Anime Review Roundup

Sometimes you have to do the right thing. I really wanted to review Paprika. After all Manga Entertainment’s new combo release has had a brand new transfer. Gone is the windowboxing of the old Sony Blu-ray, and you get a bright shiny full screen image, and for the first time you get lossless English dub audio as well. But hearing me go on about it for a third time, having reviewed Sony’s DVD and Blu-ray would be repetitive. So for a fresh opinion on this mind-bending anime from the much-missed master of breathtaking narrative Satoshi Kon, click on Stuart McLean’s review.

I’ve finished my Tegami Bachi adventure with Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee Reverse Part 2, the conclusion of the story. And it turns out that it’s one of those anime original conclusions that manga fans tend to loathe, simply for being anime original. Usually those concerns are justified, as anime writers tend not to live up to the style and quality of the mangaka, but once in a while you can get an anime that transcends the material it’s adapted from. Click on the review to see if Tegami Bachi manages to pull off that feat.

It may be live action, but I would be remiss as an anime fan if I didn’t mention the review for Shin Godzilla. After all, it was directed by none other than Hideaki “Evangekion” Anno, taking a sabbatical between the third and fourth Evangelion movies. With Shiro Sagisu supplying the music (and recycling some familiar themes), Shin Godzilla might just be as close as we get to a live action Evangelion. Certainly the biting political satire in this reboot of the classic Toho monster franchise wouldn’t be out of place.

Iria: The Complete Series, or as it’s otherwise known, Iria: Zeiram the Animation. There’s a lot to like about this six-episode OVA series. It certainly has the eye-candy imagination, and narrative scope of an OVA from the nineties. You can see the budget and quality oozing from the production. It’s a sci-fi action show about a rookie bounty hunter who gets thrown into the deep end, following a mission with her brother that goes wrong, and sends her crash-landing alone on a back-woods planet. There’s plenty of conspiracy and machinating going on in the background, and plenty of action too, as well as a young sidekick she picks up along the way. Alas the quality animation and production values amount to a thin veneer over a very hackneyed plot. Iria is just another take on Alien.