Golgo 13 creator Takao Saito’s superhero manga Barom 1 got a revival as a satellite anime this year (previously it had been a live action show in the 70s). Let us note that Barom 1 has Wolverine’s haircut years before it was seen in Marvel Comics.

The assassin/flower shop juggernaut continued with the third anime series of the multimedia shojo franchise.

The second Pokemon series, this time covering material from the Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald games.

I’ve said before on this site that I believe Pokemon to be one of the few videogame adaptations that truly succeed in capturing the flavour of the game on screen. This continued that success, marred perhaps only by the inclusion of a little brother character for the Misty replacement, May.

Again I’m puzzled why you have Toshiki Hirano directing but not doing character design. Particularly as Naomi Miyata’s designs, the heroine especially, are Hirano-like, recalling his Iczer-1 designs.

You know what, in sharp reflection to this bore-athon, K-On doesn’t seems such a bad idea. In the wake of Azumanga, it seemed that a lot of people were falling over themselves to declare themselves fans of “slice of life” anime. I recall this being one of those shows that those people were liking.

The fools!

I suspect anime fans who’d be interested in fansubbing this fishing anime don’t have time as they are “busy” fishing. Based on Jūzō Yamasaki’s long running manga (1979 and still going). There’s also been 20+ live action films starring Toshiyuki Nishida, better known in the UK as Pigsy from Monkey.

Watch Shin Seiki Den Mars episode 01 vf in Animation  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The third time for Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s Mars to be adapted. It had an fairly loose TV adaptation in the 80s, followed by a more faithful OAV, though that too had a severe visual redesign. This version is reportedly the most faithful, the one I’m most interested in seeing and so the one that has been paid next to no attention by English speaking folks (the first episode was fansubbed earlier this year).

Many of the mecha and character designs will be familiar to fans of the Giant Robo OAV, where they were used in various forms.

Card game manga gets anime. Typical “me-too” production hoping to ride Yu-Gi-Oh’s coat tails.

Another Yoshitoshi ABe show that I felt didn’t really capture the charm of his art and writing, despite the fact he was writing this time. I still enjoyed the first few episodes I saw, but once I saw the dojinshi, I lost the inclination to watch any more as that had usurped the anime version in my mind.

The point at which Keiji Gotoh stopped designing and I stopped being interested.

Instead he has his wife Megumi Kadonosono doing the design work, and he’s now in the director’s chair. Like Hirano, is there some unwritten rule about directors not doing design work, even if that’s what they are famous for?

This show was super popular at the time among UK fans, and I imagine US ones too. Ostensibly another girls with guns show, from the outside looking in it appeared to be a po-faced take on the Dirty Pair, with a typically 00s sensibility. And so I was not interested, thank you very much.

A sequel, Kiddy Girl-and arrived this year.