Children pilot giant robots known as Evangelions Fafners to defeat giant aliens known as Angels Festum. Even at this point in time, Evangelion was still a huge shadow cast over robot shows, and this had the shadows of Evangelion’s imitators over it too (shades of Rahxephon with the living in a bubble aspect). I imagine its selling point was meant to be Hisashi Hirai’s design work post-Gundam SEED, but that’s never done anything for me.

I think I’d already been introduced to Osamu Kobayashi by way of his Studio 4°C shorts End of the World and Table and Fishman at this point, so was quite excited to see him on the Beck adaptation. While it doesn’t quite capture his personal style fully (his Gurren Lagann & Kemonozume episodes are more representative), he was probably the best choice for the project as he has a grasp of pop culture that goes beyond other anime shows or otaku subculture.

In fact, he’s far cooler than Beck author, Harold Sakuishi. Gone are the manga’s references to UK/US bands that come across as cringeworthy rather than cool (Sade???) and in come in a ton of throw away references to indie bands from Japan, the US and UK. And an ending animation that is just a straight up tribute to musical acts Kobayashi digs.

Unfortunately as good as the show is, there’s one horribly clunky problem with the show. A number of characters are supposed to be bilingual in Japanese and English, and others are supposed to have English as their main language, and I’m afraid very few of the performances convince you that is the case. I’m not sure if this is down to the performers or the script, but at the very least Yuuma Ueno is terribly unconvincing as the supposedly fluent Ryuusuke. And there’s a few minor roles who have the opposite problem where they appear to have been cast for their language skills rather than their acting skills.

If you can get past that hurdle, it’s a worthwhile and stylish adaptation of a great manga.

Usune Masatoshi’s post apocalyptic gun fetish manga gets a broad adaptation from Gonzo, complete with now statutory terrible ending that deviates from the manga.

The “hero” of the show, Sunabouzu, won’t be to everyone’s taste. He’s like short-tempered Lupin III, but devoid of all of Lupin’s charm, meaning he comes across as a complete git fuelled by greed and lust. Likewise his relationship with Junko is a like a cruder version of the Lupin/Fujiko dynamic.

While I had no real problem with the episodes I saw, my over-riding impression was that I’d rather have read the manga. The whole military hardware & survivalist fetish side of the series is lost a little in the translation to the anime, which seemed happier with parts revolving around gags about Junko’s breasts. Likewise, the manga has a more realistic approach to the character design (though it can feel schizophrenic when it veers from near-Otomo realism to crude approximations of manga-cute to Wile E. Coyote cartoon gags).

Nerd club sitcom that pitches somewhere above a Dork Tower and below an Eltingville Comic Book Science Fiction Fantasy Horror Role-Playing Game Club.

Like Panda Z, Genshiken is one of those shows where I got to an episode and said to myself “it can’t get any better than this” and stopped watching. In this case it’s Episode 9, where Tsutomu Mizushima (Hale+Guu) draws out every moment of tension in head nerd Madarame’s afternoon spent alone with Kasukabe in the club room.

It’s a social discomfort comedy, like a Meet The Parents or The Office. It crops up in manga a reasonable amount (Detroit Metal City for instance thrives on it), but rarely do you see it converted on the screen as animation so well. It’s all in the timing, and Mizushima is a master at the slow turn of the screw in social torture as much as he is psychological and physical torture.

Another ufotable show with character designs from Jun Shibata (Dokkoida). For my money it’s the last of their projects that gelled as a whole, though the opening episode of their next show has some great action animation.

This is a mightily silly show based on Ryoichi Koga’s manga. It takes the two stories per episode route favoured by many comedy shows wanting to pack in the gags rather than pad a story out to fit an episode. Given the nature of so many of its peers in the pages of Dengeki Daioh (and their anime adaptations), it could so very easily have been a simpering mess. Thankfully though there’s a vulgar edge there in the source material. And a hell of a lot more edge in the performance of Norio Wakamoto as “super-handsome boy” Onsokumaru. If it is possible to chew scenery in a cartoon, then he is doing it here.

Of course as a ufotable show, it has a very tactile, hand crafted ending animation.

I know I’ve watched some of this, and yet I recall nothing. Standard fantasy adventure. Another show licensed in the US by the now elusive Illumitoon.

Divergence Eve II

More bosomy space action.

Ghost in the Shell – Stand Alone Complex – The 2nd Gig

More future cyborg police procedurals.

Transformers Superlink

At this point, I’m thinking there is exactly as much as meets the eye. Known as Transformers Energon in the US/UK.

Maria-sama ga miteru Haru

More Catholic schoolgirl romantic friendships.

Kakyuusei 2

Has any good come from subtitles that are quoted in tildes? Sequel to a 1999 dating game anime.

To Heart ~Remember my memories~

The tildes in full effect here too, on a sequel to a 1999 erogame adaptation. Visual Novel nerds, is To Heart the trendsetter in the homeopathic porn market? Was there anything before it that got watered down from computer porn, to de-porned console game, to anime?

Rockman EXE Stream

Megaman nerds – how is the whole EXE side of things looked on by the hardcore?

Yu-Gi-Oh GX

I’ve seen far too many episodes of this half-asleep. Felt a little more subdued compared to some of the craziness of the original, though the dub script seemed more self aware and deliberately goofy. That being said, it does eventually go reassuringly nuts with being the school transported to a fantasy realm and a card that requires human sacrifice to be played.

Gundam Seed Destiny

Hoo boy, did the fans of Gundam Seed turn on this in quite a nasty fashion. Specifically against writer Chiaki Morosawa and her husband, director Mitsuo Fukuda. No doubt some of the criticism was legitimate, but an awful lot seemed aimed at them personally, rather than the work they’d produced.

Another show that couldn’t be more NHK if it tried, unsurprisingly this is a series of adaptations of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries, tied together through the addition of Mabel West and her pet duck. Yes. A pet duck. I have no idea either.

Despite the girl and the duck, they are pretty faithful adaptations. Certainly no less so than Suchet’s Poirot and definitely moreso than ITV’s recent Marple adaptations. Visually though it’s a little plain, unless you are big fan of the look of the humans in Pokemon as Sayuri Ichiishi does the character design here too and OLM are on production.

Another NHK show, which means it’s hard to find viewer ratings, but seeing as there’s been five seasons of it so far, I think we can assume it does more than OK.

Takuya Mitsuda’s manga has been running since 1994, and it follows the life of baseball player Goro Honda from kindergarten through to his professional career.

Director Kenichi Kasai had come off Mirumo and would direct the first three seasons of the show, before the popularity of Honey & Clover and Nodame Cantabile started to push his career in a different direction as the go to guy for romance shows.

Takahiro Omori (Bacanno!) adapts Tachibana Higuchi’s manga about a school for gifted youngsters. Seriously, there was no need for a “shojo manga” X-Men, because this is pretty much it in concept, if not characters. The show itself is a perfectly acceptable entry into the genre, helped by being an NHK show so that unlike a lot of its contemporaries you don’t feel like you’re watching an extended advert for merchandise.