So most of the time if I talk about anime in this journal or elsewhere it is about some subtitled anime that I've downloaded off of the web, and which most people lacking the desire to go looking for bittorrents can't really check out on their own. This is a bit of a grey area with regards to anime companies, as on the one hand it is anime they aren't being paid for, on the other hand, it often generates buzz which can help out the anime sales when they actually come out in the USA and elsewhere. So having recently noticed some ads for anime that I watched back when it was on the sub circuit, I figured I'd do what part I can for buzz, and give my impressions on these series. So without further ado and in no particular order.
Bamboo Blade - As might be guessed from the title, this is an anime about a Kendo club. Kendo is the sport based on Japanese sword fighting techniques, so this is mostly a sports anime, but with elements of fighting anime. I'm generally not a sports anime type, but this is a fun, quirky anime in the best tradition of Japanese quirkiness. Essentially, the Kendo club at a school, is down to one regular attendee, the enthusiastic female captain, being half-heartedly coached by a broke teacher. The teacher gets invited out to dinner and drinking with an old colleague of his from his kendo days who is coaching at a couple schools. He winds up leaving the meeting with a bet, that his female squad would beat the female squad of his friend in a practice match in a month or so. At stake is a year's supply of sushi from the restaurant belonging to his friend's family. Suddenly he needs to recruit enough girls to make a squad. He finds a ringer in the diminuitive Tama-chan, whose father owns a kendo dojo, and has been practicing there for years. The problem is that she thinks of kendo as a chore, and would rather spend her free time watching anime. How can he and the captain, who is thrilled with the idea of having a real team get her to participate in the club? The anime winds up being about this kendo club, but also about Tama-chan growing as a person (if not in stature) as she learns to make new friends, and new rivals. The characters in this are quirky, fun and generally pretty well rounded, (at least among the club members) and you don't need to know anything about Kendo to enjoy the anime, though you may learn something about it. The whole thing is out on DVD and free episodes can be watched
here.
Eden of the East - This series is only 11 episodes, and falls into the category of thriller, I think. A young woman on the last day of a post graduation trip to Washington, DC does something silly (I think she throws a rock at the White House) and draws the attention of the police she runs and gets aided by a young man who happens to be naked, has lost his memory, and has only a strange cell phone. The cell phone it turns out has a very large sum of money on it (in yen, but I believe it is the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars). It connects with a woman who can make pretty much anything happen , but each service has a cost that drains from that sum. As it turns out if you spend all of that money, or fail to spend any of it for a period of time, you will be considered out of the "game" and you will be terminated. The man finds a safe house of his, with clothing and multiple passports, and the two of them return to Japan. Over the course of the anime, there seem to be indications that somewhere in that erased memory, the man had something to do with a missile attack on Tokyo, that may or may not have killed a lot of people.
This anime has an interesting premise, and deals with it pretty well. There is a sub story going on about the fate of Japan's NEETs, the graduates of their colleges with no jobs awaiting them in the real world, but a strong connection to technology. The characters have a good range from grounded to eccentric, and if some might be considered over-the-top, it at least seems to be in a different way than in most anime. A solid mini-series. Find episodes
here.
Sengoku Basara: Samurai Kings- OK, I haven't watched all of this series yet, it got licensed not too long into it and stopped being subbed after that. However, I watched enough to get a pretty strong picture of it. We've had our sport's anime and our thriller anime, but this one is our over-the-top action anime. The leaders of the Sengoku period of Japan, when many states warred for the Shogunate are imagined as over-the-top warriors, with over-the-top personalities. Throw in some ninja assistants, along with some anachronistic designs, and turn things up to eleven, and you've got Sengoku Basara. One could guess that it is based on a video game, but it tackles things with such gusto, it is hard to be critical of it. It may also contain the most impractical outfit ever worn by a female ninja, and that's saying something given the outfits that have appeared in anime and games over the years. Find it
here.
I'd like to mention Okamisan, which has the most original take on fairy tales that I've seen in a long time, but I'm not sure it is officially out yet, though episodes are available on the same Funimation site that the links point to. So I'll let this go with these 3 very different animes that each offer something outside of the usual anime mold.