"One day during spring break, Haruka saw a man standing in blue shining snow on the roof of the church. He was Karasu,
who came from a world 15 years in the future, known as
"Dimension La'cryma." Karasu was a Dragon Knight of that country. Actually, he was Haruka's childhood friend, Yuu --
only he was 15 years older than
the Yuu she knew.
In that world, 15 years in the future, a severe war had been waged between Dimension La'cryma and Dimension Shangri-La
for 10 years. La'cryma was
trying to save the world using high technologies, while Shangri-La was trying to demolish the whole of the dimensions.
Before the overwhelming power
of Shangri-La, La'cryma was losing ground with every battle. The only hope to resist Shangri-La was the Ryuu no Toroku
("Dragon Torque"). When High
Command realized this, they sent Dragon Knights, including Karasu, to the world 15 years in the past to retrieve the torque."
I was unexpectedly delighted with this series, and I
recommend it to anyone who likes a lot of cerebral workout time and serious science in their science fiction anime.
A group of schoolkids and a pair of warring futures interact seamlessly in this fascinating adventure: as some
of the future combatants realize the kids are their own past selves, or could become them in a different future,
both the past and future are affected by their decisions and choices--and by what Haruka will decide to do with
the mysterious Dragon Torque. I had no expectations whatever of Noein, and it won my love on its own merits
alone: action, comedy, human drama, and mind-bending higher mathematics (seriously, a lot of the plot turns on fine
points of theoretical physics--it must have been a beast to subtitle) all at once. It's a bit uneven and has dry
stretches, but I promise you'll feel well rewarded for the effort it takes. (And if you don't choke up a little
when a formerly-psycho hunter-killer selflessly gives his life to save the former prey who have become his friends,
well, you're not watching any anime at my house.)
--Out on DVD now.
Wiki's article gives good details on the internal physics of the series.
==========
TRINITY BLOOD--A 2005 series; 24 episodes. Welcome to a far-future earth where, after an apocalyptic war, the balance of power has settled to an uneasy truce between the human-ruled Catholic West, dominated by the Vatican, and the
vampire-ruled, Byzantine-styled East--the New Human Empire--headed by Empress Seth Nightlord. Of course, there are powers afoot that want this balance disrupted: namely, the calculating black magickians of the Rosencreutz Orden; and making matters worse is the imbalance of power in the Vatican,
where a timid, teenaged pope is hauled right and left between his vampire-hating, warmongering older brother, Francesco de Medici, and their strong-willed, determinedly diplomatic sister, Caterina Sforza. (I know, I know, the series tosses these real names into impossible relationships with total abandon. Don't try to sort it out.)
Who can we call? Caterina's hand-picked team of super-gifted gunslingers, AX (short for Arcanum cella ex dono dei, "Secret Chamber of the gift of God") that's who; and their star agent, a super-powerful vampire --called a Krusnik--who takes only vampires' blood. This creature in his human form passes as a slightly klutzy human priest named Abel Nightroad, and if this name reminds you of the Empress of the East,
very good. Oh, and did I mention that Contra Mundi's mastermind--consumed with hatred for both Abel and Seth-- is one Cain Knightlord? Yup.== The Night Lords, as the vampire siblings are called, have a long history that took the original author two series of novels and audio dramas to unfold. This disastrous series, which attempts to stitch the two series together
and bring it to some sort of single conclusion--AND was cropped two episodes short to boot--doesn't even come close to capturing its scope. But it's still pretty to look at, contains a really fascinating and original vampire mythology (they're from Mars!), and if you like courtly political intrigue and lots of dishy guys, this won't waste your time.
But avoid the last two episodes at all costs. Yes, I'm serious.
Much, much more, including a full episode guide, background info and lots of screengrabs, at my Trinity site, Krusnik 02.
=============================
ZEGAPAIN-- Gave up on this in one episode flat. Captain of the high school swim team sees a mysterious girl
vanish off the diving board and finds
out she's an alien who's come to recruit him to pilot a *yawn* super-machine in her planet-dimension-timespace's big
battle...you've seen this before.
And if you're watching Noein (and for that matter Bleach) you're already getting all the "regular kids
in inter-world jeopardy" fix you need;
we sure are.
AIR GEAR-- Another one that we dropped in < 5. A kid who just happens to live with a household of beautiful
sisters (they apparently aren't HIS
sisters, though...) badly wants to be as cool as the gangs that zoom around town on high-powered rollerblades called
Air Trek, though they're illegal (it's a street racing thing). But wow! his roommates are secretly an Air Trek team
called Sleeping Forest! and when he steals a set of their skates he promptly gets in trouble with the Skull
Saders gang, falls for a pink-haired skater girl, and...there's a lot of fanservice.... Just kids on rollerblades,
man. Pass.
RAY THE ANIMATION -- Yawn. A girl gains x-ray vision in a surgical accident, I think. Sorry, I'm already watching one hospital procedural with dark tones (Monster) and that's enough......
NIGHT HEAD GENESIS--Two brothers with paranormal powers are taken from their parents as kids and imprisoned in
a compound for study. Eventually they escape and try to make a life in the outside world despite being more than
slightly dangerous to themselves and others...
NANA-- Man, I thought I was gonna love this after the first episode. On a Tokyo-bound train stalled in a
snowstorm, two young women meet and find they have the same first name, Nana. They could not be more different--one's
a ditzy butterfly and one's a weary, jaded rocker--but they form a quick friendship, and, when they later find themselves
competing for the same apartment, decide to split their expenses and share the place. I could just see it: an "odd
couple" sort of comedy-drama in which these two mismatched roomies would be pulled together by the trials of surviving
city life, get to know each other, respect their differences and be best friends, with some funny and tragic stuff
along the way. Sounds OK, right? But the next three episodes go into the events that led them to start new lives
in Tokyo, and make it clear that Cute Nana (we call her Nana Pink) is an unbearable clinging vine and romance-junkie
who falls in love with anything male and believes finding true love will solve all her life problems; while Tough
Nana (Nana Punk) was raised by a stern grandmother and ran away when she fell for a guy in a rock band. Frankly,
I don't watch anime to see women mess up their lives over men... it may have gotten better, and I know people who
do still watch it, but we ditched it about episode 6 and don't regret it.
==========
OURAN HIGH SCHOOL HOST CLUB-- Something completely different from all the above. =) What happens when a smart,
stubborn girl--one Haruhi Fujioka-- from a lower-middle-class family scores the grades to get into a super-exclusive
academy and finds herself entangled with a pack of ultra-wealthy, drop-dead-gorgeous guys (a/k/a You Rich Bastards)?
A delicious, flowery little confection of elegant manners, mistaken gender identities, comedy, drama and romance, this
became my biggest guilty pleasure in ages. Lush, beautiful art (these backgrounds are to die for), witty dialogue, lots
of flirting with yaoi situations, quick, sharp character writing, and yeah, the guys are total eye candy--but Haruhi is
not impressed. It only got better as the underpinnings of relationships and some darker angles were revealed (Kyouya's
struggles with his father, Tamaki's idiot-savant ability to see straight into the motivations and needs of anyone except
himself, the twins' conflicted indecision about whether or not to open up their hermetically sealed little world)--
developed the depth of the group's friendships and loyalties, and pulled off a
non-stop, honestly heartwarming final episode loaded with action, emotion and pure fun to wrap the whole thing up with a
big shiny satin bow. (--and who can not love a series whose heroine's dad is a professional cross-dresser? =) == Yeah, it's probably corny; yeah, it's not the most original idea on earth; yeah, I'm just being a
girl, I'm sure. But pfui to all that: I **love** this thing. Pour on the rose petals. =)
BLACK LAGOON-- I never expected to like this as much as I do --even tho there's no Creature! =) Okajima Rokuro
("Rock") is a regular Japanese salaryman who's entrusted to take a crucial data disk by boat to Southeast Asia, but finds
himself in the middle of a gun battle when industrial pirates try to get hold of it. His company sends an elite unit to
kill the mercenaries who are holding him hostage, but advise him that they'll be killing him too --so sorry--the company
will honor his name. Well, he's naturally peeved and throws in his lot with the mercenaries, who are a sharply written
and hugely engaging lot (Dutch, the huge captain and weapons expert; Benny, the Hawaiian-shirt wearing radio guy and techie
geek; and Revy--it's short for Rebecca, but never remind her of that--wild-eyed, tattooed, two-gun-toting babe) and is
well on his way to becoming the first neck-tie wearing pirate in South China Seas history by episode 2. They become sometime-allies-sometime-rivals
of the powerful expat-Russian crime gang, Hotel Moscow, and its mysterious boss, the horrifically scarred beauty called Balalaika,
and shoot their way into and out of capers from
nuclear secrets to Nazi art treasures with huge style and massive firepower. This thing's
got carloads of entertainment value--high-speed action, amazing
battles, great writing, humor, beautiful art and animation--and it's
just tons more fun than a gun-loaded shoot-it-up like this ought to be.
A definite keeper; now in its second season.
And that season--entitled "Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage"--opened up a remarkable degree of depth in the series: there's a lot of serious thinking here about the lives of the displaced and
dangerous folks who make up the rogues' gallery of the cast and their home base of Roanapur, about what drives them to violence, and just how much they have to lose. The arc ending with episode 23 goes more deeply than
anything before into Rock's decision to stay with the Lagoon crew: whether or not he's really made a choice, and what it will mean to him, and Revy, when he does. Some truly thoughtful and impressive
character writing all around, villains as well as regular cast, with a tour-de-force performance by both Rock and Revy's VA's: this series has risen from mere fun-and-games bangfest to one of the best dramatic series of the year.
THE MELANCHOLY OF HARUHI SUZUMIYA-- Anyone who's been watching anime for more than three years ought to have fallen in love with this from its very first aired episode (less than that and I suspect you'd've thought it was insulting to anime, and been deeply offended.) That episode, which takes the form of a student film called "Episode 00: The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina" [and is actually the final episode...] is one of the most brilliant and hilarious send-ups of anime imaginable, utterly deconstructing the magical-girl-fighter genre with a wry, incisive voiceover narration and the most inept plotting and fight scenes ever. After that we were braced for just about anything, and have pretty much gotten it. Haruhi Suzumiya is a high school student--well, passing for one--who's utterly disinterested in anything except contacting supernatural creatures and alien life, and will blithely cause any sort of chaos that comes to mind if it might further this goal. Her motley gang of sidekicks--intelligent cynic Kyon, cool little "humanoid interface" Yuki, timid babydoll Mikuru, and mysterious transfer student Itsuki-- form the "Save our world by Overloading it with fun Suzumiya Haruhi's Brigade" (S.O.S. Brigade for short) which goes along with her wild schemes and tries to keep her out of at least the worst kinds of trouble. (Just don't pay any attention to the episode numbers.) ==Eventually we know that practically NONE of these people are merely human beings, and Haruhi is essentially the Creator God/dess of this time-space continuum, and can control all reality....no, I'm not kidding....You HAVE to watch this; it's not sane. Miss it at your peril.
xxx-HOLiC-- (the Xs are silent BTW--it's just "holic")-. ---Now, I admit it--I am a total sucker for supernatural
detective stories. Demons, hauntings, curses; exorcisms, ghost breaking and youkai-chasing; bring it on, man,
anything from Ghostbusters to Yu Yu Hakusho, NightWalker: Midnight Detective (yum, Shido =)
and Tactics. So this
Clamp-created beauty (it's the sister show to Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle) had a head start with me.
--Strait-laced high schooler Watanuki Kimihiro has a problem Bleach fans will recognize: he not only can see
ghosts and spirits, he can't get rid of the darn things. When he stumbles into the shop of mysterious and beautiful Ichihara Yuuko, she promises she can grant his wish to be rid of his pursuers, but.. of course...there's a price. In fact, that's what Madame Yuuko's shop does: it grants wishes--for a price. In Kimi-chan's case, the price is his moving into the shop to be elegant, lazy [and gorgeously dressed--the
fashion sense of this show is stunning] Yuuko's chef, housekeeper, bartender and secretary--and, of course, get mixed
up with other wishmakers' cases. The show shifts from comic to creepy with ease, the odd stylized art gives it an
appropriately off-kilter feel, there's a wonderful depth of folklore and mythology and just-round-the-corner darkness, and it's just 100% nifty cool.
(AND it has "19sai" by Shikao Suga, just about the most indelible theme song of anything this year--next to "Sakura Kiss"
of course =)
---Check Spring 2008 season for the sequel, xxx-HOLiC Kei.
HIGURASHI no NAKU KORO ni ("When the Cicadas Cry")--
"Hinamizawa appears to be a normal, peaceful village to Keiichi Maebara. However, the tranquility abruptly ends after the
annual Watanagashi Festival, a local festivity to commemorate and give thanks to the local god, Oyashiro-sama. Keiichi
learns that for the past four years, one person has been murdered and another has gone missing, never to be seen again, on
the day of the Watanagashi Festival. Keiichi himself soon becomes implicated into the strange events surrounding the
Watanagashi Festival and Oyashiro-sama. As the series unfolds, numerous questions are encountered."
This fascinating, convoluted, gruesome anime was the talk of the 2006 summer season--at least on the boards I hang with--
holding everyone in thrall with its mixture of schoolgirl cuteness and shocking, bloody violence. (Yeah, torture chambers,
dismemberment murders and wide-eyed pastel-haired girls toting dripping hatchets are pretty much guaranteed to keep the
fankids riveted.) But not everyone who was hooked by the shock value stuck around for the whole story, and I think that
does it a real disservice. Higurashi tells the story of a small town's dark history and the grim crimes that tore
it apart--and then retells it over and over again, each arc coming back at it from another angle, another point in time,
a different character's perspective. This may be due to its being based on a computer game, but it makes all the
difference in keeping the story both unsettled and unsettling. Not all of the arcs have the same power and focus,
but it's worth working through the weak spots to see how elegantly it spins its way out: nearly every character
eventually plays both killer and victim, insider and outcast, loyal friend and traitor. And the ending, I thought,
came up with a believably eerie rationale for why reality keeps resetting--and will keep on resetting--in this
place, for this long, awful summer. It's uneven, but I think overall it's a success and an experiment in storytelling
style that turns the source's weakness into imaginative strength. (And you have to give points to anything so
intense and disturbing that male and female fans alike confessed in public that they couldn't watch it alone or
at night, or worse, both.)
COYOTE RAGTIME SHOW--ehh...this wants so, so bad to be Cowboy Bebop (Oh, you guessed that already?)
that you feel sort of sorry for it. Tells the tale of a trio of "coyotes"--space outlaws-- led by a
semi-legendary adventurer known simply as "Mister", which sets off to grab the buried treasure left by an old compadre
before (tick-tick-tick) the planet he buried it on explodes. Trying to get there first are rival gang Madame
Marciano's Twelve Sisters; in hot pursuit are Federal investigators Angelica and Chelsea. Another half-season
anime at only 12 episodes, and it was STILL a bore. ---Sorry, but it really was. Despite a jaw-dropping,
rocket-out-of-the-gate first episode that introduced literally all the characters in one swoop (including the
rival gang, a pack of android girl assassins all decked out in elaborate Loli-Goth fashions, and they are quite
a sight) AND setting up a time-constraint gimmick that should have kept things clicking along at an exciting
pace, it just...didn't. The characters were too uninteresting (despite trying their damnedest to be lovable
rogues), the hunt for the treasure was too vague, and the pacing managed to plod though you'd think there was
no possible way it could. (Oh, yeah, big surprise: the reason that gorgeous, determined Angelica has been pursuing
Mister for five dogged years isn't really that she wants to see him behind bars...yup...oh, brother.)
Ultimately it was just a big heaping plate of yeah-so-what, and it put us to sleep. Pass.
========
GINTAMA (it's a joke: can mean either "Silver Soul" or "Silver Ball"..)-- Early 2006 was a good season for batty comedies. This one's set in
an alternate-universe sorta-Edo-sorta-Meiji-era Japan where samurai ride motorbikes and read Shonen Jump;
our hero won my heart when he pondered aloud how great this "bankai" thing must be =). When the Amanto, haughty
anthropomorphic-animal aliens, invade and take over all commerce--that's right--while banning the wearing of
swords, what's a freelance mercenary to do for cash but defy the law and take any odd job that comes his way?
Gintoki, his apprentice Shinpachi, their super-strong alien roomie Kagura and her giant puppy Sadaharu share an
apartment, get into crazed scrapes while doing anything to pay the rent, dodge the Shinsengumi and keep ramen on the table, and never
miss their favorite TV shows. ---This is so whacked that you'll either love it or hate it; me, I still think
Samurai Champloo was the best thing since Godiva Creme Brulee', and I think this one rocks. Its humor ranges from
the quite-blue
(sex and toilet humor) to hilarious in-jokes--references to One Piece, Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Bleach, Lone Wolf
and Cub among others--and it's always aware of actually
being a TV series with characters and a theme song (at one point Gintoki, who'd overslept and let the episode start
without him, fears he's being replaced as the series' star since his theme song wasn't played at the beginning; he's
placated by playing it then and there, though it's 14+ minutes into the episode). At the same time, it genuinely
considers the theme of the displaced samurai and the need to uphold
the honor and code of bushido no matter what befalls. (When the aliens first arrived, Gintoki and his friend Katsura were among the samurai who united to fight them; the cowardly shogunate signed a peace treaty that made it unlawful to oppose the Amanto,
and now Katsura has gone underground as a guerrilla freedom-fighter while Gintoki stands against the interlopers more quietly but no less stubbornly.)
So, it's hard for me to assess this anime objectively, but I like it, and I like Satou quite a lot; I think I
could actually talk to him, which is rare for me to admit, and I frankly hope he doesn't end up being bullied
into re-entering the world. (--I mean, the outside world. You know. That one over there.)
...go ahead to the 2006 autumn season.
...return to Amalgam links page.
--It's been made into a live-action film which made its USA debut at Sundance last year, and the (translated) manga is now
being issued in the USA by
Del Rey..
Also saw in entirety, though didn't love it quite as much:
==========
2006: FIRST SEASON--SPRING
=============================
First, the ones we never finished:
=============================
[Being shown online by Cartoon Network, I believe--Google "Toonami Jetstream".]
Saw in entirety:
==========
--This show was a phenomenon among anime fans in Japan, a flash-craze that spawned not only squizillions of websites
but even a pop religion--Haruhi-ism, natch. I'm not sure it's THAT great. It broke from the gate as an amazing series
bursting with reckless and anarchic energy, dizzy, funny, hinting at all sorts of great plot stuff to come, and though
I enjoyed it, and it does have more inspired moments, I don't know that I'd swear it made good on that promise.
Could be it actually suffers from having one of the best first episodes ever; that's hard to live up to.
==Still, it shouldn't be missed. 
Still might see all of:
=======
--Gintama was orphaned by its subber for months and feared lost to us, then picked up by Shinsen,
thank goodness, which is breaking all land speed records getting the episodes on the table; and then by the ever-reliable
Rumbel, which has steadily plugged through 131 episodes (!) --I feel sure we'll get to see it all, which is a yay. =) 
==So, what's disturbing about this? Answer me this: if you didn't need to go to work just to keep food in the fridge
and pay the rent, how often would you leave the house? How often would you even leave your room? If there were a way for
you to just stay where we are right now, watching anime and manga and messing around on the Internet, without having to
worry about starving or being evicted or having to deal with anyone but people like yourself (cos those other people are
scary)...would you? Even if you say no, it's pretty tempting, isn't it? ==If you ask me and Gecko, it's a little too
tempting: it seems like a pretty sane and reasonable response to the world, to be honest, and it's slightly uneasy to
realize that's within a smidge of pathology.
And that's without even mentioning the talking household appliances and those unnerving dancing purple monkeys.
...go FAR ahead to the 2007 spring season.
...go all the way back to Seasonal Reviews Mainpage for all anime series reviews 2005-10.