Anime Review Roundup

Occasionally, there are titles which I’m willing to compromise on, to accept the lesser option just as long as I can watch it. Last week’s review for Shirobako the Movie is a case in point. Given that all of the mainstream anime distributors in the US have ditched DVD and gone exclusively Blu-ray, it’s pure luck that this film was released on a BD/DVD combo, but if I were truly lucky, the Blu-ray would have been Region B. I loved the TV series when I reviewed it, a tale about a group of girls trying to break into the anime production industry. The series followed them as they worked on a couple of TV series from a struggling animation studio, the movie follows them as they now shift their efforts to making an anime feature film. Strictly speaking, the film covers old ground and is narratively redundant, but the characters are so likeable, and the film is surfing such a wave of goodwill from the series, that fans of Shirobako need the feature film in their lives.

Freezing. This is one of those “last time” re-watches. I didn’t like the show when I reviewed it ten years ago, and the second time I watched it, I liked it even less. I decided to give it just one more chance, one more chance to transcend its copious deficiencies and somehow impress me. When you start watching anime, especially anime from the late eighties and early nineties as I did, you have to make a lot of allowances for difference cultural sensibilities and attitudes. This is the only medium where ‘fanservice’ is still a thing, the use of the male gaze when it comes to female characters to satisfy a target audience. Having said all that, Freezing is utterly misogynistic bilge. Forget the premise, the weedy male in a school full of powerful girls, partnering up to fight an alien menace through technological means. It’s just an excuse to animate busty teenage girls repeatedly beating the clothes off each other. They even create regenerative clothing that can be torn off again and again. This is a show that actually offends me, me, who loves High School of the Dead.