One of my earliest posts criticized the Black Cat anime for cramming too much material in to too few episodes, as exemplified by its superficial development of Flora-chan, a dinosaur brought to life by advanced cloning techniques. I finally got around to reading Black Cat in its original form of matter. As expected, it was [...]

The Good: May be the most clever anime I’ve ever seen. The Bad: “Artistic” ugly. Annoying side characters. Entangling plot and metaphor. Coming too soon after Endless Eight. The main character talks too fast. Michael won’t shut up about it. Final Grade: +

Well played, Shinobu Kaitani, well played. Bringing Liar Game back from hiatus as soon as it got the Baka-Raptor Bump. A brilliant strategy befitting the creator of Liar Game. Or so I thought. Liar Game’s scanlating group announced it would delay the latest chapter of Liar Game in favor of some other manga I’d never [...]

I’ve seen way too many comedies try to get by on premise alone. This kind of crap is all over Adult Swim. There’s no creativity to keep you interested once the novelty of the premise wears off. The shows either keep trying to milk the premise long after it’s been beaten to death or resort [...]

Although I’ve never cared about anime seasons, I do occasionally get bored enough to take quick glance at season preview charts. A few years ago, a peculiar title in the top right caught my eye. Halted? Whatever for? I dug around to find this anime, but all I could find was the J-Drama. No sale. [...]

Another year, another END DAY. I initially dropped Kenshin back in the 20s. It was loaded with filler adventures I couldn’t bring myself to care about. Kenshin goes to the circus. Kenshin rides a train. It seemed that Kenshin quit his role as Battousai the Manslayer to become the Japanese Spot. Somehow my brother convinced [...]

Some say Rose of Versailles is as good as it gets. I say it has been better gotten. There’s one huge objective flaw that should keep anyone from giving RoV a perfect score. Most of the RoV characters are actual historical figures. Oscar is not. She’s not going to shoot the Duke of Orléans. She’s [...]

Nice color scheme Five things that sucked: 1. Sword Beams Sword beams in Zelda are weak and inconsequential. Check out Crystalis for sword beams done right: More than one type of beam Beams are stronger than standard slashes Multiple levels of beam strength Beams are necessary to progress through the game Beams look like fireballs [...]

I once put off watching Spice and Wolf because I assumed it was targeted at zoophiles. Then I put off watching the second season because I hadn’t watched the first season. Then I watched K-ON, the worst anime ever, and learned two things: 1. I don’t understand otaku fetishes at all. (Apparently it’s the ears [...]

Final Grade: ++ Now lets talk about everything that sucked. Spoilers abound. The vampires are sparkly and have feelings. Nice cleavage Natsuno looks too much like a girl, even for anime. His personality is too inconsistent, even for anime. He has too much implicit gay sex with his best friend, even for anime. Megumi’s attack [...]

That’s what I looked like when I watched it I heard all the hype. P&Sw/G was so hip and radical and antiestablishment and subverts tropes and doesn’t take itself seriously and is made by GAINAX. This had to be the best thing since Astro Boy. But before I could watch it, I had to figure [...]

Why 2009? I’m always a few seasons behind. See what I did there? Could my post order be any more strategic? If you’re not satisfied with that explanation, consider this: if this post only contained series from 2009 that I finished in 2009, it would include Queen’s Blade. This list only includes series. Movies, OVAs, [...]

I recently took a six-hour Defensive Driving class to get a car insurance discount. The instructor spent the whole class telling me that driving would get me killed, falsely accused of statutory rape, and escheat my life savings to the nanny state. Those being my three greatest fears, I spent the next few days driving [...]

I do all I can to keep my website family friendly. For example, I ‘m not watching this season’s offerings of incest, more incest, lingerie, and masochism. You won’t find nudity anywhere on this site (if you do, please tell me, because any nudity I handpicked must be fap-worthy). My site is 1000% sparking clean, [...]

When I first heard of High School of the Dead, I figured it’d be little more than a mildly entertaining anime-style remix of the same old zombie movies I’d seen so many times before. I was completely wrong. Something unexpected and very disturbing happened at the end of the first episode: I realized I’d never [...]

Today is October 1, a date of great significance in human history. No, I’m not talking about the Battle of Gaugamela, the beginning of Shinkansen service from Tokyo to Osaka, or even the Thrilla in Manila. I’m talking about the fateful day when savage war engulfed the world and civilization was destroyed: 1997, October 1, [...]

Back in the early days of my site, I wrote a post defending Kaavya Viswanathan during her plagiariasm scandal. In a nutshell, I argued that her book sucked so much that it couldn’t have been plagiarized. Well, it’s time to come clean with a little ethical scandal of my own: I hadn’t read the book—until [...]

You know that gay show about emo ninjas I stopped watching approximately two years ago? Well I recently decided to give Nabari no Ou another chance. Every so often I fumble a show, that is to say, I drop it unintentionally. Such was the fate of Nabari no Ou upon its licensing. I cared so [...]

Slam Dunk Originally aired: 1993-96 Began watching: 2004 Ran out of subs: 2004 Number of Episodes: 101 Episodes missed: 89-101 (training for the national tournament) Thoughts: Too many crappy jokes. At times it’s worse than Lucky Star, no exaggeration. Picking up the series during a filler stretch was painful. The game is portrayed fairly realistically. [...]

1. The final boss is the Qwaser of Gold The philosophers among you might appreciate the symbolism of gold being the ultimate evil and iron overcoming it. Productive people realize that gold is one of the most industrially useless elements on the periodic table. The Qwaser of Oxygen suffocated people. The Qwaser of Sodium caused [...]

With my eyes currently out of commission, I’ve had to ignore a lot of anime I’d otherwise carefully and diligently research before ignoring. Spice and Wolf II: She still has a tail – get over it. Basquash: Stupid title Revolutionary Girl Utena Movie: Why bother watching anything that’s open to interpretation? Evangelion Movies: All I’ve heard [...]

I started watching Mouryou no Hako back in 2008. The show was great. My eyes were great. Unfortunately, neither was meant to last. Subbing for the show quickly slowed to a halt. At the time I couldn’t believe that fansubbers were running from a lesbian murder mystery. Now I can’t blame them. I wouldn’t be [...]

Five things that sucked: 1. The Knife Your only move is a horizontal slash. Since when were AMV Hell videos this misleading? But Baka-Raptor, what about the cut scene knife commands? 2. Cut Scene Commands Cut scenes aren’t supposed to be interactive; they’re supposed to be a chance to sit back and enjoy the show. [...]

These days, picking anime with teenage female casts is like walking through a minefield. For every show that’s good on its merits, another show is called good because “it is what it is.” When nobody differentiates between the good and the bad, how am I supposed to avoid the crap? Whatever happened to standards? There’s [...]

Remember how Kure-nai couldn’t stop fucking around? Shockingly, in the greatest redemption story mankind has ever witnessed, the author of Kure-nai bounced back and wrote Denpa teki na Kanojo. This time he didn’t fuck around one bit. Just look at the cover. There’s rain…a girl with an umbrella…doesn’t look like anything special…and then— OH SHIT, [...]

Three things that sucked: 1. Para-Medic According to Wikipedia: Para-Medic is a FOX support team member who provides Naked Snake with surgical and medical information as well as general information on the local flora and fauna. I beg to differ. The true purpose of Para-Medic is to bombard you with verbose yet minimally insightful movie [...]

All it took for Queen’s Blade to win my endorsement was a single episode. Twenty-three episodes later, I’m doubling down. I wouldn’t watch Queen’s Blade if it had a shitty story. Forget for a moment the stereotype that hentai/ecchi/fanservice anime have flimsy plots. A plot that’s “not bad for an ecchi anime” still wouldn’t cut [...]

Seitokai no Ichizon chronicles the hijinks of a five-girl student council. Each girl represents a different fetish: one is a loli, one is a sadist, one is a tomboy, one is a pussy, and one is a male. Every day in the student council room, these five girls continuously screw around and drop references until [...]

Cromartie High School? Slice-of-life? Holy shit, that would kick ass! I would do anything to live in a world where it’s plausible, let alone ordinary, to go to school with a sentient robot, a sushi-making gorilla, and Freddie Mercury. Unfortunately, Cromartie High School is the least realistic anime I have ever seen. That’s not to [...]

I highly recommend that your first opinion be Snark’s, but if you want to be a bitch, you could read pretty much any other Shin Mazinger Z review on the internet, as they’re basically all the same. Whichever review you choose, make sure you read it exactly once—no more, no less. Now you’ll get an [...]

Five things that sucked: 1. Voice Acting Much of the dialogue was kind of clumsy, and this is coming from a guy who’s relatively accepting of crappy voice acting. Bear in mind, I’m not talking about the voices that are supposed to sound ridiculous. 2. The Demon Forms of Elvis, Shannon, and Belze All true [...]

Three things that sucked: 1. Not enough bosses God of War has only three real bosses: Ares, the Hydra, and the flaming bull. All other critical fights are against either a ton of standard enemies or a handful of slightly powered-up enemies. Nobody cares about the small fries. It’s the boss fights that make a [...]

Wow, another school-life comedy about a bunch of girls. The main character is a clueless transfer student. She’s also an orphan supported by a mysterious wealthy benefactor. Her only friend a back-talking puppet with a mind of its own (but not the kind that solves murder mysteries). And the student council she joins comprises a [...]

As you can infer from this kickass manga shot, I’m not trying to bullshit you about manliness like all those feminine hygiene commercials. If you buy anything that’s marketed as  “_______ for men,” you’re a tool. It’s just like X-treme marketing. Putting the same shit in a different container doesn’t make it suck less. I [...]

Five Things That Sucked: 1. The Viewable Battle Area One jump and she’s already partially off-screen Each battlefield is a huge loop (indicated in the bottom-right corner), yet all you can see at any given time is a small rectangular portion of it (indicated in the upper-right corner). It’s barely large enough to contain Gwendolyn [...]

“Onani means masturbation. And that’s what this guy is good at. Every day after school, he sneaks into the mostly unused girls bathroom on the 3rd floor, and masturbates. Until one day when he’s caught… This is a story of mistakes, redemption, and the choices made in between. It contains the very worst and best [...]

At least the English intro is bad enough to be good I want to like everything I watch. You might not get that impression from all the bashing I do on this site, but really, I give every show a fair chance. In fact, I probably try a lot harder than you (otherwise I wouldn’t [...]

Eikichi Onizuka and Ryuji Danma are the deadly duo, Oni-Baku (Demon Explosion), with the sole mission of losing their virginities. As they turn away from the gang life to accomplish this, old enemies resurface to haunt them, and new ones appear to take their fame. Before taking the women, Oni-Baku must first show their adversaries [...]

Glo the Legend recently described Asu no Yoichi as having “no god damn fucking cons.” Should you trust him? I can’t think of a reason not to, seeing as how he wrote a 100% truthful post about my trip to England. Calling Asu no Yoichi the BEST HAREM ANIME EVER may seem heretical—until you actually [...]

Just how boring is K-ON? Let’s put it this way: I paused episode 10 to rewatch an episode of Akikan. Akikan: Crappy animation, original jokes K-ON: Uncrappy animation, unoriginal jokes Winner: Akikan The jokes in K-ON are so stale that I’m forced to make up my own jokes to survive each episode. See 1:39-1:45 I’m [...]