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It almost feels unnecessary for me to review this movie. Everybody knows about it. Everybody (who knows what they’re talking about) knows it’s a masterpiece. Is there really anything else I can add to the discussion surrounding this movie? No, but I still wanna talk about it anyway because I love this movie & actually have yet to review a Studio Ghibli movie. But first a little history. I originally watched Spirited Away for the first time back in 2018 a few months after I had just gotten into anime proper & knew who Hayao Miyazaki was. More importantly though, I knew the reputation this ... movie had going into. I watched it….. & I liked it. I’ll be honest I wasn’t overly impressed with it or saw why it garnered its reputation, but I enjoyed the film overall. Though I did watch it the same day I watched Akira for the first time, which at the time, I thought was a completely incomprehensible piece of shit. That stance has changed since then but the point is, I would’ve thought anything was good coming off Akira the exact same day I watched it. Going forward in life I just kinda moved on & didn’t think about Spirted Away too much. But in 2019 as I realized I was running out of Studio Ghibli movies to watch (as in I was close to seeing all of them). I went on a sort of Ghibli binge & started to not only watch the ones I missed, but even rewatched some of my favorites/ones I wanted to get a new opinion on, & thus brings us back to Spirted Away. I rewatched it….. & I fucking loved it. Whatever prevented me from really seeing Spirited Away as a masterpiece back then no longer applied, I was enthralled with movie & for a week I couldn’t take my mind off of it. I know this introduction was rather lengthy but I honestly felt this was necessary because I wanted to apply some groundwork as to why this is now my second favorite, & at times my favorite Miyazaki movie of all time. Spoilers inbound btw

I think what I love most about Spirited Away is the narrative, but more so the narrative structure. I love coming of age stories & Spirited Away is one of the best in my honest opinion. Chihiro does start out as an unlikable brat, but what do you expect? She’s only 10, has to move away to a different town from all her friends, & then gets thrusted into this fantasy world that she knows nothing about, & on top on top of that, is filled with all these weird fantasy creatures that nobody knows about. But throughout the movie we get to see Chihiro adapt to this environment. We see her overcome these impossible odds. We get to see her grow up. It’s simplicity executed to perfection & what makes this story even better is the storyboarding. If there’s one thing Hayao Miyazaki is a master at it’s crafting/mapping settings. I won’t bore you with excessive details like how Chihrio exactly got from outside the bath house to Yubaba’s room. But I feel like if Yubaba’s bath house was a real place that I could visit I would know the layout exactly & wouldn’t have to consult anybody thanks to Miyazaki’s storyboarding. The world just builds together & flows so fluently that I was never lost, I knew exactly where I was at all times. But even better is the pacing. This movie is just right, it knows exactly how long it needs to stay somewhere, it knows exactly when to transition into the next scene, & it knows how to keep me engaged & never question how much longer I have left in the movie. This movie is 2 hours long but I was never bored because of how excently paced the movie was. What else needs to be addressed is the world building. I more or less alluded to it when talking about the storyboarding but can we take a moment to appreciate how meticulously crafted this world is? From the pig farms, the market where Chihiro’s parents turn into pigs, the aforementioned bathhouse, Yubaba’s office & her baby’s room. The train station that takes Chirio & No Face to Zeniba’s hut in the swamp. I remember everything about this world precisely because of the excellent worldbuilding. Miyazaki knows just how long he needs to keep us in these environments as to make them memorable. Hell, even the small town that Chirhio’s family is moving to at the beginning of the movie I can tell you about how the family even ends up in the Spirit world in the first place. I won’t pad with the details of course (this review is already pretty lengthy as it is, I’m 2 pages in & I’m still talking about the story/world for fucks sake). I don’t know if I’ve said peace with this segment yet or not but Spirited Away is a very dense, layered world with a lot of meat to chew on & for that I think it’s super commendable & deserves respect.

Phew, now that I’m done with that mouthful, I guess I should talk about the characters, which are also excellent. Honestly, none of them outside of Chihiro & Haku really get development. But they don’t need to, as most of them serve a purpose in helping Chirhio find her way in this world & keep her identity as so she doesn’t get trapped & can’t go back to her world. All of them are not only characterized extremely well, but they’re also memorable and have easily identifiable character traits. Out of all the characters in this movie, my two favorites are Rin & Zeniba. I like them the most because they’re guiding figures for Chihrio in this strange world. Rin is the tough love but caring type & is like a sister figure for Chihiro. It kinda saddens me how Rin has long since lost her identity & is destined to forever stay in the spirit world working for Yubaba, but I also like to think of that as Rin’s motivation for even helping Chihiro in the first place, she knows Chihiro really doesn’t belong in the spirit world & wants to do whatever she can to help her keep afloat in this strange world & make it back to her world safely. Zenida is Yubaba’s nicer sister that ends up helping Chihiro by revealing one of Yubaba’s secrets that will help Chihiro get back to her world. She’s a sweet & loving granny figure even preferring that Chihiro call her such. She’s honestly such a sweet old woman, I almost think it would be worth going through what Chihiro went though in this movie just so I could go to her swamp & have a conversation with her. But I can’t forget Haku, the guy who even helps Chihiro realize what kind of situation she’s in to begin with. He’s heroic, loyal to his friends, & caring, but he’s also not afraid to stand up to authority going against Yubaba directly at several points in the movie. It’s actually revealed near the end of the movie that Haku is the spirit of the Kohaku river, a river that Chirio almost drowned in as a child. It’s hinted throughout the movie that Chihiro & Haku have a stronger connection than it originally seems & when this is revealed, it hits hard. Even the minor characters in this movie such as Kamajii, the human spider who’s the heart of the bathhouse as he operates the mechanisms this bathhouse needs to even run in the first place. The three heads of Yubaba who have a really funny scene in the movie where their disguise getting revealed by Yubaba results in them hopping out the room making “hup hup hup” sounds. The way this scene is directed & the way they exit the room inparticular with the same expression they had on their faces earlier just makes me laugh everytime I think about it. I’d of course be remiss if I didn’t talk about Yubaba. Yubaba, isn’t exactly my favorite Ghibli villain, I don’t think she’s as layered as Kushana from the Nausicaa movie. Or in a somewhat unique position for an antagonist like Fujimoto from Ponyo (as in he’s not really a bad guy more so an overprotective father who tries his best). But I do think she is written well & isn’t just a blank face evil villain. She’s not a nice person but I at least understand her motivations & where she’s coming from. The reason she has to operate her bathhouse on such a constant schedule is because spirts often come to be cleansed of their wrongdoings or what have-you so that they can then pass on & leave the spirt world in peace. Her bathhouse prevents Chaos from spreading & destroying the world essentially. She’s also a mother who tries her best to provide for her son too. She’s not exactly the most morally correct person but she’s not supposed to be. She’s supposed to be Chihiro’s greatest obstacle on he journey of both self discovery (at 10) and finding her way back home. I think I’ve covered about as much as I can with this segment. The characters in Spirited Away are excellent. Easily my favorite cast out of any Studio Ghibli just because of how memorable all of them are.

I honestly really don’t know how I’m gonna talk about the art & animation because I mean what is there to really say? It’s Studio Ghibli. We all know their animation is the best in the business, we all know the background art is extremely detailed, we all know the character designs have that charm with them, we all know about this stuff. I don’t think you really need me to repeat what others have said (as if I haven’t been doing that throughout this review). But alright, if you want me to explain why Spirited Away’s art and animation is phenomenal, just watch either one clip of the movie, or look at an image on google. Those two things will say more about this aspect than I ever could. I will however talk about the voice acting, which is excellent. Chihiro despite being a brat at the beginning of a movie has a somewhat soft-spoken demeanor to start off & I really like that. The rest of the cast all bring their A game & there isn’t one dull performance to be found throughout this movie. Even no faces moans just leave off this feeling that I can’t really describe but it’s there god-damnit. The music is of-course, spectacular. Shocker I know, but it’s so good. Joe Hisaishi doesn’t miss with his orchestration, his pianos, anything really. This man is so damn good at what he does & the music matches the atmosphere of this music so perfectly I couldn’t imagine anybody else doing it.

To end it off. Spirited Away I think I can safely call my favorite Miyazaki/Ghibli movie. I just get so much out of it. I haven’t watched it since 2019 but as you can tell from this review, I still think about it so much. It’s a movie about self discovery, about life, about growing up. To quote Miyazaki “I would like to make a film to tell children its good to be alive.” Spirited Away is a movie that means a lot to me & should not be dismissed. It needs to be watched by everyone. This isn’t just a good kids movie, it’s a good fucking movie no matter who you are & it does in fact hold up. I don’t know how I’m supposed to end this exactly. But Miyazaki is a mastermind, this movie is a masterpiece. Uh yeah, I’m leaving lol.

Can I even call this a review? I mean, I’ll be talking about things I like. I’ll be going over aspects of the series as if it was a review. But I won’t really be talking about Real as if I’m reviewing instead I’ll just be talking about it as if I was casually discussing it in a discord chat or VC. But before we start I need to establish 3 things. Firstly, Real is still an ongoing manga as of the writing of this review. Secondly, I haven’t caught up to Real, I’ve read 13 volumes. Thirdly, Real is my 2nd favorite manga so ... there really won’t be any talks of criticism as quite honestly, there isn’t much, if anything I find wrong about Real. I think Real is one of the greatest works of art I’ve ever read & it submitted Takehiko Inoue as not only my favorite mangaka, but my for sure one of my top 5 favorite creators in any media (Music, Games, Manga, Anime, etc.) of all time. Sufficed to say Real is a manga that means a lot to me which is why I want to stress the question asked at the beginning of this lengthy introduction “Can I even call this a review?”.

So what is it that makes Real such a god tier favorite for me? Well it’s the whole package as a short answer but I’ll be discussing this package because I doubt anybody wants “It’s the whole package” as an answer to that question. But firstly, lets begin with that story. Real’s story is about taking these 3 (& then later 4) very different characters, exploring their minds, & finding their own paths to self discovery. If there’s one word to describe Real’s story, it’s “Human”. It gives us very realistic, & to some even relatable situations. It gets us to understand how these situations effect each individual & really understand their state of mind. I don’t think it’s a stretch to state that these characters are extremely unlikable at first, but I don’t think it’s an extreme unlikable. Like lets just think about things, Nomiya in the beginning is a lost loser who has no desire for his future, a high school drop out, brash, & he ruined the life of this girl named Natsumi by paralyzing her from the waist down due to a motorcycle accident. Takahashi is a dickish brat who steals somebody’s bike just because he feels like it, makes fun of Nomiya for dropping out of highschool & looks down upon him harshly, & is very self centered. Speaking of self centered, we’ve got Togawa, somebody who’s selfishness caused the demise of his own team. While these described traits make the characters sound really unlikable, we quickly learn of their backstories & it helps us to peel back the layers of these characters & really understand where they come from. Plus Real’s phenomenal character development turns these characters into tragic heroes in a sense. Nomiya, after rediscovering his love for basketball thanks to Togawa. Does his best to set things right with Natusmi (and succeeds). Gets his driver license whilst simultaneously getting over his fear of the road. Gets a job that sets him on the right path. Changes his attitude on life & becomes a generally more positive person. Togawa gives into authenticity, learns the value of teamwork, & gets the tigers back together after splitting them apart originally. Takahashi gets over himself, takes his rehab seriously, much like Tomiya, rediscovers his passion for basketball, & gains a newfound appreciation for life that he originally didn’t have. Character development like this throughout 3 very different, yet equally layered individuals take Real & turn it into a manga that so easily cracks the top 2. All throughout this manga I’ve been engaged & when you’re at such a point that you can’t put a volume down until you finish it because you’re that immersed into the story that’s how you know you’re reading a fantastic manga. Now is also probably a good time to mention it. But if you’re coming into this manga expecting fast paced, frantic exciting Basketball action, either don’t or turn back & don’t read this manga. While Real does have really good & exciting Basketball action like Slam Dunk. That isn’t what Real’s about. Real is a character drama at its core & it’s about character development. To put it bluntly, if you’re reading Real for the Basketball action, you’re doing it wrong. Unlike Slam Dunk which is about the sport but has fantastic characters with good pacing. Real is about character drama first & foremost with the sport of Basketball as supplementary material that helps serves as a driving force for this character development to take place. Just for we’re clear, I’m not shitting on or trying to undercut Slam Dunk. Slam Dunk is my 12th favorite manga, my favorite manga that ran in weekly shounen jump, & a manga that I think appeals to everyone. I really do love Slam Dunk but what I’m getting at is that if you’re expecting Real to be like Slam Dunk, then your expectations aren’t in the right place & you may end up disappointed.

Now onto the characters. I’ve already gone over our main 3 that Real centers around. But they’ll still get mentioned from time to time. However, there is one other character that more or less becomes a main character later on in the story that I’ve failed to mention until now. The Scorpion, otherwise known as Shiratori. Shiratori is a former wrestler who found himself in an accident that made him lose his ability to walk. But unlike Takahashi (at first anyway) he’s very optimistic, claiming that he’ll be able to walk again within a month. He’s a hard worker with a very optimistic outlook on life, & with a certain volume that I’ll be discussing later on in this segment is really impressive given the circumstances he’s had to put up with. We also got Shiratori. An aspiring manga artist. Although Tomiya paralyzed her from the waist down. It ironically ends up helping her to pursue her dreams of creating manga. Real has a lot of characters, & it makes them all memorable. We’ve got Hisayuki, Takahashi’s father who expresses extreme regret over neglecting his son for most of his life & tries his best to make up with his son after the accident. We’ve got Tora, a guy Togawa looked up to as if he was a brother. This character specifically actually has one of my favorite moments in the series in which he gives Togawa a wheelchair designed for Basketball & Togawa breaks down crying. The pure emotion this scene carries with it it powerful & I’ll fully admit this is one of the moments of Real that made me cry. I can go on about these characters but I honestly don’t think that’s super interesting & even still, there’s no way a mere text post could peel back all the layers of these characters. So I’ll give off three character moments of Real that add onto making this my top 2. We’ve got Takahashi crying & yelling at Shiratori not to lose his first match after rehab after learning that his other rehab partner was the one who sent Shiratori the letters that he talked about earlier. We’ve also got the moment where Nomiya gets fired from his job & instead of sulking takes that as motivation to continue finding his new path in life & uses it as motivation to get back into basketball. We’ve got the moment where on his death-bed, Togawa still texts Yamauchi “you’re my hero”. If I had to give 2 volumes that exemplify what makes Real what it is. It’s volume 11 & volume 13, Volume 11 we get the main , we see Nomiya trying out for the lightnings. Togawa continuing to learn the value of teamwork. & Takahashi starting to find the motivation to take his rehab seriously & gain a newfound appreciation of life that he didn’t have previously. Combine these 3 stories together & you’ve got as of now my favorite volume of Real. Volume 13 is the shiratori volume in which we learn of his backstory. We learn that he went through a divorce & lost his kid, we learn the reason he became a wrestler in the first place, we learn what wrestling really means to him, & we get to see some of the best character development Real has to offer up to this point. I think I’ve exerted about all the energy I can on the characters of Real without going into college essay territory. Honestly, I don’t feel like I’ve even began to scratch the surface of why these characters are so good but I do hope I’ve at least offered enough as to give readers an understanding as to why these characters are so good & why they only add onto how much this manga means to me.

Onto the art. To the surprise of nobody Real’s art is amazing. Takehiko Inoue is one of the most renowned artists in manga for a reason, & Real is just another exemplary showcase of Inoue’s artistic prowess. While I’m not sure if I’d say Real’s art is as good as Vagabond’s on the whole, I will say it’s better than Slam Dunk even at its best & the art only continues to go up from volume 1. The text to art ratio is on the lower end, Real’s pages can have a decent sum of text on them but it’s not huge & I found myself flying through the pages no matter if it was majority text or just art. The art itself in the action scenes flows really well & there’s never a dull moment, the hype of these games can equal Slam Dunk in all honesty. I’m sorry this section was significantly shorter than the other 2 segments but I really don’t know what else I can say about Real’s art being amazing without repeating myself.

That’s Real. If I can say 3 words. “Thank You Inoue”. Thank you for creating one of the best pieces of fiction I’ve ever experienced. Thank you for giving me some of my favorite characters with some of the best development in all of manga. Thank you for creating a story that immerses me in a way that very few manga. Thank you above all else for creating Real. I know Inoue will never read this. But I still want to thank him for writing my second favorite manga of all time & cementing himself as my favorite mangaka of all time. Please read this manga people, if you love human drama you have no excuse not to read this because I honestly don’t think you’ll get a better drama series than this one. I don’t think you’ll get better character development than Real. I don’t even know where I’m taking this anymore, but I wanna end this with a final “Thank You Inoue”.

Slam, motherfuckin, Dunk. You say those 3 words & they just begin to resonate throughout the room. That’s the power this manga has. Slam Dunk is a series that, I hate to use this phrase because I think it’s stupid. “Transcends manga”. I don’t necessarily use that because I think it’s the most well written, most clever, or best manga ever. Slam Dunk doesn’t even crack my top 10 of all time (but it comes pretty damn close). So why do I use that phrase? Because I honestly think Slam Dunk is a manga that appeals to everybody.

Basketball is a universally understood concept. It’s ... popularity may vary across regions/countries (especially given that before Slam Dunk Basketball in Japan was not a popular sport) but it’s nevertheless something everybody understands. However if Slam Dunk being about Basketball was all it had going for it then it wouldn’t be as fondly remembered as it is & most certainly wouldn’t be the 7th & 9th highest rated manga on Anilist & MyAnimeList respectively. Want proof? Just look at Takehiko Inoue’s Buzzer Beater manga, while not outright awful it’s essentially a glorified advertisement for some ESPN website in Japan at the time & it’s not even remotely remembered as well as Slam Dunk is because being about Basketball is the only thing Buzzer Beater has going for it.

So what does make Slam Dunk as good as it is. Well it’s quite simple really, Inoue himself does. Takehiko Inoue may just possibly be the most passionate Japanese Basketball fan of all time. So what does he do? He takes a concept as universally understood as Basketball, gives it some fantastic characters with a lot of charisma, charm, & identifiable traits. Then takes both & writes a straight-forward narrative with hype moments throughout, characters that we get to see grow throughout the narrative, at first bad art but it quickly becomes good, & then near the end of the series phenomenal, & packages it tight so that it keeps a fast pace that makes the series incredibly addicting to read. But that’s just a generalization of these concepts.

As stated earlier, Slam Dunk’s plot is simplistic. It’s got the exact structure & story beats that you would expect out of a sports narrative. Because of its cast though, the story is excelled to greater heights that it would’ve obtained otherwise. We’ve got Sakuragi, the meatheaded shounen protagonist that gets heated easily but pulls his weight when it counts, has a strong sense of teamwork & loyalty under his rough exterior, & is passionate about Basketball. Then we’ve got Rukawa, the reserved member, the star player, the one who goes through giving into authenticity & opening up to his team mates. We’ve got Akagi, the captain, the really passionate Basketball player, & the guiding figure on & off the court. Even some of the characters that aren’t super important to the narrative like Sakuragi’s 3 friends offer some great comedy to the series & they play off of each other really well. I can go on all day but I think you get that Slam Dunk has some awesome characters that are one reason that really makes Slam Dunk as good of a series as it is.

As mentioned earlier, Inoue is a passionate Basketball fan & with Slam Dunk his passion oozes throughout the pages but it never comes off as cheesy. Throughout the manga you really get to feel Inoue’s passion rather it be through his detailed art, his ‘Dr T’s basketball lessons” (remember Basketball was essentially not a thing in Japan before Slam Dunk). The already mentioned characters that have just as much of a passion for the sport as the author does. It’s just a huge love letter at the end of the day. What I think encapsulates the love Inoue has for Basketball is how he goes about representing games & getting to see the characters grow. The games in Slam Dunk ar always hype, never dull, paced perfectly, & house some of the most powerful moments of the manga. But through the games we always get to see these characters grow meaning there is always some form of progression that keeps the pace going. There’s moments in Slam Dunk like Sakuragi denying the Judo club because he really has grown to love the sport of Basketball by that point. A last second unexpected loss that destroys the team’s spirts, & getting to learn bits about Rukawa’s past that help make this manga for me.

If you love seeing artist evolve overtime, then Slam Dunk is for you because you get to see it in just one manga that ran for 6 years, you don’t even need to read Vagabond or Real (though I’d recommend you do that but those are for different reviews). Slam Dunk’s art at first can honestly look quite bad. There’s hardly any shading, the compositional works can be weak, the characters look ultra simplistic, & the art in generally for the first volume can look derpy if I had to put it in one word. However the art quickly improves, Inoue’s compositional pieces become significantly better, his characters more detailed, his paneling better, I think you get the point. Then, it happens. Inoue’s art becomes phenomenal by the final 6 or so volumes. Not on every page mind you, but when it’s spreads, detailed character panels, & panels of that like. Inoue’s art gets to a point that I honestly think can rival early Vagabond. In conclusion, you get to see the artistic evolution of an artist in one work & that’s awesome, easily some of the best art that I’ve seen out of weekly shounen jump.

Well there you have it. My thoughts on Slam Dunk. I love this manga if you couldn’t tell, I think it’s absolutely legendary & a series that everybody no matter who they are should give this manga a chance. There’s very little to outright hate about this manga it’s so likeable thanks to Inoue’s passion for the sport being used to craft a simple yet compelling narrative throughout 31 volumes, 276 chapters, & xxxx pages worth of material (if somebody wants to tell me how many Slam Dunk actually is feel free). This manga, while not necessarily being my favorite or a manga that I think is the best. This manga gets my highest recommendation above all other manga due solely to its mass appeal & likeability. If you have not read this legendary series, get on it.

City Hunter Shinjuku Private Eyes is awesome. After a long time, City Hunter returns to animation with a brand new original movie by Sunrise (the studio that originally animated City Hunter in the first place). I think it replicates what made City Hunter so awesome in the first place & is a fantastic return to form.

The story really isn’t anything special tbh. It isn’t bad, it’s about our boy Ryo getting hired as a bodyguard (as he usually does in the series) by a famous model & then evolving into a plot about trying to stop a corporation & their super weapon. It’s not a ... particularly stand out plot, but City Hunter being an episodic series was never known for its plot in the first place, so this is fine. Even as a plot it still brings with it some high stakes, good character moments, & serves as a great driving force for the action set-pieces in this movie. So although nothing too special it’s hard to really complain about this plot that much.

The characters are pretty much exactly what you remember from the series & I wouldn’t have it any other way for what’s supposed to be a standalone, return to form after a long absence City Hunter movie. Ryo is the same perverted yet reliable sweeper you know & love from the original series, although his perverted side has been dialed back a bit for modern sensibilities. I honestly don’t mind this as they really didn’t dial it back as much as my statement would lead you to believe & he’s still the same Ryo Saeba I know & love from the OG so I have no complaints. Kaori is the same trusty sidekick who keeps Ryo in check whenever his antics get too out of hand. Other characters you remember from the series such as Sayako & Umibouzu return as well. While my explanations of these characters make them seem like very simple characters (because they are) I need to bring up that City Hunter’s cast consist of largely comedic characters. Comedic characters don’t necessarily need to have a large amount of depth to them provided they allow for good comedy & can offer good dynamics & I feel as though City Hunter’s characters succeed at both of these as I found myself laughing numerous times throughout this movie. Even when this movie starts getting more serious the characters know how to act in the situation & it never really leads to any tonal whiplash because the movie knows how to balance comedic & serious scenarios.

The artwork in this series is exactly what I would want a modern day interpretation of City Hunter to be. Character designer & animation director from Gundam The Origin, Tsukasa Kotobuki lends his hands on this project & I think it’s a good fit. His character designs achieve that right balance of old school but modern. These characters look & feel like the characters I loved in the original anime from 1987 so I have to give big credit. The art design generally speaking is pretty spectacular too, it’s got bright colors, detailed backgrounds, action scenes that flow well, & crisp shading. I will say though this movie can be lacking polish at points, I did notice some no-faces & badly drawn background characters in a few scenes. They aren’t riddled throughout the movie enough in order to ruin it for me but I did notice them more times than I would’ve liked to notice them. These mainly come at the beginning of the movie though, by the middle & end it’s pretty polished overall. The movie also has moments of CGI, but I actually don’t mind it because CGI is used the way it was in Gundam The Origin & Gundam Unicorn, mainly used on background objects off in the distance or machinery. I will say the CGI is more noticeable here than it was in either Gundam series I mentioned but I don’t think it’s bad enough to detract unless you just really hate CGI being in anime.

The sound department is pretty crisp with most of the voice actors returning to their roles. Akira Kamiya reprises his role as Ryo Saeba & he’s still got it despite getting up there in age. I will say that if you’re like me & have seen anything City Hunter prior going into this movie you can notice that Kamiya has aged but he still brings a good performance in spite of that so I won’t dock points for it. The music is pretty good with fan favorite tracks returning such as “Footsteps” & ‘Fall in love” returning (I got really giddy when I heard these in the movies). Even the original tracks are really solid too, the opening sequence of this movie has a banging rock piece playing that really gets you in the mood to see this movie. So the returning cast & an OST that keeping with the theme feels retro but brings City Hunter into modern times simultaneously? Sign me up.

This movie is a treat. I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end & I really hope Sunrise makes more City Hunter movies like these, I’d be so down for them. Do I think this movie is a great way to see if you’d like City Hunter or not? I think so, the story is pretty simple to understand, & it’s got everything I ever liked about City Hunter crammed into it. I would say you might wanna do some research into who these characters are going into it, but even if you don’t the movie does a great job at introducing you to these characters. It reminds me Cowboy Bebop Knockin on Heaven’s Door(‘s) opening scene in which the animation & directing portrays to the viewer Spike & Jet’s personality, dynamic, & differences all without really needing to tell you about it. I give this movie a 9/10

GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka) is absolutely legendary. It’s about a former gang member turned teacher teaching one of the worst classes in his school & turning them around into fine young men & women. Throughout time its been hailed as an all time great & for very good reason. In this review I hope to explain what makes this series so legendary.

I’ll start with the concept. A manga about turning into delinquents into fine people, giving them a figure in their life to look up to. It’s not the most original set-up in story telling but because of this we get to see ourselves in ... a variety of different situations ranging from down to earth & realistic, to completely out-there bat-shit insanity. Below its surface, GTO is a manga with a heart of gold about teaching life lessons & finding ones place in life. I don’t want to oversell it because GTO at its core is a comedy manga. But with GTO, I come for what’s seemingly a good comedy manga at first glance, & then I stay with it for the life lessons & characters that, while I don’t necessarily relate to. I’m sure many do & I can imagine there’s someone out there who were like at least one of the characters in this manga at some point in their life that not only relate to these but Onizuka transcended just being a character in a comedy manga & turned into somebody they looked up to.

I surely look up to Onizuka as cheesy as that may sound. I really do though, while Onizuka as a character obviously wouldn’t work in a real life scenario given how many school rules & at times laws he outright breaks. At one point to “teach his students a lesson” he ties them up, dunks them in water, & basically scars them for life. Another point early in the series as a means of getting back for one of his students, he stalks the victims bullies to a karaoke bar, ties them up, takes pictures of the girls in erotic positions & threatens to post the pictures on the internet (which he doesn’t actually do). So Onizuka isn’t exactly the most orthodox, or even morally right teacher out there, but at the end of the day he’s still a man I can never the less look up to for his ability to really teach those lessons he wants to get across.

On the opposite end, you can also understand where the students are coming from, why they’re assholes, & why they hate authority above all else. Take Nana for example, she’s a lonely girl who once lived a very happy family life in a small 5 tatami matt room. Once her father actually gained a new job & an increased level of wealth, the family became more distant with each other & see become less & less happy overtime & wished things could go back the way they were as she hardly feels like her family is a family anymore. When Onizuka learns of this story he decides to go to her house & put a giant hole in the wall with a sledge hammer. Metaphorically but also literally tearing down the walls that separate this family so that they may become reunited & learn to bond again. It’s moments & stories like that placed throughout that really make this manga into the legendary work of fiction that it’s become.

But Onizuka isn’t a manga that’s always tackling some of these heavy themes, it also knows when to lay back & just be a good comedy, & I give it serious credit. Onizuka is a pretty funny series that had me laughing at 90% of its jokes & situations. I remember one moments when Onizuka was trying to get this Yakuza boss’s kid back into school after a nearly 3 month absence. He puts on this heavy tough guy front calling out the Yakuza’s kid whilst being respectful about his situation. It actually works thanks to Onizuka treating the kid with respect, his speech convinces the kid to come back to school. Because of all the guns pointed directly at him during the speech, we then cut to reveal that Onizuka feared for his life so much that he actually ended up pissing his pants in fear. While some may look at that as juvenile I look at it as funny & grounding Onizuka back to reality because although he may be a Great Teacher, he’s still just a regular person at the end of the day, he may’ve been a former gang member but he’s still a man who values life (well, his own life in this instance) so of course he’s piss his pants out of fear of death.

I do need to bring up the art which is honestly the weakest part of the series. I don’t think GTO is necessarily badly drawn (I consider badly drawn to be art so bad that I genuinely can’t tell what’s supposed to be going on) & in that case GTO gets a pass because I can tell what things are supposed to be, action scenes don’t have too much going on to where things become a mess, & the faces are actually really well drawn a lot of the time (I should stress the comedic ones). But a problem with GTO’s art is that characters can kind of blend together from time to time, specifically the women, sometimes I can’t tell who’s who’s unless they call out the names which is very much a bad thing. I don’t think this necessarily detracts from the major character moments that I come to this manga for but nevertheless it can be pretty distracting.

GTO’s pacing is reasonably well, it’s largely a 50-50 split on text to art ratio & it took me about 40-50 minutes to read a volume give or take. I don’t think jokes overstay their welcome, beat to beat the story flows well & arcs last for just long enough as to feel satisfying but not truncated. It isn’t like Astro Boy where some stories have this problem in that they reach their climax & then the falling action happens to quickly, leading to some of the stories feeling truncated which GTO thankfully doesn’t suffer from.

It’s a combination of GTO’s absurdness, funny moments, down to earth character moments, but above all else heart of gold that turn this series into a legendary work of fiction. While it is a pretty simple manga in concept it thrives in the simplicity & uses it to create some layered-ness to its characters & story. I highly implore anyone to check this legendary series out if only for Onizuka himself he really lives up to that moniker of Great Teacher Onizuka.

Black Jack is a pretty dope manga. Written & illustrated by the one & only Osamu Tezuka, it ran from 1973 to 1983 & was one of his most successful works as it was running & then became one of his most recognizable overtime. I really don’t know where else to take this intro so I guess we’ll get started. Probably gonna be some spoilers, just a heads up.

Story:

Black Jack doesn’t really have any sort of narrative. It’s an episodic series with self contained stories that don’t really reference each other too much. While I don’t think Black Jack does anything at all to maybe ... convince non-believers or the episodic format or people who just don’t like episodic stuff in general that they’d like it given that the stories really don’t connect to one another aside from maybe a few callbacks. I never the less believe Black Jack’s individual stories are really strong. The main schtick of Black Jack is that the Kuroo Hazama is a black market doctor who goes around charging people (usually shady ones) obscene amounts of money in return for his services. In spite of being unlicensed & infamous for his schtick, Kuroo is actually one of, if not the best surgeon in Black Jack so people would have very good reasoning as to why they would want his services. This set-up isn’t necessarily the most original or creative set-up that could lead to interesting ideas however with stories such as Kuroo treating a whale, the origin story of how he created his technically daughter Pinoko, Kuroo’s origin story on why he became a doctor, etc. Black Jack more than makes up for its premise with some interesting (if at times frustratingly truncated) narratives, memorable characters, & somewhat reasonable pacing of these narratives. I can’t necessarily call every story in Black Jack great or even good, but seeing as we have 243 stories to tell (if you read scans of the official Vertical Comics release like I did) & the vast majority of them are good to great that’s forgivable. Before we move on, I do also need to mention that Black Jack may have some dated aspects or creepily disturbing or to some disgusting stories. There’s one story where this school announcer girl is on the verge of losing her voice so Black Jack treats her but then proceeds to say she can’t use her voice for a year or else the treatment won’t work. This is fine however there’s a scene where this girl who can’t talk almost gets raped by this group of guys. There’s another story that’s about this guy trying to cope with the loss of his girlfriend (or wife, one of those two) & one of his solutions is to then give his dog his GF’s voice to make it seem as if she’s still alive. This then leads to a scene of a little thing called beastiality near the end of the story, youch. Then there’s the way Tezuka presents Black people which, can definitely be seen as uncool to put it lightly. I personally didn’t take much issue with a lot of these topics I’ve just brought up, & in defense of Tezuka I don’t believe he intended for the drawings of the black people to look as stereotypically racist as they can look (at least I hope that was the case). However, I do feel it necessary to warn any potential readers of these aspects as I know some people probably wouldn’t have the level of tolerance towards these aspects that I had while reading the series


Characters:

The characters in Black Jack are pretty good I’d say. They aren’t exactly depp or layered characters necessarily (aside from Kuroo) but they are fun & memorable. Kuroo isn’t just my favorite character in Black Jack, he’s one of my favorite characters overall. I love his design & personality, he has a very cynical outlook on the world, a dark sense of humor, but underneath it all a heart of gold. Kuroo despite charging obscene amounts of money usually ends up treating some of his patients for completely free, rather that be because he gets screwed over or he believes the patient in question he’s treating is a good person true to what they believe in (as cheesy as that may sound). I can also appreciate how he refuses to become a licensed surgeon due to his outlook on hospitals & how money is seemingly more valuable to them than the life of a patient. If I had to bring up one thing I didn’t like about Black Jack, it’s Pinoko. Not that I think Pinoko is a bad character per-say but her speaking mannerisms can be grating because in general when I’m reading a manga, my brain always wants to say what the correct word is supposed to be (ex. Please instead of Pwease). In fairness there is an in universe explanation in the fact that Pinoko is only one & her speech hasn’t fully developed yet, but for an already unrealistic series that can get out there why’d that have to be realistic? Oh well. Anyhow we got characters such as the Whale Kuroo treats. Dr Kiriko, Black Jack’s nemesis who believes in peacefully killing his patients on their death bed rather than try to heal them back up. Joutarou Honma, the doctor who saved Kuroo’s life when he was a child & is there-fore the reason Kuroo became a doctor. Despite having a large cast of characters who largely only show up once I think Black Jack has some highly memorable characters.

Art:

Tezuka’s art style may be an acquired taste for some but if you read my Phoenix review or looked at my favorites list, you can guess that I not only love his art-style, but love Black Jack’s art as well. Black Jack is fairly typical of Tezuka’s art but it’s still really good. You can expect to see some great detailed background art. Creative uses of paneling that create a good sense of flow. Classic disney-esque character art with some really cool character designs that look good on the pages. You can expect some good ol’ Tezuka art out Black Jack like you would get out of Phoenix or any of his other manga. The text to art ratio is pretty good I’d say, Black Jack is still a text heavy series, it on average takes me an hour to an hour & a half to read a volume of Black Jack but Tezuka did a good job balancing it to where there’s just enough text that’s needed for the set-up & good character interactions, but not too much where it becomes a chore to read. If I had to bring another piece of criticism towards Black Jack, it would be the 4th wall breaks. Tezuka loves doing this in his other manga & I’ve never really been the hugest fan of it in any of his manga that I’ve read. Sometimes they can be cute & clever but a lot of the times they can be unnecessary & in some cases take away from the tone of the scene. I don’t think that happens too often in Black Jack to get on my nerves but I was never a fan of it when it did happen. I also need to bring up that if you’re squeamish towards human anatomy or how the inside of the human body looks I guess. You may want to proceed with caution because Tezuka can draw some pretty detailed depictions of human anatomy. I surprisingly didn’t find myself getting that sick actually so I guess it’s not too bad but again, proceed with caution.

Overall

So that’s Black Jack & it’s a pretty cool series I’ve gotta say. From its characters, its art, its passion, the enjoyment I get from reading it. It’s definitely a series I would call a favorite & one I would call a pretty good introduction to the world of Osamu Tezuka. I’m feeling a 9.5 for this one.

This review will contain spoilers

Osamu Tezuka is a figure who I feel needs no introduction. Often labeled the god of manga, he’s made so much throughout his career, from Dororo, Astro Boy, Message to Adolf, Buddha & so many more. It’s safe to say this man created a legacy throughout his 60 year life. Today we’ll be looking at his manga called Phoenix. Phoenix was considered by Tezuka to be his life's work, originally beginning in 1956, getting cancelled shortly after, & rebooted in 1967. It ran for over 20 years but was tragically left unfinished due to Tezuka’s death in 1989. Without further ado, ... lets begin

Story:

Phoenix is an anthology series. The schtick with Phoenix is that the titular bird of fire lives on throughout generations & sees over all of life. Depending on the character who comes in contact with the Phoenix, they may suffer eternal damnation, gain knowledge, or earn her help. The Phoenix is the only glue that binds these stories together albeit very loosely as the stories don’t really reference one another & are largely self contained stories. What really makes this series shine is actually The Phoenix herself. The Phoenix is a very interesting character with a lot of wisdom to offer to not only the characters, but the reader. Because the Phoenix is immortal, she sees all of humanity’s growth & mistakes throughout generations. So she herself has gained much wisdom over the generations that she’s seen everything take place. Her philosophies are very interesting & honestly make me stop to think about what I’m reading in a way that no other manga can achieve.

The stories in Phoenix also don’t really suffer from being inconsistent (aside from 1 which I’ll address in a minute). Every story has something thought provoking to offer & the progression through all of them is tight. There is one story in Phoenix that I don’t really like though, it’s the 6th one Nostalgia. While Nostalgia does have interesting things going on in it, I felt the story was too long & I got bored reading it after awhile. While that might be a big dock, it honestly isn’t, because the rest of the stories in this anthology are so good that it makes up for Nostalgia being the one shortcoming in this Anthology. If I had to give a favorite story, it would be Sun, the last story of Phoenix. Sun takes place during both the past, & future. The way the 2 stories within go on at the same time in Sun, how they tie together, & how the past affects the future. It’s really intriguing & again tightly woven. Sun is an epic that takes place over 2 parts & not one page of it goes uninteresting, from beginning to end there’s something always happening & it’s great. All in all though, each story has something interesting & different to offer from one another so that the series never gets repetitive. Aside from Nostalgia, each story has the perfect length that these stories need in order to achieve what they’ve set out to do.

Art

The artwork in Phoenix is fantastic. It has that classic cartoony style Tezuka is known for but it’s used in a somewhat different way comparatively to his other works that I’ve read. The landscapes in Phoenix are drawn realistically when it’s panels of only the landscapes to really sell these worlds that Tezuka has crafted, they’re super detailed & the water in particular. The use of blacks to make the water look just, so good is jaw dropping. That classic Tezuka humor is used sparingly from time to time & the way Tezuka draws animals in not just this series but his other works gives off this classic Disney vibe, which makes sense given that Tezuka was very much influenced by classic Disney in more ways than one. The moments of the Phoenix herself leave one in a state of shock & awe. The way that Tezuka draws sparkles to give off this shiny illusion of the fire bird makes one go wow, & when the Phoenix is on screen it truly shows & it feels like a significant event every time no matter how little screen time (or I guess page time) the Phoenix herself actually has. The paneling & layout also needs to be complimented, one of my favorite things that Tezuka does is draw an image that he then displays over multiple panels. While this isn’t something that’s exclusive to Phoenix, the way in which Tezuka does it & how oftentimes gorgeous the art in question looks blows my mind every time. The layout itself is quite good, there’s not a ton of clutter & text/speech bubbles are placed well so as to not become over bearing & take up too much page space & become overbearing to read. One nitpick I can give Phoenix is that because of how heavy the concepts explored in this series are & how much goes into each of the stories Phoenix can be slightly taxing at times because of how much text needs to be read throughout the stories. On average it takes me about an hour to an hour & a half to read a volume of Phoenix, which does make sense seeing as Phoenix volumes are the stories themselves which are much longer than a typical manga volume no matter the demographic, genre, whatever. However I can’t really hold that against Phoenix too much because the stories are so rewarding to read & offer me many things to think about long after I’ve finished reading the story.

Characters

Phoenix being an Anthology series of long stories has quite the diverse & often times layered cast of characters. Many of the main characters in Phoenix have deep backstories, unfortunate circumstances, & clear but understandable goals that they want to work towards. I won’t go over every character in Phoenix because we’d be here all day, however I’ll list off 3 examples of characters & explain both them & how they contribute to the story at hand.

1. The Phoenix~My Favorite character in this series is the fire bird herself. I’ve already went over part of why I like her being the philosophies & concepts of life she talks about & all. So I won’t really be saying too much here. All I’ll have to do is reiterate that she always feels like a grand event to the stories whenever she shows up & she never has something dull to share. This fire bird can say things that get me thinking in ways that few, if any other manga can, & for that I have to put her on the list.

2. Gao~Gao I like more so for his role in the story. Gao is a one armed man who later on in his life becomes a criminal, his fate leads him to cross paths with another sculptor whom’s arm he took. Later on he finds himself against said sculptor. The story that this happens in “Karma” just so happens to be one of my favorite, & most memorable stories of Phoenix & Gao’s role, how Karma is structured & how everything just comes together in the end makes Gao one of the most memorable characters for me.

3.Sakon~Sakon is a female samurai who kills an innocent nun & then pays the consequences by dying in the same way repeatedly until the end of time & healing people till the end of time. What I find interesting about her is how she reacts to her fate once the Phoenix tells her about it. She's not happy about it but she accepts her fate & glady heals people until the end of time as a way of repenting for her sins. This is one of my favorite stories in Phoenix & Sakon is a big reason why.

So yeah, Phoenix has some fantastic characters. All are interesting, all contribute to the stories in some meaningful way, & every interaction with the Phoenix leads to an interesting conversation that gets the reader thinking.

Conclusion

Phoenix is a masterpiece & deserving of being one's life's work. Tezuka brought out all the stops from the intriguing dialogues, interesting worlds, strong story progression & structure, phenomenal artwork, making each story stand on its own. This is one of the best things I've ever read & I'm left here still thinking over these stories long after I've finished. I'm feeling a 10 with this one

Note that this is a text entry from my blog. This isn't a professional review & is more of a rantview on my disapproval to put it very nicely towards to the first 3 Kara no Kyoukai movies (but in particular the first & second movie which is why I'm pasting it for a review here). Also there's probably spoilers so caution is advised

I'm not someone who usually goes against the grain when it comes to beloved anime. Most of my favorites are acclaimed popular shows & my 2nd favorite anime is Cowboy Bebop. That's not to say I don't have my unpopular opinions ... though, I think Toradora is the worst romance anime you can find, Fate/Zero is some of the most unrelentlessly boring garbage I've ever watched &, although I'm not sure how unpopular this take is or not, but the Girls & Panzer series is the bane of my existence. In this blog I'll be ranting what's possibly my most unpopular & disagreeable opinion in that I cannot fucking stand the Kara no Kyoukai movies. I think everything about them is atrocious & an amalgamation of what I don't want out of the anime I watch. To set the record straight I've only seen the first 3 movies, I haven't seen the 5th one (and I never will) because I already hate the first 3 on a level unlike anything else & from what everyone praises about the 5th movie it sounds exactly like the things I hate about this series. I'll also throw out that this isn't going to be professional at all, this is 100% unbiased raging about a series of movies I hate, this hit piece is going to be almost entirely unfair to these movies because I just don't know any other way to put it.

To sum up why I hate these movies, I have 3 reasons, the art design, the characters, & the directing. I’ll start off with the art design. Many think these movies look amazing, I think they look absolutely awful personally. The movies are way too dark to a point where I can see my own reflection on my monitor whilst watching these movies. If the response to this is “turn the brightness on your monitor up”. Then I’ll firstly reply with “Thanks, I never thought of that before”. Secondly, even if that did work & didn’t wash out the picture to make it a washed out mess that ironically makes the image harder to look at, I should not under any circumstance have to pause the movie & turn up the brightness because some slacker incompetent on the art design doesn’t know how to light the environments properly. I’ll also need to bring up the color design, which I also find really terrible. Due to the lighting on the environments everything just starts blending together to a point where I have trouble making out main characters in a scene where the camera is placed far away in some vein effort to try & give this world scope. The tone of colors I also find very dreary to look at, taking harsh tones that, in an environment I already don’t like looking at, only adds further to the dark, depressing, dull looking world of these movies. If that was what UFOtable was going for, then I guess they succeeded at it if the colors make the movie even more unbearable to look at than it already was. Before I end this segment, I’ll quickly give that I think the character designs are generic & have with them that exact light novel character design aesthetic that I fucking depise, so there’s that.

Next I’ll tackle the characters, which I hate. I find the characters frustratingly uninteresting, which in a story driven series that has huge bouts of character dialogue to try & explain the story which takes itself completely seriously, is not a good thing. Shiki Ryougi in particular is my most hated anime character of all time because she’s just nothing to me. Sure things happen to her, but because a lot of the character growth for her in the 2nd movie comes from character dialogue that I find completely uninteresting because of the flat directing it’s not good & doesn’t make me interesting in learning about Shiki or seeing her succeed. If you were to watch the movies in release order (which I did before giving up after the 3rd one) I also think that movie fails at making me want to learn anything about Shiki because that movie couldn’t of made Shiki more dull a character if she was a brick wall with legs, hell a brick wall with legs would be more interesting that Shiki Ryougi in the first movie. The rest of the characters in these movies are equally as uninteresting as our main heroine there’s the token male, the female information gather, & a whole bunch of nothingness elsewhere. I seriously hate how underwhelming & lame I find all of these characters to be. I also despise the voice acting in these movies. If the voice direction for Maya Sakamoto as Shiki was supposed to be “sound like you give absolutely no fucks at all & are only doing this for a pay-check” than she succeeded alright. But in my opinion this performance from Mrs. Sakamoto is absolutely pathetic. Shiki rarely ever changes her tone of voice (at least from what I saw) so I could never tell if she was supposed to be happy, angry, or whatever. A performance completely devoid of personality the line “I am Bender please insert girder” from that one episode of Futurama in which Bender loses his memory chip & basically becomes a vegetable until he gets it backs has more personality & sounds like it has some character to it. Fucking Rei Ayanami from Evangelion, a character that is supposed to be an emotionless doll (at first glance anyway) brings with her a performance that sounds like it actually has some character behind it, for fucks sake the voice acting in these movies are horrible. The other characters? Pretty much the same as Shiki. Completely uninteresting voice performances that sound like the voice actors only cared about getting a paycheck instead of giving a memorable (for the right reasons) performance to their characters.

The final segment I have to talk about is the directing. Which to the surprise of nobody, I absolutely detest. I’ve heard from some fans of KnK (mainly Digibro in his top 27 anime video) that “KnK is more about its atmosphere, characters, & action than the actual story which is pretentious” (his words not mine). As I’ve already established, I hate the characters so 0 for 1 already. But I can actually buy KnK being heavily about the atmosphere, after all, I love Haibane Renmei, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, & Aria. All series which, aren’t the strongest when it comes to narrative, but accel at creating an atmosphere, world, & characters I absolutely adore. Hell a lot of my favorites are favorites because the atmosphere does play into them, my favorite anime Maison Ikkoku is my favorite partially because of how well the atmosphere plays off of everything in that series. What I’m getting at here is that I appreciate me a good atmosphere. Unfortunately, because I’ve already established that I hate how bleak the world of Kara no Kyoukai looks, how I don’t like the character designs, I think the world just in general isn’t really interesting, among with everything else I’ve mentioned. I hope you can understand my frustrations with how this movies approach to building atmosphere is to put a slow panning shot over an absolutely disgusting environment that I don’t like looking at in some shitty attempt to mask the exponentially tedious dialogue that KnK loves to spout from time to time. Yuki Kajira’s music, while one of the more tolerable aspects of this series I think is unmemorable & they don’t take enough opportunities to use it for some good atmosphere building. I’ve seen Hunter x Hunter come under fire from people for having expository dialogue, which isn’t exactly wrong. But why Hunter x Hunter gets away with it is quite simple really, Madhouse was able to make amazing use out of that kick ass soundtrack & make the exposition scenes feel more epic than they actually are. Plus Hunter x Hunter will usually have something interesting going on in the background or an environment that isn’t completely disgusting to look at like KnK, so Hunter x Hunter has that going for it. The action directing in these movies admittedly can be great showcases of directing, but because they’re so far between & placed well after I’ve become frustrated & angry at the absolutely piss poor directing elsewhere in the movie, they fail to capture my attention or really leave an impact because once the action scene is over it goes back to showcasing slow panning shots or long landscape shots over disgusting environments that I can’t stand looking at. So the action directing & good sound design can’t even be appreciated.

At the end of the day, I just don’t know what to say about these movies anymore. From the unbearable directing, awful voice acting, frustratingly boring characters, & atrocious art design I just don’t know what to say anymore. I am genuinely feeling a 0/10 for these movies. Not even a strong 0 to a light 1. Just a 0, because these movies offer me absolutely no enjoyment, I didn’t even enjoy writing this post because I just hate these movies that much but I must say I do feel better now that this is out there (even though I doubt many will read this). I’ve also made myself a very unpopular guy now but shit, I already claimed Toradora as the worst romance anime ever, at this point, I have nothing else to lose.

Its been 40 years since this manga was released onto this world. This #1, masterpiece manga by Rumiko Takahashi. Twas over a year ago that I watched the anime and about 9 months since I reviewed the anime, which I dubbed both a masterpiece and my favorite anime of all time. I'm now back to tackle the original source in celebration of both the 40th anniversary (which I’m a bit early on), and my ever lasting love of this series. This review will mostly be comparisons between the anime and the manga as quite honestly, a lot of what is to be said here are ... the same points I made in my review of the anime. Spoiler warning inbound, let's go.

Story:

Being that this was the original source material for the anime, the story is exactly the same. A ronin named Godai lives at Maison Ikkoku, almost moves out after having enough of his rowdy neighbors, the new manager Kyoko Otonashi moves in just as Godai’s about to move out. Godai decides to stay & then over the course of 5 years tries to win the girl. It’s the definition of a simple narrative executed really well. What’s worth noting is that the anime actually had added a lot of original content & changed some things around structurally to help fit the style of an anime more. Two examples of this from the first episode/chapter would be that the anime starts off with an introduction monologue of Godai studying & from there introduces everyone we’ll be meeting in the story. Where-as in the manga it just starts out with Godai yelling he’s had enough & is about to move out. I prefer the anime in this regard because the anime does a better job at introducing the characters, establishing the setting, & ultimately telling us what we’ll need to know. Meanwhile the manga frontloads the viewer with information. The other example would be the interaction between Akemi & Kyoko in which Akemi reports on Godai peeping on her. In the anime after Akemi tells Kyoko a shot cuts to Godai in his room studying, where as in the manga it cuts to a panel showing Akemi & Kyoko walking down the hallway to Godai’s room. In this instance I prefer the manga because in the anime it’s a corner cutting technique so that they wouldn’t have to anime mouth flaps. Some changes are for the better, some are for the worse, but I would say the anime original content does far more favors for the series than it does harm.

I’m about to spoil a major event in the series so if you hate spoilers stop reading. One aspect that the manga definitely has over the anime is that Godai & Kyoko actually get to have sex with each other near the end of the seies & it’s the absolute best scene of the entire series, manga or anime. After 5 years of indecisiveness, misunderstandings, bullshit, & other things poor Godai had to put up with, It’s a very cathartic pay-off for him to now only win the girl (which we knew he was gonna do anyway because it’s a straight-forward romance series). But also get to have sex with her & get an even stronger emotional connection with Kyoko than what was already displayed between the two previously. The scene is built up well & it doesn’t come off as forced or shock value.

All in all though. Between the manga & the anime, the story is largely the same. You can’t go wrong with either, though I will say aside from cutting out the sex scene, I do prefer the anime due to the anime original content actually adding a lot of value to the world & going on to help make the world, story, & characters of Maison Ikkoku even more memorable than even the manga could.

Characters:

Much like the story, the characters are the same here as they were in the anime. But for the sake of explaining myself I’ll quickly summarize the major players of this story.

Kyoko Otonashi- Widowed manager of Maison Ikkoku, main love interest of Godai.

Yuusaku Godai- Ronin turned college student, “plaything” of Maison Ikkoku, wants to win Kyoko.

Hanae Ichinose- Alcoholic Mother who loves to party

Yotsuya- Mysterious neighbor of Godai, loves tormenting Godai, is an asshole

Akemi Roppongi- Sexual woman of Maison Ikkoku, loves alcohol & teasing Godai

Shun Mitaka- Rival of Godai, rich tennis coach

Nanoe Kozue- Caught up in the love Hexagon, arguably the most innocent character of the series

Ibuki Yagami- A student lover of Godai, tries to get in the way of Godai & Kyoko.

While these summaries make the characters sound generic, they’re really not. Godai & Kyoko go through amazing character growth, the tenants of Maison Ikkoku contribute to both the plot & comic relief of the series in their own ways (near the end of the story Akemi gives Godai Kyoko’s coat & makes him chase after her as an example.) Coach Mitaka actually offers a fun (if tired) dynamic. Kozue is just so damn cute. Ibuki Yagami, I actually found not as annoying as I found her in the anime. I don’t know if it’s that overtime I’ve grown a greater appreciation for her role in the story or if it’s because Yagami doesn’t have a voice, but I actually somewhat enjoyed Yagami this time around. She still had her moments of frustrating but they were nowhere near as pronounced as they were in the anime.

Another thing the Maison Ikkoku anime cutout was a character by the name of Nikaidou. Nikaidou…… is honestly the worst out of the major characters in my opinion. Not to say Nikaidou is necessarily a bad character, he just isn’t much. He comes too late in the story to really leave much of an impact & his character is largely defined by him being dense & getting aggravated by Yotsuya’s antics & deciding to take action. In fairness, Nikaidou does contribute to the narrative like the other characters do. He does afterall tell Kozue about the misunderstanding of Godai & Akemi walking out of the love hotel, & he is in some ways partially responsible for helping Godai get closer to Kyoko. But seeing as the anime cut him out of the story & replaced most of Nikaidou’s actions with Kentaro or Yotsuya in his place instead, & they left the same impact/contribution on the story that they left in the manga, it ultimately goes to show how weak of a character nikaidou is in the grand scheme of the story. His arc about growing up & getting away from his mother is also underplayed. The story brings it up, but it largely happens in the background without much mention, flair, or even visual queues. Once Godai & Kyoko get married & the series showcases what happened to everyone else, Nikaidou’s arc is more or less done without much fanfare & Nikaidou isn’t even in the final panel where the tenants of Maison Ikkoku get together to congratulate Godai & Kyoko on their child. Yeah, Nikaidou was a pretty disappointing character in all honesty, but he wasn’t horrible or anything.

Art:

If there’s an aspect I think the anime easily exceels in over the manga, it’s the art. The art in Maison isn’t bad (well except in chapters 1-5, it’s pretty terrible there in all honesty). It’s nothing super special. The environments do look need, & there’s some good detail in the panels. But I don’t think these panels really have the flair & especially the visual design & directing that the anime had. The paneling itself is pretty standard honestly, you won’t see Takahashi doing anything crazy but that also means the panels won’t really become a cluttered mess with a confusing layout that becomes hard to read. Dialogue bubbles are also well placed within the panels so the general layout is pretty clean & it makes for a nice, easy read.

Final:

So that’s the Maison Ikkoku manga. It’s about as good as the anime was, it’s still a masterpiece, it houses everything I liked about the series & then some in certain cases, the characters are still as lovable & funny, the story is the same that it ever was. This is Maison Ikkoku as I know it just the way it was originally & not an adaptation into a different medium. Due to this factor it gets the same score I gave the anime, a 10/10.

Me being me, I love seeking out & watching really awful anime OVAs. With me also liking to write reviews on these said atrocities on occasion, I have come across some real stinkers such as Dark Cat, Sword For Truth, Kennel Tokorozawa, & Kite to name a few. Kimera just so happens to be another victim about to face my wrath. I’m kinda hoping this will be somewhat bearable, but we’ll find out I guess.

Story: 1/10

The story is completely incomprehensible. The “plot” is supposed to be about this guy named Osamu finding the titular character & protecting her I think? The only thing we ... really know about Kimera is that it’s a guy that looks like a girl, though it’s rather confusing at first. Because Kimera looks exactly like a woman, it isn’t until we see a shot of his chest that we realize it isn’t a girl, & instead a guy. Basically nothing happens until like the last 15 minutes of the movie. Where the main villain whose name I forget because the villain is just that forgettable. The villain goes on about some betrayal nonsense that ultimately doesn’t matter because it isn’t mentioned before these events, it isn’t explored, & it sure as shit isn’t brought up after the villain dies. Osamu saves Kimera from dying, he drives off into the sunset with ultimately nothing being resolved, & me having barely any idea of what happened during the OVA, & still having barely any idea whilst reflecting upon it. There are two big issues with this plot, the story is both uneventful, & incomprehensible. Barely anything of note happens during this OVA. There’s what? A rape scene that lasts all of 5 seconds & the OVA acts as if it didn’t happen once its over? A tedious exposition scene about this betrayal that isn’t brought beforehand, & isn’t explored upon? Honestly, this OVA is so uneventful. At least in something like Garzey’s Wing, or Shoujo Tsubaki, there was stuff happening. Oh yeah, so two more things before I go on about the characters. Osamu & his co-worker Jay are supposed to be cereal salesman, yet we never see them doing anything of the sort, in-fact, the bulk of their working environment takes place in a laboratory, ya know, a place you’d go if you wanna sell cereal to people. Osamu’s motivations for why he wants to save Kimera are also non-existent. He just sees her & falls in love because? I don’t get it. I know somebody is probably gonna rogue “but you don’t need a reason to love something”. Here’s my thing, I don’t think you need a deep reason to love something. It can be because she has a mouth & I would buy it. Just give me something please. Lets take Neon Genesis Evangelion as an example. Now, my memory is a bit hazy on this specific detail. But if I remember right, Hikari stated that she likes Toji because he’s a nice guy. I could possibly be wrong about that, but my point is, she has a reason, however shallow it may be to like Toji, & I completely understand her motivations/reasons. Osamu on the other hand has nothing, & seeing as I like neither him, or Kimera, I can’t get behind either of them.

Characters: 1/10

I honestly don’t have much to say about any of the characters because they themselves don’t have much to say or contribute to the narrative. Osamu is the main character. His partner Jay is the more rational of the two. Kimera is the title character who barely speaks & sucks people dry. The villain whose name I can’t remember is evil. The characters are nothing beyond the 1st dimension & it’s absolutely pathetic. While the characters in Shoujo Tsubaki were also nothing beyond the 1st dimension. They at least had something going on with them make them memorable.

Art: 4/10

I’ll be honest. The art isn’t the worst thing out there. Environments can actually look half-way decent at times. The tentacle monsters are somewhat ominous, & the color design at least looks better than Shoujo Tsubaki. The character art, when it’s on model, can actually look like there was some effort put into it. The problem is, the character art is almost never on model, so the character art looks bad in most instances. The dog at the beginning of this movie is one of the worst looking dogs I’ve ever seen in any anime. If there’s even some slight credit I can give to Kimera. It’s the art. I’ll give it to the character designer of Kite, he’s consistent. His art can be good, but there’s always a blemish somewhere in between the cracks

Sound: 2/10

The voice acting isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard. I wouldn’t call it good. But it’s half-way acceptable I guess. They rarely emote, & range certainly isn’t apart of the vocabulary on any of these individuals. Though, I’ll chock that up to poor voice directing & the fact that they’re working on Kimera, so it’s not like it’d do them any good to actually try in the first place. The sound mixing isn’t particularly great. It can be difficult to hear sound effects a lot of the time, & taking a note from Kings Game, the sound effects barely leave an impact because there’s seemingly a delay to the connection point. The audio quality is really bad, muffled, staticy, it’s not good audio quality. This came out in 1996 by the way. I know this is a low budget OVA, but I at least expect the sound quality to be halfway acceptable. The music is practically nonexistent

Overall: 1/10

While there may be some silver lining in there, this is honestly one of the worst pieces of shit I’ve ever seen. With its incomprehensible narrative, with underwritten characters, a plot that really makes no sense once you actually start to think about. Plot points that aren’t explored. Plot points that get brought up out of nowhere. Awful structuring, flat directing, & decent character art (when it’s on model). I was bored out of my mind watching this, & when I wasn’t bored, I was angry at the fact that I was watching Kimera. On the offenso-scale I’d probably give this like a 7 or an 8. It’s above Dark Cat & Sword For Truth, tied with MD Geist, but below Cipher. It isn’t the worst OVA I’ve ever seen, but it comes pretty damn close honestly. My final rating for this one is going to be a 1/10