Anime reviews of 2022

What makes an anime good or bad? Is it the story? The writing? The art? The content? Maybe it’s something you just don’t agree with. Maybe it triggers a bad memory, in which case you’re excused. I’ve certainly been there.

The context of when, where, and how an anime is viewed is important. A good movie or show that’s shoved down your throat will tend to leave a bad taste in your mouth. Or if watching it requires unbearable conditions, you’ll be reminded of that stain every time said show gets mentioned.

On the other hand, if a truly awful anime is presented in the right circumstances, it’ll be remembered that much more fondly. If you’re going to watch bad anime, or bad anything, watch it with good friends. I mean, if you think about it, that’s the whole point of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the theater showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show. You’re not there to enjoy something good, you’re there to celebrate how bad it was by making fun of it.

Anime in general requires a healthy suspension of disbelief in the first place. Bad anime, however you might define it, requires a really strong suspension of disbelief, and for many people, they just can’t. I, however, have a suspension of disbelief beyond that of most people.

But sometimes, the shows you remember the most, are the ones that get to you somehow. They say something you didn’t know you needed to hear.

Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko
Don’t Lose, Makendo!
Trouble Chocolate
Sentimental Journey
Ghost Talker’s Daydream
Lunar Legend Tsukihime
Samurai: Hunt for the Sword
Magical Play

“Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko”
6 OVAs, 1996-1997; 26 episodes, 1999
The partnership of Akiyuki Shinbo’s directing and Akio Watanabe’s distinct character design goes back a long ways, and this might be the earliest iteration of that. At least for the TV series from 1999. The OVAs were a whole other matter. For this, I’m only watching the TV series. I had already seen the OVAs years ago. As it is, the OVAs came out first and are a summarized version of the story. If you watch one, you don’t have to watch the other. But if you have the luxury to choose, invest the time in watching the TV series.

What is it: “This is an isekai anime” No, this is a time traveling anime. There’s a difference. Anyway, have you ever seen the movie “The Last Starfighter”, where the main character gets really good at a video game and it turns out to be a mechanism for scouting for fighter pilots? This is kinda like that, except Yohko and her friends regularly jump back and forth between 1999 and 2999 by way of a secret room at high school. In 1999, she’s a high school girl who’s an expert at playing video games. In 2999, she’s an ace starship pilot.

In the future, wars are not fought conventionally. Conflicts are decided on by competitions between teams of starship fighters. The starships themselves have emergency teleport systems so if the ship is about to explode or fail catastrophically, the pilot gets beamed to safety. As a result, no one’s died in battle in over 160 years (relative to the year 2999). The twist is, in order to find capable pilots, the teams have to go back in time to the 20th Century. Another neat detail is that the time difference isn’t elastic, it’s always exactly 1000 years. So if Yohko has to be present for a battle by a certain time, she has to be through the portal by that certain time, or she won’t be there in time. Similarly, if she spends a whole day in 2999, then she’s absent from 1999 for a whole day. Helps to keep the story simple too, I guess.

As I type this in 2022, I begin to understand why pilots were scouted from 1999 instead and no later. The video games today are different. Current games require more planning and thought than the arcade games of a few decades ago. The software has become more complex, often for the sake of world-building and immersion. The controls have become more elaborate, making use of most of a standard keyboard. In terms of computational power, a CPU in a 90s arcade game is several orders of magnitude slower than almost anything from the past couple years, but can still be way faster than human reactions. Arcade games from that time required pure reflexive instinct and heightened reaction speeds in order to play and stand any chance of mastering. A player needed to keep up the fast-twitch muscle action at all times, which required a different stamina than today’s games. Not that modern games can be any less demanding, but for the sake of the plot of this show, teenage video game players from the 90s made for better starship pilots than someone from a few decades later. And when it came to having that fast-twitch, teenagers had it best. (Mine started going downhill by my mid-20s.) Given that this anime was made in the 90s, I don’t think that’s what the writers envisioned. That just seems to be how it all played out. They picked 1999 because that was the year they made the show.

For something that often takes place in space, there sure are a lot of sound effects. “But there’s no air in space so there can’t be any sound!” Nobody cares. Let it go. This is an anime. We have a show that already has kids piloting starships, time travel, and teleportation. Science fiction scoffs at accuracy. Explosions and other sound effects taking place in space are fine here. The technicality about space being silent just gets in the way. Just let it the fuck go.

The opening theme “Tenshi no Kyuusoku” has always been a feel-good song for me.

If Bakemonogatari was made in the 90s with cels, it would look like this.

Okay let’s take a look at Watanabe’s character design. It’s about the eyes. Instead of just making a character’s eyes bigger as often happened in the 90s, he puts effort into the shape and detail, in a way that only he can. This is something I respect. The eyes really do help make a character more memorable. If you look at a sample of characters that he designed, you’ll know who they are just by the eyes. It doesn’t matter what year they came from. Other character designers may have their own way of designing eyes, but Watanabe’s design is a classic one all his own.

Getting it: The only part of this that was ever released in the US was the OVAs, and those were put on DVD all the way back in 2001. I got mine back then as a celebratory self-gift after getting a job offer. It’s out of print but used copies are easy enough to find. The TV series is only available via download, and you’ll have to make do with .avi and .mp4 files of almost the same vintage.

For the sake of alternative media, there are other options. This was also released on VHS and LD, if you want to be a hipster about it. In Japan, both iterations got a DVD followed by a BD release, if you’re fine with watching this raw.

On a 4K TV, the old .avi files seem to be holding up curiously well. A little rough but acceptable. About a third of the way through, a different fansub group picked up on it and switched to .mp4. Still good enough. Both groups involved seemed to know what they were doing with encoding. I’d rather have the files in native 1080p but maybe I shouldn’t be a spoiled brat about it and I should take what I can get.

“Don’t Lose, Makendo!”
1 OVA, 1995
I sure do like silly anime OVAs! Seriously, they’re great. This show is loosely based on the SNES game “Kendo Rage”.

So we have a dude who’s turned into a cyborg against his will by a mad scientist, and a pair of school girl sisters who help the Yokai Police in keeping the monsters under control, and they’re somehow connected. Look, there’s only one episode, so that’s about all I have.

This show isn’t the wildest thing I’ve seen from that era, but if I stumbled across it at an anime convention or anime club, I’d have a good time watching it.

Getting it: Download it. Either torrent or watch it on Youtube. It was never licensed in the US, and I don’t think it made it to DVD anywhere in the world. But hey, at least it’s watchable in 4K.

“Trouble Chocolate”
20 episodes, 1999-2000
If the song “Dare to be Stupid” by Weird Al was an anime, this would be it.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to ever watch this chocolatey adventure of a show. What changed my mind was acquiring it by chance. I stumbled across an incomplete set of the DVDs in a used store, and I couldn’t ignore the price. The first volume itself was being sold for 35 cents, with subsequent volumes going for a more exorbitant $2 each. Getting the one that was missing was accomplished by a few taps and clicks on ebay. That one cost more than the others combined but not by much, even if it was unopened. For what I’ve heard about this show, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it. But anime is weird, I’m weird, and so is the world we live in.

What is it: A summoning spell involving magic chocolate goes wrong because of Cacao being a complete jackass, and Hinano, a tree fairy, is brought into our realm, using a life-size wooden marionnette doll as a host. Hijinks ensue. Every romantic comedy anime trope is cranked up to 11. Wild shit just happens all the time, and everyone in this show just rolls with it. This seems to take place well into the future but doesn’t say how far.

“Fear and Loathing in Tomobiki-cho”

An early description of this said this was like an off-brand Urusei Yatsura. I guess I can see that comparison. This could be kind of what UY would be like if Rumiko Takahashi regularly took big rips from a bong the size of a sewer pipe that was packed with enough weed to fill a dump truck. I’m okay with that. The character design and animation quality look like amateur hentai animation done in Flash. I’m okay with that too. That’s all beside the point though. The point is, I ended up liking this show.

Trouble Chocolate is dancing like no one’s watching when it knows everyone is watching and I respect that energy.

Where I really give this show credit is that it’s very self-aware of how ridiculously silly it is. It knows it’s dumb, and it does nothing to hide it. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more. It doesn’t seek justification. It doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t try to explain itself. It doesn’t need to. If you’re left hanging without any kind of explanation about where the aliens came from? If you’re mad that there’s no backstory or continuity to tie everything together? If you can’t deal with how some of the male characters are thirsty for a girl who’s obviously made entirely of wood? Or the Frankenstein’s monster soldier-turned-home-ec-teacher who’s all-out gay for the vampire? The two Chinese girls working for a four-eyed alien and they all suddenly move in with Cacao and Hinano and some random jungle boy with an eating disorder and they’re all okay with it? The entire cast having a combined IQ lower than a pile of rocks? If your suspension of disbelief can’t keep up with any of that and the wholesale rejection of logic in this show, Trouble Chocolate doesn’t care; that’s YOUR problem to deal with. It’s YOUR fault if you take any of it too seriously. It’s YOUR loss if you’re not having fun. Trouble Chocolate owes you nothing.

But if you can lighten up and get on the same level, you’re in for a good time. It’s easier than you think it is. You don’t have to lobotomize yourself, just relax. Wear looser pants, quit being a pretentious snob, and chill the fuck out. Yes, the show is dumb. Brilliant deduction! Now get over yourself, stop groaning about how you “only watch good anime” because no one gives a shit about your so-called impeccable taste, and we really don’t want to hear about how you’re such a big fan of good anime that you went and got a tattoo of Miyazaki’s face put on your taint with your scrotum in place of his chin. Which by the way, I absolutely NEVER wanted to see, so don’t you dare try showing that to me again. Oh, and that’s actually Colonel Sanders down there.

Dude, what are you- Dude. Stop. Pull your pants back-NO! PULL YOUR PANTS BACK UP RIGHT NOW! Awwwww jeez! Why. Ugh. Hey, we need security over at Panel Room 2? Yeah, it’s That Guy again. Yeah, the one with that weird Colonel Sanders tattoo.

Ooookay. I’m calming down now.

When this show was brought to the US back in around 2002 or so, it was universally panned in reviews for most of the reasons I’ve mentioned. But I’m a lot more forgiving of anime like this. I have a soft spot for anime that others dismiss as dumb or crappy. Maybe its my own odd tastes? Maybe out of pity? Some of each? I mean, I liked Koi Koi Seven, so read into that what you will.

The music is good. Opening and ending themes are catchy. Being an Avex work, eurobeat music will find its way into the background. That’s just how it is.

Getting it: This was put on DVD by Viz a long time ago, and went out-of-print also a long time ago. They can be found on the used market easily, some of them being sold as new-old stock that was never opened. The other option is downloading it.

On a 4K TV, I got two different results with two different players. I initially tried watching this with my BD player. Whatever Viz did to this show made my BD player almost have a mild stroke. After one episode I switched over to an older DVD player connected to my TV via component cables and somehow it looks better? At least until it gets to a few spots that make my DVD player freeze up, and only the first disc did that. Maybe that’s why that one was being sold for 35 cents. The other four discs played fine. There’s some kind of analog sorcery at work in my own living room. So, note to self for future reference: Watch non-progressive-scan DVDs on an older DVD player.

Oh, but I think I’ll end this entry by getting back to why it’s easy to find this and many other shows on DVD even now, 20 years later. The high availability of this show is a result of the Cambrian DVD Explosion of the early aughts, when anime companies in the US were putting everything they could on DVD and everyone was buying them left and right. I was there for that frenzy. I didn’t just watch it happen, I willingly jumped in to be part of it. Of everyone who was part of that madness, a vast majority didn’t really watch everything they bought. It was more like, maybe they started watching it and didn’t finish it for whatever reason. Or they intended to get around to watching it someday. Or they just wanted to flex by merely having it in their collection, sometimes not bothering to take the plastic wrapping off. Then years later, they would all look at those shelves full of unwatched anime, finally accepting that they were never going to watch them a first time, much less a second time. They herded together all of those unwanted DVDs, and either listed them on ebay or trotted them off in bulk to the used shops for some quick cash. Taking whatever they could get because by then, it was less about the money and more about getting the space back, having less stuff.

Someone, years ago, paid good money for Trouble Chocolate on DVD, possibly at full MSRP from their local Suncoast, then eventually decided they didn’t need it anymore, so it found its way into a second-hand store’s inventory.

Some of those DVDs then found their way into my home after being sold for pennies on the dollar.

They’re welcome to stay, because Trouble Chocolate found its way into my heart.

Thank you, Trouble Chocolate, for being a fun anime.

“Sentimental Journey”
12 episodes, 1998
What could I possibly have in common with a bunch of Japanese high school girls in an anime anymore? Or ever? Or at all? The answer may surprise you as it surprised me.

This is based on the “Sentimental Graffiti” dating sim game thing. The game was a big deal in Japan when it came out also in 1998. I never got into that franchise for whatever reason, so I can’t really say how big of a deal it was. But I know that it was a big deal, if they made an anime of it the same year as the game.

What is it: An anthology series of 12 different stories about 12 different girls’ bittersweet first loves. Each episode serves as something of an epilogue to each girls’ routes in the game. As you can guess, this anime has more meaning to those who actually played the game.

The premise seems kind of trite and shallow on the surface, but a lot of anime (and related songs) are about the excitement of first love, and almost none of it acknowledges that almost every first love doesn’t work out. It’s something that should really be touched on more often, and this anime does that. Each of the girls’ first love was all the same boy, who was the protagonist from the Sentimental Graffiti game, who had moved from town to town, from girl to girl.

Listen, 1998 is starting to be a long time ago. For me, that’s half a lifetime now.

That’s a fairly important bit. All of the girls have one thing in common: A boy enters their lives, changes them, and suddenly, he just disappears, usually with no warning. That’s the part that gets to me, the part that hits me. The show was made in 1998, and many of their encounters took place long before that. How are they supposed to keep in contact back then? Writing letters when they don’t even have each others’ address? Later in the 90s, email was certainly an option but not many people had email accounts then either. Phone numbers? Most people didn’t have cell phones back then, and when people moved to a new address, they usually had to get a new home phone number too.

Now we have social networking sites left and right, everyone can have as many email addresses as they want, we can keep the same phone number no matter where we live. But those sudden complete disconnects still happen. Someone will just up and move on in life, without even a goodbye. That still happens, in 2022. Sometimes we want to find out how someone else’s life turned out after years or decades, so we try to look for them, to skip to the last few pages of their book, only to find those pages aren’t there, like they’ve been ripped out, and we’ll never know what happened to them. We have to accept that we’re just not always going to get closure and we’ll have to learn to live without it. The best thing to do after that is to focus on our own lives. Even then, we need to stop re-reading the earlier chapters in the book of our own lives, and get back to writing the chapters yet to come.

The internet is an extremely ephemeral place, always was. Most of the people I’ve met on the internet, stayed on the internet, vanishing back into it, like they never existed. All I have left of them are memories in the form of posts, comments, chat logs, and a few emails. If that. I have a better success rate with people I’ve met in person. Sometimes I luck out and I’m able to reconnect with someone from many years ago. Like when a couple friends from my childhood found me on Facebook, and we were like “aayyyyy how’s it going” even though we hadn’t seen each other in person for over 30 years. The friends I met at conventions and anime clubs? For the most part, I’m still on good terms with them. I still stay in contact with them to some degree. But even there, many people I met just went on in different directions with their lives. And I’m sure, that to someone else, I was one of those people who vanished.

In Sentimental Journey, twelve girls have to accept that a boy they fell in love with at some point, has abruptly left their lives, and they might never find out what happened to him. In doing a quick bit of research on the game, I learned about the game’s sequel, which makes the premise of this anime that much more bittersweet.

I’m getting way off track here. I think what I’m trying to say is that the older I get, the more I relate to the characters in Sentimental Journey, when it comes to someone entering and leaving their lives. I was not expecting that. I was not expecting this anime to touch me the way it did. I was not expecting this anime to make me think. If I watched this either when it aired in 1998 or when the DVD set was released in 2004, I don’t think it would have had the same impact. I would have probably watched a couple episodes and then moved onto something else and never gave it another thought.

This isn’t a show to marathon. It’s best to take it a few episodes at a time. Three episodes in one stretch is pushing it. On the plus side, every episode is its own self-contained story so you could watch these episodes in any order, and there are no cliffhangers to draw you from one episode to the next. It’s not an intense show either. But it is thoughtful in its execution.

The art style? Y helo thar 90s, good to see you, how ya been? And am I picking up strong citypop vibes from the music, or is it just me?

Look, I know anime isn’t the best way to learn about Japan. But seeing Japan’s scenery in this show gives me a longing to visit again, something that’s not going to happen any time soon. I already visited before, in 2017 and 2018, so I’m glad I got to go at all. I have that much.

Getting it: Media Blasters put it on DVD a long time ago, back in 2004. Finding it used is fairly easy. Would you believe that I have this on Laserdisc too? Of course you do. Would you also believe that I bought the LD set forgetting that I already had it on DVD for at least 2 years? I’m sure you believe that too, and I hope someone does, because I can’t believe it myself even though I have proof that happened.

On a 4K TV, the vintage of the show’s DVD authoring starts to show its age a bit. Sticking with playing on a DVD player of equal vintage seems to be a big help here.

“Ghost Talker’s Daydream”
4 episodes, 2004
Here’s a short OVA series about people who can see ghosts. Short OVA series get short reviews. That’s just how it is.

What is it: Misaki works as a dominatrix in a BDSM club and as a government-employed medium, because she can communicate with ghosts. She has a sidekick/assistant who’s good at physical fights but is scared of ghosts. Alrighty. Misaki is an albino so she looks a lot like Rei Ayanami. So if the mental image of Rei Ayanami as a dominatrix turns your crank, then you might want to check this out, just for that.

There’s a manga for this that runs way longer than the anime did. That happened a lot, where they’d make an anime of something, almost for the purpose of promoting the manga and not much else. Maybe they’d throw in some content exclusive to the anime, but for the most part, it was all appetizers and hors d’oeuvres, and the manga is where the entrees are.

Fanservice level: Bare boobs with nipples. The boobs shown are reasonably sized, and have nice shape. This is much different from newer anime, where character’s boobs are drawn more like BIG FLOMPIN MILKERZZZ.

The character design kind of reminds me of Serial Experiments Lain. Then again there was something about early 2000s anime that had the same kind of style. For some reason, some of the characters have a more subdued color palette.

The music doesn’t strike me as anything special. I think that the producers knew it was only going to be 4 episodes so they didn’t put much effort into the music. The ending theme is an instrumental piece that makes me think that it’s going to be followed with “and now for the extended forecast”. On a somewhat unrelated note, if you ever check into a hotel or motel room, and you turn on the TV, and it doesn’t have the Weather Channel, something’s wrong. You’ll probably be okay for one night, but check out as soon as you can. Skip the free breakfast, shower as fast as possible, drop your keys off at the front desk as soon as you’re packed out, and just go. A place of lodging without the Weather Channel has some supernatural things going on and you do not want to be part of that any more than necessary.

Getting it: It’s formerly a Geneon title, so it’s been out of print for a long time. It was something of a niche title so not many discs made it into the wild. Ebay has some, if you’re willing to spend a few bucks. Used copies are going for about the original MSRP, maybe a bit more. If I didn’t already own this? I’d have to download it.

On a 4K TV, it looks good. Then again Geneon/Pioneer was always good with making their anime look good.

“Lunar Legend Tsukihime”
12 episodes, 2003
Supposedly this anime doesn’t really exist and any DVDs should be reported to the SCP Foundation. I happen to have the full set. What do I do? Load up all 3 DVDs in the changer and see what happens.

What is it: It’s about originality bias. No wait, it’s about vampires. And we also have Shiki, who can see cut-lines on everything unless he wears special glasses so he doesn’t go crazy (from seeing cut-lines). Everyone in this show has a secret of some kind.

Supposedly this is based on the Tsukihime game. Or not, depending on who you ask. Most fans of the game refuse to acknowledge this anime’s existence because apparently it strays too far from the original. I haven’t played it, so my opinion doesn’t have that kind of bias. “But the VN was so much better! The anime doesn’t do it justice!” I’m sure that’s true. I’ll take your word for it.

If one puts aside the context of the visual novel, being completely blind to the original work, then the anime could be more enjoyable, more acceptable. It’s a lot like, a bunch of years ago when the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender movie was made, and all the fans of the original cartoon were making a fuss and refusing to accept it. Meanwhile, a coworker of mine at the time had not seen the original in any capacity, but enjoyed the movie. For my coworker, that originality bias was not there.

It’s not that I didn’t know what Tsukihime was before watching this. I could recognize it well enough to know what it was a mile away. I enjoyed the music, and even bought some of the merchandise. I had seen an episode or two of this back when it first came out. And obviously, I bought the DVDs with the intention of watching them. But I hadn’t played the VN. I am, by my own admission, the most casual Type Moon fan there could be: Familiar enough to know what I’m looking at, unfamilar enough to not know how it all ties together.

Also, before I watched all of Tsukihime, I had already watched all of the silly and self-parodying Carnival Phantasm series. Much like how I had watched Nurse Witch Komugi before watching all of Soul Taker. Watching the parody before the original changes how we see things but that’s just how I roll.

Here is where the all the Type-Moon fans have a valid point. When any elaborate adult visual novel gets turned into a 12 episode TV anime, a lot of things are going to get cut out. Something has to give. In the case of Tsukihime, the anime cut out things like whole sub-plots, character development, and a proper ending. Even an ultra-casual such as I could tell this anime was something from the dollar menu compared to the banquet feast that was the VN. I know I’m only getting some chicken nuggets and not really paying much for them but I can’t help feeling disappointed, especially when knowing damn well what kind of amazing spread is being served in the main hall, and I have only myself to blame for not arriving in time before the doors closed.

As disavowed as this anime is, it did help provide the foundation for the joke of Ciel and Rumiko Chie from the Higurashi franchise, as they both have the same traits and seiyuu. 07th Expansion was like “ayyy can I parody Ciel” and Type Moon was like “ayyy go for it fam, we cool”.

Why had I not played the VN? A few reasons. When the VN was released all the way back in 2001, I was still using primarily Apple computers. This continued until about 2005, when I bought my first PC with Windows XP. Except that first PC was a turd, and couldn’t stay running long enough to do anything with. By the time I had a Windows PC that wasn’t awful, Tsukihime was no longer the Hot Title Everyone Was Talking About. It was remembered as good, but it wasn’t the in-thing any more. The torrents were no longer seeded, discussion forums went silent, the buzz was gone. And nobody likes being late to a fandom.

Getting it: This came out on DVD a long time ago. No license rescue that I know of. Used copies are floating around, if you look hard enough. Or you could download it. Me? This was another part of the “25 for $100” RightStuf challenge, which is how I ended up with it. Which means I paid $12 for this show.

Now I’ve been watching these on my DVD player, but since they’re from Geneon, I’m sure they’re fine on the BD player too. Ever since I pulled out my 5-disc DVD changer from about 2005, I haven’t stopped using it. I like stuff that works, whether it’s new or old.

“Samurai: Hunt for the Sword!”
2 OVAs, 1999
I don’t know what’s going on here. I might never know because there are only 2 episodes and it’s based on a game I know nothing about.

What is it: We got samurai and ninjas, a young man inheriting a swordsmanship school after his father just decides to up and go somewhere, and whatever goings on there are in Japan’s Edo days. People are looking for a sword. Oh, and there are a lot of boob comparisons.

I have a soft spot for the 90s anime style and it feels like this show is going right for it. Kind of reminds me of Saber Marionnette, which I also have fond memories of. I got into anime big time in the 90s, so nostalgia has its say. I also have a soft spot for songs by UCO, aka U, aka Funta.

Other than that, there wasn’t anything really special about this anime. This was probably shown on Sunday afternoon at mid-sized anime conventions in the early 2000s as a compromise of filling a one-hour hole in the schedule without being a real draw. If there are only 2 people left in the video room when the end credits roll, whatever. That just makes clearing the room to shut everything down that much faster.

Getting it: If you want the DVD, you can probably find it on the used market. Maybe a few NOS copies still in their shrink wrap for a few bucks more. Media Blasters released this all the way back in 2001. The benefit of getting this on DVD is that it also comes with an outtakes reel for the English dub, albeit a short one. I’ve always liked MB for including those.

4K TV: The video quality is a little grainy in places. It’s perfectly watchable though, nothing to complain about.

“Magical Play”
4 + 1 episodes, 2001
This is a silly show. I like it.

What is it: Padudu is from Sea Heaven and wants to be a magical girl. Her outfit/mascot is an actual fish named Uokichi. Uokichi is also something of a food source and punching bag. Padudu’s hairstyle is giving off Tomo vibes, which is to be expected because the character designer is the same guy who blessed us with Azumanga Daioh.

The episode count on this is a bit confusing. According to ANN, it’s 24 episodes for the main part of the series, but the first DVD has 4 episodes. As it turns out, the show was originally web-sized, with really short episodes, and Sentai decided it was better to ball up a bunch of these smaller episodes into larger ones, half a dozen at a time. Which honestly makes some sense. If they market it as 24 episodes, people are going to expect a much longer runtime for their money.

The second DVD has only one episode, a 3D alternate story stuffed into one episode. It trades a lot of the humor for sheer surrealism, and more actual violence. Gets pretty dark in places, with one character getting a direct fatal headshot. I mean, in the first part, the entire world gets destroyed but that gets played for laughs. In the 3D version, the violence is more uncanny.

Getting it: ADV released this all the way back in 2004, then Sentai re-released it in 2013. Out of print as far as I can tell but used copies are easy to find.

4K test: It’s possible Sentai re-authored this for the 2013 re-release because it looks pretty good for its age. I don’t have the 2004 version to go by.

That’s kind of it for now. This doesn’t include the seasonal anime I’m watching, and the 2022 Spring anime season is certainly keeping my eyes busy.