Anime Review Roundup

No news is good news. It's the first week in 2012 that no anime company has closed its doors, downsized, or announced that it is suing someone. No releases have been cancelled, downgraded, or delayed. Nothing much of substance has happened; I can breathe a sigh of relief and just get to talking about what I've been reviewing of late. First up last week was Samurai Girls: The Complete Series on DVD. It's the first release this year from Kaze Entertainment, distributed for them by Manga. It's set in an alternate Japan where the Shogunate never fell, and has maintained Japan as a great power in the world to the modern day, mainly down to the bonds that form between generals and Master Samurai, exceptional warriors that can accomplish amazing feats. Traditionally, the Master Samurai have solely served generals from the Tokugawa Shogunate. All that changes when samurai Muneakira Yagyu returns to Edo, only for a vulnerable naked girl to fall from the heavens into his arms. But when she kisses him, Master Samurai Jubei Yagyu is unleashed. Soon Muneakira has a harem of girls around him, wanting to be kissed to unlock their hidden powers. Sounds familiar? It's another sexy girls combat anime, but Samurai Girls has a visual style you'll have never seen before.

Then it was time to delve into the back catalogue once more. I have a soft spot in my heart for the anime romantic comedy. Very rarely do you get a Tom Hanks Meg Ryan situation, and you never get a Hugh Grant in one of these things, although given how ineffectual some of the teen males can be... Anime romantic comedies are all about the situations, and with animation as the medium, the situations can be as bizarre as the imagination allows. The harem comedy is a staple of the genre, while other shows have teenagers falling in love with robots, androids, goddesses, demons, catgirls, aliens, ghosts... Once you start watching these things, you can get accustomed to the wildest stretches of imagination. But can you imagine a show where a high school boy, unlucky in love, goes to sleep one night, and then wakes up the next morning with a little girl where his right hand used to be. That's the plot of Midori Days: Volume 1.