The absolute first thing I have to say about it is that the PV is VERY misleading. Secondly, the description and title are a bit misleading. Judging by what we see, one would be forgiven for assuming it is another slice of life anime with some craaaaaazzzy situations that we have NEVER seen before (and by never I mean every other slice of life anime did so.) And third, I cannot get the image to post.

But, if anything, you should watch the first episode. I gave it a chance, and it ended up getting awarded for being much better than expected (and I would have given it anime of the year 2011 had I though to have an anime and a manga award. Hindsight is 20/20.)

The first episode starts with a girl with a wind up handle in her back running down the street. Fine, only a little bit out of the ordinary. Then she runs into a guy, as she can’t stop in time. Been there, done that more times than I care to count. Then there is an explosion, with a tokeshi, an akabeko, and a salmon fillet flying through the air. I did NOT see that coming.

Next, we get introduced to two of the main characters, high school girls by the name of Aioi and Mio. Aioi is subsequently struck in the head by the objects. After the second item hits, she remarks that she is lucky that at least no raw meat hit her in the head. Three guesses as to what hits her next.

Wikipedia has the best plot description there is, so enjoy it: “The series follows the lives of a group of high school students and their school. Various oddities and absurdities abound, such as a robotic girl made by a scientist who is an eight-year-old girl, a boy who rides a goat to school with his butler, a girl who can procure various guns out of thin air, a cat that can speak and a principal who has wrestled a deer. Despite its bizarre settings and characters, the students still lead normal lives.”

Well, the last sentence isn’t ENTIRELY true. Many, many semblances of normality appear, but with the absurdity of the series, even some things that are quite common become wholly original and amusing.

The weird thing is, I have evry little to say about Nichijou, apart from I spent most of the time being highly amused by it, and not in a negative way. It is really genuinely GOOD. And to be honest, I don’t say that easily or often.

If you like somehting that is more romance or action or basic slice of life, this will not be for you. If you like seeing genre lines blurred and reality slightly twisted into the comically absurd, then this is for you.

I would honestly like to say more, but I am watching it again for around the third time, and I would rather go back to that. Also, saying any more, while it would all be complementing it on everything it had done and discussing it all, it is genuinely good enough that I do NOT want to spoil ANY of the plot if possible. And yes, there is an underlying plot that ties together all the separate stories and characters.

I will admit that I was going to review this earlier on, but I do not like to review series that are ongoing (until a certain point) as they can take a sudden rise or fall in quality, and I don’t want to say a series is the best ever if it goes and undoes everything in the next episode.

Afterthought: While the girls in the show all wear very short skirts for school, there are absolutely no pantyshots. Finally, a mature series that doesn’t use its high school girls bodies to sell itself.

Score: 5/5 very good

Pros: One of the best and most amusing animes I have ever seen. Also, it DOESN’T sexualize its characters.

Cons: most people do not enjoy genre blurring, they like their slice of life to be only slice of life, not comically absurd slice of life

What you should do: it is on crunchyroll, and it  is free. Go and watch it. I sincerely doubt you will not enjoy it.

When a prisoner with only a few months left on his sentence breaks out, the Elric brothers set out to track him down. Their search leads them to Table City, a city on the border of Amestris and Creta. When the pair saves a young alchemist named Julia from the escaped prisoner they get caught up in a rebellion to restore the nation of Milos to its former glory.

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos follows in the footsteps of movies like Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and Trigun: Badlands Rumble. All three are movies for series that had endings that would be hard to follow with a sequel, so they end up being random filler that takes place sometime during the series itself. This means the movie has no bearing, and really no connection at all, to the actual story from the series.

The movie really goes out of its way to hammer this point home by practically taking place in another country and having next to none of the major characters from the series returning. Winry is there, but all she does is worry about Ed, then fixes his arm. Mustang is there, but he just reads documents most of the time and kills a couple chimera’s offscreen. Hawkeye is there, but all she does is shoot a gun out of a guys hand towards the end of the movie. Aside from Ed and Al, no characters from the series really participate in the story.

Instead the story is centred around all new characters. Of the new characters, only Julia and her brother are really given any amount of backstory, with everyone else just kind of doing their thing, usually until they die. Julia, the main character of the story, is the daughter of two alchemy researchers who were killed when she was young. She lives with the other Milosians in a valley underneath Table City, helping with the rebellion to retake the land that used to be theirs. There’s not much to say about the villains, though truthfully the movie doesn’t even have a villain until the climax when one reveals itself, and then another one reveals itself with about 20 minutes left in the movie. Neither one has a real goal. The second one is angry and wants to destroy everything, and the first is just kind of a prick I guess.

The actual story is pretty straightforward stuff. There are two groups, the Milosians and the corrupt Amestris military in Table City, who want to get the power of a Philospher’s Stone (which is known by another name in Milosian mythology but it escapes me at the moment) for their own reasons. The Milosians want it so they can reestablish the nation of Milos, and the Amestris military wants it for no established reason. It’s a Philosopher’s Stone, so why wouldn’t they want it I guess? Ed and Al, knowing how a Philosopher’s Stone is made, are intent on stopping anyone from trying to make one. Stuff happens, plots are twisted, and ultimately the crisis is averted and nothing substantial has changed in the world of Fullmetal Alchemist. It’s a 90 minute filler episode, essentially.

The movie does pull off some noteworthy things though. First of all, there’s not a single short joke in the entire movie, which is great because those are tired and played out. There are also no points where someone mistakes Al for being the Fullmetal Alchemist due to his armour. The movie actually handles all of its comedy better than Brotherhood could ever hope to. Most of the humour comes from visual gags that are never explicitly called out and are just there for you to enjoy. As opposed to Brotherhood, which takes its gags, waves them in front of the camera and shouts, “SEE THIS? IT’S WACKY!” The movie does slightly falter at the very beginning, where it has the eye-roll inducing title drop scene. You know the one, it’s in every Fullmetal Alchemist animated thing. Ed’s shirt and/or pants get torn by bad guy, bad guy sees Ed’s automail arm/leg and says, “Automail limbs… you’re… the Fullmetal Alchemist!”

A big change between this movie and the previous two series is a dramatic change in artstyle. People were complaining about this when the first trailer appeared, because people are stupid. The change in style comes from the new director Kazuya Murata, who has previously directed episodes of Code Geass and Eureka Seven, among other things. I honestly prefer his style over the previous series. It does have some goofy looking attempts at walking and running, but during fight scenes the loose style allows for more stylish looking action. The only times it really suffers are when characters are far away, where they tend to lose most of their detail. I’ve seen it described as cheap and ugly, but I think it looks better than either of the series and lends itself much better to the kind of action you get in Fullmetal Alchemist. But it’s different, and people hate change, so I see where the complaints come from.

Funimation obviously brought back the old cast for returning characters, so I’ll not dwell on those. Suffice to say, they all have a great amount of experience with the characters and handle them as well as they ever have. New additions to the cast are Alexis Tipton as Julia Chrichton and Matthew Mercer as Ashley Chrichton, both of whom give good performances, though neither role is particularly challenging. Julia has her share of emotional scenes, and Alexis Tipton handles them great, but this isn’t the kind of role that’s really going to draw out a great performance. Mathew Mercer doesn’t really get a chance to shine as Ashley until the climax of the film since the character is fairly calm and composed most of the time, but again he gives as good a performance as is necessary for a fairly shallow character. Patrick Seitz also shows up as the villain near the end and shouts about being angry and wanting to destroy the world for 20 minutes, and he does as good a job as anyone could really.

If what you love about Fullmetal Alchemist was the emotional captivating story, you’re probably going to be disappointed with Sacred Star of Milos. It has none of the engaging story and is basically just a 90 minute filler episode. But if all you want to see is your favourite Fullmetal Alchemist characters (assuming your favourite characters are Ed and Al and no one else) going on another adventure, it’s a fine movie. It may not be emotionally engaging in any way, but it is a nice last hurrah for the franchise.

It’s better than Conqueror of Shamballa at least.

Score: 4/5

Redline: the biggest and most deadly racing tournament in the universe. Only held once every five years, everyone wants to stake their claim to fame – including JP, a reckless daredevil driver oblivious to speed limits with his ultra-customized car. Meanwhile, organized crime and militaristic governments want to leverage the race to their own ends. Amongst the other elite rival drivers in the tournament, JP falls for the alluring Sonoshee – but will she prove his undoing, or can a high-speed romance survive a mass destruction race?

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Plot:

As of a fan of auto racing (it is right up there with anime and video games for me) watching Redline is a no brainer.  It is no surprise to hear that it got a lot of praise all over the internet.  So is the show worth all of the hype it gets, or does it just blow up on the starting line?  The short answer to this question is yes it is worth all the hype it gets.  Of course, the short answer is not going to work here so let me get to the longer reason why this is awesome.

What makes Redline so great is that has such broad range appeal to all types of anime fans.  From the hardest of hardcore, to the newest fans just getting into anime there is something for just about every type of fan to like in Redline.  Even those not into anime would be able to enjoy what Redline brings to the table.  There is no otaku pandering, no “check list” material, and no meta references that you have to be some super anime fan to understand.  It is just over the top excitement when the racing happens and it would not be as enjoyable any other way.

That is not to say that Redline is not without its faults.  If you are looking for something that has a long navel gazing looking at the psyche of people who drive racecars then look somewhere else.  This is not some super character study or deconstruction of the street racing.  This is mostly a focus on the racing and as such, there is not much in terms of character development.  We do learn about some of the backstory about JP like why he got into racing some of his troubled past.  We also get to know Sonoshee and some of her backstory during the film.  Though considering the pace that the film has spending a lot of time on character development could have potentially messed the pacing as a whole.

Art and Animation

Created by Madhouse the movie looks like nothing else out there that has come before it.  The character designs are unique and it shows a lot of western influence not that it is a bad thing to have.  The colors are bright when the need to be and the colors are dull when they need to be as well.  The racing animation is in one word awesome.  The animation is fluid and outright amazing looking considering that CG was not used at any part of the film this is impressive in its own right.  None of the races loses their pop and they are exciting from start to finish.

In a surprising sense, there is a little bit of fanservice present here, but none of it really takes away from any of the scenes that it is present it.  This is how you put fanserivce in a film and not have it take away from the scenes present.  The character designs are unique and have a Western flair added to them.  There is no moe, and the characters are easily recognizable from one another.

Music and Audio

The music in Redline is a mix of different styles of music most of it being techno which depending on how you feel techno music.  If you enjoy techno music, it will be pleasing to your ears.  Well if you do not care for it, then you will probably not want enjoy it.

Bang Zoom produced the English dub for Redline and it does not sound that bad.  Anybody who is used to listening English dubs that come out of Bang Zoom should be able to recognize many of the voices actors and actresses used in the dub.  Patrick Seitz gives JP his voice for the English dub and does a comparable job to his Japanese counterpart Takuya Kimura (who is a member of SMAP).  Michelle Ruff also does a great job with her role as Sonoshee and it about on par with her Japanese counterpart Yuu Aoi.  Both the English and Japanese dubs are great so listening to either is not going to make your ears bleed.

Final Thoughts:

Redline is something that EVERY anime fan should watch at least once in their lifetime.  If you had to describe Redline to someone who does not watch, anime the easiest way to describe this movie would be “Think of Wacky Races but on tons of crack and turn it up to eleven”.  Sure, it may not be the deepest film out there, but with a film like this who cares if it is deep or not.  It is visual candy at its finest and such a thrill to watch.

Score: 5/5

Pros: Great English and Japanese dub, visually excellent, all around amazing

Cons: Not that deep of a film, not much in the character development department

Redline BD is available from RightStuf

The DVD version is also available

If Tomoki doesn’t learn to control his impulses around Ikaros and be more careful with his wishes, the chaos will only get crazier. Luckily, even with such a dirty mind, Tomoki’s heart is in the right place. His hands, however, are a completely different story.

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Plot: 

It should come as no surprise to anyone who follows me on twitter that I love ecchi anime and manga.  Ecchi comedies are a dime a dozen in today’s anime industry and 90% of them are similar or damn near the same to other titles in the genre.  At first glance it would seem that Heaven’s Lost Property fits into the mold of a standard ecchi comedy.  We have a normal teenage boy whose hormones are running wild and who like any heterosexual male his age wants to see panties and female underwear.  We have the standard childhood friend who is potential love interest even if she gets annoyed by his perverted antics.

As much as it may have in common with similar shows in the genre the biggest defining aspect here is the comedy with the series.  There are some truly very funny moments littered throughout the series and it is here where the series is shining the brightest.  Episode 2, Episode 4, and Episode 11 feature some of the funniest moments that the series has to offer.

Of course not everything the series has to offer is humorous and this is where the series starts to stumble.  Mixed in with the comedy are some doses of drama which while itself are not a bad thing to have in a series, you cannot expect to switch between humor and drama and have it seem a bit jarring.  Comedy and drama together can be done in a way that works and not do huge flip flops with comedy then all of a sudden start doing drama.  It disrupts the flow of the series and can be off putting.

There is a little bit of character development here and there.  Ikaros tries to be more human as the show goes a long similar to how Chi does so in Chobits but without all the learning how to talk and clothes once self that Chi has to learn.  The male lead Tomoki does get some development in the first episode after his “wish” to rule the world and what comes of it when he does it.  The rest of the cast sadly does not get much if any development at all.  Sohara the Type B tusndere childhood friend of Tomoki sticks with the whole I want to beat him up/ I want him in bed with me thing all throughout the series but does not really to change any of it or to progress their relationship.  I am not going to really talk about the side characters since there is no development with them, and I wish there was some development with the side cast.

Art and Animation:

Well the background art is nothing innovative and the same can be said about the character designs the show looks great in HD.  The colors are bright and look sharp.  There is some CG used during the shows and the CG is done in a way that does not seem jarring to the non CG stuff.  One of the highlights of the CG is the flying panties scenes that appear in episode two and episode four which is the highlight of the CG used in the series.  Not only does it look great it is also funny to watch a bunch of panties go flying in the air.  Chibi character designs are used a lot in this series especially with the male lead that spends most of the time in chibi form.

There are a few action intense scenes in the show and those are animated nicely and are enjoyable to watch.  These types of scenes are used heavily in episode four, episode eight and the last episode of the TV series.

To say there is a bit of fanservice in the series is like saying the ocean is wet.  Being that this is ecchi show at heart there is a lot of fanservice shown in Heaven’s Lost Property.  Expect to see lots of panty shots each episode and females in their underwear.  While bare breasts are shown in the series the girls however do not have any nipples.  The male lead is the only character in the show to have nipples

Sound and Audio:

The OP Ring my Bell is the best the series has to offer music wise which is played by Blue Drop which include Saori Hayami and Hitomi Yoshida.  The ED is a little different in that each episode has a different ED along with different animation which are sung by different people.  The animation usually has to do with each episode that it is for.  The music score during the episodes is standard J-pop music that you can expect in a ecchi series and is pretty forgettable

Funimation did the English dub for the series and for the most part the dub is good.  Greg Ayres provides the voice for Tomoki and does an a great job of emulating the original Japanese voice actor for Tomoki Soichiro Hoshi (you may remember him for giving Kira Yamato his voice in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny).  While most of the English actors do a good job with their roles the only role that I feel was better in the Japanese than English is Ikaros who in Japanese is voiced by Saori Hayami and Brittney Karbowski.  While Brittney is a great voice actress she does not give the same type of performance for this role has her Japanese counterpart Saori Hayami who does a better job with this role.  That is not to say that Brittney’s version of Ikaros is terrible and unlistenable, which is quite the opposite but Saori does a better job.

For the most part the English script is faithful to the original Japanese script.  There are a few rewrites here and there with some things especially in Episode 5 which renames a hot spring but it works in both languages.  There is more profanity in the English script especially with Tomoki who comes off as more of a jerkass in the English version than in the Japanese.

Final Thoughts:

Heaven’s Lost Property is a funny harem ecchi show that does some things to help it stand out amongst an already flooded market.  While the drama does not blend with the comedy well and cast members who do not get much development, it is still one of the funniest shows to come along in the last few seasons.  Heaven’s Lost Property is not for everyone, but those who do will get a fanservice filled comedy that will leave them in tears.

Score: 3/5

Pros: Lots of fanservice, good English dub and Japanese dub, very funny comedy

Cons: Poor musical score, comedy and drama do not mix all that well, not much in the character development department.

Heaven’s Lost Property is available from Right Stuf

The LE version of the series is also available

“The domed city of Romdo is an impenetrable would-be utopia where humans and robots coexist, and everything is under complete government control – or so it appears. While working on a mysterious murder case, Re-l Mayer, a female detective from the Civilian Intelligence Office, receives a foreboding message that something is going to “awaken.” That night, she’s attacked by a deformed super-being… What was this unidentified monster that attacked her, and who was the figure that came in between them? As Re-l attempts to unlock this spiraling mystery, a metaphysical battle cry leads her to the unknown outside world.”

Ergo Proxy has a fetish for being vague. The series’ terminology is rarely defined, and characters often have discussions of vague concepts. Sometimes this makes sense as things need to be obscure for the sake of the story, but most of the time it just gets annoying and tiresome. Certain plot points are also left vague such as an important event that’s essentially skipped when the story jumps from the group just about to return to Romdo after exploring the wasteland, to them being separated in Romdo after some serious shit had gone down. How the group got separated and what actually happened in Romdo is explained through narration. It was so abrupt that I thought I was being faked out (again).

The series also never bothers to fully explain what happened to the world. It’s apparent when we first see outside Romdo that something went horribly wrong and the world was left as a barren wasteland. The closest thing to an explanation are a few snippets snuck in during a quiz show halfway through the series. It ends up being an info-dump surrounded by a completely random unexplained event.There’s actually an interesting backstory here involving the end of the world and a plan to restore it, but the series seemed quite intent on never fully fleshing it out. I would have been totally fine with an entire episode of exposition about what happened to the world to put it in the condition it’s in and how the plans were carried out, but no such luck I suppose.

Something that could have saved the series would be interesting characters, but no luck there either. The main character, or what we’re supposed to believe is the main character, is Re-l Mayer, a girl who dresses all in black, wears too much makeup, and is generally unpleasant to be around. She’s almost completely irrelevant to the plot and I’m not sure why she’s the main character when the story actually revolves around Vincent Law. Vincent is more likeable than Re-l, which is hardly a challenge, but isn’t any more interesting. He has no memories of before he immigrated to Romdo, has a connection to the Proxies, and is in love with Re-l (what man could possibly resist that cold unpleasant personality?) The other major player in the series is Pino, a little robot girl in a bunny suit who just acts cute most of the time, which probably makes her better than the other two at least.

The series also has a problem with completely random episodes that make everything grind to halt, usually for no real purpose. One of these would be the aforementioned gameshow episode. But that episode at least reveals some of the backstory for the series. It may have ground things to a halt for what was a goofy out of place episode, but at least it contributed something. By far the biggest waste of time is the episode about Smile Land. It’s an episode that takes place entirely in a dream of the little girl robot, where a Proxy asks her to prevent the group from going to his dome. And then they don’t go to the dome, and none of the events in the episode are ever brought up again. Hooray.

It wasn’t entirely bad though. The early episodes with Vincent first leaving Romdo and exploring the outside world were actually interesting. Had the series stuck with that and simply been about Vincent surviving after being forced to leave the safety of the dome, it probably would have been pretty good. But once it gets on to the point of heading to Vincent’s original home, and encountering other Proxies, it just gets dull and in the end there’s no payoff for any of it. For all its philosophical ramblings, Ergo Proxy doesn’t really have anything to say and just feels like a waste of time.

The art and animation in Ergo Proxy are as good as they need to be. It’s a show where stand around talking about things. The most actual movement in the series happens whenever there’s a fight with a Proxy. There are a few moments where characters are off model, including a hilarious side view of Re-l’s head in one episode where her face is completely flat. There’s really nothing all that impressive visually, with fight scenes being few and far between and the general setting of the series, the wasteland remains of Earth, being a huge stretch of grey. It’s a dark, drab series where people stand around and talk, so what more can you really expect?

Ergo Proxy is a show drowning in dark sci-fi themes, philosophical meanderings, strange terminology and unlikeable characters. This would hardly be a problem if the show could muster up the ability to be entertaining in any way, but really it’s about as entertaining as watching an amnesiac man wonder about who he really is and how he ended up in his situation. If that sounds like your cup of tea, all the power to you, but all it’s just not for me.

Score: 2/5

Ergo Proxy is out of print but is available on Amazon Instant Video for some reason

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Plot:

Compilation movies and the Gundam franchise go hand and hand.  The original series get a trio of compilation movies after the TV ended.  The Seed series (I am including both shows here) got compilation movies.  The most recent compilation movies were for the Zeta series.  However there is one big thing that all of these shows listed have in common is that they are fairly long shows (longer than two seasons).  One of the thirteen episode OVA’s Mobile Suit Gundam 0083 also received one.  The real question that has to be asked here is does a thirteen episode OVA deserve a compilation move?

The short answer to this question is no.  However, you do not want a short answer as to why a compilation movie for this OVA series should have never been created in the first place.

With any compilation film, there needs to be that delicate balance of moving the story along and allowing some character development to occur along the way.  The biggest problem with this compilation film is that while it keeps the story moving at a brisk pace, there comes the sacrifice in terms of character development.  This makes it worse since some of the character development that is needed to show Kou developing more as a pilot and a person.

The editing is all over the place here with almost no rhyme or reason with what was left in and what was removed from the film.  A few characters just disappear without any explanation as why they are no longer there.  If you have seen the OVA series you will know why these people are not around, but if you have never watched the OVA series this can leave you scratching your head as to why these people just disappeared.  In addition, some scenes do not have any type of lead up or any type of resolution.  Again, if you have seen the OVA series you will know what is going on, but this will confuse those who have not seen the OVA before.

Art and Animation

Most of the art and animation was taken straight from the OVA series; however, it still has aged well even twenty years later.  There is a little bit of new animation at the start of the film and near the end of the film.  This new animation has aged gracefully as well.

Music and Audio

The music is the same as the TV series and still is good even twenty years later.  The same VA’s from the TV series are used for the movie though I do not know if their voices were recorded again of if they use their dialogue from the OVA.

One thing that needs to be mentioned is the subtitling for this film.  To start with, the subtitles use British English and not American English.  There also seems to be some issues with what the cast is saying and what is being said in the subtitles.  For example in an early seen the Captain of the Albion Synapse who rank is Captain is called Commander in the subtitles but the character who says his name clearly uses Captain.  Kou is misspelled as Koh and there are a few other things here and this.  Considering that, this never got an official R1 physical release I can cut some slack here with this.

Final Thoughts

While compilation movies are, a good way to watch a series that you do not have enough time to invest in and watch, this is just not one of them.  While it is only two hours in length, if you have to see this movie please watch the OVA series first otherwise you will be confused if not frustrated by the inconsistent editing and lack of starting or finish up some plot points.

Score: 1/5

Pros: It is only two hours of your time.
Cons: Editing is inconsistent, subtitle issues, some issues with the plot threads.

Mobile Suit Gundam 0083 – The Afterglow of Zeon is available for rent on the Playstation Network

Dojin Work follows the life of a young girl named Najimi Osana and her exposure into the doujin world. She was first tempted into becoming a doujin artist after seeing how much one of her friends can make at a convention. Najimi loves to draw, though soon learns contrary to what she expected that this new world is anything but easy. As she attends more conventions and meets more people, Najimi eventually manages to find a group of very interesting friends. These friends already have some experience in the field and help her out along the way so that she can someday make a name for herself creating doujinshi.

Plot:

Shows about doujinshi are rare to be found in the world of anime.  Comic Party comes to mind as one of the first anime shows to talk about the world of doujinshi.  Taking into consideration that Comic Party is based off an eroge game but it was still one of the first shows to focus on making doujinshi.  Dojin Work is one of the more recent shows to come out of Japan that focus on the world on doujinshi.

If there is one thing that Dojin Work does right is that it does not get preachy or bog down with pacing issues.  With each episode being fifteen minutes (ten minutes if you do not consider the OP and ED as part of the episode) each episode moves a lot of good clip and it feels like the time just passes by as you watch it.  The shortness of the series to watch (if you take out the OP and ED just 120 minutes  in total) is great if you have a very busy day and only a maybe an hour or less to watch anime a day or need to kill two hours in day.

Sadly, the length of the episodes is also its greatest downfall.  With just ten minutes for each episode there is not much time to do things like character development of focus on making doujinshi.  Dojin Work focuses mostly on comedy which is fine but you know a show about making doujinshi should oh I don’t know focus on making doujinshi.  The comedy is going to be hit or miss but most of it will depend on what kind of humor that you enjoy.  If you do not like sexual misunderstandings style jokes you will find this show to be not that funny.

The short length of the series also limits the development of the cast members.  Each of the cast members is given a few personality traits (nothing really new like making money and beating a rival) but none of these traits are really every developed or explained as why these people are that way.  This can however be pointed to length of each episode and the episode length.  If say Dojin Work was a 24 episode series or even longer there would be enough time to have some episodes that focus the personality traits of the cast and bring some character development to everyone.

Art and Animation:

There are many short cuts taken with the art and animation of this show.  Background characters are monochrome (red, green, or blue) colored and feature very little detail.  The main cast is given the most detail out of everyone and even that is limited animation wise.  Characters are flipped with little animation effort and any talking scene usually involves little movement of their bodies.  The background art is fine but does not feel as cheap as the character movement.

Music and Audio:

The music with the exception of the ED the music in Dojin Work is forgettable.  The OP is weak and just not sung very well.  The ED however sounds like it came from a video game and is easily the best piece of music from the whole series.

In a somewhat surprising twist of animation shortcuts and terrible music, the voice acting is probably the strongest part of Dojin Work.  Everone who gives their voice does a quality job with the roles that they are given.

Final Thoughts

Dojin Work is a show that on the surface should be great, but sadly, are its own worst enemy.  With episodes that are too short to do anything of real substance with the cast, cheap animation shortcuts, and forgettable music makes Dojin Work just a show that should have been great and could have brought some more insight into the world of doujinshi similar to Comic Party.  If you have not seen Comic Party then giving Dojin Work a shot is not going to be a huge set back time wise, but there are better ways to spend two hours of your time.

Score: 2/5

Pros: Good voice acting, humorous at times

Cons: Too short for its own good, cheap animation, lackluster music

Dojin Work is available from Right Stuf

Note: This review is based off the original release singles of the series and not the current release.

Plot Synopsis:

When two doors are discovered in an ancient ruin, the gateways to shinkai, the realm of the shinzoku (Gods) and makai, the realm of the mazoku (Demons) are irreversably opened. The races of human, shinzoku, and mazoku come together in the mortal world and nothing will ever be the same. One day, two new families move next door to a boy who had previously been living a very peaceful life. In one house lived the family of the King of the Gods, and in the other lived the family of the King of the Demons. Both families had one daughter whose single wish to live next to the boy they had fallen in love with years ago has just been fulfilled. Also living with the boy is his childhood friend. With these three girls vying for his affections, the boy finds that his new life filled with despair, jealousy, and just a little hope is beginning.

Plot:

Harem shows usually fall into one of two groups with anime fans, they either like them or they dislike them.  There is no grey area with harem shows it is black or white.  Most of the time you can say that most harem shows all follow a similar formula and do not do much to deviate from the standard formula.  However there are a few those that do change things up a bit and make it a standout in the genre.  Shuffle! is just one of those shows that does change things up and be one of the better shows in the genre.

Well, let me rephrase this in a different way.  If Shuffle! was just twelve or thirteen episode series instead of twenty-four episodes I could be safe to say that Shuffle! would just be another show in the genre that does nothing to separate itself from the pace.  Why is that you ask?  This has to do with the first half of the series which follows a lot of aspects that we see in other shows of the genre.  The first few episodes set up the world that our cast lives in and introduces us to cast members including the girls of the harem and the side characters.  Right after these introduction episodes we have several episodes that focus mostly on each of the girls in the harem and if you have seen any harem anime before you would be able to recognize these episodes as they do nothing to set them apart from other shows.  One weak point with these introduction episodes is that the world of Shuffle! is never fully explained.  We understand that the portals to the worlds to the gods and demons were opened, but how did they get opened?  How did the initial meeting between humans the demons, and gods go?  Or more specifically why did both groups decide to come to the human realm and not stay in their own perspective worlds?  I understand that this is a harem show so the girls are the focus of the series, but some information about the world the cast lives in would have been great.

However to think that the whole series will stay with the goofiness and comedy forever would be a mistake on the viewer.  Starting with episode twelve we start to get more drama and less comedy with each episode.  These twelve episodes start to explain more about each of the girls and gives most of the girls much more background information and makes them more well-rounded characters instead of just the standard tropes seen in harem anime.  There are still a few upbeat episodes in the last half of the series but these take a backseat as the drama starts to become greater and greater as the series moves towards the end.  We also get some development for Rin the male lead and he becomes less and less of a typical male lead.

Art and Animation:

While the background art is pretty and nice to look at, the character designs are to say the last not quite the same in terms of quality.  While at times the character designs look alright, other times it looks as though some short cuts were made and the characters look off model.  The design for the cast is another disappointment.  If it was not for the different ears to show the difference races and the hair colors the girls and most of the other cast members would all look the same.

It would not be a harem show if there was any fanserivce during the series and Shuffle! is no exception in the fanservice department.  Shuffle! starts off light in the fanservice realm mainly with panty shots occurring maybe once or twice an episode and eventually this changes early on as more panty shots occur more often each episodes and starting six we start to see some nipples and then moving up to full bare breasts and more frequent uses of panty shots.  Most of the panty shots can be attributed due to the camera being set lower than it needs to be but that does not always mean it is a bad thing.

Music and Audio:

While the OP and ED are the strongest parts of the music for the series, the rest cannot be said for the music that appears in the episodes themselves.  This music can best be described as h-game type music, generic, and completely forgettable.  The music is also recycled throughout the series which makes it that much less enjoyable.

Funimation created an English dub for Shuffle! and to be respectful to the Japanese VA’s better in most aspects than the original Japanese dub specifically with the girls in the harem.  The English dub has a variety of VA’s that you would normally hear in either a Funimation or Section 23 dub such Brittney Karbowski, Caitlin Glass, Monica Rial, and LuciChristian.  What makes the girls better in English than the Japanese is that the girls in English are given more personality in their voices instead of a generic dial a bishojuo voice that you hear in the Japanese.  The only standouts in the Japanese track would are Tomokazu Sugita who voices Rin (no offense to Jerry Jewell who gives Rin his voice in English dub but who is not as good as his Japanese counterpoint), Hideki Ogihara who gives Itsuki his voice in Japanese, Juurouta Kosugi and Toshiyuki Morikawa who give the King of the gods, and King of the devils their voices.  The English script stays close to the Japanese script most of the time but there are a few rewrites that were made to fit some of the jokes in the English and truth be told actually work.  Some of the rewrites are not joke based but also fit into the English translation.

Final Thoughts

Shuffle! is not going to please all anime fans.  Those who have issues with fanservice or even harem shows in general will dislike this show.  Those looking for a lot of drama in their shows will be disappointed to find that there is not enough drama overall.  However, those looking for a standout in the harem seas will find Shuffle! to be just that standout.  With a mix of comedy, drama and plenty of fanservice to see harem fans will find Shuffle! fun and enjoyable to watch.

Score: 3/5

Pros: The second half of the series, the fanserivce, the English Dub
Cons: the first half of the series, the music, character designs and animation at times.

Shuffle! is available from RightStuf

Dragon Ball Z Kai tells the story of a fighter named Son Goku and his friends. Several years of peaceful times for the group are quickly interrupted when a strange person arrives from space. The person claims to be Goku’s brother Radditz, revealing that Goku is actually part of an alien race known as the Saiyans. Radditz wants Goku to join him on a mission to conquer another planet, but when Goku refuses Radditz takes his son as a hostage. When Goku faces off against Radditz to save his son, he sets off a chain of events that puts the entire world in peril when two more Saiyans, Vegeta and Nappa, decide to head to Earth.

The story of Dragon Ball Z isn’t a very deep or complicated one. It’s a straightforward “Good vs. Evil” story where a man with the mental capacity of a 12 year old punches bad guys in the face, with some training arcs thrown in for good measure. Such is the case for many shounen fighting series though; there’s as much story as is necessary to get the characters from one fight to the next. So taking a series known for its often horrendously slow pacing and trimming it down to the bare necessities, like Kai does, is a pretty good idea. However, this does have some downsides to go along with the benefits.

The biggest improvement Kai makes to the series is cutting all the… less than stellar episodes of Dragon Ball Z. I love DBZ and all, but I can honestly do without seeing Gohan hanging out with a bunch of rebel kids, or Goku falling off Snake Way and ending up in hell. Those kinds of episodes bored me when I was a kid because they were clearly just time wasters that didn’t add anything of value to the show. They just weren’t entertaining so I’m fine with seeing them go if it means we get to the action sooner.

Kai also quickens the pace of fights themselves. DBZ is known for having fights where opponents spend a lot of time just standing across from each other and shouting or charging up attacks. That kind of thing is gone from Kai. A rather long scene where Vegeta just floats in the sky, screaming at the top of his lungs while the clouds darken and the ground shakes is shortened to a more reasonable length. Shots where combatants stand around while the camera pans dramatically are also reduced. Kai does a great job trimming the series down to its most basic entertaining elements, turning Dragon Ball Z into a fast and exciting series.

The quicker pace does have some downsides though. Sometimes the stuff you really want to see gets shortened such as some of the fights, even the ones that aren’t ludicrously long. The fight between Goku and Vegeta is the highlight of the first story arc, with everything that happened beforehand leading up to that one climactic moment. This wasn’t originally a long fight to begin with, only lasting about three episodes, but Kai shortens it even more such that it feels like it’s over as quickly as it starts. The series spent more time on Nappa pounding everyone into the dirt than it did on Goku and Vegeta facing off. It’s nice to have filler removed and the pace sped up, but sometimes it can take the already brief great moments and make them even shorter.

Regardless of all the changes, the Dragon Ball Z that people grew up loving is still there, with all the same characters and events. Things may be sped up, but Goku is still his childish fight loving self, and Vegeta is still a sadistic murderous villain. Some of the humour may be gone, since much of it came from filler episodes, but the series still has a sense of fun about it. All of the action is still there, and Kai gets to the fights faster so it can be non-stop action at times. If you grew up watching the adventures of Goku and his friends, Kai still has everything you love. If you haven’t seen the original series, Kai makes it easier than ever to do so, conveying the original experience in a faster more condensed manner.

This new version of Dragon Ball Z has given Funimation the chance to do a proper dub for the series, one not rewritten to cram in dumb jokes for kids. This time around the script sticks closer to the original Japanese but while still being tweaked to sound good English, the way they do most of their dubs these days. There is the occasional extra joke thrown in, but it’s not even close to the amount of rewriting that went on with the original dub. One tiny problem that crops up later in Part 2 is a small continuity error with the dub script. At one point Dende refers to all the other Namekians as his brothers and sisters, and then a matter of seconds later he doesn’t understand the concept of females because Namekians are genderless. This doesn’t exist in the original script because he never uses the phrase “brothers and sisters.” This is the only mistake like this I noticed, and the dub script is excellent overall.

Funimation also took this opportunity to recast some of the characters. Christopher Sabat is no longer playing half the characters in the series, though he does still voice his old main ones like Vegeta, Piccolo, and Yamcha. Sabat’s performance as those characters has obviously improved, since he’s gotten about a decade’s worth of experience since originally playing them. His Piccolo voice is also notably softer, sounding much closer to his normal speaking voice than the more gruff voice he used in the past. Other changes to the cast include Colleen Clinkenbeard as Gohan, who perfectly nails the character’s trademark whimper-like-a-little-girl-while-all-my-friends-die that he’s so known and loved for. The biggest change is Christopher Ayres as the new voice of Freiza. Ayres manages to capture the effeminate nature of the character without making him sound like an actual woman as the old voice did. Every aspect of the dub is an improvement over the old one.

If you watch Dragon Ball Z Kai expecting great animation… you’re going to be disappointed. It’s a really old show, so it’s not going to look as good as anything made more recently. Toei did a great job cleaning it up and re-colouring certain parts, but it’s easy to see when looking at it that it’s from the ’90s. That’s not to say the animation is complete garbage. It can be pretty good at times, with one example being Goku attacking Vegeta after using the Kaio-ken early in their fight. It’s a rare moment where there’s actually some flow in the combat which usually consists of abusive overuse of speed-lines and the like, and since a large part of the fighting consists of people using beams from long-range there are scant few times the animation actually has a chance to shine. One particularly jarring thing is the opening and ending, which bookend the old ’90s animation with shiny new animation made just for the show. It really highlights just how old looking the actual show is, but it does manage to make me excited to watch DBZ after all these years, so I have to give props there.

Dragon Ball Z Kai is a great way for both newcomers and older fans to enjoy the story of Dragon Ball Z. It removes all the fluff and gets straight to the action, making it a much more enjoyable experience. Some DBZ fans may complain about all the material that gets taken out, but those people are weird and should be ignored. The new dub is a vast improvement over the old one, having a much better script and improved performances from returning cast members. Kai is an simply excellent revival of a classic series, and definitely worth checking out.

Score: 4/5

Pros: Full of action, great dub, much more accessible version of the show

Cons: Still looks really old, some good things get lost in all the changes

Purchase Dragon Ball Z Kai Part 1 at RightStuf / Also available on DVD

Purchase Dragon Ball Z Kai Part 2 at RightStuf / Also available on DVD