In seven short stories spanning just two volumes, Hiroki Endo’s Tanpenshu manages to weave a sprawling tapestry of human experience. After one story leaves us stewing in an emotional …
Unless you’re a newcomer to anime, you probably know the name Haruhi Suzumiya. The first series was widely recognized and soon became a cult classic in both eastern and western fandom.…
This is actually the second Birdy The Mighty anime, but you’d be forgiven for never having heard of it. Based on a short-lived 80s manga, the original OAV never made it to the UK, and was released…
Who is Astro Boy for? Osamu Tezuka, in his day, would have straightforwardly replied ‘for children’. But Dark Horse Comics’ edition, running to a monumental twenty-three…
My first experience with Gunslinger Girl was when someone at work imported the Japanese PS2 game developed by Marvelous Entertainment and played it over a few lunch times. It was an on-rails shooter,…
The release of Summer Wars at the end of March can’t come soon enough for some anime fans. It is, after all, the latest work from director Mamoru Hosoda who directed The Girl Who Leapt Through…
I have to admit I knew very little about 5 Centimeters Per Second when it landed on my doorstep. I knew it was a series of short stories a little over an hour in length, but that was about it. I decided…
In a futuristic city, a barrier of multi-coloured light know as the ‘aurora shell’ hangs constantly overhead. Twelve years ago in this city, a terrible disaster known as the ‘blast fall’ left …
Back in the 90s Manga Video (as this was the dark ages of VHS) made their name by selling 15 and 18 rated anime full of sex and violence. Memorably they used to add extra swearing to their dubs to obtain…
In New Port city everything, it seems, is connected. Information, like consumer technology, is everywhere. Almost everybody enjoys a certain level of cybernetic enhancement. Citizens sport…
As the fifth volume of this series left a great impression on me, I was excited to watch the last episodes of Desert Punk and to see how everything unfolds leading up to the finale. In the end it left…
How a series ends is important. Perhaps more important even than how it begins. The final moments of a show are key to how it will be remembered. It’s impossible to please all of the people …
If there’s one anime studio that I seem to be ignoring at the moment, it’s Gonzo – unless you count the multiple times I’ve seen Linkin Park’s music video for “Breaking…
It used to be that every male Japanese Otaku worth his salt wanted nothing more than to pilot his own giant robot. Then later it became their ultimate fantasy to be surrounded by a harem of adoring…
So here we are at the end of line, as the war between humanity and their enemies, the Shadow Angels, heads toward its conclusion! But before the final battle in the Shadow Angels’ realm of Atlandia,…
Beginning in 1985 as a graphic novel and continuing sporadically thereafter, Masamune Shirow’s tales of urban combat and political unrest in a hi-tech utopia have persisted in the affections…
Gainax have shown time and again that they can take a genre and create something that plays fast and loose with the rules and Mahoromatic is one such series. In this case, the show takes the conventions…
After a number of false starts and near misses, the past few years have finally seen the first Hollywood big-screen adaptations of anime and manga. However it hasn’t been the most audacious…
BALDR Force EXE is one of those peculiar beasts. Based on the plot of a Japanese video game series, you’d be forgiven for rolling your eyes and swiftly moving on, but there’s a good deal more to this…
When a show has such heavyweight talents behind it as those named in Aquarion’s opening credits, you can’t help but have high expectations for it.
Let’s get this thing straight from the word go:…
