Anime Review Roundup

Stuart McLean kicked off last week’s anime reviews by taking a look at Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ - Part 1. It picks up where Gundam Zeta leaves off, with another young boy finding his inner hero when he climbs into the cockpit of a giant robot, to face off against the wicked Zeon forces. It seems like such a well worn trope these days; it’s hard to remember that Gundam was doing it when it wasn’t even a trope!

I finally got around to watching Your Name, probably a year after all the hype had died down. Putting aside the issues with the disc, I found what is probably Makoto Shinkai’s most populist movie to date, a modern day body-swapping fairy tale that appeals to broad audiences, without letting go of those themes and ideas that Shinkai has explored in every film that he has made to date. You can see why it was so lauded and feted last awards season by clicking on the review.

I managed to find the space to squeeze in the review for Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee Collection 2. You can tell a series is one of those long-running shonen action jobs when it takes the best part of a whole series to get to the point of the story. With Tegami Bachi it’s not so much filler as it is getting to know the cast of characters and going into depth when building this world. It’s only the last five episodes of this collection that gets to the point of the series, with the protagonist searching for the man who inspired him, and who’s apparently lost his way. Alas, Tegami Bachi is not a long running series, and you’ll have to wait for the review of the second and final Reverse series to see if it delivers a decent story.

Space Above and Beyond. I know, it’s not anime, but it is what I’m re-watching right now. Like most of the shows that I wind up falling in love with, Space Above and Beyond turned out to be a one season wonder. A sci-fi series from the people behind The X-Files, it’s about humanity’s first war with an alien species. It follows a group of US Marines aboard the carrier Saratoga as they battle the ‘Chig’. Ostensibly shifting the Second World War’s Pacific arena into space, Space, Above and Beyond offered a lot of intriguing world building, adding a group of in-vitros, soldiers artificially gestated for a previous war against silicates, manmade androids that broke their programming. It was another example of fascinating world building, but the cancellation at the end of the first season squandered that. Still, the show is an interesting milestone on the way to the nu-Battlestar Galactica remake series.