It took me about 40 years and seven valiant attempts to finally enjoy anime. Whether I grew into it or the stories got better, things have been percolating along since 2004.

“Gangsta” Life

This is a gritty crime drama, set out in a town that is ruled by crime lords, so everyone is miserable all the time. It emotionally rains every day and life is very cheap. Welcome to “Gangsta” (“Gyangusuta”).

We are in the town of Ergastulum. It is not truly identified as such, but it had a Mediterranean feel to it, almost Italian. We follow the lives of two ‘handymen’, Nicolas Brown (far left) and Worick Arcangelo (right next to him). Many years ago, Worick had Nic as a personal bodyguard, but when Worick’s father stubbed out a lit cigarette in his eye (you did notice the eye patch, right?), Nic dispatched the family and they both went underground. You see, Nic is ‘special’.

He is known as a ‘Twilight’, a person with superhuman abilities, gained from the drug Celebrer. He is deaf and uses sign language to communicate, but reads lips well. They are dispatched to clean up the dirty jobs that a lot of the other crime families won’t even touch. The two ladies? At the far end is Alex Benedetto (Ally) who was working as a prostitute, but is saved by the two guys (she plied her trade in the alley just across from their office/apartment) not only from her life, but from her abusive pimp. The little girl is Nina and works for Dr. Theo, one of those back-alley doctors who patches up people after the rather numerous battles and helps get the Twilights their Celebrer.

The series details their lives in this gritty town and the machinations in place that seem bent on eliminating all the Twilights. Continue reading

Missed “Connection”

This was a rather confusing show, “Yosuga no Sora” (“Sky of Connection”), in that you were never really sure where the reality was, if what you were seeing was merely the overheated fornix of any of the characters or if it really was as it really was, which made things more disturbing than it had to be.

We start off with the tragically orphaned Kasugano twins (she, Sora; he, Haruka; both to the right). They travel to their grandparents’ countryside residence via train, hoping to reconstruct the shards of a shattered life. Two lonely souls, so physically alike, yet so spiritually divergent, that they are unaware of the challenges ahead of them. Sora is weak, frail since her birth, and so is predisposed to being reclusive and unrelentingly dependent on her brother for everything. Haruka is damaged emotionally, as he clings to memories of the past, hoping to find the strength he needs to protect his ailing sister and move forward towards a better, new world for them. Yeah, you already see the storm clouds on the horizon.

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That’s “Mister” To You

“Osomatsu-san” (“Mr. Osomatsu”) is a throwback show, something I have not readily encountered. The show originally ran from 1966 to 1967, in what would have constituted the First Wave of anime (and could have been shown on US television, when I had my initial encounter with anime back in 1964). It was everything you might recall from that time: flat or non-existent backgrounds, overly–broad characters, simple art design and pointless plots.

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“Black” As Midnight

If there are any folks out there that recall the series “Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse”, this series is the prequel to it. “Schwarzesmarken” (“Black Marches”) takes place 18 years earlier, across East Germany, when humanity thought they still had a chance to win. Let’s back it up a bit for the new ones.

In 1958, oddities were noted on the surface of Mars, but no one paid it any heed. These oddities got to the moon by 1967, got identified and the fight began. They landed on Earth in 1973 and things really took off. And who are they? They are the BETA, which stands for “Beings of the Extra-Terrestrial origin which is Adversary of human race”. I guess. I mean, we could have easily called them “Terrible, Ugly, Rapacious, Destroying Space-types”. Anyway, there are eight caliber of these BETA, but we usually see the Grapplers, Tanks, Soldiers and Lasers. They all can be destroyed, but their advantage is sheer numbers.

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Hand “Sample”

When you are a young youth, you have hopes and dreams and fantasies. One of them is that there will be a girl who likes you for you and you can have a lot of romantic events. Another is that you are needed to help people along, just by being you. Well, what if that came to pass? Thus is the plot idea for “Shomin Sample” (“Shomin Sample: I Was Abducted by an Elite All-Girls School as a Sample Commoner” orOre ga Ojōsama Gakkō ni ‘Shomin Sanpuru’ Toshite Rachirareta Ken”) and what a massive title that is for anything. Continue reading

You Have “Failed”

As of late, I have been running into a lot of fighting academy shows, where people of varying degrees of talents and abilities are shipped off to this particular institute or that particular school to hone their particular fighting skills, in that they may defend this country or do battle against other schools for honor and glory and taiyaki. It’s like being in “The Goblet of Fire” but without Cedric Diggory. (Hmmmm……….this is like déjà vu all over again). Much like “Sky Wizards”, “Asterisk War” and/or/perhaps/either “Bahamut”, this one, Rakudai Kishi no Kyabarurii” (“Chivalry of a Failed Knight” or “The Heroic Tales of the Failure Knight”) continues in that same vein. Continue reading