Omohide.com

Somehow, it hadn’t crossed my radar that Nodame Cantabile had returned to the airwaves with a new season, probably because I’ve been paying less and less attention to ongoing anime.  Of course, I’ve picked it up again, though I’ve only had the time for one episode so far.  At first glance, it appears to carry on [...]

I’ve always heard the name Satoshi Kon pop up in serious anime discussions, but my familiarity with his works has been fairly restricted.  There is, of course, Tokyo Godfathers, which was an enjoyable film that earned quite a positive review from me, but I’ve been told that it is the least indicative of his general style.  After watching Millenium Actress, I think I might have a better idea of what that “style” may be, and it is indeed a very interesting one….

Figure 17 aired back in 2001 under a fairly uncommon format – it consists of 13 episodes, but each episode is about double the length of a typical anime episode.  So in terms of actual length, it is more or less the equivalent of a common 26-episode series.  The story revolves around Tsubasa, a girl from Tokyo who has moved to rural Hokkaido and finds herself having trouble fitting in (not helped by her reserved demeanor).  One day, she stumbles upon a crashed alien ship and discovers a man fighting for his life against a giant, violent creature.  …..

The new season’s anime previews has been posted up at CF’s website – you can take a look here.  I’m going to take a page out of psgels’ book and write a commentary on each of the offerings.  However, I’m not as familiar with the backgrounds of various non-Ghibli studios and directors, so my impressions [...]

Mamoru Hosoda is probably best known as the director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, a film which was fairly popular both critically as well as commercially (despite limited release).  The praise was certainly well-deserved – it was a very well-made film, and clearly showed that Hosada possessed real talent for directing.  Of course, I did have some of my own criticisms of that film, particularly in regards to the balance of the sci-fi elements in the story in the overall plot.  Summer Wars has some similarities….

Eve no Jikan is a relatively short ONA series that was released between 2008 and 2009.  The story is divided into six acts, but the majority of them are only about 15 minutes long, and you can think of this as the equivalent to a two hour movie.  Eve no Jikan takes place is a futuristic setting (probably Japan, says the opening titles) where androids have become commonplace.  Our main character, Rikou, is a young high school student who possesses one of these androids at home and is constantly teased by his sister for being a potential…..

This two-part OAV (Saishu Heiki Kanojo: Another Love Song) was released in 2005 as a side story to complement the original 13-episode series.  It focuses more on the military environment and personnel associated with Chise’s role as a weapon, while not really give us any more background about the origin of Saikano’s plotline either.  As such, I

Before I get into the review, I want to mention that the tagline to this series, “The Last Love Song on this Little Planet”, is one of my favourites – I find it to be very evocative and expressive. How does the actual anime stack up? Well, Saikano was one of the first anime…

Ponyo is the most recent work of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli and marks the end of my series of reviews on the works of Studio Ghibli.  Sometime soon, I may get around to doing some sort of summary post.  You may notice that there were no posts regarding Mimi o Sumaseba and Cat Returns, the reason is simply that I’ve already written reviews of those films in the past, a particularly long one for Mimi (which is a favourite of mine).  Ponyo alludes to….

Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫) was a project which had been in Miyazaki’s mind since at least 1983, when he had written a manga called The Journey of Shuna. Though the plot and characterization in that manga were different from what would become Mononoke-hime, there are some obvious similarities between them. After completing Porco Rosso, Suzuki and Miyazaki had to decide what Miyazaki’s next project would be. Suzuki felt that a….