Anime Last Anime You Watched

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I'm watching:

Persona 4: Actually surprised about this one being really good. Especially these later episodes that have random songs in them. Sticks to the game and does it really well. Recommended :)

Mirai Nikki: Also incredible. A load of people (12/13) have to kill each other to become the new god. Well paced and I've heard that it sticks to the manga. Very addictive. Recommended :D
 
Last one I watched happened to be Gungrave. Old series from same director of Trigun and such. Was actually a decent watch up until the last dvd then everything became craptastic. It was just like a giant middle finger you couldn't help but scream come on to, since our hero Brandon Heat aka Grave, made the same decision again that wound him up dead in the first place.
 
I'm now currently watching highschool DxD, which is an awesome anime, which came from the Light Novels! (The manga only has 2-3 vols so far). It's got a fair bit of fanservice, with TnA but it also has an equal amount of action as well!

I'm also watching Nisemonogatari (sequel to Bakemonogatari). Which centers on Araragi's sisters and a Villian! the female characters also have new hairstyles and most importantly:
Shinobu talks! She's so freakin awesome!
 
I just finished watching High School of the dead. It has everything. Massive amounts of blood, undead, and chicks that kickass. However I would not recomend it to audiences who are woozy of blood and those who are under 18. I didnt like how it ended, but I heard from a buddy that they are working on a season 2. I might end up watching it.
 
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I am currently watching Chobits, even though it's been awhile. I have to say my last, actually seen anime was K-On!!.
 
Tiger & Bunny - 9/10: I loved this series from beginning to end. I loved the art, the music, the characters, the action--all of it was just so much fun. The only thing I can really say is that some of my favourite characters (Dragon Kid, Rock Bison, LUNATIC!!!) got shafted in the development/screentime department. And the last few episodes got a wee bit silly. But hey, silly or not, I was still havin' fun.

Oh hey, an extra scene at the end! Aw hey, Tiger finally has a fan, but the kid dropped his dollar--OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT
 
Space Adventure Cobra (1995)

Saw it on hulu.com's 'free anime section'.

The characters are one dimensional and undeveloped & the dialogue is extremely cheesy and banal. Normal people would probably hate it. I thought it was decent. :ohshit:
 
I just finished watching Air Gear. I loved this anime, and I think its a shame they arent making a season 2. I absolutly hated how they ended it. Im going to have to go back to the manga to find out what happens next.
 
Just re-watched my entire DBZ box-set. I usually just let a few episodes play when I'm chilling before bed then wake up hours later with the theme tune blasting away :D

I definitely need to watch something new though. I should scour this thread for some insight.
 
I've just watched alot of Fairy Tail and LoLH (Legend of Legendary Heroes). Despite its very corny and unoriginal name, this anime's action and plot is just... just... to freaking notch!!
 
Im currently on episode 10 of Arakawa Under The Bridge. Hilarious stuff.

I know this weekend though Im bringing the first two rebuild of Evangelion movies to a friends apartment as well as Gundam 00 and Gundam Unicorn episode 4.

I have a huge backlog of what I bought that I need to watch though such as: First 3 sets of Fairy Tail, Black Lagoon season 1 and 2, Pretty much all of Universal Century gundam. And others I cant think of off the top of my head. My anime collection has skyrocketed the last 3 years. I think Im up to about 3-4 thousand in anime purchases
 
E's Otherwise -
Watched this a couple of days ago, and I have to say I really hate that cliche settings where the protagonist doesn't want to "kill anyone" because he's afraid "to hurt people", this anime has previous setting amplified by 10000 times with stupidity, I couldn't stand it one bit... -.-

Another -
Ongoing series, Horror and Mystery genre but it's quite good actually, I'm loving it so far, each episode want to make me want to watch the next episode immediately, this could be one of the best in 2012.

Night Head Genesis -
I'm watching this slowly but I enjoy it, it has a serious theme that's why I don't just finish it with one go, I'm currently at episode 11.
 
I am presently watching The Sacred Blacksmith, which I just picked out at random from a list of anime that is actually still present on the internet. It's...interesting, I guess. Only 12 episodes, so I'll probably finish it pretty soon. The voice acting is pretty generic, but the battle theme is nice, and I like the fantasy setting. Will have to wait and see how it turns out...
 
Occult Academy

It's a very short (and hopefully sweet) series, clocking up just 13 episodes, and I wanted to watch something that was relatively concise with its storyline because I honestly don't have time to dedicate myself to something long like Fairy Tail. I only started last night, so I'm only four episodes in, so once I'm done with the other nine, I should come back with a comprehensive review.

I'll just list some pros and cons so far:

PROS:

+ The tsundere main character has been done to the death before, but I absolutely love Maya. She actually has a personality that isn't simply being as abusive as possible to the cowardly secondary male lead character with no backbone. She is both an expert in the occult, yet reviles it, and is capable of kicking a lot of ass with an decapitating axe and a crossbow - yet she never comes across to me as a Mary Sue. She has her fatherly issues that torment her deep within, so she's not just one-dimensional.

+ It is gorgeous. Seriously, this has to be the best looking anime I've seen. Every shot and every scene has been delightfully given extra fine coloured and shading details that you rarely get elsewhere. The sunset sky looks amazing, as are the trees and the fauna that sway in the wind. The people in charge of the animation have done a fantastic job with all this, and it's a tremendous step-up in terms of visual quality.

+ The interesting blend of humour and then mild, grim horror. Sometimes you get so used to the two being interspersed with one another, that you cannot really tell which one is about to hit you when the scene zooms in to an empty spot, a wall, or a mirror. Then when it decides to throw some mild horror at you, it's powerful. It's not very horrific, and is really mild, but the technique they use to slam the horror into your face after the viewer is used to some of the mundane and light comedy in the five minutes beforehand is very effective.

+ Most of the voice acting is very competently done and convincing, especially Yōko Hikasa who voices Maya. I say most, because there is one character whose voice makes me want to strangle a kitten.

+ Good imaginary use of yuma beasts and malevolent spirits and mythological entities such as lamies as the initial "villains", while another villain(s) is/are observing the situation. Perhaps sometimes they could crank up the horror factor rather than resorting to black amorphous shapes with glowing red spheres for eyes. Actually, there was a scene where Maya is being strangled by a rotting corpse in her own lodgings. That was well designed.

+ Speaking of designs, the character designs are lovely. Even the weird JK, who isn't actually as OTT as I initially thought he was. In fact, for an occult manic and a music fan, it actually fits. Maya on the whole, is relatively modest, sans the times when part of her thighs are emphasised in a few shots or so, and she doesn't need to rely on blatant fan service to be of any use to the story.

CONS

- Mikaze. Seriously, her voice is so unnaturally high-pitched. It's like if a man tried to do a high-pitched voice, then a woman tried afterwards to do the similar forced, awkward sound. Sometimes she sounds nasally to me, as if the voice actress held her nose. As for her role so far, it's practically...not much. She and Bunmei fall for one another, and it's a silly love-love scenario that takes a few episodes to develop. Buuuut, I suppose it's not out of left field and is convincing enough. But in a series with so few episodes, you don't simply introduce new characters for little reason. I bet she's going to be like the "final villain" or something.

- This whole 2012 apocalypse thing is so weirdly relegated to the background. I know that as a time agent Bunmei is in 1999, so he's temporarily escaped from his present day, but his mission is to stop the impending apocalypse by destroying the Nostradamus Key, but despite that, there's little actual urgency. No, Bunmei is just being driven around by Mikaze, which I suppose I should cover in the later review as part of his character flaws. The apocalypse is a very big plot point, and the world is apparently doomed, yet it seems so inconsequentially in the background, while more mundane issues are being tackled.

- The plot is starting to lag. It started off really well, establishing the characters and the world, but now it's getting a little dull. Like I said, Bunmei is being driven around by Mikaze, and the characters are just facing off against various yuma beasts and evil spirits in two-episode arcs. It's already slowed down and I worry that it would suddenly suffer from pacing later on as it approaches the end.

- Okay...what the hell, Chihiro? At first, you seem like the typical stern woman who acts as the vice-principal, then you seem to be eager to take down Maya, now you're...lovesick. Over Bunmei. Like a schoolgirl. I dearly hope this doesn't define her character, and that she and Mikaze do something useful in the story. Seriously, Bunmei? The guy barely has any balls anyway and can't even bend spoons anymore.

...that was longer than I anticipated. It's not even my full review because I still have 9 episodes to go. :gasp:
 
Yes, I know. Double post. But I did say I would follow up with the actual review.

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Review of: Occult Academy
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Occult Academy, if I have to start from somewhere, is one of the three Anime no Chikara projects by Aniplex. Like the earlier two projects, Occult Academy is a short animation project, clocking up 13 episodes, fitting in its storyline and world concisely into these 13 episodes. I have received word also that NIS America plans to dub this series into English for its American Blu-Ray release sometime in May this year. It will probably not be a dub, but a simple subtitled fare, which is perhaps just as well, with the heavy Japanese pronunciations that an American actor would be making a fool of himself of herself with.

The first place to start in an anime review would of course, be the story. The main setting of Occult Academy as one would imagine, is centred in the fortress-like Waldstein Academy in the year 1999, an educational institution on the outskirts of a quiet Japanese rural village. Its locals see Waldstein as an overly eccentric place. It openly embraces the occult in its curriculum, and its 24 floors house an array of oddities, from preserved brains (of creatures both human and...probably not very human) to a special capsule machine that gives the subject a near-death experience. It is little wonder therefore, that this school is also dubbed the Occult Academy, which makes one wonder: do parents actually willingly send their kids here for the entirety of their educational lives? I mean, this school covers elementary school to university level!

Story

In a prologue scene, a man, who is referred to as an "Abe Minoru" No. 5 is seen frantically and desperately fleeing from something in the darkened woods in the night. The creature chasing him appears to be called a tengu, a UMA. He contacts a crew in a bunker headquarters, requesting for a teleport. Though the crew successfully activate the teleport beam, the agent is unable to return in time as the tengu tears him apart, leaving only part of his arm to successfully return to the present day, 2012.

The story properly begins with Maya Kumashiro arriving late to the funeral of the school's Principal Junichirou Kumashiro, who turns out to have been her father. The audio-taped final message that the late Principal recorded inadvertently chants a spell that summons a malevolent lamia spirit into the academy, possessing the corpse of Junichiro and forcing him to attack. Maya at this moment in time, expresses her contempt for what she deems to be the foolishness of this school's occult obsession and labels the event a staging, accusing Vice-Principal Chihiro Kawashima for her part in it, when she too is attacked by her possessed father.

Maya's contempt and hatred for the occult is made clear to her close friends in the academy Ami (her childhood friend from elementary school), Kozue (an occult-obsessed bespectacled girl), JK (the eccentric, large-sized, punk rocker-like student with spiritual dowsing rods he is constantly seen with) and Smile (a mechanic with a giant wrench who is apparently proficient in combat). However, Maya displays an incongruous expertise in the legends of the occult, and she demonstrates this when she permanently defeats the lamia. The lamia reads her inner sadness and weakness, and uses this against Maya, but she slays the spirit by beheading her possessed father. To Maya, her father was the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the occult. It changed him, stripped him of his sanity, and it psychologically hurt her as little girl.

The final will and testament of the late Principal bestows Maya with the position as headmistress of the academy. With her new authority, Maya seeks to destroy the very thing that her father's obsession with the occult fostered - the school itself. The arrival of Fumiaki ("Bunbei") Uchida however, would quickly change not only Maya's goal, but everything. A mobile phone drops near Maya, and she quickly claims it, and not too long afterwards, a time gate appears to open before her, horrifying her. A mysterious naked man in goggles emerges, and Maya instantly takes an unliking to this mysterious stranger. In her lodgings, Maya inspects the phone she had found and noticing a camera function (how many mobiles in 1999 had a camera feature anyway?), she takes a snapshot of herself in the mirror only to see an image of a skull. To her dismay the next time, Bunmei joins the staff as a history homeroom teacher.

Bunmei urgently requests the return of his phone, and Maya furiously attacks him, only momentarily stopping when Bunmei explains to her that the phone is no ordinary 1999 mobile phone. He is an agent - No. 6 in fact - sent to the year 1999 from the year 2012 to find and destroy what is called the Nostradamus Key by 21 July 1999. It was the 21st July 1999 that saw apocalypse. A rift to another dimension had opened, and a vast armada of alien machines descended from the sky, destroying the world and leaving it in nothing but ruins by 2012. However, an insurgency aiming to recover their lost world developed a time machine system using the aliens' technology that would allow agents to go back in time.

Using similar technology, agents would receive unique mobile phones. To find the Nostradamus Key, one would need to take a snapshot of something. If the user imagines destroying this particular item they are taking a snapshot of, and the object turns out to be the key, they would see an image of a peaceful future. Otherwise, the object is what it would like in 2012. When Maya saw a skull in what should have been a picture of herself, it signifies the fact that she will be long dead in 2012.

Maya to begin with, struggles to believe him, and neither is she too particularly fond of Bunmei's cowardly personality. To her surprise however, she learns that this same Bunmei in the year 1999 had been a famous boy whose mother paraded him on TV with the ability to bend spoons at will. The present-day Bunmei however, has ceased to possess that ability. That night, Maya is attacked by an evil spirit that attempts to kill her to get her out of the way for some reason, when a book with magical spells left by her father is revealed, protecting Maya and vanquishing the spirit. Seeing this book, Maya begins to understand the need to find the Nostradamus Key and prevent disaster from happening. However, she is uninterested in seeking for Bunmei's help.

The string of two-episode arcs that follow primarily flesh out the secondary characters a bit more. Bunmei in a small eatery in the village encounters a teenage girl named Mikaze, and the two quickly fall for each other. In time, Bunmei and Mikaze would spend considerable time together, while Vice-Principal Chihiro also falls in love with Bunmei and begins to resent his relationship with Mikaze, to the annoyance of the suited agent who is plotting something with her. Bunmei and Maya are attacked by tengus who turn out to be mothmen, and the two attempt to navigate through a cave to escape them, when Bunmei notices the mobile phone left behind by No. 5, the previous "Abe Minoru" who had been eaten by a mothman. As they flee just in time, explosives go off, sealing the cave and the mothmen within, as Vice-Principal Chihiro and her agent have planned.

Kozue's character is given focus when she is partially trapped in the afterlife. When Bunmei dives in to save her, Maya catches glimpses of Bunmei's past - and one image sticks into her head. His mother slapping her son hard in the face for objecting to his televised exploitation. Maya's own father had too smacked her once, and the parallels are clear. Both their parents had been driven irrationally obsessed. She garners significantly more respect and care for Bunmei soon afterwards, and she agrees to search out for the Nostradamus Key with him. The episodes that follow are filler. Ami's father attempts to reignite Maya's love for the occult which fails, and leads to Maya and Ami renouncing their friendship. When Maya saves Ami from chupacabras, this is resolved. Afterwards, a seance summons up the spirit of a lost 7 year old named Akari. Maya and her friends are able to let this spirit rest in peace soon afterwards.

While the fillers have been happening, Bunmei and Mikaze have been spending considerable time together, with Mikaze growing more and more forward with her seductive-like tendencies. Maya, noticing this, grows considerably annoyed with him yet again, reminding him of their mission. Mikaze as expected really isn't what she appears to be. Her seducing of Bunmei has been a ploy to allow her to get closer access to Maya's talisman book and destroy it. Maya fakes her death with the help of Vice-President Chihiro and the agent, both of which were helping Maya all along, in the hopes of throwing their true enemy off course. Unswayed however, Mikaze reveals herself to be a Black Mage, stuns Bunmei, leaving him petrified with shock and betrayal, and ignites the book into flames.

The agent transforms into a flying jaguar and attempts to escort Maya away to safety. Mikaze battles Chihiro, who is a proficient White Mage, and reveals to her opponent that the spirits and UMA creatures that suddenly appeared when Maya arrived at the academy were from her magic. At the same time, Ami and the rest attempt to flee from a band of possessed townsfolk donned in black KKK cloaks and torches. Maya lands in the academy roof as the black jaguar she had been riding on dies. By then, Chihiro dies from her sustained injuries, yet found the strength to revive Bunmei and transfer her knowledge of the sealing spell to him. Bunmei is able to help Maya confront Mikaze. Maya's snapshot of Mikaze lying on Bunmei reveals Nostradamus Key, thinking that Mikaze herself had been the key all along! Mikaze's attempts to kill Bunmei are unsuccessful and with the combination of the pair's chanting, the sealing spell successfully destroys Mikaze, sealing away her UMAs and cancelling out her magical brainwashing as well.

Bunmei rejoices and reports to 2012 that the future is now saved, with the Nostradamus Key finally destroyed. To his horror, it turns out that Mikaze wasn't the key, and the future is still as it is! They quickly realise however, that the key (not a real thing as it seems, but more of an abstract apocalyptic trigger) is in fact Bunmei himself! Or rather, Bunmei meeting his younger self. Maya beforehand however, had already invited Bunmei's mother to the academy's closing ceremony. Bunmei throughout the series has had the emotional urge to see his mother again despite the lack of fond memories with her. Unfortunately, Bunmei's mother's presence would also mean the presence of his younger self. If the two meet, a rift in reality would open and spill forth the aliens in the first place.

Maya cancels the ceremony to the disgust of Bunmei's mother, who angrily storms off. On the 21st July however, young Bunmei had wandered away to the academy, impressed by the institution, leaving his horrified mother seeking in vain to find him. Before Bunmei could return to 2012, Maya stops him, pleading for him to stay instead, but unable to truly carry across her feelings for him. It is too late however. The two Bunmeis encounter each other and the rift opens, and an armada of alien robots emerge. Bunmei regains the lost psychokinetic abilities from his younger self and manages to send the alien robots back through the rift, dragging himself into it with them. The rift closes and Maya walks off hand in hand with the younger Bunmei.

In the end, it appears that Junichirou Kumashiro never did die, and that his "death" was a magical trick also used to try and throw their true enemy off. In 2012, Junichirou has become the commander of the insurgency and once the future has changed, he is astounded and lost by his new surroundings, receiving a call from his daughter Maya to head home and have tea with her and the younger Bunmei, who by then, has reached the same age as the older Bunmei.

Story analysis

Let me get something off my chest first. I can buy the apocalyptic thing. I can buy the idea that one meeting his or her past self can trigger a space-time rift colossally able to tear apart the very normal fabric of the world, but why have they opted for aliens? I know alien robots can fit in with the occultist theme of the series, but it’s just odd. As magic comes into predominant play, it makes little sense to see such an arbitrarily-tacked on sci-fi element to the show. I didn’t come in expecting Code Geass or anything, though fortunately, I suppose the sci-fi element is largely kept quiet, relegated to the background so the real font of the game’s supernatural existence, UMA beasts, spirits and dark magic are given the actual foci.

Yet it is this background relegation of the sci-fi that raises another fundamental issue for me. We’re talking about the apocalyptic annihilation of much of the human race here, yet the writers have managed to make this seem so inconsequently unimportant towards the middle of the series. Instead, we have more mundane things to think about, like throwing a Christmas party for a deceased little girl. Where’s the urgency by the middle point of the series? Bunmei, the agent who is tasked with preventing apocalypse to begin with, is smitten by Mikaze and appears to enjoy nothing more than visiting the eatery where she works in to receive a plate of his favourite dish: curry. He admits early on that the time limit for finding the Nostradamus Key and destroying it is short, yet appears to put to the side that fundamentally important task by the middle. Heck, Maya ends up being the more proactive of the two. This links in with something else I predicted - and correctly so –from relatively early on: the pacing.

The first couple of episodes in terms of pacing seemed adequate enough, in establishing the setting, Maya, Bunmei and the rest of the characters. From the third episode onwards however, the show sticks to a string of two-part episode arcs where something peculiar happens in each of them, and the characters seek to figure out what the anomalies are, and how to tackle them. It would take them two episodes to do so. Episodes 3 and 4 focus on the mothmen kidnapping people to transform into their brethren; 5 and 6 focusing on Kozue’s partial entrapment in the afterlife; 7 and 8 see the friendship between Maya and Ami strained, but resolved after chupacabra pack attacks, while 9 and 10 feature the characters seeking to put to rest the lost spirit of a deceased young girl. It is only from the 11th episode that the final part of the story begins to kick in and in my opinion, it is conspicuously too late by then.

The pacing really begins to fall apart by then. Despite the 11th episode labelling itself as Maya’s death, her seeming death barely lasts for more than five minutes before it is revealed to have been a fake. Mikaze suddenly reveals herself to be a lot more than she seems, all in the space of half an episode, and it is particularly jarring to the viewer when contextually in terms of the plot, this feels completely out of left-field. I’ll get to this when I analyse her character in more detail. Chihiro and her suited agent reveal everything as well; Maya suddenly reveals that they have been protecting her from the beginning – the sudden, enormous revelations come smashing into the viewers’ faces almost at once, and there is little preparation, little room to breathe. It seemed obvious to me that by that point, the writers were rushing. The sudden rapidness of the pace smacks of a degree of script abridging, and this carries on until around the final episode: 13. It is difficult to praise the pacing in this series, when much of it had been slow before the sudden rush.

This isn’t to say that the two-part mini-arc middle episodes have had nothing substantial happening. We do see the characters of Ami and Kozue fleshed out a little with some good interactions with the other characters and focus. It’s pretty bog-standard material and nothing to write home about. It just means that they at least have character. This is more than what I can say for JK and Smile, who haven’t exactly received all that much focus at all. They play only modest roles and are delegated with perhaps only a few lines each per episode on average. Maya and Bunmei clearly develop during those slow episodes, and the most notable development Maya receives is being able to empathise with Bunmei once she catches a glimpse of his exploited self in his past.

Episodes 9 and 10 stand out to me out of the “filler” episodes in terms of the emotional edge that this show – what people commonly call a gothic comedy – isn’t afraid to delve into. Is it erroneous to call this a gothic comedy? I would argue so, because it never actually struck me as a comedy, just a supernatural fantasy anime series with plenty of humour served now and then. The show tugs at your heartstrings quite regularly, with mixed successes. 9 and 10 were emotional because it’s the story of a lonely 7 year old girl called Akari. Her parents split up, her father never free to spend time with her – or even properly cook for that matter – and he openly denied the existence of Santa Claus to her. In defiance, Akari sat outside her door in the bitter blizzard waiting for Santa so she could show him where she lived, only to freeze to death. The reaction her ghost makes when she returns to that very door is chilling, yet horrifically melancholic, as is the saddened recounting of the story by her father.

Here is something I absolutely don’t understand. The insurgency in the future seeks to change the past by finding time agents to send to 1999 to find and destroy the Nostradamus Key. Mankind has yet to be truly wiped out and there are still pockets of civilians living in poverty and strife, yet the insurgency makes a big deal of…running out of time agents? Evidently, by choosing the cowardly Bunmei to be the sixth agent, they’re not too fussed about the qualities and training of their agents, but why is it that they seem so frantic when the 5th agent dies? “Only one agent left?!” So what? No one left to hurl into a time machine against their wishes? It’s not like Bunmei would have any sufficient qualities by then, as he could no longer bend spoons with his mind. Additionally, they seem extra worried that an agent may be running out of time as July 21st over in 1999 draws nearer and nearer. Why not simply recall him and resend him back to an earlier part of the year? Time travel stories often rely on principles such as the parallel concurrent passing of time between two different time periods.

Another thing that bugs me is the twist with the Nostradamus Key itself. The Key all along has been the meeting of Bunmei with his past self and the ripping open of a rift that would summon the aliens to this world in the first place. The two Bunmeis have never belonged to the school in the first place, and Junichirou realises this – the Nostradamus Key was never in, or part of the school. As commander of the insurgence in 2012, his order in sending Bunmei to 1999 in the first place ironically laid the first foundations for apocalypse to occur in the first place because the fabric of time is unable to sustain anything like this. We are therefore presented with this cycle – a circle loop in time. Yet I have absolutely no idea how this loop could have started to begin with. The insurgency has a time travel device! We assume that like the phones, the time travel device had been created using the reverse engineering of aliens’ technologies, but wouldn’t that mean in the continuum of events, the invading aliens from another dimension would have had to invade first to begin with…somehow? It’s one of these general bullshit and complicated things you get with stories that involve time travel. Thank goodness that in real life we currently lack the ability to manipulate the space-time continuum. How screwed up would life be then?

The ending to me, feels like another victim of the rushed pace. Flashes of crucial events happen before your eyes, and often it feels like you’ve little breathing space to absorb and take in everything that is happening in these short spaces of time. Yet in between, there have been some very well-produced scenes that despite being sandwiched among the conspicuously rapid pace change of the endgame that do manage to hold tension for long enough. For instance, the moment when the younger Bunmei runs into his future self, and the sheer horrified look that is maintained for at least 5 seconds on Maya’s face was beautifully done, despite the fact that the viewer could easily guess that the two Bunmeis would eventually meet.

The ending itself tones down on the dialogue, and does not rely as heavily on it for the powerful closing scenes. The animation would speak for itself: Maya’s composed yet clearly grief-stricken reaction to Bunmei’s sacrifice in order to seal the rift, and her father’s shocked and speechlessness in discovering what was essentially a new world to him – one of peace that he had not seen for 13 years.

Miscellaneous

I will save my rants for Chihiro and Mikaze in their respective character focus sections, though I do have other points not necessarily all about the story that I would wish to discuss. Firstly, there is an interesting running motif of anti-climax when it comes to this series. Often when the characters are confronted with various evil spirits and UMA beasts, events are often resolved rather quickly straight after the show hurls into our eyes the idea that: OH NO, EVERYONE IS IN A PINCH! Then, barely a minute or two later, it’s resolved and usually through low-key means, such as a single fatal shot to the back of a flesh-eating giant chupacabra from behind.

I love how unafraid this series is in giving us an anti-climax as part of its goal in trying to misdirect and throw off the viewers’ initial expectations and anticipations. I also love how the obvious deus ex machina that saves Maya in the 2nd episode was clearly designed to be a carefully-planned deus ex machina even in the context of the story, as set up by Junichirou.

Wait, speaking of the deus ex machina magic book, it’s only ever used like, twice! YOU HAVE A MAGIC BOOK, WOMAN! YOU’RE PRACTICALLY UNBEATABLE WITH IT, SO WHY WERE YOU INEFFECTIVELY TRYING TO SHOOT CROSSBOW BOLTS AT MOTHMEN BEFORE PROCEEDING TO FLEE FROM THEM?!

Originally, I made a big point about the horror that is cleverly amalgamated in with humorous scenes, so that when they do decide to flash on the screen something that is mildly horrific, it effectively catches the viewer off guard. Since the early episodes however, there have barely been anymore instances of moments like this – such as the unexpected skull and bones of Maya’s future remains showing up on the mobile phone screen and the flash of the evil zombie-like spirits’ mostly-skull-partially-fleshed face as it is attempting to strangle Maya to death.

It’s a bit of a shame. For a show with its premises revolving around the occult, malevolent spirits and UMA creatures, they could have gone to town a little further with the mild horror thrown in there every now and then. In fact, the show actually decides to stop trying with the sly and mild little bits of horror as the episodes progress, and overall it feels like an overall missed opportunity. Still, no one was going to come in to Occult Academy and expect an adult-rated horror anime – certainly not. It just could have been more consistent with it from the 3rd episode onwards.

Visuals

Occult Academy is perhaps the best looking anime I’ve seen yet. The designs get a positive response, if uninspired and samey. Maya’s design is simple, and straight down to the point, though she only ever wears like, two things in the entirety of the 13 episodes. Those piercing blue eyes in contrast with her black hair are clearly her most distinguishing physical features. You can easily tell that the budget for the Anime no Chikara project must have been extensive, because Occult Academy just looks so damn good.

Shots are packed with high definition detail, fantastic lighting and are well-placed and timed so that virtually every shot counts, and cleverly used. I admire the fact that even the quick shots are given as much love and detail, despite how expensive that must have been. They handpicked excellent animators for this series. Facial expressions are fantastically drawn, and Maya looks absolutely convincing when she’s been out in the rain, with each visible raindrop and the effect of the rain on her hair.

Music

I’ve not actually much to say about the musical score. Nothing was used inappropriately and out of place with the context of the scenes at the time, yet nothing really captivated me about the music. The opening song “Flying Humanoid” was kind of…there, though the opening animation is just awesome. I actually hated the ending song “Kimi Ga Iru Basho” because of Ayahi Takagaki’s noticeably high-pitched voice that seemed to irritate me for some reason, but the song itself managed to grow on me, though oddly because I was listening to the male cover of it.

Characters

+ Maya – I absolutely love Maya. Everything about her just ticks the right boxes for me, and it’s perhaps easy to see why that is the case. Immediately what I notice about Maya is the fact that she is a tsundere-type character. I know this trope has already been done to the death in Japanese fiction, but I love tsundere-types, so you can see why I would immediately love Maya. I also love her character because she actually has character other than regularly pelting things at Bunmei for his lack of a backbone in the earlier half of the series. She isn’t some two-dimensional person who takes no bullshit. As I will try and convey in the Ami subsection, Maya is a lot more down-to-earth than that, while she possesses her own inner form of conflict that ties in with the compassionate side of her. Namely, she has little fond memories of what an obsession with the occult had done to her father, as it did drive him insane briefly enough to physically smack Maya once as a child. When she sees Bunmei’s mother in a similar state of obsession (in this case, in the fact that her spoon-bending son was laying golden eggs for her) which led to her slapping Bunmei as a child, and the few fond memories Bunmei has of his mother, it hits her extremely potently. Maya’s character development is very commendably executed. She learns to believe, trust in and even home feelings for Bunmei, a man of whom she could barely tolerate, trust nor work with in the beginning. With the help of her friends, Maya certainly shows herself to be an equally as down-to-earth person, and through them, learns to reaccept the occult, and also the side of her as a kid that was really interested in the occult. Ultimately, she grows to accept her father, learning of what he did for her, as – how I interpreted – an act of penance by a loving father.

+ Bunmei – Unsurprisingly, his character is the direct antithesis to Maya. He is nowhere near as expressing as Maya is in terms of words, let alone through violent, physical means. In addition, he begins as a cowardly individual, who would attempt to try and mask this trait by lying to Maya and claiming himself to be a cocky and confident “Abe Minoru” agent to mitigate his clear character flaws. Despite the fact that he easily screws up, as seen in his debut, where he finds himself cast into a space-time storm that somehow strips him totally naked sans his goggles, he is perceptive, and often given too little credit for certain things. His progression is perhaps rather standard for an anime character of these particular tropes, and it is perhaps unsurprising to see him grow from a cowardly individual with low self-esteem to someone able to recognise his ability in fulfilling the crucial mission he is tasked with. What I like about Bunmei is the extra depth he is given. This is a conflicted man, whose present day is one of death, destruction and suffering. Yet he is forced to return to the halcyon days of before the apocalypse to fulfil this crushingly crucial task. It is only natural that he develops a longing for his childhood days when everything seemed so much better, and for a caring and motherly presence, even if he has unpleasant memories of his mother. His abrupt loss of childhood is represented by his lost psychokinetic abilities, and therefore he can no longer bend spoons. His longing for someone to pour his compassions to, and for compassion to be mutually returned to him is actually understandable, hence his feelings towards Mikaze, despite how much that love subplot annoyed me in slowing down the show’s main overarching story. It is understandable also to see how destroyed he seems when Mikaze clearly rejects his sincere feelings and used Bunmei for her own advantage, as did his mother in a way when she exploited her son for fame and money. Yet admirably, he soldiers on and fights with Maya anyway, throwing himself willingly into the front lines and even giving his own future up for the sake of everyone’s future. That there ladies and gentlemen, is a true hero.

+ Ami – Ami has been Maya’s best friend when they were in elementary school together, and I interpret her importance as (aside from also being one of Maya’s current best friends!) helping bring Maya down to a more ordinary kind of plane. What I mean by this is, Maya is constantly shown to be different from everyone else, being the daughter of the seemingly late Principal, as well as being the current Principal of the school by will. The interactions between Maya and Ami – as well as the focus given to their friendship – brings Maya down to the more relatable level, where we can see her to be just as ordinary as her peers, and it negates the initial idea that Maya is just one cold, aloof and friendless tsundere-type character. Ami is admirable, though perhaps slightly naïve in her staunch defence of her father, even willing to go against Maya in order to do so, which provides us with a taste of the fact that she isn’t some mere support type character lingering in Maya’s shadow and cheering her on. She also actively challenges Maya’s initial hatred for the occult, which helps us to see more of Maya as a character.

+ Kozue – I quite enjoyed Kozue. Sure, there isn’t much I can say about her. Like Ami, she too is keen to instil and revive that love for the occult that she clearly suspects to still be a part of Maya despite her vicious denunciations of it in the beginning. Unlike everyone else, Kozue takes her obsession with the occult to another level, and this is humorously reflected in the fact that she is usually the first to be attacked by a malicious UMA creature or a brainwashing cult – in the latter instance, actually joining in with them, how very Kozue-like! It’s like the show is very subtly satirising the most die-hard of believers of things. However, her importance in the story is hard to say- I don’t think she was really that important at all, and her focus arc was primarily used so that Maya can see flashes of Bunmei’s past.

+ Smile – Smile, like JK, is barely given any focus, and is arguably the blandest of the characters, because although I know he does have lines of dialogue, I can barely remember at all anything he says. I can barely even remember what he does, other than be a mechanic and acting as a strongman at the same time, with his giant wrench doubling up as a battering ram and/or a club.

+ JK – My problem with JK is…we barely know much about him either. Neither he nor Smile receive much in the way of focus at all, and as such, they’re mandatory allies to crank up the numbers. This isn’t to say that JK is useless. Au contraire, his love for punk rock, playing the keyboard and his obsession with tracking things with his dowsing rods help IMMENSELY. Shockingly immensely!

+ Mikaze – It’s a clever ruse to turn someone so seemingly innocent and harmless into the main antagonist of the series who is actually astonishingly powerful capable of killing her white mage counterpart. However, this ruse fell flat to me in its execution. Mikaze’s sudden revealing of her powers and true nature are totally from out of left field, and it is barely ever hinted at that Mikaze is more than what she seemed. The viewer would only suspect Mikaze for the simple fact that a short 13-episode show like this must have some fundamental reason for adding in a random character other than for a really cheesy love subplot. The love subplot bugged me, because it was one of the major ways in which the show relegated the CRUCIAL TASK OF FINDING THE NOSTRADAMUS KEY to the sideline and instead gave us this love subplot focus as well as the other material in the two-episode arcs which slowed the plot down considerably. Of course, the subplot was used to demonstrate the seductive powers of Mikaze, but by this time, it seemed way too late. Mikaze had long been shown to be this innocent and stereotypically sweet and perfect girl with an irritating high-pitched, nasally voice, then suddenly she turns out to be the main villainous all of a sudden- 9 episodes later after her debut to be on screen for around fifteen minutes. I had already lost all of my interest and any kind of investment in this character earlier.

+ Chihiro – I have major problems with our Vice-Principal/white mage. One of the problems appears to revolve around the feeling that the writers had very little idea of what to do with her. Her personality is just all over the place. She is often shown to be a very stern, serious and focused individual whenever she needs to be, yet at other times, it’s completely thrown out of the window. That side of her completely changes – often inappropriately abruptly – to one of an obsessed schoolgirl, squealing and fantasising about Bunmei, clearly eager for him to make tender love to her, and she even writes cringingly cheesy poems about him. And that comes out of nowhere. Her obsession for Bunmei suddenly happens. I could barely even remember the other side of her anymore, sans the times when the suited agent is with her, and her character to me is dominated by that stupid, vapid, schoolgirl-like obsessive side of her that is completely and utterly stupid. It does not work with her! It butchers what should have been a sinister (in a misleading way) and imposing character. WHAT WAS THE POINT OF IT? We’re supposed to believe that she is this powerful white mage, a loyal subordinate to the two Principals of the school and the antithesis to Mikaze/Black Mage, but ugh, this moronic side of her bugged me incessantly, and it still does. It was like the writers totally had no idea what to do with her in the middle and just wanted to build some pointless suggestive ideas with a poorly-done love triangle.

Conclusion

There is a lot to enjoy about Occult Academy. Sure, there is unequal emotional investment and focus when it comes to the characters, but Maya and Bunmei have both been powerful and striking characters, and certainly memorable even with the familiar anime character tropes at work. The series is absolutely gorgeous in visuals and the sheer love the animators must have put into this project is certainly noticeable. Watching each individually crafted frame work with the perfect shots and perspectives is an absolute pleasure, and going back to older animations after watching this would certainly seem a significant downgrade in animation quality.

I wish I can say the same for the writing. The writing certainly has its very strong points, and I identified this with my analyses of Maya and Bunmei for instance, and what they mean to me, yet it is also downtrodden with things I absolutely had to object with. You will notice the pacing of the overarching story suffer towards the end. It suddenly goes from a long period of slowness to a rapid streak that is exceptionally difficult to not notice. It does wrap up the story nicely, but the fact that it feels so rushed in the endgame chapter to get there leaves a considerable amount to be desired for. My personal grips are with Mikaze and Chihiro, and the fact that the overarching story does come to a startling halt towards the slow middle.

Characters suddenly forget about the HUGELY IMPORTANT QUEST TO FIND AND DESTROY NOSTRADAMUS KEY (the whole blinking APOCALYPTIC ASPECT is often relegated to the BACKGROUND!) and suddenly seem more focused on the more mundane things like throwing a Christmas party for a deceased little girl. Don’t get me wrong. I loved the emotional edge of that mini-arc, but…PRIORITIES!

3/5
 
^ you didn't have to write such a long review about Occult Academy xD, it's pretty much average, had potential to be better but still average.

Hajime no Ippo - Episode 1 - 35
Alright, first of all, I've watched 35 episodes in a day and a half, that's how awesome I thought this anime was.

Hajime no Ippo is a sport anime about boxing, the protagonist is somewhat a wimpy highschool student who gets bullied, one time a boxer saves him and takes him to his boxing gym due to the protagonist falling unconscious, he tries to cheer him up by imagining the sand bad as a bully and teach him how to throw a straight punch, that's when it all begins for Ippo.

I have to say this anime is very WELL DONE, now since it's a boxing anime I think I'd only recommend it for guys. This anime has it all, it gives you an idea on what is boxing in such an interesting way, it just gets me pumping every time, I really enjoy each of Ippo's fights and also the training's episodes are very fun to watch. Truly, a very remarkable show I've come across by accident to kill my boredom, and god how lucky I am to discover a show that's one of top 10 favorites now!
 
eureka seven pocket full of rainbows

i have not finished this movie but im actually really into it. i like the way rentons and eurekas relationship start off at in the story and how the characters from the series play different roles in the movie. pacing seems really fast but being a movie i guess its justified. i hope the ending turns out good and by good i mean sad and by sad i mean i hope the mains dont get what they want. tragic endings i find to be the most memorable but knowing this anime thats not going to happen.
 
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