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Black Lagoon
Season 3 – Roberta’s Blood Trail
(5 episode OVA)

This sequel is basically more of the same as far as plot and characters go. Oh, and since it’s an OVA, we finally get to see some uncensored side-boob from both the titular maid and everyone’s favorite fanservice action girl, Revy. Wink

This sequel picks up right where the series proper left off, continuing the storyline of Roberta, the terminator-like maid, and her master, Garcia Lovelace. The thing about Black Lagoon is that it revels in its own grittiness, so while a story might have an otherwise happy ending, it usually still ends badly for someone or is at least bittersweet. So while Roberta successfully rescued her young master and the two of them went home, as it turns out, Garcia’s father got blown up in a clandestine anti-drug operation conducted by the US Army. Entirely innocent of anything, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now Garcia is the head of the small Lovelace family. This not only hits Roberta’s berserker switch, but it breaks it off in the “on” position, because she grabs an antique musket that symbolizes the Lovelace family and disappears, vowing to avenge this attack on the Lovelace family.

Fortunately for Garcia, he’s not left completely alone, as the Lovelace family apparently saw the need for a second assassin-trained maid, only this time she’s a moé-ish loli, just to make sure all the fetish bases are covered. Since Garcia basically is in love with Roberta, he enlists the aid of his second maid, Fabiola, to go look for Roberta so they can hopefully bring her back home before she gets herself killed by trying to take on the US Army. This leads them back to Roanapur and the Lagoon Company, naturally at the oft’ destroyed bar where they first met Roberta. It goes about the same way, too.

Everyone is brought into this little adventure thanks to the implications being presented to the various mobs operating in Roanapur and elsewhere in the world, because they are interested in maintaining the status quo in Roanapur, even if some of them, like Hotel Moscow, would love to have an excuse to kill some American servicemen themselves thanks to the Cold War dying hard with them. In the end they actually end up helping the American black ops unit responsible for Lovelace’s death, but they are sure to let the Americans know that while there is some professional respect there, they’d just as soon kill them as anything else the next time they see them.

One of the most interesting things about Black Lagoon is its characters, and that continues with this OVA. For this story, we’re introduced to an Army officer who is duty-bound but also has a strong moral compass. The first we see of him, he’s actually defending some young Vietnamese kid from the troops in his unit, risking getting fragged himself to do so. But he holds strong, and even guns down one of his bloodthirsty subordinates to make his point. Fast forward to the present, and upon learning that he’s killed an innocent man and wounded Garcia, and he does everything he can to defend Garcia even while he flees from Roberta, who’s so out of it that she nearly kills her own young master. There isn’t a whole lot of depth to the character, and basically he’s an ideal more than a real person, but that’s pretty par for the course in Black Lagoon – what’s important is that he’s interesting.

As always, Black Lagoon is a valentine to action movie fans, and the action is just as over the top and awesome in this OVA as it was in the series proper. Sure, it’s unrealistic as hell, but if you recognize where things are coming from and just accept it for the action schlock that it is, it’s pretty damn fun to watch, and if you’re anything like me you’ll find yourself laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. This is actually why I tend to give shows like Black Lagoon more of pass for that kind of thing, because they know exactly what they are and don’t try to apologize for it in any way, unlike something like say, Avatar (as in the one James Cameron made while fapping to furry porn).

The one downside to all of this is that it tends to be fairly predictable. A lot of drama is made of Rock’s struggle to make some kind of a master plan that will enable him to save everyone this time around, since pretty much every other time he’s tried this he hasn’t really succeeded. On the plus side, this is character development, as is Revy’s continuing interest in him (I really wish they’d just jump each other’s bones and get it over with). On the other hand, it’s kind of robbed Rock of the underlying kindness that’s been an aspect of his character from the start, and turned more into this odd competition with Mr. Chang, boss of the local Triad mob.

No what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, predictability. And I don’t just mean in that you could see action scenes coming from a mile away. What I mean by that is that this story ends about the way you might guess that it would end, which is to say that it’s a mostly happy ending, except that Roberta ends up not quite being the fine specimen she was when we first met her. This is basically foreshadowed earlier in the story when she starts taking depression medication and starts seeing dead people. Essentially she becomes a Captain Ahab, in more ways than one.

And they lived happily ever after...

Overall, it’s pretty easy to say that I liked this OVA, though in a lot of ways I kind of wished we’d gotten a fully-fledged season. All the same, it was nice to get something, and it was one hell of an action romp to boot, every bit in the same vein as the first two seasons. The only downsides are a lack of time for other characters to get more than a cameo, and the kind of predictability that just comes as standard fare for action schlock.

If you liked the first two seasons, you’ll probably like what the third season has to offer, just be aware that there’s as yet no dub available, at least not as of the time I wrote this review. I’m really hoping that a dub does get made, but I’m not going to hold my breath either.

If you haven’t seen the first two seasons, you should be able to jump right into Roberta’s Blood Trail without much trouble. They do quickly run through introductions again, so you shouldn’t be completely lost if you skipped the first two seasons. If you’re trying to decide to watch this, if you liked The Expendables, RED, or the Crank movies, Black Lagoon should be right up your ally. 9/10 (in my extremely biased opinion).

Been reading a lot of your reviews past few weeks ranging from Elfen Lied, Voices of the Distant Star, Sekirei, Time Eve, etc and glad to see you're still active in this thread.

I haven't seen Black Lagoon yet although I'm watching the ongoing Jormungand right now which many fans has compared to as of lately.

Anyways, great review, keep them coming Anime smile

Thanks, glad you're enjoying my reviews. Smile

I've been hearing that about Jormungand, too. Might have to look that up when it's done airing.

Armored Trooper VOTOMS
(52 episode series)

You know, I muddled my way through this beast of a series, hoping that in spite of the constant padding and drawing out, that it would pay off in the end. After all Blood+ turned into something worth watching in spite of a slow start, and it was likewise a long series. However, Armored Trooper VOTOMS ultimately proved to be a disappointment for me, because as the series neared its end, it became really clear to me that the writers had been pulling everything out of their fourth point of contact all along.

A product of the '80s, this series really showed its age as far as the animation – it actually resembles the animated Star Trek series from the '70s in part. That being said, at first that was my only real concern with the series. We're given a bit of exposition in the beginning that explains that a war has been going on between two interstellar nations, the Gilgamesh Confederation and the Balarant Union, and from that point on the series closely follows protagonist Chirico Cuvie as he is sent on a secret mission with a clandestine group that has unknown objectives. He thinks he's on a training mission of some kind only to find himself fighting his own forces as the group he's with looks for something. He stumbles upon a mysterious bald (and buck-ass nekkid) woman in a glowing stasis chamber, and from that point on his life goes completely to hell as basically everyone he comes across tries to kill him. So basically what I'm saying is that, initially anyway, the story seemed to interesting enough to put up with the dated animation and lack of a dub (however horrible it might have been). After all, it was obvious that this secret society didn't want Chirico with them on this mission to steal what turned out to be some kind of a genetically engineered super-soldier, yet he was an elite soldier from a group known as the Red Shoulders. What was he doing there? What was the secret society up to and how extensive was its membership? Who was the mysterious bald woman?

So it was fairly easy to root for Chirico and the friends he made along the way, even if every single one of them basically met a cliché of some kind. Chirico, for instance, was basically the ideal bad-ass soldier. Actually, it got rather amusing at times, because the secret society was apparently after the "Perfect Soldier", or PS for short, and given how Chirico was basically perfect in is Gary Stu-like ability to overcome literally any odds, I thought it was pretty obvious that Chirico was the real perfect soldier. Apparently the writers noticed this too and just made him one. But then, the PS thing was pushed into the background, even as Chirico met up with the mysterious woman and the two of them decided they were in love with each other.

I suppose it could be somehow argued that everything was planned out at least well enough, but especially getting toward the end of the series, it was obvious that the writers were just clamoring to tie up any loose ends they might have left (more on that later). I guess I can give them credit for at least caring enough to do so, anyway – that's more than Rick Berman and Brannon Braga can be given credit for anyway. Wink

I was also initially concerned that since this was a giant mech series that I'd end up not liking it because of that. To be honest, giant mechs are mostly amusing to me, and for the most part in a series that's trying to be serious I usually find that it just isn't me thing (see my Evangelion reviews). I was somewhat impressed that some thought was actually put into these particular giant mechs, but for the most part I just kind of bared with it.

I think the characterization is where I was mainly let down for the majority of the series. To be frank, Chirico's character would change depending on whatever plot twist the writers decided to pull out of their asses, and so would pretty much everyone else's. For instance, there were three comedy relief characters who always managed to end up following Chirico no matter where he ended up, and they would constantly yo-yo between thinking Chirico was a prick and deciding he wasn't that bad after all and do everything they could help him. To be fair, though, there were plenty of times Chirico actually was a prick, and he'd usually end up screwing these people over in some way. Then there was Fyanna, the mysterious bald woman Chirico saw in the first episode (she does grow hair, though). Initially, she was an impressive combat soldier, but as Chirico drew closer to her in his search for answers, she started to grow weaker, and when the two of them fell in love she basically fell into the clichéd role a lot of women in anime and just in media in general tend to fall into. Sure, occasionally she'd show some fighting ability, but for the most part she was there to be emotional about Chirico so the writers could try to fool the audience into thinking there was actually some drama.

The series goes on a very long, convoluted journey, which seems to change depending on what mood the writers were in, and it has a little bit of everything. Chirico goes from the kind of urban cyberpunk dystopia that was pretty common for '80s sci-fi, to a Vietnam-like planet where he fights in someone else's civil war, to a post-apocalyptic desert planet that has a poisonous atmosphere, to the desert home planet of a species that decided to abandon technology, with an ancient technological mystery buried beneath them the entire time. Likewise, Chirico goes from being almost an everyman, to an asshole, to being sympathetic, to being regretful in his past affiliation with the Red Shoulders due to atrocities they committed, to refusing to let a woman die even though she's vowed revenge on him and constantly tries to kill him, to being a prick with aspirations of galactic domination, to being the big damn hero at the last minute. I especially wasn't impressed with those last two things.

So what was the solution to all the mysteries? God did it. Well, a technological god who is basically a genetically superior superman, but, still. And as it turns out, Chirico is actually one of these "overmen", too. And the part that really irritated the hell out of me is that once this was finally revealed, Chirico basically turned evil and left his would-be lover and the friends who have been with him for all this way to die. Then, not long after, he seems to actively try to kill them as they try to stop him from taking over the galaxy. Of course!
Then, at the last minute, Chirico suddenly shoots the ancient computer god and sets about destroying it, having done all the douchebag things he'd done up to that point to fool the computer god. Of course, the big deal about the computer god was that it was telepathic, so... yeah.

Daisy... Daisy... Give me your answer, do... I'm half cra-zy, all for the love of you...

The ass-pull comes in how basically every lingering mystery – the strange ship Chirico and Fyanna found themselves on following planet Vietnam, why Chirico was on the mission in the first episode, etc. – was resolved by having the computer god exposit that it was totally behind everything, and even though Chirico came close to dying more than once, the computer god was somehow protecting him the entire time. Talk about an eye-roller.

The series then somewhat abruptly ends as the war Chirico apparently was trying to prevent with by destroying the computer god (along with the planet it was on and all of its inhabitants) breaks out between the Gilgamesh and the Balarant all over again. Chirico and Fyanna, now newly made up with the other friends Chirico had tried to kill previously, decide to be shot out into space in a cryo-tube, leaving the story open for a sequel, which there apparently were plenty of. Jury is still out on whether I'll actually give them a chance – I might check them out just out of morbid curiosity.

I think, for me, the most interesting aspect of the series was seeing the influences this series took from other sources, and how it influenced at least one other show at least in name. There was definitely a lot of influence from the movies Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey, both in visual design and in the use of certain sound effects. As for how it influenced another, much younger show – apparently someone from Gainax saw this show and especially liked the name of a certain character, named Gurren. Wink

That being said, while there are some interesting aspects to this series and it is somewhat noteworthy in the basics of its story and approach to telling that story, I'm not sure I'd really recommend it to anyone. Hardcore sci-fi and mech fans might be interested somewhat, but it's a rather dated show and it tends to drag at times. 4/10.

I can't believe I watched the whole thing... Sad

Baccano! – A Re-Review
(13 + 3 episode series)

Having recently re-watched this series, I thought it deserved a re-review – not that my views have changed much on it, but because I have a clearer understanding of it. That, and the original review I wrote up on it was one of the first ones I did, and I think it deserves to be reworked using my current, more detailed style.

Baccano! is a pretty unique series, and it’s obvious that a lot of effort went into bringing it into being. Like the Gunsmith Cats team, the Baccano! team went to the locations they wanted to portray in New York City, and since a good chunk of the story takes place on a train, the team also visited the Steamtown National Historic Site, so the locations the story takes place in could be more accurately depicted. This attention to detail was carried on into the English dub by the casting director and script writer, who watched old movies from the era so they could get a feel for how people talked at the time, and this produced one of the best dubs in anime. About the only downside is that since most of these movies were about Chicago mobsters, a bunch of New York mobsters had Chicago accents, but in this case it’s the thought that counts. For me, the attention to detail is pretty impressive nonetheless. And as if that wasn’t enough, the outstanding soundtrack also makes a point of bringing the sound of Prohibition era America to life for a show that primarily takes place during this time frame.

Of course, this attention to detail isn’t really what I’m referring to when I call this a unique series. What makes this show unique is its method of storytelling, which is to say that it’s like the editor had attention deficit disorder. There are several different storylines that take place at several different time frames that all manage to intersect on a train called the Flying Pussyfoot, which is referring to being qick and light on the feet, you sick bastards. Anyway, if that wasn’t bad enough, the story actually starts out after everything has already gone down, and then proceeds to feed the audience relevant information in a well-paced manner that kept me interested in the story. To the credit of the people who made this, they actually kept things pretty straight, which is more than most other shows told in a more traditional manner can say sometimes. This works both for and against this show, as it does generate interest and tells a story in a different way, but it can also be very frustrating and confusing at times.

The story itself revolves around a group of immortals and an elixir of immortality given to them by a demon one of them managed to summon. This isn’t a case of Highlander immortality either, as one of these immortals can be shredded into little pieces and their flesh will magically reconstitute together and bring the person (or animal) back to life. The original group was apparently a bunch of alchemists, though the series didn’t really make that point all that clear to me, as I was under the impression that it was a group of immigrants on the way across the Atlantic. Although now it makes a lot more sense to me why they all had different fake European accents. Anyway, the demon gives the knowledge for how to make the immortality elixir to the alchemist who summoned him, but he and most of the others decided that they would keep this to themselves, as the consequences of this becoming common knowledge and creating a world full of immortals was rather distressing. However, one of them, and old man named Szilard Quates, disagrees and wants this knowledge for himself. Incidentally, the demon left the group of immortals an out in case they ever decided they wanted to die by making it possible for them to be absorbed by one of their fellow immortals if their devourer placed their hand on their forehead and thought, ‘I wish to eat’, or something along those lines. As an added bonus the devourer also absorbed all of that person’s knowledge and experience on top of basically being a cannibal, so you might guess where this was leading.

Fast forward to the 1930s, and ol’ mad Doctor Quates was closing in on the correct formula for the elixir, and unfortunately for him, got tangled up with a bunch of mobsters in the process. Really, though, the best thing he ever produced was Ennis, an incredibly attractive homunculus he created from his own cells using magic, apparently.

*sigh* So kawaii… Have I mentioned I have a thing for women in suits, women with short hair, and women who can kick ass?

As for how all this leads up to a slaughter on the Flying Pussyfoot *snicker*, I can’t really say for sure, other than that a lot of the characters we’re introduced to end up on that train, and one of them was one of these original immortals (man, imagine being stuck in the body of a 10 year old boy for 200 years) and the homunculus of another immortal happened to be on the train while some kind of underhanded political crap was going on. It’s really kind of a Charlie Foxtrot, because while there’s a group of black-suited terrorists basically looking to take a US Senator’s wife and daughter hostage, there’s also a group of white-suited thugs led by the completely insane mobster Ladd Russo that’s basically looking to kill everyone on board. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s an expert assassin/gymnast on board who was actually one of the train’s conductors, but thanks to a scary story being told at the right time he effectively becomes a monster known as the “rail tracer” who busily goes about slaughtering all the black-suits and white-suits on the train. It’s entertaining as hell to watch, but it can also be confusing at times.

That all being said, this series is completely over the top and ridiculous. That actually helps me to let the giant cluster fudge that is the storytelling method and the sheer amount of story and characters that there is. Which, speaking of the characters, there are so many of them that it's often hard to keep track of them all. The opening credits fortunately helps a little, as it introduces basically everyone important to the story while the awesome theme song plays. It also helps to convey the scatter-shot method of storytelling, I guess. Really, there are only two characters that manage to weave it all together – Isaac and Miria, two eccentric (as in insane) characters who are in every single storyline except for the "how it all got started" storyline that took place in the 1700s. There's also the vice president of the Daily Days, which is both a newspaper and an information broker, and his young apprentice, Carol. Those two mainly serve the function of introducing the different storylines and the odd method of storytelling to the audience, as well as the all important role of being the writers' mouthpiece. This may be somewhat unkind of me to say, but they just made it so darned obvious by only having these characters be in the first few episodes, literally introducing all the various storylines, and then not having them show up again until the very end of the special 3 episodes that were added after the original ending of the series, mainly to take pot shots at critics like myself, as well as making a statement to all the fans who were undoubtedly the reason these 3 episodes were made, which is to say that they tied up a few loose threads and then told everyone off about any others they might have left dangling.

It's certainly a valid argument that the audience should be able to use its imagination in lieu of showing how each and every plot point got resolved, which is to say that there is an appeal to that. Mainly, I just took a little issue with the attitude, although I can understand anime fans being at the root of that. I'll also say that their unique method of storytelling was also valid, but I still think the show would have been better in chronological order and without the story-framing writer mouthpieces, but that's just my opinion.

On that same note, I also have to say that I didn't particularly attach to any characters or find any of them sympathetic, mainly because they were all criminals, but that's okay because this isn't really a serious series anyway. In this case, what matters is interesting characters who are interesting to watch, and Baccano! has plenty of those. One of my favorites has to be Ladd Russo.

How can you not like this guy? So what if he's a psychopathic murderer who's saving his girlfriend to kill last; he's just so damn entertaining to watch. Wink

So, in case you were wondering if I'd changed my mind on the rating I gave this show on my nebulous and arbitrary scale of "good", no, I haven't. I still rate this a 9/10 for being the entertaining, well done, and well thought out ruckus that it is. I would definitely recommend it, and I'm going to finally get around to adding it to my favorites list. Actually, I bought this show a while back when it was on sale, and the only thing I regret is that Funimation saw fit to put unskipable ads on every single disk.

Neo Tokyo
(1987 movie)

I've actually been putting this review off for close to two weeks now, because honestly, I'm not entirely sure what all I can say about this movie. Of course part of that is because strictly speaking it isn't so much a movie as a collection of three short stories, only one of which is told in a linear, mostly logical fashion. The others are a bit more ... abstract. But then, that isn't to say that I disliked this movie so much as I wished I understood what exactly it was I was watching.

Okay, just to start things off, I'm going to put it out there that this is a beautifully drawn and animated piece of work. The visual style of the two less abstract shorts in particular typify one of the appeals older anime has with me. Older sci-fi anime in particular just tends to look really awesome to me, and I actually kind of like it when things are kind of weird or otherworldly in the story that's being told. Actually, one of the things I liked about the much more recent movie Redline was that it's visual style and even the type of story that was being told reminded me a lot of '80s anime that I've grown to like, in spite of never having watched any of it until more recently. I'd say Redline actually mostly resembled the "Running Man" short with the hardness of the lines in the drawing style and just overall in the visual design, at least in my opinion. Incidentally Madhouse animated both of these movies. Very Happy

As for things like plot and story, well, that's a bit more complicated. As I mentioned before, this isn't a movie, it's a collection of three shorts, one of which serves as a framing device for the others, at least in how it was edited for the movie. Called "Labyrinth labyrinthos", it seems to involve a little girl in '50s era Japan playing with her large pet cat, named Cicerone. The Wiki article indicates that the abstract visuals the audience is subjected to is an "exploration into the mind of a little girl," which I guess I can buy, it's just that I felt kind of like I was watching an animated episode of The Twilight Zone. Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of commentary I can offer on this short, as it's really much too abstract for me to do so – really this is a case of things possibly representing some other concept that I just don't grasp, or it could be complete nonsense. About all I can offer is that her cat's name is an old European term for a guide, such as for a museum or an art gallery. The word itself is derived from Marcus Tullius Cicero's name. He was a Roman philosopher and politician during the late Roman Republic. During Caesar's dictatorship, he advocated for a return to the more traditional style of republican government which later led him to becoming an enemy of Marc Antony and getting killed. In any case, the use of his name as the title for a guide probably has a lot more to do with his writings on philosophy, mostly of the Greek variety, through which he introduced Greek philosophy to the Roman Republic. These writings were rediscovered in early modern times and are often credited for helping to start the Renaissance by reintroducing classical philosophy to the writers of the day. As for how this applies to a little girl traveling into a warped dimension and seeing some Salvador Dalí artwork on the way to a monster circus, I have no idea, beyond the obvious of the cat accompanying her in spite of not actually being a guide of any kind.

The second short, called "Running Man" is about a futuristic, ultra-violent race of some kind that is (in)famous for all the deaths it tends to cause. It focuses on a driver named Zach Hugh, but is told out of linear order and is narrated by a magazine reporter after Zach's unusual and mysterious death. Apparently Zach had a telekinetic ability which he used to destroy the hover-car racer of anyone who managed to pass him, and this apparently had driven him insane. The short covers Zach's last race as the ghosts of his past catch up to him and he apparently destroys his own body and car. I guess the thing is, while the narration explained all of this, the way the story is edited together made it somewhat confusing for me to watch until after I'd watched it a second time. It was kind of bland as a story, but pretty neat to watch even if I didn't entirely understand just what I was watching.

What did I just watch?

"The Order to Stop Construction" tells its story in a much more traditional fashion, keeping things nice and linear even if the setting is still strange as hell. Basically, a stereotypical salary man from a generic Japanese construction company has to travel to a fictitious South American country to shut down an expensive project being built there. Called Facility 444, this would be a bit more obvious to American audiences if it was called Facility 666 – 4 is the Japanese number for death. Anyway, the facility is being built deep in the jungle and has to deal with both an abundance of rain and flora, and because of the conditions there it's being built entirely by robots with only one man supervising the project. As you might guess, this is the pretty standard "warning against depending too much on technology" story, though I personally also see it as a bit of a jab at the business attitudes of the average Japanese company. Since a coup has taken place, the contract for the facility has been cancelled, and the order has gone out to stop construction and recoup as much as possible from the site. Unfortunately the human supervisor has not responded to this order and construction at the site is continuing. So, it's a bit clichéd, but not in a way that made it unenjoyable for me to watch.

So while this movie may not be what I would normally call "good", I think it was still pretty fun to watch. It actually reminded me of a show that was on Tech TV back in the early 2000s that featured animation (mostly CG) from amateurs, some of which had no point beyond being cool-looking, and some of which actually were short stories. I'd say I enjoyed Neo Tokyo on that basis, and I think it's important to keep that in mind if you're thinking about watching this movie. I actually would recommend it, though more in terms of seeing an example of some cool sci-fi anime from the '80s than in some other sense. That being said, I'm not entirely sure how to rate this, even on my nebulous scale of "good", so I'll just tentatively call it a 7/10 – not something that'll rock your socks off, but still fun to watch.

Wonderful Days/Sky Blue
(2003 movie)

Man, I really wished some of these shows would just keep the same title. I actually watched this under the title "Sky Blue", but Wikipedia has informed me that it's actually supposed to be "Wonderful Days". Whatever. Wikipedia has also informed me that this animation comes to us from South Korea, which is actually where a lot of animation is done for both Japanese and American companies. Of course this is also where movies like Diatron-5 comes to us from, which is basically Korea's attempt at doing anime. I'm not saying Sky Blue is that bad, though between the CGI (used for basically everything but the characters) and the story, it does remind me an awful lot of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which isn't really a good thing either.

The story, such as it is, takes place in 2142 in some unspecified region of an environmentally devastated Earth. There's mention of global warming, and toxic rain is supposed to be responsible for the barren landscape, so, as you might guess this, this movie has a very heavy environmental message. About the only thing going for it there is that its only about as heavy-handed as Ghibli's Castle in the Sky, as opposed to some of his other movies, just to give you a feel for what you'd be into for this movie. As in Castle in the Sky (and Avatar, for that matter), the story follows two star-crossed lovers who are somewhat awkwardly made to share the protagonist spot. What I mean by that is that Jay, a rather attractive female security officer in the "living" city of Ecoban, seems like she's the protagonist early on in the movie, as she not only narrates, but the film follows her perspective for the most part. This changes when we're introduced to the male lead, Shua, who's an environmentalist terrorist bent on messing up Ecoban's power core. He's also later revealed to be a former citizen of Ecoban and the boy Jay totally liked when they were kids. Point being that Shua takes up most of the movie's focus from the point he's introduced, with Jay being relegated to more of a supporting role. But then this movie isn't really what I thought and hoped that it might be from what the opening of the movie teased me with.

What can I say? I like 'em with short hair.

You see, I was lead to believe that Jay would be the protagonist, and the movie was even kind of setting her up as the type of strong female protagonist that I like seeing, mostly because that isn't a type of protagonist that is seen very often. She informs us that it's been raining for a century, and that Ecoban is not only the last hold-out of humanity, but that it's also a living city. Of course it's only almost always cloudy, not always raining, and only the computer/power core of the city is "living" in the sense that it's neurally-based and happens to be shaped like a flower bloom. Of course Jay turned out to not be all that strong, or the main protagonist, so it shouldn't be hard to understand why I was disappointed by this movie.

The thing is, this movie is pretty predictable, and not terribly compelling on top of being somewhat boring. Right off the bat, we're given underdogs to root for, as survivors of the environmental apocalypse mentioned in the opening are basically used as mistreated labor to do all the dirty work of digging up the resources Ecoban needs to run, somewhat similar to what was depicted in Battle Angel Alita and in Star Trek's "The Cloud Minders". Within the first few minutes of the movie, we're shown not only the bigoted way that most of Ecoban's residents treat the people they call diggers, but the way they abuse them. Apparently Ecoban is powered by carbonite (no word on if they use it to freeze people, too), and they use these diggers to, well, dig it up for them. So the opening consists of Jay, the one non-bigoted person who lives in Ecoban, heading out to an oil-rig looking mining platform, just in time for it to start falling apart and to show the complete disregard the Ecoban foreman, Commander Locke, has for the diggers' lives by not only ordering the part of the platform that's falling apart on its own to be cut loose into the ocean, but by shooting the digger foreman when he refuses to do so and threatens a mass strike if Locke gets someone else to do it anyway. Of course this doubly serves to introduce the main antagonist to the audience. And that being done, Jay goes right back to Ecoban, Commander Cade is introduced as her boss and the guy who wants to bone her, and Shua sneaks in, kills some poor security guard, and hacks Ecoban's computer for his boss, Dr, Noah.

Sadly, no. (Photo Credit: Memory Alpha)

Dr. Noah, who not only used to be a citizen of Ecoban but designed its computer system, wants to do some kind of an energy release that will supposedly clear the entire planet's atmosphere, making sure to note that the only "harm" to the citizens of Ecoban will be that they'll have to use solar energy (because I'm real sure that's developed a lot under a sky that's constantly cloudy) and have to do some hard work themselves, because, you know, the diggers are the underdogs who do all the work while the Ecobans are bastards who live like rich people and do no real work themselves. Class warfare, basically. It's also at this point we're given some brief background on Shua and Jay, as Shua also used to be a citizen of Ecoban, and he and Jay were totally into each other even as kids, apparently. We're also introduced to Woody, some little orphan kid Shua adopted as a little brother to show us he's totally domestic material, and to the comedy relief thugs that Woody hangs out with, and who naturally turn out to nobly sacrifice themselves so Shua can get laid- I mean so he can win the day and get the girl in the end.

The conflict of this movie is also quickly set up, not only between Ecoban and the diggers, but between quite a few of the characters. Locke and Cade are set up as political rivals, with Locke being more militant and Cade being more moderate. Cade is also an antagonist, though he's made much more ambiguous than the straight-up black hat wearing, mustache-twirling (if he had one) antagonist that Locke is, at least in every area than one – Cade totally wants to bone Jay, and has been jealous of Shua since they were kids. Shua brought Jay outside Ecoban at one point to show her a brief break in the clouds, but Cade tattled on them, as the area they were in was supposed to be off limits. The guard was a real prick himself, and went really overboard on Shua. Naturally Cade was all for that, but when the guard turned his attention on Jay, Cade tried to pull him away from her. Cade tried to stop him at that point, and in the ensuing struggle his foot knocks knife out of the guard's belt and he uses it and to stab the guard in the back. Then, being rather forward thinking for a kid, Cade not only frames Shua for the guard's murder, but does his best to kill Shua so he can't be around to defend himself, as Jay was conveniently unconscious at the time. So as you might guess, the conflict between Cade and Shua is made to be the main conflict of the movie, rivaling even the plot's main conflict, which is Dr. Noah's plan to screw Ecoban so the sky can be magically cleared.

Naturally, everything turns out exactly the way you would expect, with the underdog terrorists succeeding at Dr. Noah's plan at the cost of all of their lives, with Shua and Woody being the only survivors out of them so that Shua can hook up with her and the two of them can adopt Woody. Cade actually turned out to be the most fleshed out character of all of them, as he actually stopped short of killing Shua, instead sacrificing himself to save Jay from Locke. Of course, everything was very melodramatic during all of this and I couldn't help but roll my eyes. There's also the reveal that the mythical "Gibraltar" Shua had been going on about having a blue sky all the time was actually where the entire story took place.

I mean, this isn't a horribly bad movie or anything, but it's just so thin in story and characterization, and the plot is very basic. I suppose if you enjoy basically anything that has class conflict, star-crossed lovers with a love triangle, and an environmental message, you might be able to just turn your brain off and enjoy this movie. As for myself, I found myself bored and disappointed. Really the only entertainment I got out of this movie involved all the names of characters which just also happened to be the same as characters from other shows or movies, all the flaws in logic the movie had, and just how transparently manipulative this movie tried to be. I also couldn't help but see some similarities with Ergo Proxy, which I totally would have made a crack about, except that Ergo Proxy came out about 3 years after this movie. Well, Ergo Proxy may have borrowed from this movie, but it was definitely a better show and far more entertaining. Other than that, while there are a few enjoyable moments, and it has some pretty visuals here and there, I can't really recommend this movie to anyone. 4/10.

Appleseed
(2004 movie

This is actually one of the first animes I ever watched back when I first started putting a list together, but before I was driven to start writing reviews, which some of you might recall was started by Blue Gender. Since I've mostly been watching things alphabetically, you can kind of guess that most of the shows that start with "A" were either done from memory or were watched since I started writing reviews. Appleseed is one of a few that I've decided to rewatch prior to writing reviews for them, so I can refresh my memory about them. I have to admit that when I first watched Appleseed, I actually liked it quite a bit, enough so that it was actually the first anime I bought once I'd gotten all the Ghost in the Shell stuff. But, much like Elfen Lied (and Higurashi, incidentally), Appleseed has not aged well for me. I honestly don't know if this is because my tastes have changed or if watching more anime since has diminished my tolerance for certain clichés, but I'll try to be as fair as I can be. As for the 80's OVA that's based on the same manga as this movie, and the sequel to this movie, I remember being bored by those when I first watched them, so it's debatable as to whether I'll sit through them again, so I might not review them.

Anyway, what brought this on was recently watching Vexille, thanks to my roommate who bought the DVD for it on sale. The DVD cover brags about Vexille being brought to us by the same people who made Appleseed, which is the reason my roommate even bought it. Of course Vexille turned out to be horrible, lacking a coherent plot, well thought out characters or story, or an antagonist with a clear motivation. Instead, it mostly consisted of a series of action scenes that were very loosely tied together. I expressed my disappointment with that movie by comparing it to Appleseed, which I remembered having a much more coherent plot and better characterization and pacing. Apparently I was remembering through rosy-tinted glasses or something, because while Appleseed is better than Vexille, that really isn't saying much.

Appleseed apparently takes place at the tail end of a devastating world war, which has left most of the world a desolate wasteland that leaves one wondering where the combatants who are still fighting get their supplies from. The story follows protagonist Deunan Knute, a rather good looking female warrior with short blonde hair.

*sigh*

The movie begins with Deunan and some other poor saps following her as they fight it out with some robots or guys in mech suits (it's never made clear) and an eight-wheeled armored car that has the gun from the A-10 mounted on top of it. As you might guess, a bunch of light infantry packing rifles and RPGs don't stand much of a chance, though Deunan is blessed with the ability to defy physics and guns that actually do something against her robotic aggressors. She's eventually cornered and surrounded in a way that makes me wonder if they were trying to capture her, even though they sure seemed to be trying their hardest to kill her just seconds before that. Fortunately for her, what looks like the love child between a C-130 and a V-22 comes along and drops off what we later find out to be guys in mech suits and kill the tanks and robo-dudes. Of course since they never bother saying anything to her along the lines of, "we're here to help," or "come with me if you want to live," Deunan does what most anyone would do and tries to get the hell out of dodge, only to be taken down by large metal crosses fired by their guns. Incidentally, these are actually real things, which much like bean bags fired from shotguns are designed to be a non-lethal weapon against crowds, and work by knocking the wind out of the person they hit, which unfortunately also tends to break bones and cause internal damage. In Deunan's case, however, they apparently just deliver tranquilizer, as explained by a very out of place and much too chipper Asian chick named Hitomi, who comments on Deunan's beauty.

This all happens at a very brisk pace, which the movie keeps up for the majority of its run. Soon after, we're introduced to Olympus, a shiny happy city in the middle of the ruin, which is described as being a "utopia". This is also where the problems with the pacing and focus on action rather than character start to become a lot more obvious, because after the title sequence is where the story is supposed to really begin, only the quick pacing kind or prevents a proper set-up. This is where my disappointment really comes in, because Deunan seemed like she could have been an interesting character, but she is never really explored beyond being shown to be a much better soldier than anyone in Olympus. We're very quickly introduced to other characters, to the city, and to the plot, with Deunan basically being made to be unrealistically resilient to being plucked out of a battle zone that's been all she's known for most of her adult life and placed in this pristine city and given a new problem to solve beyond her basic survival. All of this while being hit on by another woman who turns out to not actually be human, and being confronted by the fact that her boyfriend, Briareos, who she had presumed to be dead, was now sporting a fully robotic body that didn't even resemble a human being. In fact, she accepts everything very quickly, even though she really has no reason to do so. And the only real indication we're given that she's effected at all by the quick transition is a nightmare she has on her first night in Olympus and the fact she can't sleep on a bed, and even this is quickly brushed aside, much like we never really find out who was attacking her at the start of the movie or what their objectives were.

Anyway, the plot, such as it is, revolves around tension between bigoted humans and the bioroids that now run the city. Bioroids, as the name suggests, are artificial beings that have been designed to resemble humans while being programmed to act a certain way, but are biological in nature rather then mechanical as an android would be. The "utopia" apparently sprung up out of no where, thanks to the efforts of Deunan's mother and father, who also helped to create the bioroids. Bioroids are to help humans in addition to apparently being responsible for most of the administrative tasks of the city. As you might imagine, this doesn't sit well with many humans, but we're informed that because a bunch of old guys are interfaced with a supposedly infallible computer and that humans run the city's military, that everything is somehow "balanced" and everyone should just be cool with that. Of course I can see right through that, and since there's as much condescension as any early episode of TNG to go along with this exposition, so should everyone else. But then, there are a lot of silly things about this movie and its characters, such as how there seem to be an awful lot of Greek names being used, and how the majority of them are actually apt to the characters who bear these names. But then I guess this is easier than establishing and developing characters, so why not name the bad guys after the Greek god of the underworld and the father of the Titans, and while we're at it, let's name the computer after the Greek goddess representing Mother Earth. Of course Uranus and Gaia mated with each other and had many children together (the Titans), so there once can't really make many parallels off of the names. If anyone knows who Uranus is, they might remember him for eating his children, so I'm guessing that's why the big bad general who wants to kill all the bioroids has that name, and Hades is the god of the underworld, so that's bad, right?

I guess the main problem I have with the antagonists we're given not long into the movie, aside from the fact that they turn out to be red herrings, is that they and every other bigoted human like them are made to be ridiculously over the top as far as their bigotry goes. This conveniently lets the movie overlook what might otherwise be a legitimate gripe humans might have with bioroids making up basically their entire government, in what is essentially an authoritarian oligarchy. So rather than forming a rebellion to overthrow the government, they take the genocide route by destroying the one building that apparently not only make all the bioroids, but also contains the special genetic material existing bioroids need to periodically have maintenance done with to keep living, uh, somehow. Conveniently, Hitomi missed her scheduled oil change, so now there's artificial tension to get the "appleseed" the title refers to. This is actually secret information Deunan's mother developed which would somehow allow bioroids to reproduce on their own, and thus now represents the only way bioroids can continue to exist. Apparently by this point we were supposed to have forgotten that all the bioroids are actually genetically siblings, because all of them are based off of DNA from Deunan's father. But aside from that, the information on how to make bioroids should not be gone, so really according to the way everything was established, it should be as simple as using another DNA sample from someone else and rebuilding the production line, but whatever, Deunan really likes Hitomi and actually cares about the bioroids even though they've done nothing but talk down to her about humanity's "nature" and all Hitomi has done is talk about how hot Deunan is and how much she wants to have human emotions. Of course the movie seems to give up at this point, so whatever.

Deunan finally finds out what happened to her mother, who died when she was young, but this has a rather anti-climactic ending, because while the military kills the rest of the ESWAT squad Deunan is with (and we never got to really know anyway), Deunan still gets away with the appleseed they wanted to destroy and the military surrenders immediately afterwards. This is the point that we find out who the real bad guys are – the old men hooked up to the city's computer. Anyone who hadn't seen that one coming shouldn't feel too bad, though, because to be fair the movie never gave any clue to this before this, instead throwing out multiple red herrings to distract the audience with, only to throw basically everything the start of the movie established in a pathetic attempt to create a crisis. For instance, the "D-tank" we were informed is a safeguard for humanity to use against the bioroids by infecting all bioroids with a deadly virus should it ever be broken, is at the end of the movie stated to contain a virus which will make all humans sterile, because the old guys have decided that humans are bad, m'kay, and bioroids should inherit the planet because they'll treat it better and stuff. Of course whoever wrote this selectively remembered that the very logical computer had to be in complete agreement with the old guys for the option to release the virus to even be available, so we're quickly informed that they fooled the computer by actually making it possible for the attempted military coup to take place, thus convincing the computer to go along with the plan to make humans sterile, eventually making the species go extinct. Not two minutes later, the newly recovered Hitomi stumbles through the door, and explains that the computer wasn't fooled so much as the old guys turned it off and have been doing everything on their own, even though this will kill them, too. Since the big red button to unleash the virus is disabled by being shot, the old guys decide to have the giant insect-like tanks guarding the city from the outside world make their way to the building with the D-tank to just shoot it at point blank range with their giant rail guns. As you might expect, this plan does not succeed, and as an added bonus all the old guys die so there's no need to deal with them in any way in the rushed resolution.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I didn't find the story or characters all that believable, and that the plot seemed rather forced and rushed along to me. Pacing was far too quick for characters to be fleshed out or given believable motivations for what they were doing, and what little story there was seemed to mostly be there as filler and exposition to set up the many action scenes. The soundtrack didn't do this movie any favors either, as it consisted mostly of some kind of J-rock/dance club music that was probably meant to get the audience's blood pumping but instead served mostly to distract, at least in my case. The animation is ... different. Everything is computer generated, much like the Final Fantasy movies, but rather than going for a more photorealistic look, everything was given a kind of animation cell texture in an effort to make it look more like traditional anime. I also found this to be somewhat distracting at times, mostly because while the main characters used motion capture from real actors, most of the characters tended to move very unrealistically, and I couldn't help but feel like I was watching the cut-scenes for a video game.

I don’t want to make this movie out to be all bad or anything, and to be fair, if you like action that involves a lot of gunfights and mech suits, you'll probably like this movie. Mainly I'm disappointed, because there was the basis for a good story here that just never got realized. It would have been a lot more interesting to me had there been more focus given to Deunan's character and how she dealt with the war she had been fighting for most of her life was pointless and yet still going on, how she'd basically been denied a life in the pristine city her father and mother had helped to create until the creepy old men and the bioroid governor running the place decided they had a use for her, and how her boyfriend she thought was dead was actually still alive, had been allowed to live in Olympus himself and become a leader of the elite police ESWAT, but never came to her rescue until told to do so by the aforementioned old guys and bioroid governor. Hell, just dealing with the fact that her boyfriend was a robot would have been interesting, especially if she found she couldn't deal with this change and between that and never coming for her, decided she wanted nothing to do with him. I guess we're just supposed to be excited by the idea of Deunan riding his robo-dick or something.

In any case, you can probably guess that I'm not going to be rating this very high. It isn't horrible, but it's not really what I'd consider good, either, as it lacks in plot, character, and story. Instead, I found myself rather bored while watching this, even during the action scenes, making the movie very "meh" in nature, in my opinion, anyway. If all you're looking for is some action, you might like it, but if you're looking for anything more than that, you'll probably be disappointed the same as I was. 5/10.

Vexille
(2007 movie)

This movie was actually the imputes for me to go back and rewatch Appleseed to see if it still held up or not. Why? Well, aside from the cover of the DVD bragging about it being from the same people who brought us Appleseed Ex Machina, it also reminded me a lot of that movie, and not just because it was made using CGI with animation cell textures, but because these movies mostly consist of long, drawn out action scenes that actually manage to be boring, joined together with filler scenes consisting mostly of exposition and attempts at making the audience care about the many characters filling them. I had thought that the 2004 Appleseed movie had done a better job at combining action with plot, but since I reviewed that movie before this one, you should already know if my memory held up over the three years or so since I'd last watched Appleseed (spoiler: it didn't).

As I did a little research on this movie before reviewing it (reading the Wiki article = "research"), I noted that this movie had actually been somewhat poorly received by the action junkies that normally watch this kind of movie, but about the only point of agreement as to why this movie kind of sucked was that the action scenes were kind of boring. At the risk of being a bit repetitive on that point, there aren't many movies that managed to make me bored during its action scenes, but this movie is one of them. Mostly I think that's because the scenes tended to go on for so long and lacked focus in its effort to cram so much going on with so many characters. The many clichés didn't help, either, although they did make for some laughs on occasion.

I'd also say that it's entirely fair to call this movie derivative. Apparently others have made comparisons to Resident Evil, although I'm not sure if they're referring to the games, the CGI movie, or the ones with Milla Jovovich's nipples. Having only seen the movies, I can say that I can kind of see some resemblance to the movies that prove women don't need large breasts to be hot, but only in the sense that there's an evil corporation and a female lead with short hair.

At least I'm not the only one that appreciates short hair on women.

Really, though, I think I'd compare Vexille to the 2004 Appleseed movie. Aside from there aforementioned short-haired female protagonist, said protagonist is part of an elite paramilitary group, in this case a US Navy group called Sword, and is made out to be an especially skilled warrior. She has a relationship with the stereotypical strong silent dude who is apparently keeping secrets from her, though in this case in involves another woman, so there is that. Anyway, she's sent on a special mission that involves the potential extinction of humanity, is essentially hung out to dry, but manages to save the day and her boyfriend in the end. Yeah, that's kind of superficial, but then so is the Resident Evil comparison.

The other point of criticism mentioned on Wiki was the soundtrack, and I'd almost say that I agree, but really I don't because rather than just missing a few notes, I can't say I cared for any of the rock/dance club music in this movie, because it always distracted from what was going on in the movie. It's like whoever made the soundtrack choices for these movies completely lacks the ability to match up music to what's going on in a way that will add to it rather than shoulder its way in and demand attention all on its own – like they were more concerned about selling an album than giving the movie a soundtrack. An especially jarring example was the use of Dead Can Dance's "The Host Of Seraphim", though to be fair this is partially because I'd already seen the movie The Mist some time ago with my friends, and that movie features the same song very prominently, and more importantly in a way that actually adds to what's happening on screen. Of course that song has also become something of a running gag with us, usually being played whenever a heavy fog rolls through the area. As you might guess, when it was used in Vexille, we all busted out laughing. This wasn't helped by the fact that the scene it was used for was itself very out of place from the rest of the movie's narrative, essentially being a cheap attempt at making the audience feel bad about the death of a character that was never really developed anyway. The scene that followed went right back to the action "plot" and made for some nice mood whiplash.

As for what is laughingly referred to as the "plot" in this movie, there really isn't much to talk about, and its mostly pushed forward by unnatural exposition, which starts before anything even appears on screen. The opening narrative and set-up actually sound like wank material to the types who want Japan to be the world's greatest economy and completely isolationist at the same time. They even come up with some kind of technobabble bullshit that would make Berman and Braga proud to make that possible in the modern and near future world with things like satellites. Of course the fancy shield cutting Japan off from the rest of the world is said to be so sensitive it will be set off by even micro-probes. Kind of makes me wonder how it doesn't get set off by birds or fish, or even just by the movement of water in the oceans, for that matter, or how everything under the shield is completely blurred from the outside, but allows the sun and clouds to be seen from the inside. Wouldn't rain set it off, too? Eh, whatever. Really the shield is just a plot device that keeps our main character, Vexille, isolated from the outside and completely dependant on the group of rebels she finds in what's left of Tokyo. As it turns out, cutting Japan off from the outside world was all part of some evil secret plan to turn the entire country into a petri dish for turning humans into androids using bullshit. I had to shake my head at the explanation of "bio-metal", but then I had to remember that in the movie's opening they showed people falling out of a helicopter hundreds of feet up in the air without any means of slowing their decent, and a plan plowing its wing through an old brick and masonry mansion without, you know, losing it. I'd wondered why they hadn't used another artificial material that might sound more plausible, but really it's because of these things:

I'm not even going to dignify this with the usual Dune reference...

They kind of resemble the weird tornado from Mission to Mars, but they're made of random metal junk, and are apparently what happens when the bullshit bio-metal virus "goes wrong". Don't put too much thought into that, because the writers obviously didn't. It's also never explicitly stated (that I can recall), but it is hinted at that they are the reason why all of Japan looks like North Dakota without any plant life. I have no idea how there are any of the Japanese android people left since apparently even Tokyo has been leveled, or where the massive ceramic wall came from and why the metal worms can't borrow underneath it, or why the metal worms can't swim, other than because the plot demands it. Oh, yeah, the metal worms are important to the climax and dénouement of the movie, you know, so the bad guys get theirs in the end. This is after the predictable misdirection that makes it look like the good guys have failed in their mission to fly down the exhaust ports to the central core of Daiwa Heavy Industries, because apparently the metal worms can't jump when the plot demands that they can't.

And all of this over the UN banning the development of androids, because that's what the intro explained was the reason Japan isolated itself over, because Daiwa had the Japanese government in its pocket, and corporations are evil, don'cha know. The big evil secret plan involved turning the entire human race into androids that bleed motor oil and are complete slaves to the corporations (corporations are evil). The big bad even spouts the usual shit about evolution, apparently forgetting that evolution is the process through which a species perpetuates itself, which can't happen when there's no reproduction. Whoops. The main question here that keeps coming up is "why?" Why would this man suddenly decide all of humanity would be better of as androids? Why would his company and the Japanese government go along with his insane plan that involved turning all Japanese people into androids against their will, and ultimately lead to the destruction of Japan as a country and a land mass. Why? Well, because... Because...

Muhahahahahahahahahaha! That's why.

What, you were expecting more? You’re watching the wrong movie, pal.

Honestly his rant just had so many logical flaws and holes that I was pretty much just left staring blankly at the screen. For instance, his argument that being an android is so much better than being human is somewhat negated by the fact being made out of metal apparently isn't enough to make a human-turned android immune to bullets, while he, hypocritically still human, somehow manages to live through being strangled by and android, shot in a helicopter with a high caliber machine gun, and crashing said helicopter.

Of course there are a few other loose plot threads, like how everything was being set up for an I, Robot style robot revolution at the beginning of the movie, and like how an American politician was somehow replaced by an evil android double in order to start positioning the US into becoming the next place to be turned into a giant android-growing petri dish, but when the movie limped into its finish I really didn't care all that much anymore. I guess they could have been sequel baiting, but considering that I, Robot was a better movie that this one, I really hope there's no Vexille Ex Machina.

So as you might guess, my overall conclusion is that this movie kinda sucks, just not as much as other movies out there. It has some added bonus in that it's pretty riff-able, but that's about the only reason I might recommend watching this movie. Well, that and if you just like mindless action and don't care about plot in the least. As for me, the lengthy, boring, physics-defying action strung together by pointless filler and exposition, combined with the lack of any character development make this movie rank pretty low on my nebulous scale of good. YMMV. 4/10.

Appleseed
(Single episode OVA)

I originally watched this 1988 OVA not terribly long after I first started on this odd mission of mine to basically watch any anime that seemed remotely interesting after reading about it on TV Tropes and Wikipedia. That was about 2009 or so, and I've become a lot more seasoned, not only with anime but toward story-telling in general. That being said, I didn't remember much from this OVA aside from being rather bored while watching it originally, so I decided to give it another chance and re-watch it. Looking at this OVA with fresher eyes, I can't really say as my original opinion was all that far off – it is rather boring, but this is mostly owing to how the story was told.

The major problem this OVA has is that it focuses its attention on the wrong things. To be fair, there was an interesting premise here, it's just that pretty much every bit of story that sounded like it might be interesting to see was instead told to the audience through exposition that seemed to be aimed at rushing the story along, which is pointless considering that the plot moved along at a snail's pace. The story itself follows both the familiar protagonists of Dunan and Briareos, and the main antagonists, a human police officer named Calon Mautholos and a cyborg terrorist named A.J. Sebastian. The thing is, none of these characters or any of the supporting characters are established very well, not only as to their backgrounds and what they're doing, but why they're doing it, especially in the case of the antagonists, because it's later revealed that the two of them don't even know each others' names. Motivation is lacking in general when it comes to the story, which goes hand in hand with giant leaps in logic that happen so the story can move along. I'll get into that more a bit later.

There actually is a serviceable plot here, it's just that, like everything else about this OVA, it's executed poorly. Basically, the set-up is the same, with many humans feeling powerless and resentful toward their situation in Olympus, the supposed "utopia" and last chance humanity has for survival following a non-nuclear WWIII that was somehow still so devastating that humanity actually was at risk of extinction. The thing is, Olympus is controlled by a computer named Gaia, and administered by unelected "biodroids", artificial humans designed specifically for whatever role they end up serving, only supposedly without any negative emotions. I say supposedly, because when shit starts to go down, the biodroids in control of the city sure do act rather angry, and frankly Athena, the city's highest authority, acts ever bit the dictator she's accused of being. Unsurprisingly, a lot of humans, most of whom have been "rescued" from the outside world and rehabilitated to live in civilization again, are resentful of their artificial leaders and the artificial environment they've been placed in, and react by either lashing out or offing themselves. The main antagonist, Sebastian, is one of the former, attacking Olympus as a terrorist, and ultimately seeking to destroy Gaia, the city's computer, in an effort to allow humans to regain control of their surroundings. Then there's Calon, a police officer who is a member of ESWAT, and Sebastian's inside man. Seems Calon's wife killed herself because she saw Olympus as a cage with no way out. Following this, a depressed Calon was dragged into a lab by Olympus officials (and probably biodroids, though never stated), strapped to a chair, and mind-raped by a computer in an effort to discover why this woman killed herself. So it's pretty easy to see why he'd have it in for Olympus and biodroids. So both he and Sebastian are working together to disable Gaia so they can take control of a giant beetle-looking tank and blast the hell out of the physical computer to destroy it for good.

As you might have guessed, I actually kind of side with the terrorists on this one, and it became harder and harder not to thanks to how Athena and her ilk were presented, and in how they treated Dunan and Briareos, when they were trying to stop the evil secret plan from coming to fruition to begin with. This is helped even further by one of the positive aspects of this show, because while the characters and their motivations aren't established very well, they are presented as being more than one-dimensional, and Calon in particular is shown in a sympathetic light. For instance, when part of the plan calls on Calon to kill Dunan and Briareos, he can't bring himself to do so. Sebastian, on the other hand, is pretty much just a cold, pragmatic asshole, who thinks nothing of killing his fellow humans if there's even a small chance they could interfere with his plan, and thinks nothing of causing any collateral damage even if his stated aim is to enable humanity to stand up on its own again, which is kind of hard to do when he keeps knocking down buildings full of them.

Unfortunately, the slow pace and almost casual way the story handles the plot has a way of bringing down the show overall. It almost comes off as a standard '80s police procedural, complete with a montage of Dunan and her robot boyfriend hitting the streets in plain clothes and violating the rights of a bunch of people in an effort to hunt down Sebastian. The darker aspect of that which seems a little glossed over here is that it's so they can essentially gun this guy down on sight without the benefit of a trial on the orders of their city's leader. Of course the way it's played, this story could be taking place in modern day New York City, at least if it wasn't for Briareos looking like a giant mechanical rabbit.

"Annnhh... What's up, doc?"

Eventually, Dunan and Briareos discover that a fellow cop is involved in this terrorist business, which they are able to very quickly put together involves Hitomi, the biodroid who has pulled many humans in from the outside world, including our protagonists, and is apparently considered a friend of many of them (she also apparently likes to get drunk and have casual sex with some of them). I'm not sure how they do that with the information they have exactly, or how they predict that they are going to need to weather a gas attack, but the story demands it, so they do. Apparently Hitomi has some kind of special DNA or something that makes her a kind of special "key" which will disable Gaia, just by walking into one of three computer terminals located around the city. So Calon kidnaps Hitomi while Sebastian sets out to hijack the giant beetle tank thing. Dunan and Briareos try to stop Calon, but he's running around in a mech suit, so he isn't exactly easy to stop. They do almost manage to do so, but thanks to Athena being a complete bitch, they're arrested by other ESWAT officers who are also running around in mech suits.

It seems that, for reasons that are never really explained, Athena seems to think that Dunan and Briareos are working with Sebastian. She tries to make the case that he got away at the beginning of the show while in their custody, except that he didn't, he got away by killing some random cop whose custody he was in. There was also the part where Dunan blew the head off of the mech that Calon was operating in an attempt to stop him from running off with Hitomi only to be stopped by ESWAT. Athena then tries to make something out of Briareos having some humanity in spite of looking like a robot by preventing ESWAT from simply pulling a spray and pray on Calon while he was holding an unconscious Hitomi. Of course Athena is a bitch, so she sees Hitomi as a replicable piece of hardware, which is pretty good considering that Athena is a biodroid herself. Dunan and Briareos are able to make the case that they had a lead on who the police mole is, however, only the informant that had clued Briareos into this was very much dead at that point. But rather than slap the cuffs on our heroes again, they are still allowed to rejoin ESWAT actively and participate in the attempt to keep Gaia from getting shut down.

This is where even more stupidity makes itself known, because rather than say, cutting the wires at all three terminals, making it impossible for them to be used, and setting up observation at all three of them in case Calon shows up, they blow up twp of the terminals and set up a huge police blockade at the one remaining terminal, which Calon manages to crash through. It does end up costing him his life, but in the end Hitomi is pushed into the terminal and Gaia is shut down anyway. This releases the giant beetle tank, and Sebastian makes a real nuisance of himself. Apparently the only way to stop this and restore Gaia's control is to shoot some circuit which just happens to be shaped like a bull's-eye target. So while Dunan was actually doing this, I couldn't help but think about how absurd it was that she had to hit the thing exactly in the center, because computers and bullets generally don’t get along very well, or as Marko Ramius put it, "mosht of the thingsh in here don't react well to bulletsh."

Hey, that'd be cool – anime Marko Ramius.

Anyway, Dunan manages to succeed at the last second, as the cliché demands, which makes Sebastian's day end very badly for him. Afterwards, Athena waves at Dunan as she passes her on the street, so apparently this means she isn't a bitch anymore, or something.

Overall, this OVA really didn't have a lot going on for it. It was rather drawn out and boring for most of its 70 minute run time. It wasn't hugely bad, though, either. If anything, I'd say that this version of Appleseed is fairly average and representative of anime from the '80s, at least of anime that didn't completely suck, anyway. I'm not just referring to the dated music, either, because it has a lot of the cool things I actually like about anime from this era, mainly in the amount of detail they were able to work in, and the mindless violence that reminds me of watching something Paul Verhoeven made. Even the visual design has a certain kind of charm to it. There were also plenty of the things I like to make fun of about anime from this era, like all the misspelled English words (Olumpus, alart, etc.), the English dub itself (which apparently based its pronunciations on the Engrishy Japanese dub), and yes, even some of the clichés being played straight.

That being said, I wouldn't recommend this OVA to someone who is new to anime, but I might to someone who likes older anime for the reasons I listed above. 5/10.

Appleseed Ex Machina
(2007 movie)

You know, this movie is going to be something of a rarity for me. Usually, when I rewatch something, it seems like I don't like it as much as when I first watched it, but in the case of this movie, the opposite is true. I'm not saying this movie is especially awesome or even partially good or anything, but I'm glad that I gave it another chance now that I've actually bothered to watch the whole thing. See, the thing is, when I first watched this movie, I was completely turned off by the opening action scene, which basically consisted of our main characters, Deunan Knute and Briareos Hecatonchires, doing some kind of a weird dance as they unnecessarily twirled around each other as they gunned down the bad guys arranged in a circle around them with automatic gun fire. This after Deunan pulled off a bunch of physics-defying acrobatic feats that Batman only wishes he could pull off while she infiltrated a giant cathedral. At the time, I was frankly bored by this, so I just rolled my eyes and turned it off. Now, with quite a bit of anime under my belt, I basically just laughed at this scene and made fun of it, punctuated by John Woo's name appearing on screen followed by a flurry of white doves, and just so many other things one associates with John Woo's direction style. So really, enjoyment of this movie depends entirely on the mindset you happen to be in, because really it's just a lot of action schlock.

A few things about this movie I have to get out of the way, though, is that this is, overall, a better movie than the movie it claims to be a sequel to. It has better pacing, a plot that is fairly straight-forward and makes some amount of sense, even if it is derivative, actually manages to have a little character development, and the CGI looks a lot better. Of course it balances this out with heavy doses of cliché, having characters make decisions and take actions that don't really make sense, having a story like something out of a video game, ripping off the Borg from the Star Trek franchise, and living up to the "Ex Machina" part of its title in order to have the good guys win in the end.

One of the other things about this movie is that it isn't really so much a sequel as a reboot. Sure, it tries to say it's a sequel, but not only does everything look completely different, but it feels different, too. What I mean by that is that in the first movie, Olympus represented the only bastion of civilization for humanity, which is why the big evil secret plot revolved around the release of some kind of virus from the "D-Tank" located in one of the donut buildings. As silly as the plot and its reasoning was, it was still plausible as a threat to all of humanity if pretty much all of humanity was located within Olympus. However, in this movie, Olympus is basically the United States, and we learn that there are other city-states around the world, such as the European Union and the fictitious Poseidon, which seems to be based in Asia thanks to the stereotypical Chinese dress the leader or representative from Poseidon wears in all of her scenes. This change kind of makes the plot of the first movie even sillier, and since nothing in this movie is dependant on anything from the first movie, it makes more sense to view this movie as being another adaptation rather than a sequel to the 2004 movie.

Something else I have to make note of is the fan service, not only in this movie, but in the 2004 movie, the 1988 movie, and by extension of its producers, Vexille, is the very tame nature of it. It's kind of an oddity for anime, at least in my experience, which makes it both a good thing and a bad thing at the same time, in some ways. On the good side, it's nice to see some restraint from the completely ridiculous levels of jiggling woman flesh on display one might see in a lot of other anime. Of course that's not to say that there's no fan service, as this movie in particular has a love affair with Deunan's ass.

Every shot of which managed to stop me mid-sentence from my riffing, because, damn...

And you know, between this and how Hitomi kept going on about how beautiful Deunan was in the first movie, I actually could have went for seeing the absolutely gorgeous short-haired blonde in all her naked glory, but then I'm a perv, so I can hardly fault the filmmakers for showing a little restraint. Of course, they also tried to balance it out a little by showing off Briareos's and Tereus's, his bioroid clone, asses in skin-tight plants far too often for my tastes. This also only briefly distracted me from noticing that Deunan is apparently the only female officer in ESWAT, which makes ESWAT a total sausage festivaaallll.....

What was I saying? I kind of lost my train of thought there, so I guess I'll finally get around to the story and explaining just who the hell Tereus is.

Okay, so the opening scene I mentioned happened, and the set-up is basically that a bunch of cyborgs have kidnapped some EU officials, apparently to keep them from going to some important meeting, and is holding them hostage. Deunan rushes in and does her thing, followed by her robot boyfriend, Briareos. They gun everyone down and save a very Harrison Ford looking hostage along with a few others. Unfortunately for them, one of the cyborgs took a cue from Predator and sets off a bomb as Briareos tried to interrogate him. He shields Deunan from the blast, but is messed up pretty badly himself, so we get that clichéd attempt at dramatically calling out the name of someone who's been hurt or killed. Surprisingly, this doesn't work so well with a name like Briareos. However, the point of this is basically to split up Briareos and Deunan as police partners so that Tereus, the son of Ares and clone of Briareos, can become her partner, and to set up Briareos to get screwed by the antagonist later on.

The big bad, sort of, is basically a grey-haired doctor that made me think of the doctor from Team Fortress 2 every time I saw him. Doctor Richard Kestner is apparently pretty popular with cyborgs, which kind of sets him up to be behind the big secret evil plan, though really he ends up just offing himself and the big bad is revealed to be a computerized collective consciousness, and all because Doctor Kestner is upset about his wife dying in an accident, and because Poseidon shut their company, Halcon, down because of it. Oh, and as an aside, I couldn't help but think of Calgon from the MST3K'd Space Mutiny. Incidentally, Halcon is a real company, which manufactures firearms. Anyway, as you might have guessed, the evil secret plan is to make everyone part of the Borg-I mean Halcon collective by somehow infecting them with machinery from the iPhones of the future, something called a Connexus that is worn on both ears like two Bluetooths and projects a holographic screen over the eyes of the user.

Essentially, the build-up to this is that Athena, the prime minister of Olympus, has reformed the UN in order to brow-beat all the other remaining countries around the world into letting Olympus control all of their satellites, uh, because. Honestly, they gave some reason, but I forgot, mainly because the big UN meeting takes place in a big glass dome in spite of the security risk, and Athena goes as far as to refuse to let anyone leave even as the building comes under attack from people who have been hacked/assimilated by the Connexus. There's an attempt at drama here, as a character who possibly could have been cool if he'd been allowed to be developed, ended up being one of those assimilated, and Briareos ends up being forced to kill him to stop him. Briareos himself is also infected with this nanovirus in order to further the plot along, as well as to make it more difficult for Deunan to help him so they can figure out what's going on. Briareos does figure it out, and Doctor Kestner is even kind enough to exposit how he thinks all of the world's problems would be solved if only humans weren't allowed to have different thoughts. The Borg similarity is pretty easy to see, and the black vein things that sprout out of the Bluetooths just cements it as a rip-off.

Tereus's role in all of this is to basically constantly throw doubt as to what side he's on, because he is played both as an honest person, and as having an unreadable, possibly sinister side, since he's a clone and clones tend to be evil in media. There's also a very disturbing aspect to his existence that the movie didn't seem to realize, because while they did touch on how disturbing it might be to have a clone of yourself, they passed completely over the Orwellian horror aspect of having a genetically engineered clone of yourself made without your permission in order to serve as the basis for a new line of artificially made, genetically engineered police force. But I guess the filmmakers thought a better use of their time was to suggest mannerisms are genetic and to make it out to be cute that Tereus and Briareos act a lot alike, even if they apparently kind of hate each other. This is at least partly due to the fact that the movie kind of makes Deunan out to be attracted to Tereus and somewhat tempted by the prospect of having a flesh and blood tubesteak to enjoy instead of whatever Briareos is equipped with now. Can't say as I really blame her all that much, especially since Tereus is made out to be so much like Briareos, and Briareos himself is rather moody for most of this movie. But since there's not much more character development than the 2004 movie, this doesn't really go anywhere by movie's end.

The climax of the movie takes place in a floating city made out of Borg cubes, which is described as being Halcon's "abandoned" headquarters. I mean, if it was abandoned, why was it just left to float there, where it could come crashing down at some point? Eh, whatever. The important thing is that there's an epic aerial mech fight that leads to our main characters meeting the Borg queen, who turns out to be a Borg-ified Dr. Elizabeth Xander, who was the dead girlfriend Doctor Kestner was whining about earlier in the movie. That and that she's covered in robotic tentacles.

Seems pretty obvious where the animator wanted to go here (don't blame him).

As you might guess, this involves multiple penetrations and the excretion of a fluid into the violated bodies of our protagonists, all three of them, but it's nanovirus through their skin, you dirty perverts. Wink

I should also probably mention the anti-nano-virus one of the Q-like (Bond, not Star Trek) characters came up with our of thin air, which only works temporarily. This was used to stop Briareos from freaking out so they could get to the climactic battle, but even though our main characters are being assimilated by all these robo-tentacles, this isn't used to stop the assimilation process or anything. Instead, Deunan is able to summon some kind of main character immunity and come out of the assimilation all on her own, as is Briareos so he can toss her the last vial of the stuff so she can inject the Borg queen with it. This deus ex machine rather anti-climactically ends the battle, which was already kind of going that way anyway since all of the characters had been assimilated very quickly after arriving in the Borg queen's chamber. Anyway, zombie Dr. Zander, briefly free of the Halcon collective's control, sets the floating factory's self destruct, and the movie ends in the second most clichéd way possible. Really the only thing that kept it from ending the way I thought it would is that Tereus survived his attempt to make a heroic sacrifice.

Threesome anyone? Very Happy

So, like I said, it isn't really an especially good movie, it's just that it was a better movie than the one it was supposedly a sequel for. The main things it has going for it are that it's well-paced, and actually fairly entertaining, in part due to its riff-ability. There are also a number of character appearances that make it a little fun to spot, such as a Hitler and a Lincoln look-alike, and the Harrison Ford look-alike I mentioned before. I'd recommend it on the basis of mindless entertainment, but that's about the size of it. My main regret is that no one making any of these movies seems to know how to do any character stuff, because they're too obsessed with action and showing off Deunan's ass, god bless 'em. 6/10.

Scrapped Princess
(24 episode series)

While I’d initially decided to pass on this series for whatever reason, it just so happened that my roommate had it on his hard drive, and we decided to watch it out of boredom if nothing else. We were both pleasantly surprised by the series, and liked it so much that we ended up marathoning it over the course of the next week. While it has a somewhat confusing beginning, a somewhat annoying protagonist, and a rather contrived resolution, overall I found the series to be quite enjoyable, with a complex, well-paced story, interesting characters, and enough drama to draw me in and keep me watching – the cliff-hanger ending to the majority of the episodes helped that along, too.

The story starts en media res, introducing us very quickly to protagonist Pacifica Casull, and her two adoptive siblings/bodyguards Shannon and Raquel. Not long afterwards, the three are attacked by forces of their Kingdom, Leinwan, and find themselves pursued by a member of the kingdom’s special forces, Christopher. Eventually the backstory of the story is explained to the audience, and it sounds a lot like a Greek tragedy. The story itself seems to take place in some kind of Medieval fantasy world, given the level of technology displayed and the use of magic by Raquel and other wizards. Pacifica is actually a princess of Leinwan, but when she and her twin brother were born, a prophesy from the Church of Mauser predicted that when she turned 16, she would cause the end of the world. So the King ordered that she not even be given a name, and that she be dumped off of a high cliff to be killed, Spartan style. Like a lot of anime, they felt the need to use some other word to describe this, so they call it “scrapping”, because I guess “death by exposure” sounds too cool and “throwing a baby off a cliff” sounded too on the nose. But I guess they had to call the series something, so there you go. But luck was on baby’s side, because her mother and a court wizard conspired to save her, and the wizard adopted her as his own, naming her Pacifica in the hopes that it would somehow make everyone she met like her. No, really, they made a point of bringing that up more than once. But even in Medieval fantasy land, it’s difficult to keep secrets from the government, and Pacifica’s adoptive parents were both killed defending her, leaving her adoptive siblings to protect her as they live a life on the run, though it’s never made clear just where they were hoping to run to.

Pacifica is actually a fairly sweet, if spoiled, character, which makes it actually somewhat humorous in how much everyone ends up hating her after they find out she’s the scrapped princess.

Truly, the poison that will destroy the world.

Actually, for the most part I sympathized with her. The main drawback to her character, aside from being almost practically useless when it came to her defending herself and occasionally showing how pampered she was, was that she really had a tendency to whine and be very Shinji-like in doing so. At one point Shannon even offers to kill her if she’s so damn bent on blaming herself for the deaths of those who were either trying to protect her, or were otherwise just caught up in the zeal of those trying to kill her. Not exactly something she could be blamed for, but she sure insisted on doing it a lot. Oh, and then there’s the semi-incestuous attraction she has to her adoptive brother Shannon, but fortunately he insists on telling her off every time she bring it up.

The three of them meet plenty of other characters along the way, including a small dose of Moé that later goes on to try to kill them, and to varying degrees they are somewhat interesting, though admittedly, even the main supporting characters, Shannon and Raquel are somewhat bland and stereotypical. Fortunately as the series climaxes, most of them improve as they are taken to their breaking points, but while I like the series overall, I have to admit that this is something of a weak area.

Admittedly, my reviews can be somewhat spoiler heavy, but I’m also feeling a bit lazy, so I’m not going to go into too much detail with this one as far as the story and the plot. I will reveal that the setting actually turns out to be in a post-apocalyptic future, following the defeat of humanity to an alien force that is never seen or identified. This is thanks in large part to some AI-controlled weapons humanity developed to protect them, as these weapons were talked into betraying humanity on the grounds that they’d actually be preserving humanity in the end by making a quick defeat possible, and by watching over them to protect humans from themselves. They apparently elected to do so by trapping humanity in a perpetual Middle Ages setting for 5000 years, limiting them both technologically and in the area of the world they can occupy. As you might expect, this eventually leads to giant robots fighting, because it’s anime and there has to be giant robots in some form, unless it’s cheesy slice of life, rom com, or magical girl anime, anyway. The contrivance I mentioned at the beginning of the review actually has to do with a convoluted plan that was apparently started 5000 years prior to when the story takes place, which all comes together so that Pacifica is immune to the hypnotic control of their robot overlords (at least two of which have rather nice racks, by-the-by), which she can pass on to others in an uncontrolled fashion when she’s under a great deal of stress, and so she has people who are apparently genetically predisposed to protect her. Only a couple of those characters really seem troubled by that last bit, though, and they eventually just kind of let it drop, partly in light of the special forces who at one time were trying to hunt down and kill Pacifica decide to protect her and fight on her side of their own free will and sense of justice.

I, for one, welcome our robot overlords.

The biggest problem I had was with the resolution, though, mainly because it’s quite clichéd and involves the use of the often-used reset button, which also serves to fully exposit the backstory, bring at least two characters back to life, instantly resolve all the fighting going on, and end humanity’s caged, controlled existence. As an added bonus, there’s a weak attempt to explain why the age of 16 is so important, apparently right down to the hour.

While the ending was rather frustrating, and the main character could be rather annoying at times, the story was still interesting enough to keep me watching, and the drama was also fairly effective, though at times the comedy relief could get in the way of that. Still, there were a few moments that managed to tug at what few heart strings I have left, so there is that. Overall, while it may not be the best series I’ve seen and it had its flaws, it was still a pretty good series and I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in sci-fi and fantasy. If you liked Trigun or Claymore, you might find Scrapped Princess interesting, though the tone isn’t nearly as dark as Claymore. 7/10.

Ramen Fighter Miki
(12 episode series)

When I first saw the trailer for this series as a suggestion for my friends’ anime night, I pegged it as being somewhat along the lines of other comedy fighting anime like Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple. Having seen it now, I can’t say as I was very far off. I typically don’t find this kind of anime very interesting, but whereas Kenichi was very predictable and focused on typical high school crap that I couldn’t care less about, and in the protagonist hooking up, Miki simply focuses on the antics of a 20 year old woman working as a waitress and delivery girl for her mother’s ramen shop, and the antics of those around her. In essence, its simplicity is what makes it at least somewhat enjoyable for me to watch.

This series is very episodic in nature, without much in terms of continuity beyond when it introduces characters. It also doesn’t take itself even remotely seriously, having fun with its premise, and taking the opportunity to reference other anime and movies many times throughout its run. It also tends to make fun of various anime clichés, though at times it can seem like they’re trying to have their cake and eat it, too. In any case, there is no real overall story, with each episode being split up into two sub-episodes, the way Panty & Stocking was, with each sub-episode typically having a theme of some kind. There are also recurring jokes, such as everyone thinking that one of the characters is actually a vengeful ghost, going so far as to directly reference The Ring (she’s actually a stressed out teacher). The series also likes to play clichés up, only to turn them on their head throughout its run.

The characters in this series are both its strength and its weakness. They are never really fleshed out all that much or all that well, beyond the fact that the majority of them like to fight the title character out of revenge or out of a simple dislike of Miki. The only exceptions are the grocer next door to the ramen shop Miki works at for her mother, and Miki’s mother. Most of the characters are childish in some way, the only exception being the teacher everyone thinks is a ghost, though she has her own quirks. As most of the focus is on cartoonish, over the top violence, my expectations weren’t very high in this area, and I wasn’t disappointed or surprised. Admittedly, I did actually find some of it to be kind of funny, though as I said before, this isn’t really my kind of thing. The series is somewhat aware of itself, however, as it is revealed that the main reason the ramen shop is as popular as it is doesn’t have to do with the quality of the food so much as the violence that is a daily occurrence there, with the customers viewing it as a violent sitcom.

Overall I found this series to be … okay. It wasn’t really something I looked forward to seeing every week, but it wasn’t really bad, either. You have to keep in mind my own tastes and biases, however, so if you like shows along the lines of Kenichi, there’s a good chance you’ll like this show, too. That being said, the score I’m giving this on my nebulous scale of good reflects my own tastes. 7/10.

Glad to see you back, Captain X. Kinda missed you these past seven months.

I loved how in Scrapped Princess almost every single female wears clothing that is precisely tailored to conform to her chest. Each breast even gets its own 'pocket' to snugly fit into. It may be a medieval setting but that doesn't mean the womenfolk have to skip on comfort.

Huh, I honestly hadn't noticed that, beyond some of them being particularly chesty. Very Happy

As for the time gap, I'm afraid grad school has taken its toll. Sad

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