Anime Review Roundup

How long do you think it’s reasonable to wait for a company to resume releasing a series before giving in and importing it? Manga Entertainment released the first two seasons of The World God Only Knows, so it would have been reasonable to expect them to release the rest of the show as well. I gave them four years before importing The World God Only Knows OVAs, and its follow up series, so they better not complain about lost sales now. Although you might forgive them given how niche a show this is, about a reclusive gaming addict whose facility with dating games gets him contracted to a demon, hunting loose souls that take up residence in the hearts of heartbroken young girls. He has to romance them to release the souls for capture. It’s a delightful premise, and the only sticking point is that these OVA episodes are necessary before watching the third season.

No problems with missing bits in the Little Busters franchise, as MVM are releasing the lot this Spring. I’ve had mixed reactions to Key/Visual adaptations, the visual novels turned into anime, which combine a little romance, light comedy drama and supernatural mystery. Clannad was a great series with an utterly disappointing ending. Little Busters on the other hand turned out to be a comparatively mediocre series, but it gets a well-deserved and coherent conclusion in its final series Little Busters Refrain. Click on the review to see why it works so well.

The Sky Crawlers. I’m in a mood for re-evaluation these days, and I took another look at The Sky Crawlers, the Mamoru Oshii animated opus that followed up his Ghost in the Shell: Innocence. Back when I first saw it, I watched it with Innocence in mind, and couldn’t help comparing the two, thinking that it was just as pretentious, bloated and self-indulgent. How wrong could I be? I was right in one thing though. This isn’t a movie that you watch last thing at night when you’re liable to drift off. It has some action movie trappings, with aerial dogfights and some great animation, but it isn’t an action movie. And unlike Innocence, it doesn’t wear its philosophy on its sleeve, with characters quoting at each other at a hundred words a minute. This is very much a character piece, you learn about the movie and its story through their interactions, and the respective journeys they go on. The Sky Crawlers’ meditative, contemplative nature has much to say about humanity and our darker propensities. It’s well worth a second look.