I first heard of Higurashi, I was overjoyed to think that such a thing could exist. The first thing I ever saw of it was the fingernail removal torture scene and frankly, I thought it looked awesome. I love horror and gore and torture - torture porn horror movies with more blood than plot are one of my favourite things. But no matter how many psychos or scratched out necks or mutilated corpses showed up in this anime... it never got good. Not once.

Story - 1:
This story starts off pretty simple. A young boy called Maebara Keiichi moves to a new town. It's small, ... with a school that literally just stuffs all the kids in one class because there's too few for year groups, and he consequently makes female friends of different ages (fuck knows where all the guys are in this anime - he even joins a baseball team at one point and manages to make no male friends) who he goes on stupid cheery picnics with. At first, I thought this wasn't too bad. But I quickly became incredibly confused and simultaneously frustrated.

The first problem with this anime is the layout. It's presented in these really stupid arcs that last a few episodes, and are mostly dull and predictable. The aim and potential of these arcs is clear - they wanted to show all the sides of a mystery and reveal different details with each storyline. But these storylines were ridiculous. They all deviated so far from each other that I could barely recognise that they were meant to be connected. It was like the writer was trying to write plots and just gave up half-way through with a sigh and started another. There's nothing clever about this anime. There's nothing mysterious about this anime. It's just confusing and convoluted and ridiculous - characters completely change personality between arcs, and nothing really make sense and the ending - oh god, the ending!

I can honestly say I have never hated an anime ending more than the ending of this anime. I made such an effort to force myself to the end of this 26 episode anime only to find that it wasn't worth it. It was never worth it. It was the biggest waste of time storyline I've ever attempted to follow. That ending was so ridiculous and answered no questions. I was appalled, frankly, that I'd allowed myself to sit through it. It's awful.

Art - 3:
This anime's art feels so low quality throughout. 2006 isn't that long ago, but animes even older than that do a better job at art than this does. The character designs are bland and unattractive, the backgrounds are no sort of breakthrough, and the colours were dull with only splatterings of blood diverting your attention from the apparent lack of effort put into the animation. Really, this anime's art is nothing you'd call pretty. It's mediocre at best.

Sound - 3:
This anime is yet another that suffers from what I like to call "does Japan really sound like that?" syndrome. These weird shrieking insects constantly sound whenever anyone is outside like nails on a chalkboard, although this is hardly something only Higurashi suffers from. I can only assume these are the cicadas that the anime's title refers to (which I only learnt were bugs from watching Haruhi Suzumiya) but Jesus Christ - they surely can't honestly be that loud?

Aside from that, the voice acting here was mostly mediocre in the Japanese dub but for the love of God, do not under any circumstances approach the English dub. I have watched some frankly atrocious dubs (particularly when I first watched Higurashi, since I hadn't been watching anime for long and still struggled to read subs and catch all the action) but I couldn't watch this anime's English dub past the first episode. More blood spewed from my tear ducts in those first 20-odd minutes than out of any character in the entire anime. The only dub of this I was impressed with was the French dub, so if you speak French then try that.

Characters - 1:
Oh, dear. The characters of Higurashi. Where, exactly, do I begin? Perhaps with our main character, the idiot that he is. Despite the anime trying to reinforce that Keiichi is smart, he does the stupid thing at every turn. He's the male equivalent of big breasted female running up the stairs which, although I'm used to as a horror fan, could simply not abide to see in a guy that was straight up supposed to be this bright puzzle solver. He was a fucking moron.

Aside from that, this anime is dripping in infuriating lolis. They tend to go psychotic every arc or so, which was predictable and sigh-worthy. Nothing about the apparent villainy of these young girls felt realistic. It felt bratty. There was nothing creepy about them - it was like they all just threw a tantrum with a knife in their hands. All these characters ever did was scream and shout and kick and then stab things. They were irritating even before this, with their obnoxious giggles and ridiculous games. They just plain aren't likeable, and their personalities were mostly dull as all hell.

Enjoyment - 2:
This anime is not fun. It is a drag, plain and simple. It is painful to force yourself through, with little in the way of interesting plot points and characters. You become pleased to find their lives are awful because, frankly, they deserve that shit for putting you through this despicable piece of crud they call an anime. You won't laugh. You won't cry. You won't even be that disgusted, because the horror itself is lame. This anime isn't scary or creepy or suspenseful. You don't care if the characters die because they'll all be back in an episode or two to infuriate you again. In fact, I challenge you to attempt to care about the characters full stop. Maybe if they actually became good villains and were entertaining in that respect, I'd have actually enjoyed this anime.

I mean don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that horror is a good genre. I enjoy horror, but the genre itself is awful. You are more likely to find something awful than something good, but at least a lot of the bad shit is at least entertaining in its ridiculous grotesqueness. This is not the case with Higurashi. Higurashi is plain unenjoyable from start to finish.

Overall - 1:
Pathetic, appalling, however MAL wants to describe the 1/10 rating... it's right. Frankly, no matter how hard I try, I can't see a reason why you would like this anime. There are animes I hate where I at least understand some semblance of an appeal in their grotesqueness. Heck, there are animes I myself enjoy that other people would say are awful. But this anime, in all truth, is a waste of time. It does not deserve a 10 rating. It does not deserve a 9 rating. You are welcome to give it one and enjoy it, by all means, but I will never understand your motive or reasoning. You are giving this anime more credit than this overrated jockstrap will ever need and the fact that it has such a high average on MAL is, more than anything, shocking.

Please, if you ever listen to anything I say, do not watch Higurashi.
Do not waste your time on this anime.
Don't even open the streaming link.
Don't type the name into Google.
Don't put it on your to watch list.
Turn back.
Turn back now.
It's too late for me, alas, yet there is still hope for you.

Samurai Shodown the Motion Picture is an anime movie based on the SNK video game series, Samurai Shodown. I don't know much about the game apart from the two characters featured in Capcom vs. SNK 2 (since it only seems to be released on a console called "Neo Geo" which I've never even heard of) but a quick bit of research revealed this was released around the same time the original game in the series was voted Best Video Game of 1993. Don't let that deceive you, however - this is in no way the best video game adaptation.

Story - 3
Oh boy. I'm pretty sure ... this story took about as long to write as it took to play the game, if even that. It revolves around a group of holy warriors, sworn to protect a seal of ambrosia (which I'm just going to go ahead and assume is spelt the same as the rice pudding brand) who are betrayed by their seventh member, Shiro Amakusa. Blinded by the power of ambrosia that she has awakened, she kills the other six warriors and becomes something of a warlord in the century before the warriors are reborn. After this point, we follow our main character Haohmaru on his journey to learning of his past and defeating Amakusa. It's really that simple.

My main problem with this story is that it's super fucking predictable. You can see almost everything in this story coming from a mile off and it's hardly the most innovative thing on the scene. Yeah, I know I'm not meant to be expecting much from a video game adaptation of all things, but at least something that vaguely grasped my interest would've been nice.

Art - 5
Now I really love the anime art styles of the 90s, moreso than a lot of today's styles, but this art is pretty bad even for 1994. It felt rather shaky, and the characters barely moved at all. It didn't really feel like there was much effort put into it, although being forced to watch a 240p YouTube copy could hardly have helped. It's certainly not the worst I've seen though, so it's getting a solid 5. The art here is just genuinely nothing awe-inspiring at all.

Sound - 2
Well then. This anime's sound. The sound effects and music were rather mediocre by themselves, but I evidently made a mistake by opting to watch the English dub here. I have heard some bad dubs before, but even shoddy hentai seemed to be doing a better job than most of this. Amakusa's voice definitely reminded me of someone, but not in a good way - just hearing her speak made me grimace. You would definitely do better to find subs if you really have to watch this, although I have to admit that I didn't see any on offer.

Character - 3
Every character in this movie was pretty one dimensional. It felt like the level of good/bad divide you put in a film aimed specifically at children, and I definitely don't mean the quality sort either. It had a very 90s bargain bin VHS feel to it, the sort of thing your parents found at a supermarket on the cheap during the weekly shop. It was good when you were 7, but now the characters are so simple that they're not going to entice anyone. The only character with any real depth beyond "must defeat evil in a righteous manner and get revenge for the deaths of others!" was actually the villain, Amakusa. We don't even see most of the holy warriors for more than a few minutes at a time, and character development is hardly a thing. In fact, a lot of the relationships in this felt very lost and spur of the moment - it was just one big fat clusterfuck of not very well written characters.

Enjoyment - 3
Bluntly put, this movie was dull. I love samurai anime, I really do, but no amount of sword fighting here could have kept my interest. It was really an effort to get to the end, since the only really interesting part was Haohmaru's home life, mostly because it was hilariously stupid. A movie of a dim wannabe samurai doing village chores would really have been better to watch, if only because that sort of ridiculous samurai slice of life element is one of my favourite parts of samurai anime. I honestly zoned out way more than a few times.

Overall - 3
This movie is poor. Not only is it a bad video game adaptation, it's not even an interesting one. At least some of the others, despite their hideous flaws, are strangely gripping in their ridiculously awful attempts at storyline and characters. This movie isn't really fun or a breakthrough or even worth the time it took to google the title. I'd only be free of guilt from sitting by and allowing someone to watch this if they'd actually played the game and just wanted to bask in some nostalgia, but I honestly doubt this movie is worth even that.

I first encountered this anime merely because it was listed in the criteria for the GAR achievement here on MAL, but I'm actually pretty glad I bothered to watch it and I'm sorta surprised that it doesn't seem like many other people have. I've not read the manga myself but I have actually heard of it, as well as the live action movie adaptations. Whatever, back to this OVA.

Story - 7
The story's pretty simple, and follows Bouya Harumichi as he starts at a new school, Suruzan Institute. It's known as the "school of crows" because the community hates the students---they're all thugs and delinquents that ... do little but fight and brawl. He quickly strikes up a deal with a pretty scrawny kid called Yasuda Yasuo to protect him from a gang that are beating on him and soon becomes more and more involved in the hierarchy and feuds of the different gangs in the school.

Honestly, that's pretty much your lot. If you came to this anime expecting plot twists and thrilling reveals then you're not gonna find any. It's just good old fashioned delinquent fighting and slag offs in school yards. Which, if you're like me and enjoy watching burly guys punch each other in the face, is pretty enjoyable to watch. The only real problem is that the story feels incomplete. OVA 2 ends on something of a cliffhanger, like another episode is needed to finish the saga. I'm not sure if maybe they run out of funding or the project was cancelled, but there isn't really any sort of definitive ending to see here.

Art - 8
This anime's even older than me, and the animation shows. It's nice to look at despite the age though, and I personally didn't see any problems with it. I love the art style of 90s animes and other vintage animes anyway, so I'm probably sorta biased. I really enjoy the way the characters look and move however, and it's pretty easy to see what's going on in every scene.

Sound - 6
I actually really like the voice acting here, and the OVAs use some cool rock music throughout. There's no English dub (and the only subs I found were pretty fishy) but the vast array of deep manly voices here pretty much hits the spot just right.

Characters - 8
Speaking of manly voices, it's time to get onto my favourite part - the characters. It should be no secret that delinquents and manly muscly guys like this are my favourite sorts of anime characters. They're tough, they punch things, they don't know their times tables, and some of them even ride motorbikes. The interactions they have are really the only thing driving this anime, and whilst character development seriously isn't really a thing here, watching these guys shout and swear at each other is great. The character designs are fabulous too, with those stereotypical Japanese delinquent hairstyles at every turn and a vast abundance of cool jackets.

Enjoyment - 7
Personally, I enjoyed this OVA. Some parts of it dragged on a little, to the extent I was glad that I was eating dinner whilst I watched it and had something to preoccupy myself, but I could honestly never say that I didn't enjoy watching bad boys do what bad boys do best - beat on each other and then talk about it afterwards. I laughed more than a few times, and kept a smile on my face for most of the anime - I definitely had fun with this.

Overall - 7
I honestly wouldn't recommend this anime to some people. It really depends on whether this sort of thing is your cup of tea. Overall though, for people that are into delinquent anime, this is a good find and a worthwhile watch. It definitely made eating a meal a million times more fun, I can tell you straight. I'm sure this'd probably be fun for people that have read the manga too, and probably actually know how this story ends, but alas I can't speak from experience when it comes to that. 7/10, good decent 90s OVA.

Utena is an anime I was hassled into watching by friends. I'd heard a lot of really good things about it, wonderful things in fact, so I decided to give it a go. I... don't really think it was what I was expecting, though.

Story - 7
The basic premise of Revolutionary Girl Utena is that Utena Tenjou is a girl that wishes to be a prince after a prince is kind to her following the death of her parents. He gives her a rose crest ring that is worn by the student council at the school she attends, Ohtori Academy, who are involved in duelling to ... win the hand of a fair maiden called Anthy Himemiya, known collectively as the Rose Bride. Inevitably, Utena gets involved in these duels and battles to stay engaged to Anthy to protect her from the mysterious goings on at the academy. Although the anime has a number of different arcs, this common story is present in all of them.

Actually, I rather like this story. I wouldn't say it was one of the best (and admittedly, the further into the anime I got, the less I understood it) but it was always interesting to watch. Especially since a lot of magical girl animes seem to suffer from undeniably bad villains too, it was interesting to see the reasons for people to want to duel Utena - although how getting engaged to a hot Indian chick is met to suddenly solve all your problems is a mystery to me, unless your problem is an abject lack of beautiful women in your life (unlikely, given the girls in this - even the like 9 year old kid was knee deep in pussy).

Really the reason I ranked it only a 7 was probably more my fault than the anime's since the last few arcs just passed me by and flew over my head like it wasn't even there. I couldn't explain the plot of the last two arcs to you even if I could write spoilers here - I just didn't understand it at all. It felt rather complicated for a magical girl anime and the blank gaps of symbolism left me less wondering what these things meant and more what they even were in the first place. I only feel like I'm starting to understand this anime a little more as I look at the fandom now that it's over. Watching Oniisama e (one of the main inspirations for this series) is helping out a lot too.

Art - 8
I wasn't keen on the animation in this at first. The spindly limbs and reused sequences bothered me, but lately I feel like I've come to appreciate the overly bishounen features and quintessentially '90s character designs. I'd definitely say the art here is an acquired taste but it's a taste I've grown to really enjoy. The flowing feminine lines add a great feel to the anime in general, since it's got such strong female leads, and it oddly even seems to fit the men. They do suffer from an odd lack of nipples (despite some of the characters having a tendency to feverishly stroke the spot where they should be as they frolic shirtlessly across the screen) but their glistening pretty boy features scream "I am a snooty posh boy" at the top of their lungs - which the male characters mostly are.

Although I did do a bit of complaining about the symbolism, the art does the symbolism very well. Unlike some animes, it keeps a lot of these recurring themes subtle and it uses the medium well with colour co-ordination. There are a hell of a lot of roses in this anime and those in particular are very beautifully drawn. The clothes worn here are highly questionable throughout but hey, it's the 90s, we can let it pass. At least they weren't wearing bright red velvety dungarees like I was in '97.

Sound - 6
The sound in this anime was pretty average. The score was nice, but not all that breathtaking, and the voice acting was ok. It's worth noting that I watched the English dub (and have never seen it in Japanese) and whilst some of the voices could easily be perceived as annoying (yeah Nanami, looking at you right now) they all felt like they fitted the characters they were representing well. The OP to this anime is really nice too so it's worth taking the time to listen at least once.

Characters - 6
Although I only rated this section a 6, it's a rating that really reflects my average perception of this anime's characters. Apart from a few stand outs, they were all mostly just ok. Utena in particular is someone I just had very average feelings for. She wasn't a bad heroine but I didn't really feel that connected to her, particularly in the later acts with some of the relationships she chooses to pursue. My favourite character was actually Nanami who, although she is mostly comic relief, has rather a fair bit of character development and some really good centric episodes. Actually, I'd go so far as to say that her episodes are the best ones there. Although they're mostly little more than filler, they're incredibly enjoyable and really showcase what a great character she is. Her relationship with her brother was a dynamic I loved to follow too.

Enjoyment - 6
I'd like to say I enjoyed this anime more than I did, since the different aspects of it were rather good, but I just feel like I never really connected to it that much. I didn't feel like it ever drew me in that much and probably would've considered dropping it if I'd watched it alone. In particular, I felt very distant from it at the start. The first couple of episodes almost went as far as to bore me with my disinterest and it wasn't really until Nanami got a larger role that I started to enjoy it at all. The amount of time I spent horrifically confused and unable to follow the story didn't really help. It would probably benefit from a rewatch, but I'm too lazy for things like that.

Overall - 6
Although I myself didn't really get into this anime, I guess I get why people are diehard fans. I don't really understand the whole "masterpiece" title some people give it but it would probably be more fun if I actually understood it more. If you do give this anime a go, make sure you don't skip the filler - it's genuinely hilarious and helped me keep going to the end (well that and all the shirtless men rubbing their naked torsos against car bonnets and silky bed sheets alike).

Oh God, this anime. As you can see, I didn't finish this. I simply couldn't bring myself to. I dropped this so hard and dashed as far away from it as I could and I'm still surprised that people call it a "masterpiece" left, right and centre.

I'd like to start by stressing that I'm really not a fan of magical girl animes. I've seen a few before but Madoka Magica was really the only one I'd say I definitely enjoyed. The only other one I rate highly is Sailor Moon for purely nostalgic reasons.
So your first question is probably why I chose to watch this ... at all - I sort of didn't. A friend streamed her DVDs of it and I ended up watching the first 9 episodes as a result. She'd streamed Utena for me too, which I also don't really get the "masterpiece" praising for. This review isn't about Utena though, so after that short background we get onto the portion of this anime that I managed to sit through without killing myself.

Story - 4
The basic premise of this anime is that a duck turns into a ballerina magical girl with weirdass two tone hair and reclaims the pieces of a boy's heart that he no longer has - making him little more than monotone and dull to behold. It's not that interesting sounding a plot and it wasn't really interesting to watch either. What I saw of it was rather predictable and not that gripping. Some of the comedy was ok but a lot of it was rather cliché magical girl stuff - which is fine if you're into that sort of thing, which I've already explained that I'm not.

Art - 3
Whilst I appreciate this anime's pretty old now, I just wasn't a fan of the art style at all. The flicky weird hairstyles were offputtingly grotesque in particular and whilst it matched the odd childish vibe the entire anime gave off, I just didn't find it visually appealing at all. The characters themselves had rather cliché character designs too, with everyone perceived good wearing white and the opposite wearing black. Whilst this made it easy to tell who was on what side (or perhaps moreso how we were intended to feel about them), it didn't feel very creative at all.

Sound - 6
The music in this anime was rather nice, since it was all ballet music to keep to the theme. The fact that it wasn't really an original score and was just classical music is what kept me from rating it higher. It was music most of us have heard before and there wasn't really anything new or breathtaking about it in that regard.
I also watched this anime's English dub, which was... awful, to be frank. At least Chris Patton was in it, which is always a relief to hear.

Character - 2
Oh God, these characters. Duck in particular is horrifically infuriating, as well as her monotone dull love interest. I don't even remember his name, he bored me so much. The only character I really liked at all was Fakir because he made me laugh and it was only really during his conversations with monotone love interest that I was really truly engaged in this anime at all. The only other character worth mentioning in a positive light is the ballet teacher - who's an anthro cat in a green shirt, no less. His over the top comic relief was pretty entertaining, in a "were they high when they thought of this" sort of way, but he wasn't in it nearly enough to distract from Duck and her squeaky voice.

Enjoyment/Overall - 3
I did not enjoy this anime. That's rather an understatement. I mostly couldn't wait for the stream to end and only stayed there to talk with my friends. It got to the point that I was only staying for the outtakes I was promised at the end of the DVDs, and I eventually talked my friend into not showing anymore when I was told there were only two sets of outtakes to watch.

Actually, the outtakes would've made a better anime.
Do yourself a favour and give this one a miss.
Watch the outtakes instead.