Category Archives: Anime Reviews

Candy Boy (ONA) – Anime Review

By | July 27, 2009 at 1:00 pm | 2 comments

The Essentials

candyboyName: Candy Boy
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Episodes: 8
Aired: November 22, 2007 – May 8, 2009
Based On: N/A
Director: Takafumi Hoshikawa
Produced By: AIC
US Distribution By: Not Licensed

Cast

Character Japanese Cast English Cast (N/A)
Kanade Sakurai: Hitomi Nabatame
Yukino Sakurai: Ryoka Yuzuki
Sakuya Kamiyama: Emiri Katou
Shizuku Sakurai: Yu Kobayashi

Review

Candy Boy is about two fraternal twin sisters – Kana and Yuki Sakurai – who attend a private high school together.  They’re very close, holding hands often, and share a single room together, sleeping in the same bed even though they’ve been provided a bunk bed.  However, the twins, Kana especially, is often assaulted by their openly lesbian underclassman Sakuya who usually clings to Kana, comes up with various plans to try to set up dates and whatnot with Kana, and who begs for pictures of Kana from Yuki (much to Kana’s displeasure).

The love that Kana and Yuki share for each other is never really clearly defined outright.  It’s highly suggested that it is romantic in nature, but the two don’t really do any overtly “romantic” things (ie kissing, etc) even when alone.  The two many not even know what the nature of their relationship is like, as they clearly want to stay around each other and make plans to be with each other for the indefinite future, but at the same time don’t seem to struggle with other issues such as “how far they should go.”

The total amount of screen time for this show is pretty short – about 90 to 95 minutes all told over all 8 episodes.  However, despite this, the show does a reasonably good job at exploring the lives of the two sisters, though even given it’s length, it may start to grind on after a while for some.  The show also does a good job keeping fan service to an almost non-existent level despite the fact that, being a web animation and the topic at hand, they could have gotten away with quite a bit if they wanted to.

Overall, animation seemed to be pretty good, though the resolution of the episodes over torrent wasn’t exactly the biggest or the best quality, so a full evaluation of the animation is hard to do, but it appeared to be quite good.  The music didn’t seem to be anything special, but I guess was more good than bad.  Overall, if you want a quick watch with quite a bit of comedy, some drama, and nary a guy anywhere, then you might want to give Candy Boy a shot.

Scores

Story: 4/5
Animation: 5/5
Music: 4/5
English Dubs: N/A

Overall: 4/5

First Watched: February 2008 – May 2009
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: Yes

K-ON! – Anime Review

By | July 20, 2009 at 4:17 pm | 1 comment

The Essentials

k-onName: K-ON!
Genre: Comedy
Episodes: 13
Aired: April 2, 2009 – June 25, 2009
Based On: K-ON! manga by kakifly
Director: Hisako Yamada
Produced By: Kyoto Animation, TBS
US Distribution By: Not Licensed

Cast

Character Japanese Cast English Cast (N/A)
Yui Hirasawa: Aki Toyosaki
Mio Akiyama: Yoko Hikasa
Ritsu Tainaka: Satomi Satou
Tsumugi Kotobuki: Minako Kotobuki
Azusa Nakano: Ayana Taketatsu
Ui Hirasawa: Madoka Yonezawa
Nodoka Manabe: Chika Fujito
Sawako Yamanaka: Asami Sanada

Review

K-ON! is about a quartet of high school girls – Yui, Mio, Ritsu, and Tsumugi – who have banded together in order to save the school’s light music club.  However, while Mio, Ritsu, and Tsumugi already know how to play instruments (bass, drums, and keyboard respectively), Yui joins the club not knowing any instruments and not even really sure what to expect from the club.

What follows is a relatively humorous comedy.  The four girls (and later five) mix and match stereotypical moe pieces together to create a somewhat new set of characters.  However, K-ON! suffers from something which many series seem to: a show that has a good sounding premise and starts out strong, but then collapses near the end as the creators apparently couldn’t think of how to work the show after they set it up.

Perhaps if this show was a tad more on the serious side and was less focused on moe and outright goofyness, it would have been more successful.  I’m not saying it needed to be a drama in stead of a comedy, but a show about a light music club should probably either be a) about light music or b) use the club as a device to explore, well, something.  The problem is that we got neither of those in this series.  When you start virtually repeating episodes to the extent that K-ON! does (see: “band camp” episodes and concert episodes) in a 12 episode series, then there seems to be a problem.  Repeating episode ideas, i.e. going away for a training camp, isn’t necessarily bad in itself if things get mixed up when you do repeat it.  However, I never really felt that happened here.

That means that this series is driven entirely on humor.  Again, that in of itself isn’t necessarily bad as long as the humor can sustain the series.  However, after we get about halfway through, most of the humor is just a rehash of what we’ve already seen.  Yui somehow manages to play the guitar despite knowing nothing.  Mio is a shy scardeycat.  Ritsu likes harassing Mio.  Tsumugi is rich and likes bringing sweets.  The great bulk of the jokes in the entire show can probably be broken down into one of those 4 categories.

As is usual with Kyoto Animation, the animation is great, and the music, what there is of it, is pretty good too.  This show isn’t necessarily “bad” per se, and it may not be too bad of a watch for a 13 episode series, especially if you’re looking for a mindless comedy, but there are certainly more worthy series out there, especially given what this series could have been.

Scores

Story: 3/5
Animation: 5/5
Music: 4/5
English Dubs: N/A

Overall: 3/5

First Watched: April – June 2009
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: Yes (though barely)

Eden of the East – Anime Review

By | July 13, 2009 at 11:46 am | No Comments

eden_east_logo

The Essentials

Name: Eden of the East
Genre: Mystery, Comedy, Drama
Episodes: 11
Aired: April 9, 2009 – June 18, 2009
Based On: N/A
Director: Kenji Kamiyama
Produced By: Production I.G.
US Distribution By: Not Licensed

Cast

Character Japanese Cast English Cast (N/A)
Saki Morimi: Saori Hayami
Akira Takizawa: Ryohei Kimura
Juiz: Sakiko Tamagawa
Satoshi Osugi: Takuya Eguchi
Kazuomi Hirasawa: Motoyuki Kawahara
Mikuru “Micchon” Katsuhara: Ayaka Saito
Onee: Kimiko Saito
Haruo Kasuga: Hayato Taya
Daiju Mononobe: Atsushi Miyauchi
Kuroha Shiratori: Rei Igarashi

Review

Eden of the East is a mystery series regarding a man identifying himself as Akira Takizawa who turns up naked in front of the White House, and in the process saves a Japanese tourist there, Saki, who had gotten in trouble by throwing something over the White House fence.  However, Akira has no memories of the past and is in possession of only two things: a gun and a mysterious cellphone which says he has ¥8.2 billion ($82 million) on his phone and is answered by a girl named Juiz who appears to be able to do anything – for a price.

Soon, Akira finds out that he is a “Selecao” – one of 12 people seemingly randomly chosen by a man only known as “Mr. Outside” and given 10 billion yen with instructions to use it to save Japan.  However, only one Selecao – the one who is actually able to save Japan – can survive the game, with all the others being taken out by “The Supporter.”  The mystery deepens even further when the possibility that the Selecao are connected to the “Careless Monday” event that took place 3 months earlier, in which 10 missiles hit Japanese cities, but somehow no one was killed.

Eden of the East is done in an unusual style, at least based on most other shows I’ve seen, and thus can’t really be fitted very well into any pre-existing show “templates” out there.  I think this serves the show well as that allows it to keep the viewer on their toes as Akira delves deeper and deeper into the mystery of who the Selecao are and what involvement he’s had with them in the past.  The show picks up momentum right away and continues it all the way through to the end of the series – though, even though some major story lines are resolved in the series proper, the answers to some of the bigger questions are left for two sequel theatrical films.  Despite this, the series is still largely able to stand on it’s own even without the two sequel movies.

I think perhaps the biggest strength of this show is it’s characters, especially Akira, who has to deal with having to piece together who he is, what he has done, and why he has done it.  However, many of the other characters are also rather compelling to watch as well.

There appears to be very little to dislike about this show.  It has great animation, great music.  As I noted above, it seems to have a compelling story that it’s able to keep up all the way through the series.  It also mixes it’s comedy and drama aspects very well, and I don’t really recall any place where I thought the transition between comedy-centric parts of the show and drama-centric parts of the show was awkward.  Overall, I think this is an excellent show which many, many people could enjoy.

Scores

Story: 5/5
Animation: 5/5
Music: 5/5
English Dubs: N/A

Overall: 5/5

First Watched: April – June 2009
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: Yes

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