Probably the ultimate in 2003’s trend of the everyday tales of space folk, Planetes is about a team responsible for the recovery of space debris around Earth. I’ve only seen the episodes on the first disc, and I probably should get around to watching the rest at some point as I did enjoy what I saw.

More Saiyuki.

Another Bee Train snoozathon. Do not let the fun fight animation in the OP fool you, this is as ponderous as anything else Koichi Mashimo directed this decade.

Fairies learning to be humans. Cute for cute’s sake I’m guessing.

A friend who will remain nameless, once put a random episode of this on from a pile of random anime episodes she’d been sent. We didn’t make it through an entire episode before we decided the underage fanservice was just far too creepy to continue with. And I still hated Rizelmine more than this.

This thing.

Not a bad show by any means, but everything good about the story, it took from the manga, and everything bad, it added itself. Which meant it peaked halfway through the series.

So what’s good? The characters that came straight from the manga all stay strong even when put through events that are unique to the anime and, outside some animation set pieces, that’s the strongest element of the show. Also there’s two tragic events taken straight out the manga that happen in the first half that really hook you into the series.

What hurts it I think are two significant differences to the manga. The first is the change in the way alchemy works, specifically in relation to the homunculi. In the manga, alchemy feels like it’s had the same origins and development as it had in the real world, enhancing FMA’s world as being an alternate version of our history. Changing that really hurt the world building in my eyes. It took it too far from being a pseudo-science and into magic.

The second difference is related to that, but it’s more specific. It’s the character of Wrath in the anime. He is the Scrappy Doo of FMA. He’s supposed to be this tragic, important figure, but he is just annoying. I can barely remember any of the second half of the series as my main memory of watching it is being annoyed at Wrath.

He annoyed me to the point that I’m probably one of the few people who actually thought the movie was an improvement on the ending the TV series had, as Wrath barely played a part in it.

They’re currently airing an adaptation that is truer to the manga, though I’ve not seen more than the first episode as yet, so can’t really compare the two.

While it may be overly knowing in its execution, it’s clearly a labour of love on the part of Yasuchika Nagaoka and crew, and that shows through. And what it loves is giant robots and busty women. And busty giant robots.

It has its tongue in its cheek, most obviously in the taking the obvious sexual metaphor of combining robots and hitting you over the head with it, but at the same time it’s not mocking super robots. More an OTT homage than a spoof of the genre. And it may be the only show that had had to put out a dojin in order to get funds to finish the story.

It’s Romance of The Three Kingdoms in high school. With some of the genders swapped. At this point it’s probably not a surprise that this isn’t the only anime in the last 10 years that is the Romance of the Three Kingdoms with genders swapped.

Slayers’ Takashi Watanabe directs this adaptation Yuji Shiozaki’s manga, and to be fair to Watanabe the weakness lies mainly in the source material, which not only relies on titillation as a crutch but is also derivative of other manga like Tenjo Tenge.

Future series would be handled by the man that gave us MD Geist – Koichi Ohata. And more notably, ARMS rather than JC Staff on production. ARMS’ history in high-end pornographic animation (Another Lady Innocent, Mezzo Forte) makes them a much better fit for this sort of titillating material (though not to say they didn’t get some odd mismatched projects too – more on that later).

Hiroaki Sakurai (Digi Charat) adapts Eiji Nonaka’s absurd high school manga in a pretty effective series. Personally I find Sakurai’s delivery of jokes a little slow, something Digi Charat suffered from too, and I think Akitaro Daichi would have made a better series for my tastes. That being said, comedy is subjective, and I still found it pretty funny and some episodes are classics. The Ningen Nante episode for example.

Something I actually liked.

The Full Metal Panic franchise is taken from Gonzo’s hands and passed to some Kyoto Animation, with this their first production of their own. Stripping the drama from the Full Metal Panic world, you are left with a clever variation on the so called magical girlfriend genre popularised by Urusei Yatsura. A military boyfriend show if you will.

In much the same way that Lum doesn’t understand human culture and uses alien technology in a way that disturbs the lifestyle of the humans around here, a similar culture clash occurs with child soldier Sousuke Sagara’s interaction with the students of Jindai High.

For something that’s been done to death for decades, it was impressive to see a new twist, and I think it works much better stripped of the more serious baggage of the FMP story proper.