AWESOME ENGINE » manga adaptation

HATE FUN 2004! Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad

Brack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:00:00 +0000

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.

HATE FUN 2004! Desert Punk

Brack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:27:31 +0000

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).

HATE FUN 2004! Genshiken

Brack — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:00:00 +0000

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.

HATE FUN 2004! Ninja Nonsense

Brack — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:00:00 +0000

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.

HATE FUN 2004! Beet the Vandel Buster

Brack — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:00:00 +0000

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.

HATE FUN 2004! Major

Brack — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 18:00:00 +0000

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.

HATE FUN 2004! Alice Academy

Brack — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:00:00 +0000

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.

HATE FUN 2004! Yakitate!! Japan

Brack — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:48:21 +0000

A show that I really should watch more of, or at least read the manga of, as I quite liked what I saw.

The problem? Well I have a degree in Food Science and until I moved into the exciting world of the dotcom boom (& bust) and electronic publishing, a good portion of my life involved telling people off in food factories for poor food hygiene.

So the guy who bakes bread IN A MASK, WITH PEACOCK FEATHERS ON IT, flips a switch in my brain and I get angry at this fictional character. It’s made worse, in that early on, the hero is told off for poor kitchen attire.

Of course this is a series that in later volumes of the manga goes completely barking mad, so maybe I should cut it some slack, quell my Pavlovian food factory manager urges and give it another shot.

HATE FUN 2004! Bleach

Brack — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:50:58 +0000

Bleach is a reasonable Shonen Jump property that makes for a reasonable anime. Animation-wise, while it doesn’t reach the highs of Naruto, it also doesn’t plummet to the lows. Noriyuki Abe, directed the thematically similar Yu Yu Hakusho in the 90s and he’s a steady hand for this sort of thing.

The manga suffers at little from the fact that it seems that Tite Kubo wasn’t expecting it to be this popular, and so after going through what now seems to be the pacing of a SJ property (opening that could be a one-off story, then gradual lengthening plot arcs, and slow to introduce main antagonist) it’s fallen into a holding pattern of repetition of story beats. And obviously the anime inherits that, along with the added problem of inserting filler arcs into a story that is now just one interminable drawn out fight.

Unfortunately the one main thing the manga has going for it – the sense of design – doesn’t survive the translation to animation that well. We get some of it in the openings, but the episode animation tends to be meat and potatoes work.

That said, if you like shonen action shows, it’s worth watching the up to the end of the Soul Society arc as the pacing is very strong on those episodes. Those episodes clear through source material at least twice as fast as Naruto or One Piece would.

HATE FUN 2004! Black Jack

Brack — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:00:00 +0000

The second big Tezuka adaptation of year. I hadn’t quite realised just how big this show was. Airing alongside Detective Conan, it debuted with very strong ratings for an anime show at the time, and ones that would kill today. Followed by Black Jack 21 in 2006. I’m interested in checking this out at some point, which I can as Crunchyroll have begun to stream it.

HATE FUN 2004! The Melody of Oblivion

Brack — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:00:00 +0000

JC Staff/GAINAX production that amusingly abbreviates to MOO. I know I’ve seen some of this, yet recall nothing. That says it all I think. Standard catalogue padding.

HATE FUN 2004! Doki Doki School Hours

Brack — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Another show like Smash Hit that goes for the Adult-Who-Looks-Like-A-Child gimmick, though this isn’t as tawdry as m.o.e.’s output. A more likely origin for it being animated is that JC Staff were looking for similar material as Azumanga Daioh to adapt, and Tamami Momose’s high school comedy fits that bill.

It’s not terrible, and if you like Yoshiaki Iwasaki’s work on shows like Love Hina and Hayate the Combat Butler, then I think you’ll probably like this. Me? I was out after 4 episodes, as despite some fun performances from folks like Kappei Yamaguchi, it just wasn’t funny enough for my tastes.

HATE FUN 2004! Marshmallow Times

Brack — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

One of those shows that I had no idea had existed until now. Studio Comet veteran Hiroshi Fukutomi directs, along with much of the same design staff as the early Studio Comet productions. However much of the actual production appears to be from Seoul Movie. Based on a gag manga from
Lun Lun Yamamoto about kid journalists and a sheep. Quite why it appears to take place in 1970s Europe is another question, but certainly it doesn’t really look like anything else.

HATE FUN 2004! Midori Days

Brack — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

High concept manga – girl wishes so hard to be boy’s girlfriend she turns into his right hand – gets a merely OK anime.

Looking at my old livejournal there was clearly something about episode 5 that I didn’t like, as I stopped writing about it after episode 4. I think it was that they were shuffling stuff around from how the manga played out and they may have seemed a little too enamoured with the annoying little girl neighbour. Or everyone may have just seemed more annoying animated than they did on the page. Whatever it was I didn’t bother with it any further, nor with the eventual DVD release.

HATE FUN 2004! Aishiteruze Baby

Brack — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Another in the pocket shojo genre of foisted parenthood, unlike UFO Baby (aka Daa! Daa! Daa!) the child here is an actual human. Based on Yoko Maki’s manga, it deals with a teenage boy who has to look after his 5 year old cousin when she is abandoned at his house. Solid TMS style animation under the shojo trappings from TMS veteran Masahru Okuwaki and a crew of Detective Conan folks (though I’m guessing everyone at TMS works on Conan at some point).

HATE FUN 2004! Dan Doh!!

Brack — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 09:38:55 +0000

As much as I wanted to like this golf anime, it’s simply ineptly made. Of course, I’d probably still watch it half asleep if it was on the ITV4 morning cartoon slot.

HATE FUN 2004! Koi Kaze

Brack — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 23:59:00 +0000

The fun world of sibling incest!

From a lot of the folks who brought you Haibane Renmei and would go onto give you Baccano! and Hell Girl, came this adaptation of Motoi Yoshida’s manga. I’ve only seen clips of it on sakuga MAD reels, and obviously there’s some good animation work on it. But I really don’t want to watch some overwrought drama about a brother and sister trying and failing to resist their incestuous feelings for each other. BECAUSE THAT IS NOT WHAT CARTOONS ARE FOR.

HATE FUN 2004! Area 88

Brack — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:04:11 +0000

Belated TV adaptation of Kaoru Shintani’s classic manga. Of course given how I was exposed to anime in the first place I relate it to the early 90s videogame adaptation that was an early import once folks I knew started to import the SNES/Super Famicom.

HATE FUN 2004! Gokusen

Brack — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Kozueko Morimoto’s manga about teacher/yakuza heir Kumiko Yamaguchi attempts to balance her two lives was a bigger success in its various live action incarnations, but this anime version was fun too. Though what was up with that dog?

HATE FUN 2004! Battle B-Daman

Brack — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:00:00 +0000

Mitsuo Hashimoto may be an auteur of crappy tie-in anime based on updates of traditional games, being responsible for this, Beyblade and Bakugan Battle Brawlers. Whereas Beyblade was about spinning tops, B-Daman is about marbles. As was Bakugan. Yes, there were TWO marble based franchises this decade.

HATE FUN 2004! Pugyuru

Brack — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Another one of Kid’s Station’s zero-budget flash shorts series, this time based on the 4 panel strip Pugyuru. It’s one of those shows that will either tickle your sense of humour or will create intense hatred at the poorly animated nonsense you have just watched.

Me? I thought it was hilarious. Non sequiturs and surrealist flights of fancy will do it every time (I do wonder if manzai comedy is more accessible to the British than Americans…), so this tale of an anonymous girl who is tormented by the arrival of a foot high rubber maid, an octopus wearing a mask, a woman made of ice and a juvenile delinquent was right up my street. The episode where they discover the button in the maid Cheko’s head is probably the highlight.

Given its origins as a cheap flash animation, I’m not sure why this hasn’t been put somewhere online in an official capacity.

HATE FUN 2004! Monster

Brack — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:58:00 +0000

Coming to this adaptation of Urasawa’s manga after having read some of it, it struck me as being really faithful. However that faithful quality had a downside, it’s also really slow.

It’s one of these shows that works perfectly fine as a television programme, but whose merits as a cartoon are harder to see. Luckily for it and countless other shows, a lot of viewers aren’t really interested whether the medium is being used to its fullest and just want to be told a story. Which Monster does very well, unfortunately Urasawa tells the story much better on the page because he’s in control and can use his medium to the fullest.

Let’s not be silly though, even with its flaws, it is still miles better than most of what I’ve written about in these decade overview posts so far, and certainly one of the 2004′s better shows due to the source material alone.

HATE FUN 2004! Sgt. Frog

Brack — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:55:41 +0000

Surprisingly successful, and long running, comedy show.

And here’s why:

Genius steals.

Urusei Yatsura spawned multitudes of imitators, but few have understood what made that show great. Sgt Frog, however, gets it.

It hits the correct mix of extra-terrestrial home invasion, mad science, parody and thwarted romance perfectly. And while the anime is a toned down version of the manga, that also works to it’s advantage as had it maintained the more ribald nature of the manga it is unlikely to have found the audience it has. If anything the humour is more effective now as it hits on a variety levels, while kids can appreciate the slapstick and cute characters, there’s plenty of parody and satire for the parents, and relationship comedy for the teen audience.

And it has a cracking cast. Chiwa Saito plays the female lead Natsumi Hinata, and makes a great straight woman for the rest of the cast. Kumiko Watanabe turns in a wonderful performance as the titular Keroro. And best of all, it has the legendary Jouji Nakata as the lovelorn, if overly serious, Giroro.

The first 51 episodes are awesome and well worth your time. The second batch is a little below par, picking up until you get probably the best part of the series – the multiple episode arc where Keroro’s troops are to be replaced on Earth. The start of season 2 seems to assume you’ve not seen the previous season, and spends a lot of time reintroducing characters. I’m guessing there was either a gap, or a schedule change that necessitated this, but it’s a little annoying if you have seen the previous episodes.

Getting it released in the west was a long a laborious process. First ADV had big plans for it, before it ended up with Funimation and got a Shin-chan style “versioned” English script. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I’m not entirely convinced that Funimation’s script writers are good enough comedy writers or that the talent pool working in anime dubbing in the US are good enough comic performers. The releases do include the original Japanese soundtrack though (and presumably more literal scripts), so it’s still worth getting.

HATE FUN 2004! Phoenix

Brack — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:00:00 +0000

2004 was the 15th anniversary of Tezuka’s death, and there’s a couple of big adaptations that came out that year, both of which got ratings that most shows would be jealous of. First up was Ryousuke Takahashi’s 13-part adaptation of Phoenix, Tezuka’s life’s work about ~~a working man’s club in Bolton~~* reincarnation.

Media Blasters released it on DVD and can now be found in a very reasonably priced box set. Seems to be under reviewed, so I’m struggling to build a consensus opinion as to whether it’s worth buying. On paper it is, but the scale of the task in hand makes me wonder how much of a success it was.

*This terrible joke brought to you by Google Shopping Results

HATE FUN 2004! Legendz

Brack — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:00:00 +0000

If you’re Akitaro Daichi and you’re “adapting” the monster fightin’ manga Legendz, what do you do?

Throw out everything but the mechanics of the Legendz game, move the action to New York and cast the lead from your super bleak 1999 show Now and Then, Here and There as the plucky, chirpy lead (bringing back Akemi Okamura to voice him too). Yes, he really did this. Oh, and get Nagisa Miyazaki to produce some her idiosyncratic character designs so it looks totally different to the manga too. And to anything else on TV.

While an adaptation, this feels like pure Daichi in terms of the sense of humour and general silliness of the show, he’s in his comfort zone working with regular collaborators like Miyazaki and Hiroshi Nagahama (the animator whose bright idea this apparently was). Actually thinking about it all through the decade Daichi seems to have been on the sort of shows he wants to do, I wonder if the constant work with Ojarumaru allows him that sort of freedom to pick and choose his other projects.

I’ve seen the first few episodes back when not much of it was fansubbed, and it was a lot of fun. Again it’s one of those shows that really should be on an official streaming site as its appeal isn’t going to be there for the DVD market or TV executives. Both are likely to dismiss it as a Pokemon clone, but there’s definitely an audience for it, who might not have encountered it yet.

HATE FUN 2003! Chrno Crusade

Brack — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:00:00 +0000

STANDARD ANIME.

It’s the sort of uninspired, inoffensive middle ground stuff that filled ADVs catalogue for much of the 00s.

HATE FUN 2003! Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo

Brack — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Fantastically odd manga gets a fantastically odd anime, which then gets a just plain odd English adaptation. In that they didn’t bother doing things like they normally do, like translating the opening credits. I have the feeling that for kids who grew up watching this in the US & UK, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo will be their Samurai Pizza Cats (except truer to the source material).

HATE FUN 2003! Twin Spica

Brack — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Yet more down to earth science fiction about space flight. What was in the water in 2003 that caused this trend?

HATE FUN 2003! R.O.D. – The TV

Brack — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:59:00 +0000

The first 13 episodes are a great TV show, and achieves the “Shoujo for boys” idea that was being bandied around at the time. It switches between being essentially a shoujo story show set in school and the British telefantasy & 80/90′s Hong Kong movie-inspired action of the Read or Die OAV. Episodes like They Shout and In A Grove could have had their plots ripped out of The Avengers and are all the better for it.

Those 13 episodes end on a superb rescue sequence and had it stopped there we’d probably be talking about it as being one of the great series of the decade.

However then the fans of the OAV and light novels got what they had been complaining about being missing from the those 13 episodes and, possibly coincidentally, the whole production went to hell. As broadcast those final 13 episodes were just a mess. While the production problems were fixed for DVD release, the writing, which had been exceptional up to then, was in just as much a mess as the animation, bogged down in exposition and characters on the run for much the time.

An ambiguous final scene (was that dog supposed to represent a Churchillian depression or a creature like Black Shuck?) suggested more was to come, but given the loose continuity between the various ROD projects I’m not sure if they were hoping for a follow up anime or if it was picked up in the light novels.

HATE FUN 2003! Gilgamesh

Brack — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:00:00 +0000

A show I certainly avoided due to its character design and general look. Having now read that it was based on an Shotaro Ishinomori manga my interest is piqued a little, but I still think that had it looked more like Ishinomori’s art (below) I’d have been all over this like a rash.

HATE FUN 2003! Gunslinger Girl

Brack — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:00:00 +0000

Creepy show about turning little girls into hitmen. The idea is a sound one, and while it should be creepy, it is creepy more due to the mishandling of the concept than something they are going for deliberately. Notable, at least for me, for having a theme tune by Scottish Indie Overlords, The Delgados.

HATE FUN 2003! Ai Yori Aoshi Enishi

Brack — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:00:00 +0000

More of this now forgotten nonsense.

HATE FUN 2003! Planetes

Brack — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:32:36 +0000

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.

HATE FUN 2003! Saiyuki Reload

Brack — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:00:00 +0000

More Saiyuki.

HATE FUN 2003! Fullmetal Alchemist

Brack — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:00:00 +0000

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.

HATE FUN 2003! Ikkitousen

Brack — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:59:00 +0000

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).

HATE FUN 2003! Cromartie High School

Brack — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:00:00 +0000

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.

HATE FUN 2003! Shadow Star Narutaru

Brack — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000

This anime adaptation of Mohiro Kitoh’s manga was a lot of English speaking people’s first exposure to Kitoh’s somewhat bleak world view. Deliberately, deceptively cute this is a stronger adaptation in terms of writing to the later adaptation of Bokurano: Ours, probably in part due to Chiaki J. Konata’s presence on staff. Visually though, it wasn’t particularly gripping. While true to Kitoh’s visuals, it just felt a little flat to me. At least in the episodes I saw.

HATE FUN 2003! Rumiko Takahashi Anthology

Brack — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:00:00 +0000

Another show that languishes out of print on R1 DVD, though I think you can find the individual R1 discs pretty cheap (the boxset is another matter). I’ve only seen the first episode, the one about having to look after a penguin, and while it was pleasant enough, there wasn’t really anything that suggested it needed to be animated.

HATE FUN 2003! Dokkoida?!

Brack — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:21:10 +0000

Smart, fun comedy from the once promising ufotable studio. Though looking back now, I think it was just the manga they were adapting and the fact they had Jun Shibata working for them that was their appeal.

Impoverished university student Suzuo Sakurazaki gets a part time job as a field tester for a toy company. Unfortunately the toy company is from outer space, and he’ll be testing a power suit. And unbeknownst to him, he’ll be sharing an apartment building with the field tester for a rival company AND a collection of super villains. Comedy ensues. There’s an element of satire running through it, as well as a degree of sadness (all the villains have a tint of tragedy to them), but the series has a big enough heart that never seems exceptionally mean or dwells in melancholy.

And what points it loses in using the well worn “alien can’t cook human food gag”, it makes up for having a character look like dog-eared, disturbing 70s puppet Hartley Hare.

One thing I really liked about this show was the ED animation, which reminded me a little of how the old Paddington Bear cartoon used to look:

HATE FUN 2003! Happy Lesson Advance

Brack — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

More teacher/mother fetish in this Happy Lesson sequel.

HATE FUN 2003! Cinderella Boy

Brack — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:59:00 +0000

Early 80s Monkey Punch manga gets the anime adaptation that no one asked for. I enjoyed it, mainly because it’s Monkey Punch and there were Rockford Files references. It tells the tale of detectives Ranma and Rella who after dying in an accident, mysteriously find themselves sharing the same body (though they aren’t aware of that at first). They switch between Ranma and Rella at midnight (hence the Cinderella reference) and the central gag is that each will find themselves transforming in the middle of the others case and have to solve them from scratch.

HATE FUN 2003! Ultra Maniac

Brack — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Has there ever been such a gulf between title and actual content?

Another twist on the magical girl genre, specifically the traditional girl from magic kingdom comes Earth variant. Adapted from Wataru Yoshizumi’s manga, its unique selling point is that the magical girl isn’t the lead, instead her best friend takes that role.

HATE FUN 2003! Submarine Super 99

Brack — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:00:00 +0000

Your recommended dose of Matsumoto.

The Japanese save the world from an underwater empire using, of course, WW2 era technology (the 99 of the title refers to not just the titular submarine but also the Type 99 rifle). Compare the now near cookie cutter Matsumoto visuals of the anime to the original 1970-72 manga:

Obviously the Matsumoto look is pretty much a brand in itself, but I can’t help this would be a lot more fun if the show was in that looser style.

HATE FUN 2003! Tantei Gakuen Q

Brack — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:00:00 +0000

More detectives? Really? Did you think you stood a chance against Detective Conan? That’s HIS genre now, so you better bring something better than a school for detectives.

What’s that? You did pretty well in the ratings and you got a live-action adaptation too. Oh well, maybe a school for detectives was a decent idea after all.

HATE FUN 2003! Dear Boys

Brack — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Given that it preceded Slam Dunk, it’s odd this similarly long running basketball manga full of pretty boys took so long to come to the cartoons. Apparently this is the Initial D of basketball anime, being made by the same production house, similarly low budget and full of Eurobeat. It was released in the US as Hoop Days.

HATE FUN 2003! Croket!

Brack — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:14:41 +0000

Curiously Viz have an English language page for this kids adventure show, but don’t appear to have done anything in the way of releasing it. Can anyone shed any light on that? And are there other series in a similar situation?

HATE FUN 2003! Astro Boy

Brack — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:21:20 +0000

The 2003 version of anime’s favourite robot son. Naturally this featured on TV Asahi’s 2005 Top 100 anime and I wrote about it over here.

HATE FUN 2003! Zatch Bell!

Brack — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:59:00 +0000

I wrote all about this here. But that’s a really vague entry in that Top 100 anime series of posts, so here’s some more.

Looking at the crew, there was a bunch of talented people who passed through the project, and I’ve seen plenty of clips crop up in various key animator clip videos, most notably that of Takaaki Yamashita who frequently collaborates with Mamoru Hosoda. The look of the show is down to Ken Ootsuka, who also shows up on Hosoda projects. Takuya Igarashi (Soul Eater) directed the second movie.

If I had the time I’d go through the 1998-2003 Toei shows and see where various staff ended up, because I think they’ve produced some strong talent and continue to do so. Obviously not everyone is gold, but I think the fact I’m seeing about one One Piece episode a month now that amazes me (normally Naoki Tate’s eps), tells me they’re doing something right.

HATE FUN 2003! The Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok

Brack — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:00:00 +0000

Not very good Detective Conan-a-like, this time the spin is that it’s occult investigations. And when I say not very good, I just mean mediocre. That’s the thing that really strikes me is that considering the sheer amount of anime produced in the last 10 years, very little is truly dire or utterly inept across the board. There’s just this low level hum of the uninspired and unambitious.

HATE FUN 2003! The World of Narue

Brack — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0000

This seems so generic I can’t be bothered to form an opinion.

HATE FUN 2003! D.N.Angel

Brack — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Leaden shojo series from the creator of Rizelmine. See how slow and boring that opening theme is? That’s pretty much how the show feels too. Also I get it mixed up in my head with Masakazu Katsura’s DNA², because I suspect that was something of an influence on Yukiru Sugisaki in the first place.

HATE FUN 2003! Airmaster

Brack — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Fantastic piece of trash, elevated above the source material by some incredibly well choreographed fight scenes. I shall be writing more about this over Xmas!

HATE FUN 2003! E’s Otherwise

Brack — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:01:43 +0000

What little I saw of this, probably the first couple of episodes, reminded me of the X-Men somewhat. But thinking about it, it’s probably because it’s drawing from the same well of sci-fi stories about ESPers and mutants being feared by normal men (i.e. PKD’s The Golden Man). Or possibly it was just another X clone.

Regardless, I didn’t watch any more, and I can’t recall much about it now.

HATE FUN 2003! Someday’s Dreamers

Brack — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:00:00 +0000

Hey kids, magical realism!

I definitely think there is a thread of these sort of series weaving through not just this decade, but the history of anime & manga. However I do think that in this decade we started seeing quieter, less OTT series like this one emerge, both in this genre and others (a lot of the space flight themed shows of 2003 strike me as having a similar sensibility).

That being said, I like my cartoons loud and cartoony, so I’ve not seen this.

I did catch some of the second Someday’s Dreamers series due to who the director is and it takes the realism part of magical realism even further, particularly in the actual animation. Whereas this looks like bog-standard anime in its presentation.

But more on that much later.

HATE FUN 2003! Mouse

Brack — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Satoru Akahori dusts off the formula that served him and the anime industry so well during the 90s to deliver this fluff about an art teacher turned thief, assisted by his three attractive assistants.

If your anime is going to deliberately invoke Lupin III in its opening, you probably want to be better than this show is.

HATE FUN 2003! Nanaka 6/17

Brack — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Teenager suffers from head bonk amnesia reverting her mind to that of when she was six years old. Another show that I had in my head as being totally different than what it actually appears to be. Hiroaki Sakurai (Digi Charat) directs.

HATE FUN 2002! Tsuri Baka Nisshi

Brack — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000

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.

HATE FUN 2002! Shin Seiki Den Mars

Brack — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:00:00 +0000

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.

HATE FUN 2002! Duel Masters

Brack — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0000

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

HATE FUN 2002! GetBackers

Brack — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:00:00 +0000

From writing synopses for this back in the old job I think this is about a pair of superpowered repo men.

HATE FUN 2002! Naruto

Brack — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Let’s ignore the writing for a moment. Has any other TV anime show managed to contain such extremes of animation quality?

In the episodes I’ve seen, probably the first 100 or so, you’ve the highs of some excellent Norio Matsumoto animated fights to the lows of elementary animation cock ups like having Naruto on the screen running upside down. The level of inconsistency in what Studio Pierrot produced was astounding. And infuriating.

But that’s not why I gave up on it. No, it was the writing.

Here’s the real problem Naruto had, the manga didn’t divide up neatly into arcs in the same way that Dragonball or One Piece did. There’s other problems with manga’s writing, but that’s neither here nor there, for the purposes of animating it.

That lack of breaks in the story meant that they struggled to pad out the story. You ended up with both repetitive recaps and then the long tract of sub-par filler episodes that people just hated. It’s not the only show that’s had that problem, but it’s certainly really noticeable when seen against the success of One Piece and Dragonball, and may have ultimately hurt the property. Certainly kept me away from it for years.

But outside of Japan it’s probably been the hit of the decade. Some may wonder if it’s deserved, but to really put the current success of Shonen Jump properties like Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Gintama & Reborn into perspective I suggest looking at what else is running in Shonen Jump at the moment. It’s mostly terrible. Toriko and Bakuman are good, and I’d guess would be hits if animated. Bakuman I expect will be, Toriko might not, probably for reasons that have nothing to with the actual strip.

Every other non-gag strip that’s not been animated yet, feels either highly derivative or just clumsy. Naruto’s success in the US/UK is fueled by the manga, and that is head and shoulders above a lot of what’s in SJ, even if it’s not really my cup of tea. It is very good at what it does. Not the best ever, not the best now, but certainly better than the majority of shonen manga and anime.

HATE FUN 2002! Monkey Typhoon

Brack — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Journey to West is adapted for the 142,078th time (I counted). According to wikipedia it’s a Steampunk version. Of course it is.

HATE FUN 2002! Ghost in the Shell – Stand Alone Complex

Brack — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:00:00 +0000

OK here’s where I get my Otaku Pass revoked.

Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex bored me.

Well at least the first few episodes. I didn’t go any further. I can understand why people like it, but science fiction and me don’t get along that well. And what I’m looking for from anime tends to be a cartoon, rather than a serious science fiction television show. Which is what this felt like. Plus it’s Shirow, and I find his brand of science fiction particularly boring.

It’s around this time that I also began to get turned off of Production IG’s work a little. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but a fair few years I don’t think it was doing for me what Madhouse and Studio 4C were.

HATE FUN 2002! Spiral

Brack — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:59:00 +0000

Reasonable detective show that I saw a few episodes of at a convention. Didn’t bother with any more, possibly because the opening theme is like fingernails on a blackboard.

HATE FUN 2002! Mahoromatic 2

Brack — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:00:00 +0000

More Mechanical Maid Malarkey.

HATE FUN 2002! Hungry Heart: Wild Striker

Brack — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000

You know how I said I thought there’d be more football anime this year? Well here’s another football anime. It did fairly well, running for an entire year.

HATE FUN 2002! Demon Lord Dante

Brack — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Seen as a prototypical Go Nagai manga, particularly for demon related apocalypse series like Devilman, this was a short adaptation that gave that gave the series an ending it was originally missing. I’ve not seen the anime, but I have the read the manga which starts off fairly sensible, but we eventually get the bonkers origin of Dante:

Which is great.

HATE FUN 2002! Dragon Drive

Brack — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:59:00 +0000

Relatively short lived Shonen Jump comic gets relatively short lived anime.

HATE FUN 2002! Asagiri no Miko

Brack — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:00:00 +0000

Another show with a plot hanging off a fetish – this time miko fetish – that I’ve seen more of than you might expect. We’re begining to hit shows around the time that I first got broadband, so there’ll be a lot more coming up that I’ve seen at least one episode of. I don’t recall much about this, beyond the Megumi Hayabashi song. It might be worth rechecking as I see Yuji Moriyama directed, and he tends to turn out some nice looking animation even on the trashiest shows.

HATE FUN 2002! Saikano

Brack — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Well here’s a show I almost feel I should have watched more of, but I think I only saw the first couple of depressing episodes. Beloved at the time, I get the feeling it’s not had any longevity in peoples memories. Now I don’t think I could be bothered watching it, as I’ve drifted from wanting melancholy moodiness in my cartoons and would prefer them to be more, well, cartoony.

HATE FUN 2002! Samurai Deeper Kyo

Brack — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:00:00 +0000

A name familiar from my Urusei Yatsura write ups shows up here, Junji Nishimura (his ANN profile seems light of 90s projects, any idea of what’s up with that?). Still working at Studio Deen he turns in this adaptation of Akimine Kamijo’s manga. As good as he was at episode direction, his Ranma work left me unconvinced me at his ability to handle a whole series.

HATE FUN 2002! Jing: King of Bandits

Brack — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Comedic fantasy needs turning into an anime? Better call Hiroshi Watanabe!

While Watanabe’s Slayers based resume makes him an obvious choice, it’s character designer and animation director Mariko Oka who seems to cast the strongest influence on the show. While I’ve not been particularly well disposed to the shows she works on (Hell Girl, Ghost Hound), they do have a strong look to them that I can admire. Definitely a character designer you can recognise from their work.

HATE FUN 2002! Whistle

Brack — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:00:00 +0000

I’m actually surprised there weren’t more football shows starting in this World Cup year. This is a Shonen Jump property that got an adaptation this year, finishing just one month before the manga ended.

HATE FUN 2002! Wild 7 another

Brack — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:59:00 +0000

Belated follow up to the OAV adaptation of the Wild 7 manga. One of those shows that there’s little information in English about. The series concept is a doozy, and given its timing I wonder if this 2002 adaptation was a piece of 9/11-sploitation. The original manga was about a Dirty Dozen-style group of convicts who make up an anti-terrorist motorcycle unit. As the original itself was a piece of exploitation playing on the fear of things like student militants, it seems likely. See Go Nagai’s “Gakuen Taikutsu Otoko” for similar exploitation with the militants as the “heroes”. In fact, I wonder if Tsubasa Nishikiori’s gang of bikini clad, go-go checked, machine gunning bikers were a rib on Wild 7, given the go-go check motif on the 7′s own helmets?

As I can’t find a clip from a movie site that doesn’t block my country, here’s the opening to the 1972 live-action TV series.

HATE FUN 2002! ATASHIn’CHI

Brack — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:00:00 +0000

All Endings of Atashin’chi
Uploaded by jessaries09. – Videos of family and friends from around the world.

I wrote about this here.

HATE FUN 2002? Ai Yori Aoshi

Brack — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:00:00 +0000

I’ve never seen this, but the way I remember it was that this was the show people who loved Love Hina moved onto after Love Hina. Which explains why I’ve never seen it.

HATE FUN 2002! Azumanga Daioh

Brack — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Another show that’ll talk more about over Xmas. A lot of its success lies in the source material, but like the recent Astro Fighter Sunred, the key element is that it just focusses on the job at hand – gags. It gives each gag enough or as little time as they need. With the plot-heavy tendencies of anime shows, people have often compared it to Seinfeld as a show about nothing. These people obviously haven’t really watched Seinfeld. Seinfeld is not a four panel strip adapted into a compilation TV show.

A more apt comparison is to this:

HATE FUN 2002! Pita Ten

Brack — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:59:00 +0000

The love affair with Koge Donbo continued with this show about an Angel next door neighbour. I wonder if there really was a demand for all these Koge Donbo shows, or if it was, as I suspect, part of Brocolli’s ultimately misguided expansion plans.

HATE FUN 2002! Tenshi na Konamaiki

Brack — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:00:00 +0000

The first episode of this was so convoluted (as I understand is the ending), that I didn’t press on with this sex-change comedy. Also the character designs, while faithful to the manga, didn’t really suit animation. That being said, those who have watched it through seem to like it a lot.

HATE FUN 2002? Happy Lesson

Brack — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000

We’ve had the harem of sisters, now we get the harem of teachers. Oh and the teachers are also the lead’s adopted mothers. Double your fetish! I suspect I can get away with not seeing this show.

HATE FUN 2002! Full Moon o Sagashite

Brack — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:00:00 +0000

Hey, it’s Creamy Mami with throat cancer! In terms of Magical Girl tragedy, is that better or worse than being hit by a truck?

HATE FUN 2002! Mirmo!

Brack — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Yet another kids show I’d heard of, but never realised it had be a) licensed b) shown in the UK. On BBC1 no less. Is the internet lying to me on that last fact, or did I rightfully remain unaware due to being an adult and thus not watching TV whenever it was on.

HATE FUN 2002! Tokyo Mew Mew

Brack — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:00:00 +0000

More 4kids fun and games as they licensed this, didn’t really know what to do with it and once they did something with it, couldn’t get the rest of the series. As to the show itself, the OP gives the impression of it being a strange cross pollination of Magical Girl and Maid Fetish. We weren’t quite at the point of Magical Girl shows being blatantly being made for an adult male audience, but the cross marketing seems to be there already when you look at the difference in the marketing materials for the anime compared to the original manga.

HATE FUN 2002! Chobits

Brack — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:59:00 +0000

This is one of those shows that both gets undue criticism and praise.

CLAMP, moreso than any creator that’s emerged in the last 20 years gets it. They know how this manga and anime game works. Unless I’m missing someone, they seem to be the only manga creators in the last 20 years who have really emerged as successful polymaths, if not in the Tezuka sense, certainly the Go Nagai sense. Not only do they produce cracking artwork, they understand their audiences, are shrewd businesswomen and get involved in both the manga and anime side of things.

So when they turn to something like Chobits, basically pure otaku bait aimed at the teenage boys and young men who tune into late night anime, not only is it a success, it’s also a notch or two above that typical fare. Compared to the robot maid shows of the years previous to Chobits, this is high art. Not only did it provide better characters than those shows, they also provided better dirty jokes.

It’s not just CLAMP’s stated fandom for Devilman that draws the Nagai comparison, they are also possessors of absolutely filthy minds. I’ve seen folks accuse the whole crotch power switch gag as being sexist, but not acknowledging it’s also a pretty funny joke. Had Go Nagai come up with it, it’d be “Oh that bawdy Go Nagai, he’s so incorrigible”. Well CLAMP are just as incorrigible, and that’s great. But people seem to put them on a pedestal, forgetting that they came up with smut fests like Mizuki-chan in Wonderland as well as their more high minded stuff.

On the flipside, there’s those who liked this a little too much – either as die-hard CLAMP fans or as idiots who wore Chi-ears and shouted Chiiii! like they were hard of hearing Monty Python fans. It’s not really deserving of that response. While it does what it does well, I’m not sure there’s much to offer to people who aren’t in that target demographic they are going after.

HATE FUN 2002! Tokyo Underground

Brack — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:00:00 +0000

This can seen as Studio Pierrot & Hayato Date warming up for Naruto a few months down the line. This is one of the shows Manga UK have put out dirt cheap over here. Unlike some of their bargains, this isn’t really calling to me.

HATE FUN 2002! Gun Frontier

Brack — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:00:00 +0000

What If…? Captain Harlock was a Cowboy!

HATE FUN 2001! Fighting Foodons

Brack — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Or Martial Arts Cooking Legend Bistro-Recipe as it was in Japan. Strange show where cooks make monsters out of food then battle them.

HATE FUN 2001! Cyborg 009

Brack — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Ah, one of the lost Sony UK DVD releases (along with various Jackie Chan adventures boxsets, the latest Astro Boy TV show and Heavy Gear: The Animated Series), this kept on appearing on schedules while I was at Videolog, only to continually bumped into the future.

Shotaro Ishinomori’s iconic James Bond homage is one of those series that is going to be continually revisited by the anime industry, either as adaptation (it’s had three so far) or by reference and homage (too numerous to mention).

See also the entry I wrote for the top 100 anime list.

HATE FUN 2001! Rave Master

Brack — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:59:00 +0000

~~Nami from One Piece goes off to find magic items.~~

Studio Deen-ugly version of Hiro Mashima’s adventure manga. Tokyopop licenced and got it on TV during the big boom. It is curious how Mashima’s properties have been handled better in the US/UK than One Piece, the work which he is usually unfavourably compared with. And which is miles more popular elsewhere.

HATE FUN 2001! Kokoro Library

Brack — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:00:00 +0000

Moe librarian anime based on moe librarian manga. With horrible character designs. Seeing 21st Century Studio Deen animation and then watching those 80s Urusei Yatsura episodes makes you wonder what happened.

And yes, to answer your question, Lum-A-Day will return shortishly.

HATE FUN 2001! Hikaru no Go

Brack — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:00:00 +0000

Following Prince of Tennis in the schedule was this other hit show from the pages of Shonen Jump. The tale of a young boy learning the game of Go from the ghost of a Heian era Go instructor to the Emperor.

I wrote about it here.

Here’s an old BBC report on the boom caused by the manga and anime:

HATE FUN 2001! The Prince of Tennis

Brack — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Big hit straight out the gate with Takeshi Konomi’s breakthrough 1999 manga about tennis genius Ryoma Echizen coming to the small screen.

Wrote about it here so go take a look at that if you want.

HATE FUN 2001! Captain Tsubasa – Road to 2002

Brack — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Captain Tsubasa remake/sequel in time for the 2002 World Cup. After summarising Tsubasa’s lengthy career so far, he’s had a career longer than many real life footballers, the series catches up with the characters’ careers in Europe. Veteran Gisaburo Sugii (Street Fighter, Night on the Galactic Railroad) directs.

HATE FUN 2001! Hellsing

Brack — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Is this the archetypal GONZO show, in that it goes off cliff in quality and writes an ending that isn’t in the spirit of the material being adapted? Possibly. Certainly when the author is unhappy enough to want an ultra-faithful adaptation done, you’ve got to think you’ve messed up somewhere.

So what does the 2001 version have going for it? Well it has a better soundtrack than Hellsing Ultimate (the later OAV adaptation) and a nice opening animation (even if some of the shots now seem overused). But the other main boast – the awesome George Nakata as lead character Alucard – can be boasted by Ultimate too. While this series may be better value for money, you’re better off with Hellsing Ultimate in terms of quality.

HATE FUN 2001! Babel II – Beyond Infinity

Brack — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:00:00 +0000

New adaptation of the classic ESPer manga/anime. Dumped that same slot of death that Cosmo Warrior Zero was put in, it performed even worse in the ratings. Given the success of Yatterman, Golgo 13 (particular the earlier reruns) and Shin Mazinger, I wonder if produced now these shows with nostalgia appeal would be better positioned in the schedules.

Despite the low ratings on Japanese TV, this too was licensed and released in the US. Can’t imagine it set the world on fire, like the Matsumoto licences, I wonder if these are more favourites of the people deciding what to release rather than strong business decisions.

HATE FUN 2001! Mahoromatic Automatic Maiden

Brack — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Gainax grasp the zeitgeist by the udders and milk for all it’s worth, with this robot maid show. While this concept has been done before, indeed in this same year, even when peddling blatantly opportunistic shows like this, Gainax are clearly miles better than the m.o.e.s of the world. When people think of cartoons about robot maids, it’s Mahoromatic that’s going to be remembered over the Steel Angel Kurumis and Hand Maid Mays of the world.

The manga of Kurumi and Mahoromatic both seem to have come out in ’98. Was the time simply right for tales of warbot maids or was one copying the other?

HATE FUN 2001! X

Brack — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:01:00 +0000

CLAMP. WOWOW. Madhouse. Yoshiaki Kawajiri.

You know, I’m not sure why I’ve not seen this. Particularly as I was apparently one of the few people who seemed happy with the film version (great, possibly Violence Jack inspired, decapitation ending! SPOILERS!).

Another show that got double releases in the US in singles and boxsets – increasingly a good sign of these shows from the start of decade’s popularity and longevity.

HATE FUN 2001! Okojo-san

Brack — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Anime version of Ayumi Uno’s shojo manga about an escaped ermine living in an apartment building. This looks jolly and fun.

HATE FUN 2001! Samurai Girl: Real Bout High School

Brack — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:01:00 +0000

Unlike Tsukikage Ran, this is a more typical show about women getting into fights from the 00s. And there’ll be a fair few of them down the line. Keiji Gotoh shows up again here contributing his distinctive character designs and the OP animation. Apart from that, it strikes me as just another show.