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Four-Hankie Specials▲▼
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Rating▲▼
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Comment▲▼
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| 5 Centimeters Per Second (movie) |
Masterpiece |
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| Ah! My Goddess: The Movie |
Decent |
Not a fan of the Goddess franchise, but this movie is uncommonly crisp and clear in its focus, for a romantic drama of its kind. They successfully give their central love story a suitable fairytale tone, and stick to it. Beautiful animation all round.
Winner of the Beemer of the Year Award for Most Blatant Product Placement. |
| Air (TV) |
Good |
Perhaps the most successful of the eroge adaptations, probably because it retains a game’s disjointed structure. The dramatic set-pieces are exceedingly well realized, making the heartstring-tugging feel gentle rather than cynical. |
| Angel Sanctuary (OAV) |
Decent |
Hmmm, they probably did not show this one on "video night" at the papal Conclave... What it tries to be and what it actually manages to be are not highly correlated. On the plus side, its "stay tuned" inconclusiveness is not annoying, as it was not going anywhere, anyhow. |
| anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day (TV) |
Excellent |
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| Boku wa Imōto ni Koi o Suru: Secret Sweethearts - Kono Koi wa Himitsu (OAV) |
Decent |
Ah, an incest story. Ho hum. While not quite played out, the use of incest as the last frontier of forbidden love is entering the diminishing returns stage. While not quite bad, this story is simply neither original enough, nor executed well enough to get an appropriate emotional rise. |
| Destiny of the Shrine Maiden (TV) |
Decent |
A very incongruous mix of magical girls, shoujo-ai and mecha. Having so many shinto deities portrayed as cut-rate robots is somewhat... heretical. The central love story is pretty good, though, with a nice emotional payback. |
| Diamond Daydreams (TV) |
Good |
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| Emma: A Victorian Romance (TV) |
Excellent |
No-one could wish for a more gorgeously designed, lovingly produced, carefully researched series… and yet, remembering that this very lushness contributed to its premature demise, Emma is an object lesson on why you must be careful of what you wish for. Nevertheless, as completed, it still tells a story that is both captivating and that rings emotionally true. Winner of the Robert Ballard Award for Best Salvage Job. |
| His and Her Circumstances (TV) |
Excellent |
This refreshingly unwhiny portrayal of teenage angst is perhaps the most sensitive and perceptive of all shoujo romances. With character development aplenty, each individual story arc is rich enough to sustain a lesser series (Tsubasa and Katsuma alone are worth a 6 episode OVA series at the very least). |
| Hotori - Tada Saiwai o Koinegau (special) |
Decent |
The early set-up promises considerably more than the seen-from-a-mile-off outcome delivers. |
| Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu (OAV) |
So-so |
The poor man’s Saikano, and as usual, The Man gives the poor a raw deal. Nothing much wrong with it, but nothing much right either. Its one dooming weakness is simply that its punches are telegraphed WAY too clearly. Predictability can be a virtue, but ostentatious predictability is not. This series main interest is as a benchmark for so-so-ness: the OAV equivalent of a replacement-level player. |
| Kanon (TV 1/2002) |
Decent |
It is rather nice to see the early days of a new medium, but dating games and dating game adaptations sure are a queer bunch, ugu. Forget the ero, the merodrama is so extravagant as to deserve an opera soundtrack. Besides, if Yuuichi only had taken his gingko biloba pills, everything vould have been so much easier, sigh. |
| Kanon Kazahana (special) |
Decent |
I really, really thought it was over. Shows how much I know. |
| Looking Up At The Half-Moon (TV) |
Decent |
One-hankie special. All the right buttons get pressed. Just not very hard. The drama in the story is well set-up, but there is simply not enough follow-through. The bittersweet ending leaves a edulcorant aftertaste where stronger flavors were needed. |
| Marmalade Boy (TV) |
Good |
A minor landmark in my life. This is when I unambiguously realized that I was, beyond any redemption, a wuss: I cried like a babeee. I've dealt. |
| My-HiME (TV) |
Good |
This series starts as a fairly run-of-the-mill, though highly entertaining, magical girl story. Then it pulls out one of the most dramatic changes of key this side of Mahler, and becomes a heart-wrenching tragedy with one heckuva set-up and a big emotional payout. Of course, in the end Sunrise could not hold on to the courage of its convictions, and pressed the Button That Must Not Be Pressed. And pressed it *hard*. |
| Oh My Goddess! (OAV) |
So-so |
Just your average stupid master/happily indentured Wyrdsister love story. Oh, what a boring couple they are: you find yourself craving for some S&M Bondage action, something, anything. On the other hand, it is nice to see a committed, relatively uncomplicated relationship in a genre addicted to anguished indecision. |
| Please Save My Earth (OAV) |
Good |
Euclid’s eighth axiom of narrative geometry: you cannot pack 20 tankoubon into a six ep OVA –only the Lord knows why they keep on trying. So be aware that this series is at most an ouvre-bouche that has no ending to speak of. That’s a major bummer, because whatever they DID manage to pack is well-realized and intriguing: Samsara dramas have something rather appealing in their sense of inevitable eternal return. |
| Rumbling Hearts (TV) |
Good |
Like all ero game adaptations, this overconvoluted love polygon has a forced, press-enter-dammit feel. This "force-straightening" of the story works sometimes, though: in this case, the series delivers by being pleasantly mean-spirited in its efforts to tearjerk. The characters are a neurotic bunch -but hey, who wouldn't be. It falls to Akane to provide the one true emotional pole with her bitter resentment at the injustice destiny has meted out to her sister, and to herself in the process. |
| This Ugly Yet Beautiful World (TV) |
So-so |
What were they thinking? No, I mean it, what were they thinking? This disappointing series seems to be aiming for *something*, its aura hints that something different and effective is coming at some point. It’s just not very clear what that “it” may be, and it never actually comes. Whatever GAINAX actually intended to do for its birthday, this series ends up as flat and limp as deflated party balloons. |
