Sunshine, Rainbows and Zombies in School-Live

School-Live spins a magnificently deceptive story about optimism in the most hopeless situation–a zombie apocalypse.

We’ve seen similar stories like this anime. An infectious disease spreads through Japan, causing people to lose their sanity and turn into zombies. However, School-Live’s visual style truly sets itself apart right from episode one. The show begins with a pink-haired girl prancing around the high school, searching for a lost puppy. In half an hour, she’s smiling in the middle of a ruined classroom, with zombies swarming around the building.

Could cute high school girls somehow live normal lives, even when hundreds of people are dying? The whole premise of School-Live (Gakkou Gurashi in Japan) grapples with this apocalyptic scenario. The protagonists reflect the innocent, child-like charm of Lucky Star and countless other moe-style shows, but the situation is a lot more devastating. The schoolgirls must scavenge desperately for food, shelter and clothing. The zombies could also break through the high school girls’ barrier of desks and tables at any time.

There really isn’t much of a setup for how this zombie outbreak takes place. Episodes two through six show us all the moments in which the mysterious airborne infection spreads through Japan. Eventually the power grid shuts down and people just turn into zombies. That’s all. The whole exposition reeks of monotony, because we’ve seen this cookie-cutter plot before. The members of the School Living Club are what really define the emotional intensity of this show’s 12-episode run. Each club member plays a critical role in helping their group survive.

School-Live! ends on one of the most horrific final episodes. The School Living Club faces a devastating situation, in which the pink-haired Yuki must face her fears and save her friends. For most of the show, she’s acted as the most delusional person in the club, daydreaming that high school life is still passing on without any problems. Her friends know that this is really a post-traumatic facade, to try to separate herself from all the horrible problems surrounding her. At this same time, she’s also a remarkable cheerleader. Yuki might seem like the class clown, but she becomes the embodiment of the last shining beacon of hope in their high school.

This show isn’t very pleasant, but it still proves that traumatized little girls can still find hope in a zombie apocalypse. Maybe. There’s actually more chapters of this story in the manga. I really doubt that these girls survived after the twelfth episode, but hey, the show ended on a high note. That’s good, right?

Do you disagree with this review? Can you think of any other shows that are as agonizing as School-Live? Write about them in the comments below!

Bookworm Saves the World With Paper-Fu in Read Or Die

Want to watch a nerd kill supervillains with paper airplanes, daggers and swords? Then Read Or Die is the perfect show to fulfill those hopes and dreams.

Trust me on this–the best Japanese shows always emerge from outlandish concepts. For a super spy hero, Yomiko Readman is the biggest klutz in the world. She spends most of her time shopping for books and reading everything within reach. She is also the most powerful paper master in the world. Every paper that she touches can harden into weapons and vehicles.

Sure, the three-episode Read Or Die DVD never explains how the hell someone could do such a thing. Thing is, we don’t need to know the details, because her fighting style is just plain awesome. She often throws tons of paper at her enemies, suffocating them and slicing through their bodies. All of her fights look incredible.

And while there isn’t much story in Read Or Die, Yomiko Readman is clearly the star of the show. Throughout each episode, she dances dreamily around massive libraries of books, hunting for the the rarest novel to distract her. She has absolutely no real prestigious aspirations–she’s a broke schoolteacher who needs to find a long-term job. However, the first episode shows us that she never needed much help to begin with. She’s a secret agent for the British Library, with more than enough martial arts paper training to murder anyone who tries to steal her books.

This anime is one heck of a killer parody of blockbuster spy thrillers, especially the James Bond movies. All the characters have special code names. Yomiko’s code name is The Paper. Her boss is Joker, the cleanest looking British dude on planet Earth. Yomiko works alongside Nancy Makuhari, nicknamed “Miss Deep.” The only relatively ordinary member of the team is Yomiko’s helicopter chauffeur, a heavy duty American operative named Drake Anderson. This team ventures to save the world from a tyrannical organization known as the I-Jin.

The dangerous, seductive vibe of spy action films permeates through every frame of animation in Read Or Die. Taku Iwasaki’s orchestral soundtrack fills the show with intense orchestral bursts, with smooth jazz interludes interspersed after every battle. The battles between the Paper and the I-Jin are massive affairs, littered with sword duels, gunshots and tons of explosions.

The true irony of this 2001 Read or Die film is that it ends far too abruptly. There’s enough closure to satisfy viewers–Yomiko still saves the day in a courageous display of heroism. The O.V.A. even kicks up the drama with a romantic subplot between Nancy and Ikkyu, the villainous leader of the I-Jin. Unfortunately, the film never explains why the I-Jin started cloning all these historical figures to cause terrorist attacks in the first place!

I suppose the director of this show couldn’t easily explain this concept very easily in a short feature length film.  In spite of all these egregious flaws, Read Or Die still shines as one of the finest anime films in the last decade. It only lasts about 90 minutes, but it introduced truly imaginative characters that no one will ever forget.

Got any suggestions for crazy anime concepts that could top this one? What are your favorite anime shows of all time? Write about them in the comments below!

Apology: What the Heck is Read or Die?

In my previous review, I forgot to explain what the Read or Die series is really about! I can’t believe that I haven’t mentioned this anime franchise once on my anime blog.

For the record, one of the first anime shows that I’ve ever watched is Read or Die. The movie-length DVD is an all-time classic movie in Japanese animation history. I honestly thought that I had written about this show at least once.

I was wrong. I hadn’t posted a single article about Read or Die. I’m absolutely sorry about this. I will correct this crime in a couple days. Sigh.

Do you have any show suggestions for me to review? Write about them in the comments below!

Charming Paper Masters Unite in Sluggish R.O.D. TV Series

Paper is the most lethal weapon known to man, at least according to the Read or Die franchise. R.O.D. the TV takes this concept further with a complex adventure about cute girls saving the universe with paper. Unfortunately, the end result is a bit of a drag.

Although Read Or Die has never been known for realism, the franchise’s story arcs about power-hungry dictators only seem more plausible than ever before. In this particular TV show, the villain seeks to rewrite the history of the world using massive bureaucratic power and manipulation of the masses.

Sounds like incredible stuff, but the narrative is so frustratingly slow. The main problem–my favorite character from the original 2001 R.O.D., Yomiko, has disappeared! At the very least, the first episode shows Nenene Sumiregawa from the manga series. Nenene Sumiregawa is a famous author who is Yomiko’s #1 fan. She meets her three bodyguards in episode one. These girls just happen to be paper masters–dangerous secret agents who can turn paper into swords, dragons and giant airplanes that can travel across continents.

Unfortunately, this awesome intro is followed by two clumsy episodes where the three sisters just cause mischief for Nenene around town. If anime fans stick with the R.O.D. the TV, they’ll watch some truly gripping episodes where the Paper sisters have to fight against formidable foes. There’s a madman who shoots supersonic waves and a book thief assassin who can slip through walls.

If that wasn’t enough, the show ends with an epic showdown between the Paper Sisters and an evil Chinese library organization called the Dousensha. This group seeks to implant something called the Perfect Language into Nenene’s mind, so that she can hypnotize the world into an ideal future or…something.

The first half of this 26-episode journey is a ridiculous, meandering travelogue of the Paper Sisters’ life with Nenene. Their crazy morning routine of brushing teeth and eating food together looked cute at first. After 10 episodes, the charm wore off. Sure, they have some thrilling side jobs that they fulfill with Dousensha. However, the thrills are few and far between.

The overarching story of the series finally picked up steam at around episode 12, but the pace change arrived too late for me. The whole show has a number of special reunions, where characters from the R.O.D. OVA finally reveal their faces in episode 15. Unfortunately, that stretch from episode one to episode 15 is such a slog for the average TV watcher.

I still loved R.O.D. the TV. The Paper Sisters grew on me over time. Anita especially shined as a reluctant hero with her share of childhood trauma. The slow pace is really what kills the series for me. I think Read or Die fans should still consider this a must-see series, but I wouldn’t watch this more than once.

Do you disagree with this article? What are your favorite moments of the Read or Die series as a whole? Feel free to write about it in the comments below!

Anime Therapy

I feel like I have to apologize to anyone who still reads my blog. I haven’t updated it in forever. However, I still come back to it because I still love anime.

I’ve often come to odds with my love of video games and anime. I’ve restarted my job search multiple times and I’ve just felt utterly depressed half of the time. However, I don’t think my life would ever feel the same without my favorite shows.

For instance, I’ve always been a diehard fan of the Read or Die series. I read the original four-volume manga and I watched the three-episode OAV series. I just recently finished the Read or Die TV series (also known as R.O.D. the TV). It was one of the most emotionally fulfilling shows that I’ve ever seen. The show now ranks somewhere in my top 25 shows.

See, I can’t rip myself away from these shows. Whenever I feel especially low and depressed, I just watch a few episodes and it just brightens my entire day. R.O.D. the TV was just filled with so many tear-jerking moments of joy and sadness that it just defied all my expectations.

I will write a review of it sometime this week. It was just one of those shows that I had to write about, because it’s just filled with so many heartfelt memories. I always go through periods of depression, but there’s always some anime show that makes me return to my laptop to type out more articles.

Check Out Games Revisited

I’ve been meaning to add a link  to my new video gaming blog on Anime Epicuriosity. If anyone would like to read about the Japanese games that I play, feel free to check out Games Revisited at gamesrevisited.wordpress.com.

I’m a huge fan of both anime and video games. However, I’ve been playing video games a lot more often. I just feel like video games are more fascinating, because the medium is so experimental. A lot more of the ideas in these games are liable to fail, or to try radical new things.

Note that I usually play Japanese role-playing games that usually have anime-style graphics, so this isn’t a huge diversion for me. Besides, the Japanese anime shows even receive their own video games.

So if you have some free time, try out Games Revisited. I’ll be revisiting all the classic (and not-so-classic) games of my childhood. Right now, I’m checking out the unique world of Tales of Symphonia. If you have any suggestions about games that you’d like me to try, let me know in the comments below.

Updates: New reviews and rants

I’m making a couple changes to how I review anime shows, but I feel like I should explain my present situation.

I’ve received an associate’s degree in computer information systems this year. I restarted my job search three months ago, hoping to get hired in my field as soon as possible. However, job hunts are never easy. I usually don’t get hired until a year of networking, searching and researching.

I hate to gossip about family matters, but I have to vent for a bit. Some family members want me to focus 100 percent on my job search. Unfortunately, job hunts always seem to take longer than usual these days. So until I get hired, I need some productive way to pass the time. The Anime Epicuriosity blog has always been a source of refuge for me, because it allows me to write about the exciting shows and games that I have seen recently.

Sorry, but sometimes my family just says certain things that irritate me. I just have to vent out my thoughts, because some of their comments drive me insane.

I’ve had trouble coming up with a prompt review schedule. I used to review anime shows by renting DVD collections through Netflix. Their mail service was once my biggest source for reviewing collections of episodes. Now that anime shows are broadcasted over the Internet, Netflix cancelled their mailing service. I have been trying to review shows through streaming services, such as Crunchyroll.com and Hulu.

Unfortunately, the review format is never easy for me. I’ve tried reviewing entire seasons of shows, but that takes far too much time. I’ve also thought about switching to reviewing episodes, but that would make the blog too long for the average reader.

For now, I think I’ll stick to reviewing three or four episodes at a time. This was always the standard format for most DVD collections. Each disc had about three or four episodes, which was enough for me. I would typically watch the entire DVD in one sitting and write the review in two or three days. Then I’d mail the DVD back and I’d receive a new one to review next week.

And there were always shows that I missed out on. For example, I never finished watching Claymore or some of the other mainstream shows with 10 million episodes. That was fine for me, though. Some of these shows literally take their sweet time telling their story. Anime shows are usually based on manga comics, but they sometimes take over 21 episodes just to get through three manga volumes. Sadly, many of these shows were literally made to waste my time.

Anyhow, I know that I’ll write up a review for next week. I don’t know what to choose, but I’ll probably just pick something off of Crunchyroll. Stay tuned…

Anime review: Inspiring Musician Love Story That Starts With a Lie

Your Lie in April starts off as a simple boy-meets-girl romance with musicians, but it quickly turns into a intensely emotional roller coaster. Don’t be fooled–this show is a heart-wrenching drama about a friendship that turns into an uplifting commitment like no other.

At first glance, this show moves at a snail’s pace. The first episodes slowly introduces us to a depressed pianist boy, Kousei Arima, who struggles to maintain a normal life after his mother’s death. He was a child prodigy who played at classical music competitions. His mother trained him constantly to become one of the best pianists, but her vicious drills traumatized him to the point where he just couldn’t play the piano anymore.

The girl next door, Sawabe Tsubaki, is Kousei’s childhood friend. She thinks that a girlfriend could raise his spirits and possibly motivate him to play the piano again. She invites Kousei on a date to meet up with their other buddy, Ryouta Watari, and his new mystery date. Little does Kousei know that this meeting would change his life forever.

Ryouta’s new girlfriend is Kaori Miyazono. She’s a virtuoso violinist who often gets criticized for improvising too far from the written sheet music. She invites her friends to watch her performance at a classic music competition in Towa Hall. Kousei is quite impressed with her playing, but he keeps his distance from her. After all, Kaori seems to act as if she likes Ryouta. However, Kaori actually has a big-time crush on Kousei.

One day, Kousei meets Kaori on his way home from school. Kaori says that she is waiting for her boyfriend, who seems to be running late. She decides to use Kousei as her new substitute date. Kousei has reservations about this outing, but Kaori clearly wants to know more him. She wants to know more about his life as a virtuoso pianist and why he suddenly stopped playing.

The entire show is focused on the growth in the relationship between Kousei and Kaori. Although they are both amazing musicians with incredible chemistry together, their whole relationship is peppered with personal struggles. Kousei constantly tries his best to deal with his traumatic memories with his mother. Throughout the series, Kaori also has plenty of medical emergencies that force her to more of her time in the hospital.

As the story slowly unravels over the course of the series, we learn that Kaori is struggling through one of the most difficult moments in her life. Although I really can’t reveal anything else about the story, I will say that their relationship is strikingly touching, heartbreaking and emotional.

Even if the ending of the story is somewhat predictable, the voice acting in this show is exceptionally poignant. The animators somehow struck a delicate balance in texturing the episodes with just enough tragedy and compassion to make everyone shed tears of joy and sadness. If anyone only has enough time to watch one anime this year, be sure to watch Your Lie In April. It is definitely one of my favorite shows of the year, by far.

Season Review: The Dumb Cute Squid Girl Show (Part One)

The story of the Squid Girl anime really isn’t complex. It’s about a little girl with a squid-shaped hat who wants to take over the world.

Yeah, this is ridiculous. To be honest, this is one of the silliest shows that I’ve ever seen. However, the creators come up with enough well-written lines to make this comedy cute and believable.

I probably shouldn’t explain this story, because it is very one-dimensional. It begins with our adorable main character–a girl with a white hat in the shape of a squid head, with blue tentacles hanging down from it. She barges into a beach restaurant called the Lemon Beach House and declares that she is taking over the world.

Everyone in the restaurant thinks that this cosplayer girl is playing a ridiculous joke on them, so they all just ignore her. The end.

Well, that could’ve just ended right there. Then again, she’d probably cause a ruckus amongst the customers. The waitress has a heart-to-heart chat with this weirdo in the back of the restaurant. Turns out that this “cosplayer” calls herself Squid Girl (or Ika Musume in Japanese). She has some sort of revenge plot to take over the world, to retaliate against the humans who pollute the ocean everyday.

Any normal person could’ve just ignored this girl. Thankfully, the restaurant owners see her as an opportunity to help grow their business. You see, the waitress and her big sister both own the restaurant. They live in an apartment nearby. They need all the help they can get, so they keep asking her to take dishes to the customers. After a while, Squid Girl gets fed up and tries to demonstrate that she doesn’t want to get bossed around. She shows her grown-up power by destroying a wall of the restaurant with one of her tentacles.

Of course, the waitress isn’t going to stand for this disaster. After all, if a girl destroys the wall, she has to pay for it. Squid Girl reluctantly agrees to work for the restaurant owners, to try to pay off her debt.

So that’s really the whole idea of this show. This comedy is more or less about Squid Girl and her quest to try to take over the world. After she pays off her debt. Okay, it’s a stupid premise. I’m not gonna lie.

The script writers come up with really funny jokes, though. In every episode, she seems to run into a wide variety of people who have some strange attraction to this Squid Girl. The owners’ little brother loves to play with Squid Girl’s tentacles. The girl in the house down the street has an unhealthy obsession with Squiddy (yeah, I’ll just call her Squiddy from now on) and she wants to dress up as her. The restaurant owners hire a new waiter, who is scared to death of weird people such as Squiddy.

Every dumb joke seems to focus around Squid Girl’s fascination with the world. Thankfully, the show takes a surprisingly dramatic turn at the end. This lowbrow comedy really could’ve stopped with a lame ending, but the writers did a good job in developing the characters. There’s also a second season, if anyone is willing to watch through more of the same old sight gags.

Sega Girls Too Hard to Pass Up

Japan makes anime comedies about all sort of strange topics. Now we have an anime show where three cute girls represent video game consoles.

Sega Hard Girls is a strange collection of hit-and-miss video game jokes. The average anime fan might pass this up, but the beautiful 3D animation makes the show much more enjoyable.

I thought I’d seen every type of anime by this point, but Sega Hard Girls is definitely one of the most unusual shows to date. The show’s full name is actually “Hi-sCoool! Seha Girls,” but most fans just call it by its nickname, Sega Hard Girls. The show has three main characters who each represent Sega video game consoles. Their names are Mega Drive, Saturn and Dreamcast. The game systems in this show are represented in the form of cute anime girls.

These Sega girls are all attending Sehagaga Academy in Tokyo. Their goal is to graduate and become full-fledged video game consoles. Well, at least I think that’s their main goal. For the entire season, I kept wondering what would actually happen to the girls when they graduate. The whole concept is already too strange to comprehend.

Thankfully, this show isn’t focused around a serious plot—it’s a comedy based around video games. The main goal of the academy is to earn 100 medals. To earn these medals, the girls have to enter the worlds of old Sega games to perform a specific task. Each episode focuses on funny slapstick jokes that use retro game characters.

The show is a unique mish-mash of 3D anime and video game animation. I’ve seen all sorts of lame 3D anime films where the animation looks incredibly stiff and fake. Sega Hard Girls is the first 3D show where I had an emotional connection with the characters. The brilliant animators of this show took the time to slow the action down and focus on the facial details and expressions of the character models. Because of this detail, the girls look a lot more like humans with feelings and emotional expressions.

The result is a light-hearted cartoon that looks back at the joy and fun of video game characters in the past. Some episodes showed off some really obscure games that were only released in Japan, such as Border Break. Based on the episode I had seen, Border Break looks like a versatile, online 3D shooter with mecha robots. Even if the game’s environment looked a little bland, I really enjoyed watching these girls explore the unique landscape of Border Break.

The show has plenty of cameos from video game icons, but the funniest parts actually take place when goofy-looking characters wander in from other random Sega games. In fact, Sega Hard Girls is chock-full of visual gags. My favorite jokes took place in episode two, when the girls used martial arts moves against little birds from Flicky, pig men from Golden Axe and a giant beetle from some weird bug game (Mushiking).

Sega Hard Girls is a retrospective of all the funniest moments of early video games. The show is geared for all the anime fans who yearn for the old days of video games, when all the graphics looked a lot more innocent and timeless. Sega Hard Girls also shows off some of the best 3D animation I’ve ever seen.

Sega Hard Girls is available to stream at crunchyroll.com.