Anime to pick up
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I love my anime.
It's terribly uncool of me, since so many of the wrong people are getting into it now. I cant help myself. There are genres within anime that always give me gold. If I do my research I find garunteed hours and hours of the most amazing shows. It's the search and discovery thats so exciting as well. The hunt.
In this spirit, and since I havnt collected any new shows for a while, I've been searching online to see whats out there and what I should be looking for. Supanova is coming up and the madman booth there is always good for stocking up on things you want and missed.
This is what I'll be looking for:
Abenobashi Mahou Shotengai aka Magical shopping Arcade Abenobashi - One of the finer parody shows to come out recently, this show is about two kids from Osaka, Arumi and Satoshi. After a weird mishap with Arumi's grandfather and a magical statue, Arumi and Satoshi are transported to different mystical lands in search for the answer of : why are they constantly being shifted to newer weirder worlds?
Texhnolyze - Kind of in the same vein as Lain (unsurprisingly, as it was created by ABe), the
show is very 'cyberpunk' and has a decent amount of angst. It follows Ichise, a young man who lost his parents when he was young and eventually became an underground fighter. Through certain incidents, he loses an arm and leg and has them replaced with 'Texhnolyze', which are biomechanical artificial limbs.
The show starts off fairly slowly as Ichise deals with his new limbs, but quickly gains speed and pure awesomeness immediately afterwards. It's a very heavily saturated political drama / fantasy, of sorts, and it can be hard to keep track of who is who throughout the series.
RahXephon: In the year 2015, Tokyo is controlled by the Mu, beings from an alternate
dimension. Thing is, the citizens don't even know it happened. The story begins on a regular school day for Ayato Kamina, running late for class. The city is suddenly attacked from out of nowhere, and, while fleeing, Ayato meets Reika, a rather creepy girl from his school just standing there in the middle of the attack. It is here that the story truly begins, leading Ayato into a world outside of his own in which humans have been waging a war on his city (Tokyo Jupiter, named because it very much resembles the planet Jupiter) and the Mu for the past 15 years, and the secrets of RahXephon, a weapon only he can control.
(I've seen this but dont own it. It's beautiful and brilliant)
Argento Soma - Made by the Sunrise team that created Gasaraki and Witch Hunter Robin,
the story centers on a young graduate student who loses his girlfriend in an experiment dealing with a giant alien 'Frankenstein monster', and proceeds to literally 'sell his soul' for revenge by getting inducted into to a military organization. Smartly literate, politically astute (though dealing mostly with American politics, though even better than Gasaraki did), and mildly socially aware (race and gender issues are touched on very very lightly, but the flags they raise are important), Argent Soma succeeds because its themes aren't as overt as Gasaraki's media criticisms, nor as weakly argued as Witch Hunter Robin's issues of human rights. And the constant plays at character doubling and the underlying theme of the loss of identity are brilliant. It's both intelligent and well planned, and I'd venture to say that it's one of the best television series ever made in the past decade.
Infinite Ryvius - A training ship full of hundreds of children of varying ages is targeted for
terrorist attack, and all the adults aboard sacrifice their lives to prevent the ship, the Ryvius, from falling into enemy hands. The older students on board are forced to take over and start figuring out how best to fend off more attacks while trying to maintain some sort of order on the ship, which quickly begins breaking down into total anarchy. And, worse still, there's questions to be asked about the Ryvius itself... This series might be considered a bedfellow to Battle Royale or perhaps Lord of the Flies, but the twists are more realistic and, while not as extreme or violent as either movie, far more tragic. The characters are, for the most part, handled marvelously, particularly with the protagonist Aiba Kouji, whose inactions can sometimes recall Shinji of Evangelion, but with arrogance instead of angst. Infinite Ryvius portrays a credible snapshot of massed urban society pushed to the brink of death and sanity.
Well, thats for starters.
It's terribly uncool of me, since so many of the wrong people are getting into it now. I cant help myself. There are genres within anime that always give me gold. If I do my research I find garunteed hours and hours of the most amazing shows. It's the search and discovery thats so exciting as well. The hunt.
In this spirit, and since I havnt collected any new shows for a while, I've been searching online to see whats out there and what I should be looking for. Supanova is coming up and the madman booth there is always good for stocking up on things you want and missed.
This is what I'll be looking for:
Abenobashi Mahou Shotengai aka Magical shopping Arcade Abenobashi - One of the finer parody shows to come out recently, this show is about two kids from Osaka, Arumi and Satoshi. After a weird mishap with Arumi's grandfather and a magical statue, Arumi and Satoshi are transported to different mystical lands in search for the answer of : why are they constantly being shifted to newer weirder worlds?
Texhnolyze - Kind of in the same vein as Lain (unsurprisingly, as it was created by ABe), the
show is very 'cyberpunk' and has a decent amount of angst. It follows Ichise, a young man who lost his parents when he was young and eventually became an underground fighter. Through certain incidents, he loses an arm and leg and has them replaced with 'Texhnolyze', which are biomechanical artificial limbs.The show starts off fairly slowly as Ichise deals with his new limbs, but quickly gains speed and pure awesomeness immediately afterwards. It's a very heavily saturated political drama / fantasy, of sorts, and it can be hard to keep track of who is who throughout the series.
RahXephon: In the year 2015, Tokyo is controlled by the Mu, beings from an alternate
dimension. Thing is, the citizens don't even know it happened. The story begins on a regular school day for Ayato Kamina, running late for class. The city is suddenly attacked from out of nowhere, and, while fleeing, Ayato meets Reika, a rather creepy girl from his school just standing there in the middle of the attack. It is here that the story truly begins, leading Ayato into a world outside of his own in which humans have been waging a war on his city (Tokyo Jupiter, named because it very much resembles the planet Jupiter) and the Mu for the past 15 years, and the secrets of RahXephon, a weapon only he can control.(I've seen this but dont own it. It's beautiful and brilliant)
Argento Soma - Made by the Sunrise team that created Gasaraki and Witch Hunter Robin,
the story centers on a young graduate student who loses his girlfriend in an experiment dealing with a giant alien 'Frankenstein monster', and proceeds to literally 'sell his soul' for revenge by getting inducted into to a military organization. Smartly literate, politically astute (though dealing mostly with American politics, though even better than Gasaraki did), and mildly socially aware (race and gender issues are touched on very very lightly, but the flags they raise are important), Argent Soma succeeds because its themes aren't as overt as Gasaraki's media criticisms, nor as weakly argued as Witch Hunter Robin's issues of human rights. And the constant plays at character doubling and the underlying theme of the loss of identity are brilliant. It's both intelligent and well planned, and I'd venture to say that it's one of the best television series ever made in the past decade.Infinite Ryvius - A training ship full of hundreds of children of varying ages is targeted for
terrorist attack, and all the adults aboard sacrifice their lives to prevent the ship, the Ryvius, from falling into enemy hands. The older students on board are forced to take over and start figuring out how best to fend off more attacks while trying to maintain some sort of order on the ship, which quickly begins breaking down into total anarchy. And, worse still, there's questions to be asked about the Ryvius itself... This series might be considered a bedfellow to Battle Royale or perhaps Lord of the Flies, but the twists are more realistic and, while not as extreme or violent as either movie, far more tragic. The characters are, for the most part, handled marvelously, particularly with the protagonist Aiba Kouji, whose inactions can sometimes recall Shinji of Evangelion, but with arrogance instead of angst. Infinite Ryvius portrays a credible snapshot of massed urban society pushed to the brink of death and sanity.Well, thats for starters.
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