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This is the only movie I've seen where the singing is better than the rest of the movie combined.

The writing is questionable at best, and tries too hard to jam in everything One Piece fans recognize. That leaves no time for any kind of character establishment or development; the movie assumes you already know all the characters and just want to see them do their signature thing.

The 3d animation is not good. The 2d animation is surreal, even more than One Piece normally is, and ends up being incoherent. The whole movie is more of a fever dream than a satisfying story.

But...the songs are good. ... One of them was #1 in Japan for a while, and honestly, it deserved that. Maybe it's better to just find the songs on youtube.

This review is unnecessary. Whether or not you'll watch this depends on what you thought of the previous movies, not on these reviews. Yet, I feel like reviewing it anyway.


This could have been an excellent anime if there was money left over from the apparently massive animation budget to hire a decent writer. Conversely, this could have been entertaining if the animation and voice acting matched the writing. As it is, I give this a rating of "what."

Fighting scenes are animated well, but ridiculous. I can handle super mecha, and I can handle people crossing swords all the time, but constantly ending up with crossed ... pocket knives is too much. Really, there's only so much you can do with that. New and complex powers can be interesting. For example, in Code Geass, there are no ends to the way some Geass can be used. Conversely, more realistic knife fighting could have been interesting. Kara no Kyoukai has nothing but glowing slashes, jumping about, and crossing pocketknives over and over again. I am also left wondering why nobody ever uses a gun.

Oooh, a long still shot of an answering machine as it says to leave a message, and no message is left. Ahhh, people talking about something mundane, done in a way that's usually used to make it seem like the conversation will be significant, when it's not. Like the previous movies, this could have been shorter, or better yet, had a writer that would make good use of that time. Lots of time spent on things that are totally irrelevant. Scenes that have nothing to do with the voiceover they go with. People that act in absurd ways. Conversations that are supposed to seem deep but don't actually mean anything and are too long to take as a standard pseudoexplanation. These are things I can describe clearly, but the writing is subtly insane in a way that transcends such and even normal kinds of insanity.

So, this was the last of these movies. In the end, I felt like nothing was explained, everyone's actions were arbitrary, and the previous events were pointless. I gave this a 7, but on my rating scale, that does not mean this is "good" per se but rather that, in its own "special" way, it was worth watching.

Simoun takes place in a world in which god loves yuri so much that he made everyone female to start out with -- people can choose their sex later -- and made magic aircraft that only work in the presence of yuri. The magic aircraft can be used to cast spells, which can be used for warfare. If that's too weird for you, then you should probably go elsewhere.

The be honest, I'm not entirely sure whether or not I myself enjoyed Simoun. I definitely had my palm on my face too often for me to unequivically call it "good." For example: a young girl becomes ... a man, and the voice actor is the same. Facepalm.

Simoun should have been shorter. Stuff happens, but there's a lot of nothing happening, and repetitions of earlier bits. You can probably skip ahead to the next scene if you get bored without missing anything important. I probably would have enjoyed it more just watching 1 to 4, 8, 10, 11, 14 to 17, and 19 to 26.

The enemy in Simoun is more humanized than usual. It's hard to tell, but I think the foreigners speak reversed japanese.

Sound was good. Voice acting was good. Animation was OK, but with lots of pans of stills and the 3d and 2d don't fit quite perfectly. Reminds me of Last Exile's.

Shows that come to mind as similar are Last Exile, Fantastic Children, and Noir. I did not particularly like any of those. If you did, and you like yuri, this might be the show for you.

First of all, it's not really Lord of the Flies in space. I didn't like that, but I did like this.

This is by the director for Code Geass and Planetes. It's more like Planetes than Geass.

Animation is mediocre. If you want to watch something for the animation, I suggest Tekkon Kinkreet or 5cm/second instead. I do not suggest watching this for action either.

There is little comedy here. Actually, maybe this is a spoiler, but if you're feeling cheerful about something that happened, it's probably so you can be sucker-punched in five seconds.

What Infinite Ryvius does have is lots of drama, lots of characters, lots of ... talking, lots of plot, and lots of serious. If that's what you like, you will probably like this. I rated it a 10. It's good.

I normally wouldn't consider writing a review of something I had only seen 4/24 of, but for this, I'll make an exception, because it has a high rating but I found it about as enjoyable as a kick in the balls.

This series appears to be targeted at people who want lots of guys crossdressing with hints of yaoi. That's not me, but it explains the rating of this series to some extent. If that's what you want, you might like this show.

The plot and characters also bother me. The main character is all style and no substance. On the other hand, if you want to ... watch a cartoon kid pretend to be brilliant and important while doing nothing but look fancy in expensive cartoon clothes while his butler does all the work, this might be the show for you. The butler is also shallow. He has unspecified powers with no apparent limits, and no real personality. The plot also only pretends to have any depth whatsoever.

Voice acting is fine, though not great. Animation is OK for most parts, but the 3d things look bad and the action scenes are terrible.

In conclusion, this series is strictly inferior to Chevalier d'eon and El Hazard the Magnificent World for any kind of person I can think of, and not worth watching if you don't like crossdressing guys and/or yaoi.

Read Or Die is a short, well made, unserious anime, with lots of action using supernatural powers. It's worth watching. Anime watching librarians might especially like it. Animation is sort of "older-style" but well done. Characterization is done fairly well, but with the number of characters and short length of the OVA, they can only be given so much depth.

This is something to consider the next time you want to watch an action anime, that isn't too serious, with unique action using supernatural powers and a somewhat "jazzy" style. However, I would not suggest watching it if you really hate engrish, as there's quite a ... bit.

If you only like moe, ecchi, or comedy anime, Denno Coil is not for you. If you insist on hacking being somewhat realistic, Denno Coil is not for you. If you are a very serious person who only likes Akira, Grave of the Fireflies, and Serial Experiments Lain, Denno Coil is not for you. If you hate kids, Denno Coil is not for you. Otherwise, I think you should try watching it.

Yasako's voice is, I think, very soothing. It's impressively different from some other characters her voice actor has done.

One notable thing about this anime is that none of the characters have pink hair or ... something, but are still distinct.

I rated Denno Coil an 8, which is "worth buying" on my scale. For me, it never reached the high points of some other anime, but it's consistently good, and I don't regret watching any of it.

Things go pretty slowly for a while, but if you're watching and wondering if things eventually pick up, well, yes, they do, around ep. 11, and most of what happens is explained, although it's not really anything as complex and sophisticated as Stand Alone Complex and there are certainly a few loose ends and deus ex machinii. (Not as complex as Stand Alone Complex? Just call me Unrealistic Expectations Man.) Normally I drop a show 2 eps in if it doesn't catch my interest, but this is a favorite of one of my friends here, so I kept watching.

What do I think? I think it ... could have used a bigger animation budget and could have been cut down from 26 to 22 or even 20 episodes.

Animation is kind of low budget. Fantastic Children looks and feels like it was made in the '80s. The color palette should have at least been more vibrant. I mean, sure, you have only so much money for your budget. But if you look at, say, Noir, or Requiem from the Darkness, they managed to have some interesting animation without spending a ton of money on it. What if everything looked like the paintings in the ED? OK, maybe that's impractical, but it's still possible to look interesting on a budget.

There is way too much time spent on shots of people just standing around, or extended close-ups of people looking surprised. There are a few things where a situation is first explained, then shown. It would have been better if it had just been shown. And, in general, the pacing is just a bit too slow for me. It's not that I don't appreciate Mushishi or Kino's, but that's not the style of this series. You can almost but not quite just skip a couple of the early episodes. Just don't watch eps 1-10 when you feel like watching something where lots of stuff is happening.

There are a few pretty silly things. The guys with hats, for example. It's also a bit disappointing how not all of the characters that a lot of time is spent with get to actually do much.

Voice acting is good. (The characters get intense towards the end, which is tough to do.) Some of the music, like in the last parts of ep 18, is alright too. (Yes I like the ep 18 Russian version of the ED better. So sue me.) The ED is mizu no madoromi, sung by Origa, by the way. But why oh why did they have to have some of the characters try to sing?

So is it worth watching? Does the ending deliver? Overall I'd give it a 7, which means worth watching but not worth buying, and I'd say it's better than or but worse than or . The drama and action pick up continuously towards the end, so the second half is better than the first. If you haven't seen, say, Gankutsuou, I'd suggest watching that before this, but Fantastic Children isn't *bad* and I don't regret watching it. The characters aren't cardboard cutouts, and there's not anything else like that to make me *dislike* it. There are just better series out there. I guess I'd suggest watching it if you like puzzle series and Final Fantasy. Especially Final Fantasy. I'd say it reminds me most of El Hazard the Magnificent World, minus comedy and with somewhat better characters and somewhat slower paced and a bit less coherent and most importantly minus the awesomeness of cat-based armor technology.

Well, I hope this review can help someone decide whether to watch Fantastic Children, but I somewhat doubt it.