Anime Review Roundup

A scarcity of reviews over the past couple of weeks has prompted me to rollover the Anime Review Roundup. It all feels a little topsy-turvy, as usually it's the pre-Christmas period that sees a deluge of new releases. This year, I've even found time to delve into the back catalogue. Nothing of the back catalogue about my first review, albeit one posted two weeks ago. Eden of the East: Paradise Lost is the second movie spun off from the Eden of the East series, and the conclusion of the story. A series of cliffhangers ended on the mother of all cliffhangers, and the first movie trumped even that by revealing the protagonist to be the illegitimate son of Japan's Prime Minister. Akira Takizawa has been playing the Selecao game, where participants are issued the ultimate in cellular phones, loaded with billions of yen, and told to improve the country or die. The trouble is that all the players have different ideas how to do that. Akira's got a useful habit of saving the country from his rivals, and an annoying habit of erasing his own memory. Since the series began, he's been trying to figure out the game he is playing, even while playing it. And all he has to help him is Saki, a girl that he met whilst naked, holding a gun and the phone outside the White House. He was naked, not the girl. Paradise Lost is where the story ends, where we learn what the game is all about, and where we finally meet Mr Outside. I reviewed the Blu-ray, and if you click on the link, you can see if one of the best series in recent years gets the ending it deserves.

Next up was the penultimate instalment of everyone's favourite 'cute girls doing cute things' anime. I've been looking forward to K-ON!: Volume 3 with an anticipation most unseemly in a man of my years, and beard length. In fact, a cheapskate such as myself ought to have been whinging about the fact that it's a single volume release in a market dominated by multi-disc collections. I should have been grousing at the full-price RRP. I should have been grouching about the measly three episodes. I ought to have been criticising how these three episodes really just repeated the events of three of the earlier episodes, albeit with a new character in the mix. Was I doing any of this? Was I, fudge! K-ON! is all about the cute, the sweet, and the charming, and I was enraptured, engrossed and on a sugar high that instantly rotted my teeth.

I thought I could review Ghost in the Shell until the cows came home. It now feels as if the cows have regular jobs, and are coming home every night for their tea. This is my fourth review of Ghost in the Shell for the site, and believe it or not, I actually hope that it isn't the last. I took a look at Ghost in the Shell 2.0 on Blu-ray, and got to marvel at what a higher definition presentation could do for Mamoru Oshii's masterpiece. But 2.0 is the Lucas-style revision, with a new look, a new sound, and new CGI scene replacements. Somewhere on this disc, buried amongst the extras, you'll also find the original Ghost in the Shell movie, also presented at higher definition. And it's that which has me hoping for yet another release of Ghost in the Shell.