Someone I know wanted to write a story around the idea of swords versus tanks, magical weapons against modern military gear but he had to Munchkin the swords and armour to ridiculous levels of magical ability to make it anywhere near an even fight.

The new anime series Gate: Thus the JSDF fought there doesn't try to make swords versus tanks an ( Read more... )

Anime can make pretty much anything cute, so when it deals with the futuristic subject of "retiring" replicants a la Bladerunner the moe is dialled up to kyu-ichi (11 ( Read more... )

 Ashinano Hitoshi, one of my favourite mangakas (Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Kabu no Isaki) is back in the saddle again with a new series, Kotonoba Drive running in Afternoon magazine. It's not anything radically different to what he's done before but that's not a problem for me -- basically a girl on a small-capacity motorbike (a Honda ST70, I used ( Read more... )

"The Garden of Words" is a short (45 minute) anime by Makoto Shinkai, a creator (animator,scriptwriter, director, general dogsbody) who is well-known for his stylistic approach to storytelling in the anime medium. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, end of movie -- that's a Makoto production and this one is no different. This isn't a spoiler, you saw ( Read more... )

 The English-language release of this movie is simply titled "Wolf Children" but the full Japanese title naming the two wolf children, a girl named Ame (meaning "rain") and and a boy, Yuki ("snow") indicates the story is, at its core, about them growing up and eventually making choices.

[Spoiler (click to open)]

It starts off in a concrete urban Tokyo with Hana, the future ( Read more... )

 I think I've found my Guilty Pleasure of this season's anime... Ben-To.

It's a shounen (aimed at adolescent boys and young men) battle-school (story set in a high-school involving organised mayhem) harem (several girls and one boy, usually a bit of a nebbish) rom-com (romantic comedy) with a trace of yuri (girl-girl hubba-hubba) and panchira ( ( Read more... )