Welcome back to “The World,” the MMORPG that forms the core of the extensive .hack franchise. In this iteration of the franchise's single plot, school friends Asumi (Sakuya), Eri (Mary), and Iori (Tobias) enjoy getting together in the game's virtual existence to explore new territories and fight bosses. When Sakuya accidentally interrupts a guild's planned boss battle, she finds herself with a price on her head. This leads our trio and the players after them to a strange, dark corner of the game, and some of the people fall unconscious following an encounter with a mysterious black PC. The remaining characters must, of course, find a way to save both their friends and the entirety of The World.

If this sounds like most of the other entries into the .hack conglomerate, that's because it is. The idea of people's consciousnesses getting trapped in an online role playing game has long ceased to astound, and while it can still serve as a warning for an increasingly online world, it is very easy to see how the story is going to play out, down to the character design of Hermit, which completely gives away his role in the story. (There's also a stab made a heavy-handed symbolism with Sakuya asking him if his name represents the Tarot card.) While there are some interesting twists this time around, such as a medical reason for the players being targeted, it still has that not-so-fresh feeling of a recycled story that we have seen, played, and read many times before.

One major point in this show's favor, however, is its length. At only an hour and seventeen minutes, .hack//Quantum doesn't drag. Each episode is forced to be relatively tight and concise, with plot points coming at regular intervals and the action fast-paced. This makes it one of the better retellings in that the story plays out smoothly. Were this the first entry into the franchise, that would be a drawback, but as the latest of many, the short run time allows fans to indulge in the story's world without dragging through unnecessary rehashed details. If nothing else, .hack//Quantum is fun, and if its attempts to tug on your heartstrings are, at this point, a bit lame, it is still easy to watch and fairly enjoyable.

Visually these OVAs have some very nice touches. One chase scene between our heroines and their pursuers takes place on a giant spinning mechanism, a bit like a model of the solar system. The characters have to scramble from arm to arm without getting pushed off or squashed, and the gears that move the contraption have a nice steampunk look to them. Likewise the gibbet tree where the villain keeps the virtual corpses of his victims is striking – it is a huge, leafless behemoth with metal cages meant to keep a dead body from falling apart as it decomposes dangling from its branches like rotten fruit. It brings to mind images of hanged pirates and highwaymen from 18th century texts and implies that the villain feels that what he is doing is justified. After all, you wouldn't hang an innocent person like that, would you? Less excellent is the texturing on some of the CG monsters that appear towards the end of the series, although in all fairness their too-shiny, strangely fake (compared to the rest of The World) look may be on purpose. Likewise the designs for Sakuya and Mary, modified versions of the well-known Kite and Black Rose characters from earlier installments, have the air of a visual cliché.

Both dub and sub tracks sound good, with very nicely matched voices. Stephanie Young's Shamrock is a bit more jarring than Sanae Kobayashi's, but since the disconnect between design and voice is clearly intentional, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Trina Nishimura's Sakuya can be a bit squeaky at times when compared to Kana Hanazawa's portrayal, but there really is no significant difference in terms of an annoying factor or a voice in either language that does not fit. The dub script is nearly identical to the sub, with changes being made only for idiomatic expression or flow. The music hearkens back to the Yuki Kajiura days of .hack//sign without ever quite hitting the same notes, and in general is fairly unobtrusive and unremarkable.

This collection, apart from coming with both the bluray and the DVD editions, also contains a fair amount of extras. Three are “chim chim” episodes, where blobby purple versions of Sakuya, Mary, and Tobias learn about quantum mechanics and Schrodinger's cat and are presumably intended to explain the title and the “ghost in the machine” ending of the show. Three longer features are the “Yui Yui” episodes, featuring Hermit's Japanese voice actress Yui Ogura first learning how to make “charaben,” or bentos that look like anime characters, then flipbooks, and finally providing answers to the .hack quiz that was included in the Japanese edition of the third disc's release. This one is the least interesting simply because we do not have the quiz; the other two are sort of fascinating. Commercial spots and trailers round out the selection of extras, as per usual.

While the ending is manufactured and a bit trite and the plot is nothing new for the .hack franchise, .hack//Quantum is still an enjoyable watch and completists won't be sorry to add it to their collections. Those who are sick of the franchise will wonder why anyone still plays “The World” given its troubled and oft repeated history, but the short length of this offering should still keep most people watching. .hack still has some interesting things to say about privacy in an online environment and the chances we take with technology, and if nothing else, in these three episodes it says them in an entertaining and visually pleasant way.

+ Visually very attractive, concise plot, good extras.
- Nothing new to see here, ending is a bit trite.

The Original Post is Located Here: .hack//Quantum Blu-Ray + DVD

Since Gaston Leroux first published Le Fantome de l'Opera in 1910, the story of the mysterious figure dwelling beneath the Paris Opera House has captured the public's imagination. Adaptations and retellings about, from the 1925 silent film to the 1986 musical which just celebrated an impressive number of performances, even to the recent Operetta doll in the popular Monster High line of toys. Mizuki Nomura adds her name to the list of Leroux's literary followers with the fourth novel in her Book Girl series, and the result is an interesting examination of the characters as Nomura aligns them with both new and recurring players in her melancholy novel.

The story opens with titular Book Girl Tohko Amano suspending club activities so that she can study for her exams. Konoha, who hadn't really considered the implications of her being a third year (senior), is left floating, without any clear direction. Luckily for both him and the plot, his recent purchase of a cell phone leads to his female classmates quickly pouncing on him in Kotobuki's (reluctant) name. This throws the two together in closer proximity than previous books have allowed and forces Konoha to finally realize that the last thing that Kotobuki feels for him is hate. While he is pondering this, particularly in relation to his troubled past experiences with Miu, Kotobuki's friend Yuka is found to be missing. This floors Kotobuki and in her distress, she turns to Konoha to help. When she explains that Yuka was in training to be an opera singer and that she had been taking lessons from a mysterious teacher she called her “Angel of Music,” Konoha turns to Leroux's novel in search of answers.

Familiarity with some version of Phantom will be helpful in getting the most out of this novel, although it is by no means necessary. Likewise a basic knowledge of the opera “Turandot” and Dumas fils' La Dame aux Camellias will also be useful, although Nomura does provide a basic summary. Rather a basic grasp of the three will enhance the story for readers, allowing them to figure out the central mystery sooner and appreciate the nuances. This is, and has been, part of the fun of Nomura's series, and Phantom's presence in popular culture makes this one of the most accessible volumes of it. However, as with her other novels, most notably the second which dealt with Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights as far as English language readers are concerned, Nomura puts her own spin on the story, and her interpretation of Leroux's tale is decidedly different from many of the Western critics'. For the literarily minded reader, this is a definite draw, as it encourages us to examine the text in a new light. Particularly interesting is her interpretation of Raoul, a character often written off as much less fascinating than either Christine or the Phantom. Nomura gives him a half-tragic, half-hopeful spin while making Christine rather less complex than other authors have. Those three, along with The Persian, are the novel characters who get the most attention, although it is relatively easy to fill Meg Giry's role if you apply your analytical skills.

Along with the basic Phantom tale, Nomura also draws on the ugly underbelly of a female performer's life. For many years, an actress, dancer, or singer was considered little better than a prostitute in some European societies, and while Leroux doesn't directly address this, Dumas does in La Dame aux Camellias. Nomura brings this to the fore in her novel, and this adds to the tragedy inherent in the story. While she skirts around direct words like “prostitute,” it is abundantly clear what is going on, and she makes a sad but powerful statement about girls with few options. Likewise she mentions the idea of family suicide and how it can effect those around them. These are not topics delved into by most mainstream works that get an English edition and Nomura deserves praise for bringing them up.

It is worth noting that Tohko herself plays barely any part in this story, perhaps an indication of the direction the series is headed in. This, sadly, does make the book a smoother read, as Tohko's overwrought descriptions of the flavors of words are largely absent. Yen Press' translation is both readable and faithful to the original formatting, and the usual color pages are present in the front of the book. Although Miho Takeoka's illustrations are presented throughout the text, they pale in comparison to the story, and largely fall by the wayside. This may or may not be the fault of her perfectly serviceable art; the writing this time is by far the best that it has been in the series and illustrations feel like a distraction.

Book Girl and the Corrupted Angel is a bittersweet story of broken dreams and loneliness. It is also the best novel in the series to date, and while it would be difficult to read it without having read the previous three, it would be possible, and Phantom aficionados may want to check it out anyway. Konoha is growing as a character and with Nomura's promise that next time we'll get to meet the mysterious Miu, this looks to be a series that is going to keep on getting better.

The Original Post is Located Here: Book Girl and the Corrupted Angel Novel 4

Sekirei isn't just about boobs, but you wouldn't know that by looking at it. The series bends over backwards to work in the greatest quantity of nipples and jiggling jugs that it can. Whether they fight with water, cloth, fist, sword, or fire, the attacks of the Sekirei are like boob-seeking missiles, shredding, ripping, burning or exploding whatever it is that is keeping their opponents' breasts from enjoying the fresh spring air. If there's any way that an important conversation can take place in the bath, it'll take place in the bath. Female characters are as remarkable for their lack of modesty as they are for the size of their boobs, which by the way are so large that after a while they look more like pointy extraterrestrial parasites than human mammaries. Which is a bit of a shame since the series' fan-service is actually very good when applied to more modestly-endowed characters like Benitsubasa. The series' need to bedeck every scene with boobs is so pressing that it often interferes with the series' non-boob-related qualities. It is hard, for instance, to get the full impact of a deathbed request when there is a giant, barely-concealed nipple heaving in the foreground.

And that's a real shame. Because Sekirei wants very much to be one of those series whose surprising depth belies its puerile surface, and if its puerile surface keeps shanking its surprising depth it'll never make it. Not that it would necessarily have worked anyway. Even if it didn't have ill-placed booby-bombs to sink important scenes, the series still does enough things wrong to lay waste to those that it does right. At first this season seems to be on the way to rectifying that imbalance. The first season spent an inordinate amount of time introducing and inducting girls into Minato's harem, a process that even harem fans find tedious. This season introduces no new romantic interests, and inducts only two into his harem—which if you're counting brings the total to six. That leaves the series considerably more time to pursue things like Uzume's tragic double life, and the Sekirei Project itself. We get a lot of background on the project, including a long-delayed rundown of MBI's history and the origin of the Sekirei. The Sekirei's number system and corresponding differences in power start to make sense, and their world begins to take on a more concrete shape. There are factions and forces and schemers, all moving against each other and the MBI authorities. It's a far more complicated and dynamic milieu than before, made even more so by the sadistic directives that MBI CEO Minaka starts issuing to get his "game" going.

With all of that activity going on, it's only a matter of time until bad things start happening to Minato and his harem. A surprisingly powerful sense of danger hangs over most of the series, exploding occasionally into violence and tragedy. The resolution of Uzume's situation in particular proves that the series has no qualms about hurting its long-standing characters. So when Minato's sister and her Sekirei get into a brawl with an abusive Ashikabi and his Sekirei, or the Uzume arc propels Minato's harem into a full-on assault on MBI, there's no guarantee that they'll come out okay. The series also isn't shy about driving home the ugly reality of the Sekirei game, or the nastiness of Minato's opponents. Don't take that to mean that the series is dark or grim, though. It balances its blacker undercurrents with a heavy dose of humor, the best of it involving the flip-flopping of vicious Benitsubasa and her dim-witted sidekick Haihane from deadly threats to Stooge-level idiots. There's some business with Benitsubasa and an ill-fated ransom call that is just murder on the funny bone. Heartening developments also crop up here and there, notably when we see how Minato is starting to fit into the power balance of the Sekirei Project.

How the series torpedoes its frankly nice balance of action, substance and laughs can be summed up in one word: romance. Oh, it has other problems, make no mistake. There's its villain, who spends the entire season laughing maniacally from the top of his skyscraper. Its premise, from the submissive nature of the Sekirei to the idea that they can only manifest their true power with the help of a man, is deeply sexist—something only somewhat mitigated by the handful of male Sekirei. Good old fashioned plot holes (why, for instance, no one tells Minato that Uzume is an enemy, even after she starts attacking allies) play their part too. And then there are the clichés. The game itself is a big one, and it is the climax's devolution into a tower-based pseudo-tournament that ultimately tips the balance against the show. But in the long run, it's the romance that has the most corrosive effect. The simple fact is that the series is terrible at it. No one in Minato's harem has an iota of chemistry with him, and none of the other Ashikabi/Sekirei pairs can boast much more. The series' idea of clever romantic byplay is having Minato's girls squabble over who gets to sit next to him at supper and feed him, and its idea of a romantic situation is having someone trip and give him a face-full of boob and/or butt. Romantic advancement consists of such scorching developments as Musubi realizing that she's jealous or Tsukiumi realizing that she wants to meet Minato's family. In a series that insists on making love a central theme, that's deadly.

Of the series' non-boob related technical merits, its action scenes are probably the best. Though less than fully animated, they are energetic and frequently pretty cool. CG assists and rapid-fire editing are largely responsible, along with the generally spectacular nature of the Sekirei's powers. Character designs and background art in general are generic, if occasionally and formidably cute in the case of the characters, as is the effective but forgettable score. The decision to use an insert song to bolster Musubi's final fight was a serious mistake, but a relatively forgivable one.

Funimation's dub is typically good, taking few risks and making few mistakes. Tsukiumi's thou-art-thee speech pattern is definitely one of them. The female cast doesn't try too hard to be effeminate, which is definitely the right decision, and Joel McDonald doesn't overplay Minato's wimpiness. That said, the dub overall is at its very best when going whole hog for ham and playing fast and loose with the humor. Emotionally charged scenes don't work terribly well, but they don't work much better in Japanese, so it isn't much of an issue. It's hard to judge exactly how tight the script is since audio and subtitle tracks are non-selectable and thus can't be directly compared, but it seems faithful enough.

The set includes a Blu-ray version for those who prefer their boobs in HD and also a pretty nice line-up of extras. There are previews and clean versions of the various and invariably undistinguished openings and endings, as well as a highly humorous (and highly breast-centric) two-part OVA episode. More important are the commentary tracks for episodes 5 and 10. As the first season didn't have any, ADR director Scott Sager leads Joel McDonald and Leah Clark (episode 5) and Alexis Tipton and Jamie Marchi (episode 10) through discussions of both seasons. Lively and reasonably informative, they're a boon for dub fans. As Sager himself warns, there're spoilers, so save the commentaries for after the series. The limited edition comes with a chipboard box to hold both seasons.

In the balance, the quality of Pure Engagement isn't far from that of its predecessor. If you liked season one, season two will probably press the same buttons. Ditto if you hated it. Fans will be glad to know that this season features real plot advancement and an ending that satisfies while also leaving large gaps for a sequel to slip through. If you aren't already a fan, though, and are on the lookout for a fan-service action/romance with a surprisingly meaty underbelly, you'd probably be better served by something like Mahoromatic or even My-HiME.

The Original Post is Located Here: Sekirei: Pure Engagement Blu-Ray

The outrageous action and knowing camp that made Sengoku Basara's first season guilty fun are still in force in its second outing, but there are differences here—and not small ones. Like its antagonist Nobunaga, season one was simple and elemental: action for action's sake, fast and furious. Like Hideyoshi, season two is more careful, less headlong—divided between its need to rock the house and a desire to say something. Uh-oh.

Nobunaga was a force of pure evil, much the way a tornado is a force of nature. He was less a person than an embodiment of all that is ruthless and ugly and destructive in the world. His ambition wasn't noble or even comprehensible on human terms; it was death and misery and betrayal for their own sake, not for what they could gain him. Hideyoshi is a human. Make no mistake, he's nearly as indomitable a foe as Nobunaga; but his goals are concrete and understandable and his motivations complex and personal. He is strong, but also fundamentally flawed, given to acts of inhumanity for human reasons. He is also, curiously enough, a lot less interesting than Nobunaga. No matter what happened, what stress he was put under, what the series threw at him, Nobunaga remained an evil cipher. Hideyoshi, on the other hand, is eventually laid bare as yet another tyrant ruled by the conviction that might is right.

To make that point, the series takes precious time out from the clashing of heroes and blowing up of things to discuss his philosophy, address the events that led to its formation, and detail the clash of his version of strength with that of his pacifist friend Keiji. That takes its toll on the series' formerly unstoppable momentum. The relentless forward grinding of his war machine is also a lot less dynamic, not to mention less colorful than Nobunaga's almost supernatural conquest, steered as it was by his monomaniacal devotion to evil—whether it served his strategic purposes or not. Nobunaga threw every battle into chaos; Hideyoshi moves them forward with crushing inevitability.

Hideyoshi isn't alone in dialing back season one's mad energy. The protagonists are complicit in it too. Too many of the second-tier protagonists are made to wait on the sidelines—Uesugi tending to his own lands, Takeda pinned at home by Hideyoshi's forces, Katakura kidnapped and held in a cell. Third-tier protagonists—ninja spies Sasuke and Kasuga for instance—have token influence at best. And the main protagonists spend as much time wrestling with personal problems as they do kicking righteous ass. Date has to struggle with the humiliation of serial defeat and his loss of Katakura, while much time is spent on Yukimura's fight to reconcile his violent path with his kind nature and forge a philosophy of his own, independent of his beloved Lord.

The approach has its advantages. However shallow they remain, the characters are expanded. They gain emotional and intellectual dimensions they didn't have previously, even going so far as to elicit sympathy. The outcomes of some fights, particularly towards the end, almost start to matter. And while Hideyoshi's meticulously planned war may not be as wild or exciting as Nobunaga's, it is more strategically nuanced—giving tactics and intelligence equal footing with martial prowess. That has its own drawbacks—the strategies within strategies require an awful lot of dull exposition—but it's still nice to see battles decided by brains instead of (or in addition to) big blasts of chi.

The fights are enriched by the additional intellectual and emotional context to be sure, but make no mistake: spectacle is still their raison d'etre. And despite swapping director Itsuro Kawasaki for Kazuya Nomura, this is still a series that does spectacle very well. This is a series whose action sequences are so ludicrously pumped-up that oceans split, skies are rent, and buildings are pummeled into non-existence. Through it all Production I.G's animation remains vital and vibrant, following characters over chasms, through explosions, and into battle after battle. Sometimes the action is rendered cleanly, sometime in exaggerated smears of motion, but always it is big and bombastic and cool, cool, cool. Cool moves, cool shouts, cool chi-splosions that rip through buildings and hordes of soldiers to cool effect. Even the war-machines are cool, the coolest being a mobile fortress armed with a spiffed-up version of Archimedes' Death Ray.

The show can go too far in pursuit of awesomeness—most notably in its characters' attire. The characters themselves are handsome, but their outfits are borrowed from some glam-rock nightmare. Uesugi's Queen-Victoria-meets-Ziggy-Stardust getup is probably the worst, with Mori's green monstrosity not far behind, and the various exposed abs and S&M masks making third place a real crapshoot. The series has its costuming as much as anything to thank for its veneer of camp.

Still, the series' raw visual impact is its greatest strength. (That, and its musical impact—Hiroyuki Sawano's blasts of anachronistic rock and demonic chanting are as good as any punch or explosion at getting one's blood up.) The true failing of all that strategizing and character-building isn't that it doesn't work—though often it doesn't—but that it gets in the way of the series' visual forte. Time spent on distractions like tactics, character and philosophy is time not spent indulging in ludicrous battlefield mayhem or shooting like a deranged rocket from fight to fight. And in this case that feels like time wasted.

Funimation delivers a predictably solid dub: fun and kind of hammy and a bit looser in translation than is the norm at present. In short, everything it should be. It suffers in comparison to the original only because the Japanese cast is crammed with insane amounts of talent. Sasuke loses the humor that Takehito Koyasu brings, Takenaka loses some of Akira Ishida's cold intensity, and onward down to season-one leftovers like Mamiko Noto's creepily dim-witted Oichi. None of the losses is as major as the loss of Norio Wakamoto's inimitable insanity last season, but the difference is still felt. On the plus side, Date's embarrassing English war cries are blessedly lost in translation.

In addition to both Blu-Ray and DVD versions and a chipboard box to house both seasons, this set includes as on-set extras the now-customary (for Funimation) commentary tracks (with Christopher Bevins and Patrick Seitz commenting on episode 6, and Eric Vale, Robert McCollum, and Chris Cason on episode 12) along with "Sengoku Basara II Katakura-kun." The latter is a series of seven SD shorts, mostly about Katakura defending his vegetable garden. They aren't as funny as they apparently think they are.

Contrasting Sengoku Basara's two seasons is instructive, but one shouldn't let it obscure their similarities. Both are thoroughly preposterous re-interpretations of Japanese history as a DBZ-styled free-for-all, best enjoyed by turning your brain off and letting their big, spectacular action sequences carry you along. They differ only in the density of fighting and the context they provide for it. If you're looking for context, this season will scratch that itch better than season one and probably seem less like a blur of historical personages beating each other up in the bargain. Then again, if you're looking for context, you probably aren't looking here anyway.

The Original Post is Located Here: Sengoku Basara 2 Blu-Ray + DVD

The manga on which this fall 2010 anime series is based first came out in 2008, which puts it on the leading edge of one of the weirder byproducts of hard-core otakuism in Japan: the well-documented rejection by some male otaku of real-life girls/women in favor of “2D” ones from anime and/or games. This has doubtless been happening partly because of the idealized (for otaku) portrayal of female characters in such media, partly because the typically-socially-inept otaku tend to have even more trouble relating to members of the opposite sex than norm, and partly because various surveys have suggested that Japanese women tend to be rather demanding in what they expect of their men these days, especially in a financial sense. That probably made TWGOK hit closer to home for numerous otaku than something with such a farcical premise should have and certainly contributed to the series being popular enough to spawn a second animated season, as the first two of the above three conditions are squarely dealt with in this series. In essence, Keima is the ultimate embodiment of the steadfastly reality-rejecting otaku.

But that is also what makes the basic premise so potentially interesting. The concept is merely a variation on the one tuned to perfection by Key/Visual Art's titles like Air, Kanon, and Clannad: a young man goes around solving the problems of damaged girls without forming lasting romantic relationships with them. The male lead in those series has not necessarily been a social butterfly but has at least been able to comfortably handle himself around girls, so Keima promises to offer a dramatic variation. Unfortunately the series instead allows Keima to use his vast dating sim knowledge and experience to successfully define each girl in game terms and execute his wooing of each girl as a series of flags which much be gathered to win that path. Some will doubtless look at this as a clever application of one medium to another, but it's really a cop-out because it avoids taking the more challenging and potentially even more interesting course: showing an otaku actually learning to step beyond his games and deal with people in a normal manner. The producers cannot be faulted too much for this, because they clearly understand that they are pandering to exactly the kind of audience that Keima represents and giving them exactly what they want to see, but wasting such a golden opportunity to make something more of an anime title is disappointing to see.

That the girls involved here are more pathetic than merely damaged does not help. Ayumi, the track and field athlete who struggles to better her time and becomes Keima's first conquest, is the strongest and most likable girl, but with merely a single episode of focus she also has the least screen time and easiest-to-resolve story arc. Mio, the rich girl who follows with a two episode story arc, sabotages much of the sympathy that the series tries to generate for her with her shallow, recalcitrant arrogance. Even worse is Kanon, the idol singer, who comes up next with a three episode arc padded with idol song performances and a silly defect where she gets such a complex over not being recognized by one person (apparently a lingering effect of her pre-idol days, when she was routinely not noticed by others) that she can literally turn invisible; such an inability to handle a little adversity seems utterly at odds with the work ethic required to be an idol, but logical consistency is not this series' strong point. A little better is Shiori, the bibliophile whose painfully shy nature and tendency to overthink things so much that she never gets around to talking results in a crushing inability to verbally communicate. Her inner monologues get irritating after a while, but she at least feels plausible and her three episode arc has the strongest finish. Elsie, contrarily, is merely the flighty, only sporadically competent complement and sounding board for Keima.

Ultimately the conquests are simply not moe enough to carry the series, but unlike the aforementioned Key-based titles this one is usually more firmly focused on Keima and his eccentricities than the girls anyway. The series is also at least as much a comedy as it is a drama, so the middling success of its dramatic side does not cripple the series, either. Comedy is the focus in a pair of interlude episodes and the series' name-establishing finale and is liberally sprinkled through all of the other episodes, with mixed results; the episode which shows how one day plays out from four different perspectives is rather funny, as is the sputter-worthy way that Elsie first introduces herself to Keima's mom and the mom's reaction to it, and what cat lover wouldn't want to have one of Kanon's cat-shaped stun guns? In too many other places, though, stale jokes fail to produce more than perhaps a faint chuckle.

Manglobe's production of the series is largely a mediocre one. It samples from Eden of the East in the styling of its opener artistry and some of its episode content shows influence from Welcome to the NHK, while most of its character designs are run-of-the-mill archetypes. Only Keima, Elsie, and one heavily-caricatured male teacher stick out as fresher looks, though the boys' school uniform Keima usually wears looks remarkably pretentious. The animation and artistry are at their sharpest in the final episode segments where Keima goes into God of Conquest mode and in some of Kanon's performance pieces, though even in the latter the movements sometimes look stiff. Only a tiny bit of fan service creeps into the project (though its subject matter may be unexpected), but sharp-eyed fans can spot numerous random visual references to other anime titles, including Ergo Proxy, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Di Gi Charat, Black Jack, Doraemon, Galaxy Express 999, the Ghost in the Shell movie, and various Gundam titles.

The soundtrack, which runs the gamut of symphonic orchestral numbers, piano pieces, and electronica, is more effective and does have its moments, especially in the late stages of episode 11 and during episode 12. Opener “God Only Knows,” which is sung entirely in Engrish, is a strong one, while normal closer “Koi no Shirushi” rotates through various singers over the course of the series (often – but not always – sung by the seiyuu whose character is the current arc's “conquest”). Several insert songs pepper the middle episodes and the final two, but none of the idol songs amongst them are Earth-shakingly good.

Sentai Filmworks' English dub is anchored by rock-solid performances by Chris Patton and Luci Christian as Keima and Elsie, respectively. (Boy, how many times have these two co-starred together over the years?) Chris gives Keima just right tone of arrogance, while Luci makes Elsie into a thoroughly charming ditz. Supporting and guest roles are more mixed. Shelley Calene-Black nails the role of Keima's mother, as does Chris Ayres as the teacher Mr. Kodama, while Brittney Karbowski is a respectable fit in a non-singing performance as Kanon, but Hilary Haag only succeeds at one of her two major roles: her Mio is fine, but she strains too much for a soft, timid voice as Shiori and thus falls well short of the Japanese performance. (Her best performances have typically involved brassy characters, so this is hardly a surprise.) The English script is very tight with the subtitles; it does sneak in a couple of current events-related embellishments, but otherwise stays very faithful. The songs, thankfully, are not dubbed.

Sentai Filmworks' release of the title includes clean opener and closer and music video clips featuring nearly all of the insert songs; these look like they were just cut straight out of the episode content, though, so don't expect anything fancy. Sentai offers the title in separate DVD and Blu-Ray versions, with the Blu-Ray featuring DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo for both language tracks, which delivers a nice range of sound. The Blu-Ray's 1080p/24 AVC encoding job is a solid one which delivers clean, sharply-defined, aliasing-free artistry.

Overall, TWGOK's first season is a decent and generally entertaining series which had the potential to be a better one but never fully achieved the sincerity, emotion, or comic zest that it was aiming for. It succeeds at what it needs to do to be popular but never manages more than that.

+ concept, some good humor, English dubs for lead roles.
- Shiori's English dub, irritating character flaws, not moe enough for what it's trying to do.

The Original Post is Located Here: The World God Only Knows Blu-Ray

At this point, the classic children's novel The Borrowers has been adapted a whole bunch of times – for television, film, comics, you name it – all to varying degrees of success. The Secret World of Arrietty is Studio Ghibli's attempt to take a stab at it, enlisting relative newcomer Hiromasa Yonebayashi to helm the film with the legendary Hayao Miyazaki providing the script. The result is a beautiful, carefully detailed and altogether pleasant wisp of a film that does absolutely everything – from the characters' personalities to the story construction to the emotional stakes that hold the whole thing together – in miniature.

The story opens with the eager and resourceful 14-year old Arrietty going on her first “Borrowing” – that is, her first foray with her stoic father into the dangerous human dwelling above to retrieve some sugar and tissue from the humans, things they need to “borrow” to make ends meet in their rustic little house under the floorboards. It's a charming sequence, and we learn everything we need to know (and will ever know) about Arrietty and her parents right up front; Arrietty is strong-willed and capable, her father is the soft-spoken man of duty who looks out for his family, and mom is always in the kitchen, worrying endlessly about everyone's safety in an environment where fear keeps them from interacting much with the world upstairs. Arrietty is discovered by Shawn, who catches them trying to pilfer a sheet of tissue paper, and immediately calls out in sympathy – he wants to be friends, but Arrietty has been taught to fear humans, and stays away. Of course, that doesn't last long, and soon the two are learning that they aren't so different, what with Shawn dealing with his own mortality and Arrietty wrestling with the notion that she and her folks may be the last of their kind.

The central conflict in the film is as light as all of its other components – the “villain”, aging busybody Hara, sees the Borrowers (which have lived on in the house in legends for generations) as nothing but little thieves. She calls an exterminator to trap them, having discovered their little house, capturing Arrietty's mom in the process. By the time this section of the story kicks in, Arrietty has befriended the ailing Shawn and they go on a particularly short rescue mission. That's about it. There aren't any other twists and turns in the story – we're made aware of the existence of other Borrowers by the appearance of Spiller, a forest-dwelling Borrower who speaks in a generic “savage” dialect; he lets the family know they can go upriver and join the rest of their kind. It all wraps up with a brief emotional moment between Shawn and Arrietty that doesn't quite feel earned – they become fast friends, Shawn helps her out, and boom, we're done, roll credits.

It's hard to fault The Secret World of Arrietty for feeling so light and small – that is, after all, clearly what it's aiming for, at least in terms of story scope. The problem, if it can be called that, arises when the film never fully connects with you or engages you beyond invoking the same fleeting sense of familiar comfort you might get from a warm cup of tea or a kitty in your lap. The characters are all drawn particularly thin – Arrietty doesn't change beyond learning that this one human she met once was a good guy, and Shawn claims Arrietty taught him to be brave in the face of his upcoming surgery, but we're never really shown the emotional connective tissue to support that. Hara's machinations feel particularly bloodless; even when she's kidnapping mom, there's no real sense of peril. The whole thing is like a very pretty balloon you hold on to for a second before it floats away; a nice little memory you may one day recollect for an instant before it wanders back into the ether.

The film likely would've been helped if it'd been given a little more breathing room. The story itself, minus credits, is barely 90 minutes, one of the shortest of Ghibli's theatrical offerings; as a result of that and the way the script is constructed, we're given very little time to get to know any of these characters and very little backstory is provided. Even a few more minutes of character building would've really helped create the sort of emotional resonance we've seen from countless other Ghibli works. There isn't really even much of a theme here, which is odd for a Miyazaki script – there's a brief hint at a thematic connection between Shawn's illness and Arrietty's extinction anxiety, but it's never explored or commented on beyond one scene where it's sort of explicitly stated by the two leads, and so we're left with very little to chew on.

Visually, The Secret World of Arrietty is yet another in the long tradition of Ghibli's aesthetic feasts. The Borrowers' underground world is rendered with the sort of lush acrylic look we're used to, with plenty of playful little details in the margins (particular attention was paid to the way water behaves in Arrietty's perspective). The animation is as gorgeous as can be expected, although there are no showy centerpieces this time; all the detail and beauty is in the backgrounds and in subtle movements, rather than in splashy theatrics a'la the tsunami sequence in Ponyo. There's a brief moment where the animation breaks out of the typical Ghibli style, when a crow comes barreling in on Arrietty outside Shawn's window and gets its head stuck in the window screen; the crow's expressions, in particular, stand out among all the saucer-eyed, gentle-faced Ghibli kids. It isn't a massive departure, but it's nice to see character animation in a Ghibli film driven by chaotic slapstick, no matter how brief the sequence is. There are a few long shots of Shawn lying in a sun-dappled flower field that are truly breathtaking; in all, the production design is sweet and carefully crafted to maintain the homespun warmth that holds the rest of the film together. The score is also uniformly gorgeous – there's a gentle Irish sound to it, with lots of acoustic guitar, harp, and light piano. There are a number of lilting vocal arrangements punctuating key scenes, moreso than ever in a Ghibli production, and it really adds to the storybook feel of the film.

Disney's English language dub (which was commissioned in the US, to be released in American theaters rather than using the film's existing UK dub) is, as expected, great. The lead cast is uniformly excellent; Disney Channel newcomer Bridgit Mendler gives Arrietty a remarkably natural and heartfelt performance. Her parents, Pod and Homily, continue Disney's tradition of picking perfect choices for the parents in Ghibli films – real-life couple and beloved comic actors Will Arnett and Amy Poehler play dad and mom, respectively, and they knock it out of the park. Poehler in particular walks a very difficult line playing Homily, who could've easily been portrayed as an over-the-top worrywart; instead, Poehler's performance is nuanced, giving the character real emotion while still delivering some great laugh lines. Comedy legend Carol Burnett is clearly having a lot of fun with the role of Hara, sinking her teeth into the character's occasionally outsized expressions. David Henrie - another Disney Channel regular – plays Shawn, and simply isn't given much to do in the role beyond sounding a little winded and tired, but he does very well with what he's been handed. It's a great dub, as we've come to expect; it's hard not to be curious about that UK dub, given the film's European visual trappings, but Disney has another production to be proud of here.

The Secret World of Arrietty may not have much beyond its effortlessly pleasant surface, and in the end – which comes before you know it – it might feel a little hollow, but it does, at the very least, do a narratively competent and entertaining job retelling a story that holds up as testament to the enduring strength of the source material. Ghibli's visual prowess is on full display once again, and it does seem like the sort of film older children may hold on to longer than most, thanks to subtle character interaction, mannered pacing and an understated, almost mundane sense of everyday magic. It's a shame there isn't more going on here, even when it comes to the film's basic story, but it's foolish to deny the simple, warm and familiar pleasures of Arrietty's world.

The Original Post is Located Here: The Secret World of Arrietty

This 25-episode 1998 production by Sunrise was originally licensed and dubbed by ADV Films and released on both DVD and VHS singles from late 2000 through early 2002, with a Complete Collection on DVD following later in 2002, but it apparently never had enduring enough popularity to remain in circulation over the next decade. Nozomi Entertainment's licensing of it in the summer of 2011 was the first action take on it in many years, and now, nearly 9½ years after its last American release, it is once again back in circulation in a new, more compact Complete Collection But will the current generation of anime fans appreciate it?

As mecha series go, Gasaraki is an aberrant branch in the tree of titles which sprouts off of Neon Genesis Evangelion. It is certainly one of the most sophisticated of all mecha titles, with a dense, uniformly serious plot which delves as heavily into geopolitical issues, philosophizing about nationalism, the complexities of world commodities markets, and immigration issues as it does into the intricacies of mecha development and operation. It uses traditional Noh dances as a means to insert mysticism into what is otherwise a story and setting heavily ground in realism and tries to spin a love story about two individuals who must fight against fate over the course of more than a thousand years to be together; it even devotes two episodes to events that happened back during the Heian Era to lay the groundwork for modern events. Though the plot moves along slowly, it only feels like it is dragging when it resorts to full-blown philosophical discussions in its final quarter and only its romantic component truly falls short.

The series' biggest draw, though, is the meticulous detail it puts into its animation and depiction of mecha activities. Few other mecha titles even come close to matching this series' degree of realism and technical detail in the preparations, piloting, and missions involved with mecha operation. Here mecha synchronize laser targeting with each other, employ flying drones for data collection and coordination, use built-in winches and hydraulic pistons to hoist themselves up buildings, get dropped from planes while sitting in protective sleds, and react with appropriate difficulty in environmental hazards like storm-blown sand. The boxy mecha fit their pilots very snugly into claustrophobic cockpits and rigorously follow the laws of physics in their movements. Support personnel guide pilots' actions down to the second and meter and adjust fine operational details from minute to minute. The attention to realism carries over into other aspects of the show, too, such as the nature of the media coverage, the fact that most of the mecha pilots are adults (Yushiro, at 17, is the youngest), and the sensible reactions by military units and security forces to threats.

If all of this sounds rather dull, it isn't. For all of the series' emphasis on minute detail, it also regularly delivers an amazing level of intensity. Director and co-creator Ryosuke Takahashi, who was also the creative mind behind the earlier Armored Trooper Votoms titles and the later Blue Gender and Flag, clearly knows well how to stage both mecha and non-mecha action and exploits all of his expertise here. The plotting and pacing are also free of fat, with barely a wasted scene (thought a few may try viewers' patience!) as they play out the multi-tiered story. Frequent use of news program clips also provides a slick way to deliver setting details without resorting to straight exposition.

The series does have some problems, however, and they are not easily ignorable ones. Yushiro may be the main protagonist, but he has all of the personality of wet cardboard and is only slightly more interesting to watch. Miharu, in a virtual supporting role, isn't much better and spends a significant swath of episodes through the series' middle catatonic. The love story between Yushiro and Miharu is similarly limp, with little real depth of feeling ever developing between the two. They are more players in the story than carriers of it, however, so the better characterizations and more dynamic interactions in the broad supporting cast balance them out. Not balanced out is the overemphasis on Japanese nationalism and the character of the Japanese people on display in the final few episodes; someone clearly fell in too much in love with rhetoric here, resulting in several scenes where characters just sit or stand and talk about what it means to be Japanese. Coupled with this is a very negative look at both Asian immigrants and the United States which, in the latter case, may not set well with some American viewers. A mostly anticlimactic and unsatisfying final episode, which will remind many viewers of NGE, is an additional strike against, although the events leading up to it are much more satisfying.

Sunrise's artistry excels in its mecha animation and technical detail, with CG effects primarily limited to computer displays. It also does a great job of giving its broad cast of characters distinctive looks without giving them outlandish appearances, including giving certain characters (generally the most nationalistic ones) specifically Japanese looks. Consistent quality control is a problem whenever mecha or other technical gear isn't on the screen, however, and the high-resolution TVs available now that did not exist when the series last circulated bring out the roughness and flaws all the more prominently. they also brings out how flat and subdued the series' color scheme was; the brand-new front cover art is far sharper-looking than anything in the series. The series also takes its share of animation shortcuts, though it is careful to pay exacting attention to important details like the Noh dances and mecha maneuverability. The artistry mutes its graphic content sufficiently to keep it at a 13+ age reading and has only a couple of brief snippets which could constitute fan service.

The musical score is at its most effective and balanced during the mecha battles and Noh dances, with results varying elsewhere. It so overplays the dramatic sound on the announcements that certain characters are “kai” that the scenes become laughable, and only partly succeeds on making something out of nothing in a couple of scenes that are supposed to be horrifying. Opener “Message #9” is a dramatic but uneven song paired with unremarkable visuals which regularly update, but closer “Love Story,” also sung by Tomoko Tane, is another matter. Its haunting melody, filled with longing and passion and paired with elegant, symbolic animation, make it one of the all-time-great anime closers.

Nozomi Entertainment retains ADV's original English dub, which was cast partly with established ADV regulars for that time and partly with up-and-comers; Yushiro was one of Chris Patton's earliest starring roles, for instance, while some of Vic Mignogna's earliest anime dubbing work can be heard in bit parts. Patton and Monica Rial had little to work with in the lead roles (as did Hilary Haag in a very restrained supporting role as the sole Gowa daughter), resulting in some dry performances, but Andy McAvin sounds deliciously harsh in the key role of Kazukiyo Gowa and most other major supporting performance range from acceptable to solid. It isn't a great English dub but not a bad one, either. The English script heavily rearranges what characters are saying but almost always has the characters saying basically the same thing, with the sole exception being the replacement of a line about a character not speaking Japanese with a line about a female character being mistaken for a boy. (It makes sense in context.)

For this release Nozomi has spread the 25 episodes evenly across five disks, with the only Extras being clean opener and closer and some boring Japanese “behind the scenes” clips on the fifth disk. Lost are all of the glossary and terms files, additional Japanese “behind the scenes” clips, and ADV's own “behind the scenes” clips that were available on the original single releases and involved the dubbing process. Also lost are the disk liners included with each of the original disks, which mostly consisted of character bios and equipment details but also included a map of the Gowa estate. Nozomi has also altered some of the subtitling and on-screen text translations with an eye to retaining the original Japanese writing, though this is not always beneficial; for instance, in the scene at the beginning of each episode where a poem types out on a computer screen, the original release replaced the Japanese text with an English translation which types out as the Japanese text does, but now the original Japanese text types out while an English translation – in white font against a white background, mind you – appears intact below it. The original Japanese credits are back, with the English translation only in a separate credit roll at the very end of each episode.

Unless one is picky about having credits in the original Japanese or is looking to conserve shelf space, those who own one of the two previous releases of the franchise are unlikely to find anything of value here. This is more a release for those who have never owned and/or experienced the series before. For those who haven't, this one is highly worth checking out if mecha content that emphasizes realism and technical detail more than cool factor sounds like your kind of thing.

+ Virtually unrivaled mecha technical detail, involved plotting, all-time-great closer.
- Weak final episode, uninteresting leads, philosophizing gets rather thick in the late stages.

The Original Post is Located Here: Gasaraki DVD Complete Collection

Jellyfish. If you live in a coastal community, chances are that you think of them as nothing more than dangers to swimming or those gross blobby things that get washed up on the beach after a storm. To Tsukimi Kurashita, however, they are beautiful, eternal reminders of her mother and the quiet, exquisite life she would like to lead beneath the non-judgmental waves of the sea, and before this show is over, you too may come to see jellyfish as more than just nature's prehistoric leftovers.

We first meet Tsukimi at Amamizu-kan, the women-only boarding house where “The Sisterhood” resides. Each member of the group has a special geek (otaku) interest – Mayaya is obsessed with “The Three Kingdoms,” Jiji has a thing for old men, Banba is a train nut, and acting landlady Chieko loves traditional Japanese clothes and dolls. As the youngest of the group, Tsukimi is the least comfortable with herself and spends most of her time in her room drawing detailed pictures of jellyfish. Then one night walking by a pet store she sees two jellyfish in a tank who should not be together, as the one is poisonous to the other. The clerk doesn't heed her pleas and treats her like she's subhuman until a tall, beautiful Stylish woman shows up. While the clerk drools over the stranger, she convinces him to just give Tsukimi the doomed jellyfish, and despite the otaku's clear discomfort, the Stylish helps her get supplies and go home before falling asleep on Tsukimi's floor. This is bad enough, but when Tsukimi wakes up to find that her unwanted Stylish is actually a cross-dressing young man named Kuranosuke, she freaks out. Nonplussed, Kuranosuke continues to come by Amamizu-kan, slowly winning over The Sisterhood with only Tsukimi aware of his true gender.

Once this central conceit is established, the story takes off. Kuranosuke, who is straight and has his reasons for dressing in drag, is appalled that Tsukimi does not take better care of her appearance and clothing. While Tsukimi never explicitly states why this is, her reactions whenever someone notices her suggest a wish to remain in the background. Anyone who dislikes the attention of the opposite sex can understand this desire – for the painfully shy, “plain” equals “safe.” Although Kuranosuke never fully succeeds in bringing Tsukimi out of her shell, he does help her to become a bit more comfortable in the world and with a more groomed appearance. Naturally this has its downsides as well – in her “after” look, Tsukimi is introduced to Kuranosuke's older brother Shu, who falls for the demure beauty. However, he is so infatuated with her appearance that he cannot see that the freckled, sweat-suited girl is the same person as his curly-headed ideal. He cannot, to paraphrase Funi's tagline for the series, see beneath the surface. One of the show's best scenes comes after he accidentally snubs her, showing Tsukimi slowly sinking into a sidewalk turned to water until she floats jelly-like beneath the waves.

Tsukimi's polar opposite is Shoko Inari, the grasping, vicious land shark after Amamizu-kan. She is the originator of a particularly upsetting subplot wherein one of the male characters is sexually molested. We rarely, in any form of pop culture, see this so-called gender reversal in terms of abuse, and the man in question's reaction to it is well done. Inari, whose name leads characters to refer to her by the apt and unflattering name of “vixen,” is a despicable character. She is the woman The Sisterhood fears, someone who comfortably wears the title of “bitch.” While she does show vague signs of remorse towards the story's end, she never really moves beyond her role, making her a flatter character than some of the others but at the same time a worthy antagonist, espousing all that The Sisterhood sees as wrong with the world.

Overall the show has a bit of an Ai Yazawa feel to it, mixed with the vibe of a women's college, at least the one I attended. There is a subtle sadness to both Tsukimi and Kuranosuke that balances out the wackier aspects of the show. Action is much more emotional than physical (Mayaya notwithstanding), and the animation reflects this with small details, like Inari's French manicure and lipstick stains. Images of jellyfish are especially soothing and beautiful, giving viewers a chance to look at them through Tsukimi's eyes rather than our own preconceptions. Speaking of Tsukimi's vision, there are also some nice moments where we see things as she does without her glasses on, through a gentle blur. This is a very nice touch and allows viewers to connect more with the character. The animation does look a bit sharper on Blu Ray, but the full effect is also achieved with the DVD version. The only instance where viewers may really prefer the DVD over the Bluray is when dub Jiji is speaking, as she is very difficult to hear and subtitles cannot be turned on with the English language track on the Bluray.

Dub and sub tracks are both excellent, so it is largely up to the viewer's preferences here. While Monica Rial does a wonderful job as Mayaya, the character comes off as slightly more annoying in the dub than the sub, possibly simply because the dub track plays at a slightly higher volume. Josh Grelle is particularly wonderful as Kuranosuke, actually achieving a (believable) higher register than the women when doing his girl voice. Maxey Whitehead and Kana Hanazawa both give Tsukimi a voice that fits the character, and their interpretations of the role are similar. A dub highlight is Anastasia Munoz, who has a wonderful small role as a 'fro fan model, stealing all of her brief scenes, whereas the sub boasts Takehito Koyasu as Shu's driver Hanamori. Dub Clara is the one slightly sour note, as the writers try to make her too sassy. Other than that, the script is very close to the subtitles, with some adjustments made for flow and idiomatic expressions (the dub script's substitution of “this boy” for “ore” is especially good), but fidelity to the original throughout.

Extras are plentiful on these discs, with five minute shorts about supporting cast members including Benz otaku Hanamori, and a comprehensive “field guide” that explains the details of everyone's obsessions. Two commentary tracks make it clear just how much everyone who worked on the English version of the show loved it, and for those of you who can't figure out the middle two movie references in the opening theme, the commentary for episode one has you covered. One of the best extras, however, is a brief documentary about Kana Hanazawa and Jiji's Japanese seiyuu Mamiko Noto visiting the same aquarium Tsukimi goes to in the show. Seeing the real jellyfish is fascinating and also showcases how much research went into their portrayal.

Princess Jellyfish is a show for anyone who was ever poisoned by a fairy tale. Tsukimi's mother told her that all girls grow up to be princesses (a nod to Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess?), and Tsukimi is beginning to realize that maybe that doesn't always come with the traditional happily ever after. In some ways, Princess Jellyfish is about making your own happy ending and also understanding that “ending” isn't a finite term when it comes to life. The show doesn't have a solid conclusion, but in some ways that would take away from the discoveries that Kuranosuke and Tsukimi are making. By the end of the show, the pervasive air of loneliness that it began with has abated there is the promise of more yet to come for the characters, even if we are not there to see it.

+ Both comedic and poignant with interesting characters who offer some relatability. Fun opening theme, good extras. Hopeful ending.
- Mayaya is irritating in both languages, the molestation storyline may bother some viewers.

The Original Post is Located Here: Princess Jellyfish Blu-Ray + DVD

Grave of the Fireflies is not a fun viewing experience; in fact, it may stand behind only Barefoot Gen as one of the most difficult of all anime titles to watch. It is a tragic tale where viewers know from the very first scene that the main character wasted away and died in a train station in September 1945, so almost all of the movie (beyond some scenes showing Seita and Setsuko as spirits) is a flashback depicting the events leading up to that. The result is a damning portrayal of the impact of World War II on the Japanese homefront and a condemnation of the way society at that time miserably failed to protect and serve its most vulnerable citizens.

Those factors have led to the movie being widely-regarded as an anti-war story, and it certainly does carry that impact, but that may have been more happenstance than actual intent on the creator's part. The movie is based off of a semiautobiographical novel of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka, who essentially was Seita, even down to losing a younger sister to malnutrition. Thus the story can also be looked at – and, by some accounts, was intended to be looked at – as an apology by Nosaka to his sister for his failure to better take care of her. But that only makes the impact of the movie all the more powerful, especially in the devastating late scenes showing Setsuko on her final night alive, because one of the oft-overlooked aspects of the film is that this movie is not just about the failure of a system or people; it is about individual failure as well.

And that failure lies not on the shoulders of the unsympathetic aunt but on Seita himself. For all of the tragedy visited upon Seita and his sister, and for all of the suffering that he and his sister ultimately went through, Seita had an opportunity to do what was necessary for him and his sister to survive but his pride could not allow him to take it. Yes, his aunt was unpleasant, but he brought some of that upon himself with his behavior and ultimately refused to do the one thing that could have made all of the difference: swallow his pride and put up with her. One farmer later in the film even suggests that Seita do just that and return to the aunt when it was clear that Seita and his sister were in trouble, but even then he could not do it, and the moment sounds in the movie like a death knell. If any of this reflects the original writer's own behavior during that time period then the demons which haunted him for decades afterwards must have been strong, indeed, for in telling this story he certainly acknowledges his mistakes.

Human failure drives the story, but the terrible truths of the wartime bombardments and deprivations are hardly understated by the production. The scenes of the firebombings, where Seita looks into the sky and sees the torches whistling down, are awesome in a horrifying way, and the casual scenes of charred bodies or severely-burned but still-living victims like Setsuko's mother disturb just as much as the destroyed cityscape, the rashes and ravages that malnutrition takes on Seita and his sister, or the other youths dying in the train station along with Seita at the beginning. (For further elaboration on how the postwar period was just as unkind to war orphans, see Barefoot Gen 2.) Simple scenes, like ants crawling across pieces of watermelon or a firefly falling dead from the mosquito net on which it had perched, carry volumes of meaning, too, and scenes like the train station employee tossing Seita's metal tin into a field at the beginning of the movie hit with with a powerful impact when looked at in retrospect. Little touches like those pervade the production, which was written and directed by Studio Ghibli co-founder (and long-time Miyazaki collaborator) Isao Takahata.

And yes, that means that Studio Ghibli animated this one, with a few individuals who would later make their own names in the industry (including Hideaki Anno) among those doing the movie's grunt work. The result is a visual production which has the slightly rough feel commonly-seen in movies from the late '80s but nonetheless flawlessly stays on-model and brings its characters to life through smooth, active animation, simple but powerful imagery, and a wealth of exacting detail. For all of the ugliness that the movie portrays, the movie regularly finds room for beauty, too, which is brought home by one of the movie's best scenes: its final one, where the spirits of Seita and Setsuko sit on a park bench overlooking modern-day Kobe in a sublimely wistful moment. Excellent use of color shows in the red tinting given to the spirit scenes, while the texturing tricks used to play up the ragged state of the dead and dying are basic but very effective. The sparsely-used musical score is also effective when present, but Takahata seemed content to let the natural drama of the story deliver all of the necessary impact.

The English dub offered here is the same one present in previous releases and seems to be the original dub made by U.S. Manga Corps for their long-out-of-print original 1998 release. It is now probably most notable for featuring some of the earliest dubbing work by Crispin Freeman (in a couple of bit roles) and Veronica “Ash Ketchum” Taylor (as the mother), though none of the principle voice actors had significant anime careers. The same can also be said of the Japanese vocal cast, which is probably most noteworthy for casting an actual 5-year-old in the role of Setsuko. The English dub does a perfectly acceptable job in all roles except one: Setsuko just doesn't sound quite convincing as a four-year-old in English. That, unfortunately, is a big negative, since a good chunk of the pathos the movie delivers is at least partly dependent on that performance.

Sentai Filmworks' March 2012 remastered edition marks the fifth time over the years that the movie has been released on DVD, including previous releases by U.S. Manga Corps, Central Park Media, and ADV Films which date as far back as 1998. The cover art this time is merely a variation on the 1998 and 2009 releases and this one lacks any of the Extras seen on some earlier editions, most notably the 2002 Collector's Series release. The balancing factor is that this remastered version brings out crisper and brighter color than has been seen in any previous version, which results in some scenes which were previously much darker now having startlingly more detail visible in them. (The effect is similar to the improvements made with the remastered version of Akira a few years back.) Thus an ideal package would have been the movie DVD from this version with the Extras DVD from the 2002 version, but sadly, we don't get that here. Still, Sentai deserves credit for keeping this very important title in active circulation and it still serves as a great offering for those who have never seen/owned it before.

Anime covers such a broad and diverse array of genres that making a universal recommendation list is virtually impossible. Any such attempt, though, would have to include this one. Few will have much desire to watch this more than once, but everyone should watch it at least once.

NOTE: The next-to-last paragraph has been significantly revised since the original posting of this review.

The Original Post is Located Here: Grave of the Fireflies DVD

Volume 4 of Tenjo Tenge—equivalent to Volumes 7 and 8 in the original printing—is neatly divided into two sections, both of which come with their own particular ups and downs. In the first half is the finale of the Shin Natsume flashback arc, where grand fight scenes are tied together by a clumsy knot of rivalries and relationships. Then comes the long-awaited return to the present-day storyline, where the characters proudly declare their fighting spirit—but never make any real forward progress, aside from training and testing each other. Is it too much to ask just to have epic brawls, an elaborate back-story, and churning emotions all come together neatly for once?

The answer, it seems, is that each of these qualities will come up some of the time, but never all of the time. The extended flashback (which at this point has become so unwieldy that even Oh! great jokes about it in his author's notes) is like some strange oil-and-water mixture where brooding character-development episodes keep getting interrupted by wild, no-holds-barred fights. Or is it the other way around? Basically, there's a lot to explain about the troubled Shin/Maya/Mitsuomi triangle—personal issues, as well as supernatural ones—but the sudden mood swings between those moments and the more extroverted fight scenes disrupt the flow of the story. Ultimately, we get to find out how Shin Natsume died, but it happens in a such an overblown shower of tragic-death clichés that everyone is just thankful the flashback is over.

Which is not to say that the story gets better in the second half. After returning to the present day, the plot keeps tossing around the same points over and over: Mitsuomi is ridiculously strong, Maya still hates his guts, and the Juken Club will have to train like crazy to beat him. These chapters do toss out a few pleasing highlights: a Maya-versus-Aya clash over Aya's readiness to use the sword that was once Shin's, and toward the end, a dramatic glimpse of Soichiro's true fighting power. But these bursts of action still feel like mere preludes to any real story development; even when the club members meet Mitsuomi face-to-face, all they do is jaw at each other and vow that their true battle will come at a later time. Occasional comedy moments where Soichiro and Bob bicker with each other also fail to add anything new, plot or humor-wise.

If one isn't terribly concerned about the clumsy and shallow plotting, though, there's still plenty to enjoy in the visuals. It's easy to see what kind of art Oh! great loves the most: the eye-popping, full-page shots where perfectly sculpted fighters pull off outrageous moves. Sometimes these scenes involve swirling supernatural auras (rendered down to the littlest detail), and sometimes it's simply the striking view angles that make it work. Of course, others will say that it's the buxom women and their pin-up poses that sell this series, but even the most blatant fanservice moments (like Aya pouring water on herself) are brief enough that they work as a natural part of the story, rather than a needless burden. However, all this emphasis on impressive fights and impressive fanservice comes at a price: ordinary scenes of school life, at home, or inside office buildings are often presented with dull backgrounds and plain rectangular layouts, making day-to-day scenes even more boring than they already are.

One thing that isn't boring, though, is the dialogue—at least when Soichiro and Bob are around. Their rough style of speech, peppered with swears and personal boasts, adds a colorful flair to the series' often serious atmosphere. By comparison, the Natsumes and Takayanagis reveal a more traditional, martial-arts upbringing in the way they talk, and the translation manages to bring out these differences without sounding forced. However, there's simply no way to fix the wooden tone of the characters' interior monlogues, because the very content itself is clichéd: all this talk of protecting the ones you love, wanting to get to stronger, and how sad it is that everyone has to fight. They may be good with their fists, but when it comes to words, these fighters shouldn't have to broadcast every thought passing through their heads. Sound effects have been edited and replaced with English equivalents, and while the letters sometimes look out-of-place floating over the visuals, the changes don't interfere too much with the artwork.

At this point, Tenjo Tenge has enough of a storyline for it to be meaningful. The Takayanagi family's failed plan for building the "supreme warrior," the tragic past involving Shin, Maya and Mitsuomi, and Maya's motivation for wanting to defeat Mitsuomi have been fully explained, giving the series a solid foundation. But the building of that foundation has been a clumsy, haphazard process: the overly long flashback finally comes to an end, but only in a wild mess of fights and melodramatic monologues, and the return to the present-day storyline feels mostly like planning for the future. Fortunately, there's still plenty of visual flourish to keep fans interested, with over-the-top action poses and superhuman fighting moves every few pages. Now if only the plot could catch up to that level of accomplishment.

The Original Post is Located Here: Tenjo Tenge GN 4