It’s been one of those full weeks of anime reviews, and there should be something for everyone this week. Actually, everyone should give Noein: Collector’s Edition a try, a show that I loved when it was released on DVD, albeit somewhat contentiously in the UK, and it approaches perfection now that it’s out on Blu-ray. It’s a coming of age story, mashed up with parallel worlds sci-fi, with as rigorous an application of quantum mechanics theory as you can get without having to pull out Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time as a reference. That’s probably proof that some shows just can’t be pitched in a single sentence. Click on the review to see what the show is really about.
There’s more speculative fiction in A Lull in the Sea: Collector’s Edition, set in a world where people live both in the oceans and on land, and the two communities living side-by-side aren’t all that comfortable with each other. It’s more coming of age, slice of life antics, as the decline of the undersea community means that a group of children have to attend school on the surface instead. The usual friction and petty bigotry is to be expected, but it gets worse when feelings and relationships start happening. But that’s the least of this odd community’s problems. Fantastic storytelling and heavenly animation abound in this great show, and it gets a perfect collector’s edition release.
“From the creator of Elfen Lied” is all that you really need to know about Brynhildr in the Darkness. If you like that mish-mash tale of light harem comedy antics and bloody, gory, exploitative sci-fi action, then this will be right up your street. A bunch of girls with enhanced powers, and a built in death sentence escape from a lab, and find refuge with a high school boy that may or may not have history with one of them. Cue lots of violence and death as the evil research lab will do anything to contain their secrets and retrieve their property, and in between, there are plenty of boobies to look at.
It’s not just anime, y’know. Popular manga titles can also be adapted to live action, and if you want to take a break from all that animation, then Parasyte The Movie Part 1 might be an interesting option. It’s an adaptation of a sci-fi, body-horror manga from the 1990s, brought up to date for 21st Century audiences, which sees alien parasites coming onto land, infecting hosts, taking over their brains, subsuming their personalities and altering their bodies, all so they can feed on other humans. Then, as they start to get smarter, they start thinking about global conquest as well. The only hope the world has is a high school boy, who through sheer luck didn’t get parasitized, but instead wound up with a parasite in his hand. The two form a symbiotic relationship, learning from and depending on each other. Click on the review to read more.
This Week I’ve Been Mostly Rewatching...
The Adventures of Mini-Goddess. The short form anime certainly is alive and well these days, thanks to internet streaming on sites like Crunchyroll. But ten or fifteen years ago, when DVD was the only outlet for anime, the TV shows that we got in the West tended to conform to the half-hour format. That made The Adventures of Mini-Goddess a rare delight, a series made up of seven minute long episodes. It’s a spin off from the Ah My Goddess franchise, a harem comedy which had a hapless teen male falling in love with a goddess named Belldandy, and having her sisters Urd and Skuld move in as well. The Adventures of Mini Goddess wondered what the sisters did when Keiichi went to college during the day. The answer is that they shrunk down in stature, and had fun with their rat friend Gan-chan.
It’s very much a children’s cartoon, although its humour works well for middle-aged children as well. Elements might not pass OFCOM muster though, such as the episode where the rat and Urd get married, or the potential name of Urd’s rock band, Urd’s Drug Junkies, but generally it’s light-hearted fare with warm intentions. Here’s my review of Volume 1. MVM released The Adventures of Mini Goddess in four volumes back in 2005-6, and I don’t think that there was a complete collection. It is well and truly deleted now, but looking online I see that all four volumes are available second hand, and in some cases new as well.
MVM released A Lull in the Sea on Blu-ray Collector’s Edition last September and then subsequently released the show in two parts on DVD. All the Anime released Noein Collector’s Edition Blu-ray on March 28th. Brynhildr in the Darkness and Parasyte Part 1 came out on DVD and on Blu-ray last Monday from Animatsu.
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