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Blassreiter
(24 episode series)

Set in a future Germany, this series both entertained and annoyed me, mostly because of the anti-US slant that turns up late in the series, and because of how annoying some of the characters could be, not to mention some of the clichés that reared their ugly heads.

In a problem that is entirely unique to Germany, human bodies have started coming back to life as these strange monsters that are really hard to kill, have devastating attacks, and apparently just appeared out of no where. Then, just as icing on the cake, most of the victims tend to come back to life as these monsters themselves, sort of like really angry and fast zombies that can blend with machinery to become even worse monsters. Their origin is finally explained, and isn't exactly a huge surprise thanks to the many hints dropped from the beginning of the series.

The story focuses mostly on one team of elite police, the Xenogenesis Assault Team, which actually reminds me a bit of FUNERAL from Argento Soma in the type of team members present. As it turns out, one of their number, Hermann, has a friend who is infected and becomes one of these monsters, but to an extent he can control it and he retains his humanity. This mostly has to do with the manner in which he was infected, which leads into what becomes the main plot of the series. At first, it seems like this Gerd guy is going to become something like a Batman figure in that while he continually fights the good fight against the monsters, only a few people (and later only his friend) stick up for him and most regard him as simply another monster.

Well, fooled me. As it turns out, that wasn't the case, and it only set things up for the main plotline, which is of mysterious figures from the past of yet another anti-hero character plotting to force their brand of evolution on humanity. We eventually learn the past of this anti-hero, Joseph, and through that the solution to the big mystery that's been dragged along since the beginning of the series. Then, like Argento Soma, there's a betrayal from within the team, but the difference is that here the betrayer never redeems themselves and most of the team dies, and the storyline shifts to follow formerly secondary characters accordingly.

Then towards the end, the US bullies the UN into letting it unleash nuclear armageddon on Germany in order to prevent the spread of the monsters to the rest of the world. Oh yeah, and the Knights Templar make an appearance and turn out to not be that much better, except for a few people who mostly all die saving the day.

At times this series grew quite tiresome, either from slow pacing or from the anti-US bullshit, not to mention the hugely anvilicious anti-xenophobia aesop, but I guess overall I don’t regret watching it. It is another series that could have gotten to the point more quickly, but it's still okay. I'd say it's about 5/10.

Blood: The Last Vampire
(2000 movie)

It's safe to say that while I liked this movie, it was also somewhat lacking in story development. We're very abruptly introduced to the story, and the pace never really slowed down enough for me to absorb as much of it as I would have liked. We're introduced to the characters very quickly, though the only really important one is Saya, who her handler David describes as "the last original". He and another character named Lewis are apparently part of an organization called Red Shield, which is charged with battling these bat-like demon creatures referred to as chiropterans. We're never informed of the origin of these creatures, who or what exactly Saya is, or how Red Shield is able to cover things up so completely despite so much evidence from the various battles that take place.

Movies like this tend to give us an "ordinary" person to sympathize with, and this is no exception. In this case, it's a plump American woman who is the school nurse at the high school on Yanato Air Base in Tokyo. She's actually quite annoying, and a pretty negative stereotype of Americans. Saya has to repeatedly save her, though at one point she seems to lament not being able to kill her.

Saya herself seems to be a vampire, but she doesn't seem to be affected by any of the stereotypical things associated as weaknesses for vampires, and we never see her drink blood. The title actually seems to have to do with the method Saya employs to kill the chiropterans, which is the only way to kill them, through a single blow that causes massive blood loss. Saya herself is somewhat difficult to sympathize with as a character due to her temperamental and abrupt nature, but she definitely kicks plenty of ass.

Overall I'd say that this was an enjoyable movie, though somewhat short. It asks a lot of questions without really answering any of them, and while I kind of like that to an extent, in this case I think there were way too many unanswered questions. It's till worth a watch though, earning a solid 7/10.

Blood: The Last Vampire
(2009 live-action movie)

Based on the animated movie, the live action version adds a lot to it, which in the end I feel improves it a great deal. A lot of the mystery is lost, which may be why a lot of fans of the original may react so negatively to it, but the story is much more fleshed out to the benefit of the movie, I feel.

Some of the differences are that instead of a school nurse, we instead have Saya rescuing the daughter of Yanato's commander, both from the chiropterans and from rogue elements of Red Shield. David also doesn't play as big of a role as he did in the original, and Lewis either changed races or was omitted and replaced by another character. And rather than just a few chiropterans, there's practically an army of them that has infiltrated quite a bit of both Yanato Air Base and Japan in general, and there are also some main antagonists for us to focus on.

More or less, it's the same story of Saya (who's now officially a blood-drinker), working with Red Shield to kill chiropterans, and at one point infiltrating the high school on Yanato Air Base to do so. From there it leads into a larger story than the anime movie, and while the resolution isn't all that clear, it at least felt like I’d seen an entire movie rather than just half of it. There are still some absurd parts, the worst offender being the point that Saya fights a massive crowd of chiropterans by herself, rather like a certain scene in Kill Bill that was played for humor.

I'd recommend this movie, but while you could enjoy this movie without seeing the original, I would suggest that you do what the original first, if nothing else to compare them so you can make up your own mind about them and how they compare to one another. 8/10.

Blood+
(50 episode series)

This series is a reboot/reimaging of the original movie, giving us a much more epic and complex story. This time, all of humanity is at risk, and our only hope is a (seemingly) teenaged girl who is having memory and post traumatic stress issues from something horrible we see her do in the opening of the first episode.

Saya is shown as being a "normal" high school student, and part of an adopted family, but naturally things come along and ruin that for her. Of course all along, there have are hints that Saya is anything but normal, but it takes an attack from a chiropteran and the return of her chevalier, Haji, to bring out the killing machine that she really is. She ends up struggling to remember her past and trying to deal with what she is, and while that could be somewhat dramatic, I tend to think it was drawn out and that it tended to happen at times that made it really, really annoying. In fact, Saya seemed pretty useless for about the first half of the series.

The series also changes a few other things up, like giving Saya a sister named Diva, whose blood is as toxic to Saya and any chiropterans (which chevalier's and even Saya and Diva are also) and vice versa. In fact, Saya's blood is the only way to kill the bat-like creatures that Red Shield has been fighting for over a century, which was usually complicated by the fact Saya is only active for a few years and goes into hibernation for something like 30 years. During the series, the complication is that Saya doesn't remember her past and freaks out at the changes that happen to her when she cuts her finger or thumb on her special sword and kills chiropterans.

Actually the connection with blood was done pretty well, not only in making it the only weapon against Diva's chiropterans, but also in the connection between Saya and Diva, and all of the chiropterans. The series was pretty well done, and kept a fairly good pace for the last half of it, all while teasing us with Saya's past and how the situation with the chiropterans started. It's pretty messed up, actually, and no one is really clean, so to speak.

I will say, though, that it seems like someone at Production I.G seems to have an anti-US axe to grind. While it's ironic, seeing as most of the good guys surrounding Saya, including her adoptive father, are all Americans, this series does pretty much everything it can to paint the US military and US government as evil. There are even a couple characters that turn up to conspire with Diva's faction who very strongly resemble Donald Rumsfeld and Condolisa Rice. I'm almost surprised Bush didn't get the same treatment, seeing as in some cases the Rumsfeld character was making statements and taking actions which would have been more appropriate for the President anyway.

That aside, the series was pretty good. It wasn't as good as Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which was also made by Production I.G, but it was still worth the watch. I'd rate it a 7/10.

Blue Gender
(26 episode series)

I've actually been thinking about this one quite a bit since I started to watch it, and now that I've finished watching it. It really isn't anything special per say, and in fact one could call it fairly derivative. It's a mostly standard issue post-apocalyptic fare, with the protagonist having slept through said apocalypse. That being said, I actually found it quite watchable and interesting. Especially in the start of the series, I found myself drawn in and I just had to watch the next episode to find out what happened after what was usually a cliffhanger ending. It wasn't until later on in the series that I found myself disappointed, and frankly at times annoyed with what the series was trying to say and how it was saying it.

The series opened right in the middle of things. I'm usually annoyed with openings like this, and this wasn't much of an exception, but I was just interested enough by it to not get too annoyed. Thankfully I didn't have to wait all that long for an explanation as to why the whiny, cowardly main character I was introduced to (he literally pisses his pants within the first five minutes) ended up in a cryo tube, and to an extent why there are giant bugs trying to kill everyone we've met so far.

I hate to say it, but the characters we meet at first aren't all that terribly interesting, including the main character, Yuji, who, for some reason, doesn't even think to ask how long he's been asleep. He was only supposed to be asleep for a year or two while doctors literally tried to figure out what ailed him and apparently quite a few others so they could develop a treatment for it. Pretty much the standard excuse to turn someone into a popsicle in pretty much every show to ever have suspended animation that doesn't also include a prolonged journey across space. As it turns out in this case, bad things happened, and Yuji receives a very rude awakening, about twenty years after he was supposed to have been awakened originally.

What happened? Well, to quote Starship Troopers, "BUGS!" Yes, as lame as that is, somehow giant bugs have taken over and turned all but a lucky few (relatively speaking) into tightly packed green balls that they never bother eating or doing anything with. Basically it serves as a body horror image until the "message" comes along and ruins everything.

Anyway, back to the characters, most of them are basically cold-hearted bastards, which is constantly rubbed in as the series progresses. Not only are most of the military personnel who were sent to recover Yuji and his fellow sleepers this way, but their superiors in the orbital stations that serve as humanity's last bastion are especially cold-hearted. As it turns out, if this recovery team hadn't managed to recover any sleepers, they would have been left planet-side for dead, which is what ends up happening to most of them anyway. That being said, while plenty of humans have managed to escape into orbit where the bugs can't get them, we're informed that only the select few seen as too valuable to lose were chosen to live on the orbital stations, which are collectively known as Second Earth. While that makes it all the more confusing as to why they would then treat their soldiers as completely expendable, what makes even those expendable soldiers complete bastards is that they've all been completely brainwashed into believing the humans who have by some miracle managed to survive and not get turned into green balls are actually already as good as dead. This means that while Yuji, and by extension most people, sees a little girl being attacked by a giant bug and wants to stop to help, none of the soldiers he's with want to completely ignore it. Oh, and if a "groundling" happens to get between them and a bug, the soldiers are supposed to shoot through them. While this does lead to some verbal exchanges, I kind of wanted to see Yuji and the beautiful blonde ice queen who initially rescued him, Marlene, come to blows and exchange a few punches, too, mostly just because I would have in his place given what happened and what was being said. Jury's still out on whether I would have pissed myself upon waking up and nearly being killed by a bug the size of a cow...

Only one of the soldiers really had any redeeming qualities, which was Joey. Unlike Marlene, Joey actually seemed human. He was compassionate and more than once stuck up for Yuji when Marlene was being a bitch to him. It was nice that this was a series so we could see the friendship develop, even though things were still moving along at a pretty fast clip.

We do see some of that development between Yuji and Marlene, but I feel it still could have used a little bit to explain why the two of them develop feelings. Marlene never really seems to be all that compassionate towards Yuji despite saving his life repeatedly; if anything she makes it seem like a pain that she has to keep doing it, since Yuji is basically her ticket back to Second Earth. On Yuji's end, it seems more physical than anything, because Marlene is pretty attractive (and also nekkid in the end credits, FYI Wink

). They do have some time to talk and argue with each other, but most of their time is spent running away from giant bugs. She explains how humanity has basically lost touch with emotions, which is why they all have pointless sex and why she's such a frigid bitch to him, and he basically goes on and on about how he was only supposed to be asleep for a couple of years and how he wishes he'd never woken up if this is the world he had to wake up to. This somehow equates to the two of them being in love with each other.

While it's pretty easy to tell I was unimpressed with how they got there, I kind of dug the idea of a somewhat unemotional woman and a somewhat emotional man falling in love with each other. The fact that Marlene had to figure out just what was going on with her, and started to see just how much the humans of Second Earth really were bastards also appealed to me, and I loved seeing her kick ass to find Yuji, even though it was against the standard idiot mooks that seem to make up the military in shows like this. It's after this that things kind of go south for me.

As it turns out, the Second Earth military scientist types seem to think Yuji's disease can somehow do for them what really any competent military should have been able to do at any point in the past twenty years – kill all the giant bugs. This being anime, naturally it features mecha, which seem to be about the most effective means of fighting the giant bugs, even though air support from some kind of gunship would probably work a lot better. What's worse is that while at some points the guns being used by the characters are quite effective, most of the time bullets seem to bounce harmlessly off of the bugs' armored skin. And way too many times soldiers freeze up and just let the giant bugs kill them. All of that was pretty annoying, but that actually isn't what bothered me the most.

So what bothered me the most about this show? Marlene and Yuji basically switch roles, for no real reason at all. While it's true Yuji had evil scientists abuse his illness in order to make him basically super-human, his obsession with another sleeper named Tony and the way he turned into the same kind of uncaring bastard that all the other Second Earth military types were just didn't ring true for me. Worse though was Marlene, who turned into a really emotional and frankly kind of useless woman. She went from cold and unemotional to really emotional without having much of any transition, and while before she was a very effective soldier in combat, she suddenly started freezing up. Basically she turned into the Yuji from the first few episodes.

Okay, I lied, that isn't the part that bothered me the most about this show. What did? Well, I hinted at the "message" in the beginning of this review, and this one is a doozy. The message? Earth is alive and trying to kill humanity, which it perceives as a cancer and therefore a threat to itself. And if that wasn't bad enough, it turns into a luddite message of how we can only peacefully coexist with the planet by giving up all technology and living in grass huts. No, really, that's the happy ending of the series is that Yuji and Marlene decide to join some random villagers they met in South America that was living in huts. This after a really quick WTF montage of the remaining Second Earther's killing the leader who has made it clear that if anyone wanted to leave, he wouldn't stop them, just so that they can fight over the last shuttle and somehow blow up the main space station. And it all happens in like a minute running time. Oh, and those green balls the bugs made out of humans? Apparently tree food, because at one point we see little tree plants growing out of them.

While there is plenty to rag on in this series, much like Star Trek: Enterprise, I liked the basic concept. I also liked most of the character interactions and development, at least up until Yuji and Marlene trade roles. I would still recommend this series, even if it scores a little low at 6/10.

Blue Gender: The Warrior
(2002 movie)

What happens when you take a 26 episode series and try to cram it into a 95 minute long movie? Well, not much good, as you might expect.

The original series was just way too complex to turn into an hour and a half made-for-TV movie, so naturally, while things started out more or less the same, a lot got cut out, and a lot got changed in the plot. In the end, not much really makes sense about the plot, and if I hadn't watched the series before this movie, I probably would have been completely lost. Most of what they cut out was either good, like Yuji's friendship with Joey, or important to character and plot development. It wouldn't have been as bad had they changed the plot even more, but they left just enough in to make things that much more confusing plot-wise. It also makes the fact that they only left one small part of what had to be the shortest training montage I've ever seen out from the series somewhat amusing. The part they left out? Marlene pressing her body against Yuji's in order to show him the proper shooting stance for a pistol.

The Yuji/Marlene relationship just seems to come that much more out of the blue in this movie because so much has been left out or become part of the chopped up journey/survival montage that reduces something like 3-4 episodes into a single minute. It also makes it that much more pathetic when Marlene becomes such a whiny loser after returning to Second Earth. Then, after explaining how she doubts she'll ever be allowed to return to Earth's surface, she's suddenly there and searching frantically for Yuji. She does find him, and he promptly tries to kill her, until something she says turns him back into something like his old self, somehow.

The ending of the movie is even more WTF than the series. While we never see or learn anything about Second Earth's final fate, the movie basically ends with Marlene cradling Yuji in the middle of the street. At one point they were surrounded by the giant bugs, looking for all intents to become another green ball in the middle of the street, when Yuji opens his eyes, makes some kind of psychic noise, and all the bugs go away. Knowing that there is a connection between the disease Yuji and his fellow sleepers have from the series, I kind of sort of know what happened, but in the context of the movie there is just no explanation at all.

So combine the storyline being ripped to shreds with character narration out of no where in a vain attempt to explain what the hell is going on, and basically you get a lot of suck. The environmental/luddite message has mostly been lost, but in its place it has a "science is bad" message. Whereas in the series, rampant militarism was blamed for Second Earth becoming what it had when we saw it in the series, the head scientist who actually lead a coup against the corrupt military council turns out to be the bad guy in the movie, sort of. Basically he's blamed for things turning out the way they are, and he kills himself after whining about what a loser he is in his narration piece.

While this movie pretty much just sucked, I'll admit that there were a few things I liked about it. To begin with, while it was kind of lame, what Yuji's illness was supposed to end up doing to him and anyone who had it is actually explained in the movie, while in the series it's never mentioned beyond the explanation of Earth using it as a means to destroy humanity. In the movie it basically just drives them insane and they start babbling predictions about the future. Another thing I liked is that at one point, Yuji actually hauls off and punches Marlene after calling her and her Second Earth compatriots on their inhumanity. He actually sticks up for himself beyond words, so I liked that. Later on, he gives his earring to Marlene as a good luck charm and at one point she expresses he strong conviction for him by piercing her ear with it and wearing it. The relationship doesn't make much sense in the movie, but something like that would have been nice in the series.

Still, the movie sucked, and I'm only giving it a 1/10.

Blue Submarine No. 6
(4 episode OVA)

This was an interesting take on the whole post-apocalyptic type of story, even with the annoying environmental message. Essentially, some Dr. Moreau type has gone nuts and somehow not only managed to flood most of Earth's surface by creating a polar shift, killing a good chunk of the population, but he's created an army (navy?) of intelligent human/animal hybrids to kill as many humans as possible. He later denies that was the purpose, but his motivations are rather difficult to understand anyway. Apparently he hatched his evil secret plan after losing his family in an ethnic cleansing while he was off figuring out how to create more food for the world's population.

In the meantime, the world's surviving navies have banded together and formed "Blue Fleet", a futuristic submarine force, of which Blue Submarine No. 6 is a part of. It's a little frustrating that they didn't give the sub its own name, as most of the other subs in the fleet do have their own names, but that doesn't really affect the story. The fleet continues to fight the water-borne forces of Dr. Moreau – I mean Zorndyke, losing many of its number along the way.

Due to these massive loses and an acceleration detected in Earth's polar shift, Blue Fleet plans to attack the tropical Antarctic (yeah, really) stronghold of Dr. Zorndyke in an effort to break the will of his creations to fight. Dr. Zorndyke interrupts their little briefing and lets them know that he's on to them, right before the massive phantom ship that has been systematically wiping out Blue Fleet turns up at their base to kill them all.

Blue Sub 6 had picked up a former crew member, Tetsu in the first episode, and during one of these fights, he, for no real reason, takes pity on the pilot of one of the machines that was moments ago trying to kill him and lets her go (kind of a fish girl/mermaid I guess). This comes into play as the Blue Fleet base is destroyed and he is shipwrecked in the process of allowing Blue Sub 6 to escape, as he is in turn rescued by the creepy mermaid he had returned to the water early in the OVA. While I'm glad they never went the romance route, it would have been interesting to have the two develop more of a friendship, but sadly it didn't come to much, other than this mermaid changing her way of thinking and not seeing humans has her enemy.

What does come of it, and from the help of another friend who has been turned into a sea creature by Zorndyke, is that Tetsu is able to infiltrate Zorndyke's "base" and kill him, thus preventing the nuclear strike that was Blue Fleet's original plan, which actually would have finally brought on the end of humanity through the pole shift. The moral of the story is supposed to be that we should try to get along instead of fighting each other, but it's left somewhat ambiguous as to whether Zorndyke's creations will make an effort to get along with humans or vice versa.

Made by the same studio that would go on to make Last Exile, some of the character designs look rather familiar. There's even a short-haired tomboy, Kino, who is unfortunately more annoying than anything. She's moody, unreasonable, and cries a lot, which kind of contrasts the professional officer image they initially tried to sell her as in the beginning of the OVA. Most of the other characters we meet are interesting enough, though I have to say that the main fish creatures manning the phantom ship (a battleship/whale combination) were a bit too cartoonish for my taste. The captain of Blue Sub 6 was likable, and actually reminded me a bit of a Star Trek captain, which is probably what they were going for anyway, including with the look of Blue Sub 6 herself (not to mention a Scottish chief engineer).

While an okay anime, this probably isn't what fans of submarine movies would like, simply because it doesn't have much of that feel, which is very firmly in the sci-fi side of things. I kind of wished that they'd gone more that route, and gotten a more appropriate soundtrack, for that matter. Other than that, it was okay, so it might be worth checking out. 7/10.

You know something, man? You've got my respect. Like another certain philisophical, mass-murdering sociopath who wears nice suits, I too have a high regard for commitment.

Others may question you for watching a series that's a 1/10 in its entirety, but I always believed in finishing what you started, and never passing judgment on it until it's passed.

A word of thought here and there is good, but a full-blown critique and judgment has absolutely no place but at the end. Keep it up.

Thanks. I have to admit I don't always finish the bad ones all the way through, but if it's just a movie or a short OVA, I'm more inclined to see just how bad something is. And back when I first started writing these, I used to have more patience with the bad series.

Boogiepop Phantom
(12 episode series)

While Baccano! managed to pull off the ADD editing somehow, this series made all the skipping around a bit annoying. It also tended to skip around in time and location, though each episode was basically its own self-contained story. Each tended to intersect with more than one other episode, however, so it could get a bit confusing to follow. There were also so many different characters that it became hard to remember their names, at least, to even really see how much each storyline might intersect with another. It also might have helped if I'd understood what was going on or what the show was even really about.

The title character basically goes around and disappears various characters that all have special powers of some kind, usually after chastising them for the use of those powers. She alternatively refers to herself as Death, and as "saving" the people she makes disappear, so it's hard to tell if she's a villain or not. I normally like ambiguity, but this was just confusing. I guess making them disappear into thin air (or cocooning them as is revealed close to the end) is somewhat better than the obviously evil "composite" humans who literally ate people who were supposed to represent evolution within the human species. The big evil organization they belonged to apparently controlled everything while actually preferring to just observe, except when it came to preventing change, as in evolution in humans. That's pretty much all I got out of the series.

I guess if you like having your mind screwed with a bit, this might be worth a watch, but I'm guessing most would simply find this series confusing and hard to follow. 3/10.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica
(12 episode series)

Wow, this has to be about the only magical girl anime I've ever actually enjoyed, or at least to this extent. What does it say about me and my tastes that it's also hugely depressing and that, well, there are some similarities to Higurashi? Wink

I'll try not to spoil you too much, but you have to keep in mind that this is one of my reviews, and I tend to like to talk about the stuff I wished I'd known about going into a series. Speaking of which, I totally knew that this series would be a lot more serious and depressing than pretty much any other magical girl anime in existence thanks to another reviewer's brief commentary on this series, and in fact it's the only reason I bothered to watch this series, because as you know, magical girl anime is not a genre I typically watch unless I'm looking for some fan service or it's something that's making fun of the genre. In this case, this series is more like a deconstruction of the genre.

For the most part we follow Madoka Kaname, a 14 year old girl with a househusband father and a cutthroat businesswoman mother. You know, the average middle school student of the future, where schools look like glass cages (as they should). Like most teenagers, while she doesn't really have anything to complain about, she still wishes her life was different and more exciting. Since this is a show, naturally that's exactly what happens.

Actually the show starts us off right from its very opening with this weird South Park-ish magical world where all the fights take place, and in doing so it not only introduces us to the kind of weirdness seen above, but gives us a hint that this show isn't so much about magical girls taking skyscrapers to the face as it is about them getting worn out and suffering deadly consequences if they fail. Yup, that's right, in this show magical girls die and are not brought back to life. Oh, for the first couple of episodes the show tries to fake us out, in more ways than one. The first is by introducing Homura Akemi as a strange transfer student who comes off as a possible villain. It isn't until later that we learn the reason why she's so hostile toward Madoka and her friend Sayaka Miki. Of course by that time, we've already seen a magical girl die a horrific death by being eaten by the cutest witch/monster caterpillar ever.

And that's a big part of why I liked this series. It's kind of like Higarashi that way – it contrasts cuteness with horrific things happening. And this in turn contrasts this show with other magical girl shows, because while other shows of this type tend to play up how awesome it is to be a magical girl because they have flashy cloths, fight monsters, and save the world while balancing school and a social life, this one shows us what's being glossed over. These are children. Constant combat will wear down even adults who are mentally prepared for it, and the consequence of failure is death. Most of the drama in these shows is derived from the possibility that the magical girls might fail, but they always win in the end. It's even been brought to my attention that Sailor Moon actually died to push this even further, but she was still brought back to fight and defeat the bad guys in the end (as far as I know). That doesn't happen here.

Like pretty much every magical girl show, there's a cute little magical animal companion, usually a cat. In this case it's kind of like a cat, but instead it's an alien named Kyubey and his job seems to be recruiting young girls into making contracts with him to fight and destroy witches. He'll even let the potential recruits tag along on missions with current Puella Magi to get a taste of what they're in for. Like any recruiter he plays up how awesome it is to be a magical girl, and he even promises to grant any wish the girls can think of in exchange for a life-long commitment to serve as a Pulla Magi. If that sounds like making a contract with the devil, well, they kind of gave that away by giving Kyubey beady red eyes. I don't care how cute and cat-like an alien is, you just can't trust a face like this:

God he's creepy....

In any case, though they witness the horrific death of a Puella Magi and are constantly being warned off by Homura that they are getting in way over their heads, Sayaka is guilt-tripped by a boy she likes into making a contract because he really liked playing violin and because of a crippling accident, he can't anymore. You can guess what he wish was? And since this show lives on being depressing, the little bastard doesn't end up hooking up with Sayaka, and she spirals into self-destruction, just so we can see exactly what witches are, and how horrible and alien Kyubey really is. Which to be fair, his being horrible has mostly to do with his being alien, what with completely lacking human emotions and anything resembling morality. Which just makes him all the creepier. Then, to depress us even more, we get to find out just how like Higarashi this show is by the revelation that Homura's magical power is time manipulation, and she's actually been going back in time multiple times in a so far fruitless effort to keep Makoda from becoming a Puella Magi and dying soon afterwards while fighting a hopeless battle against a really powerful witch. So, much like Rika Furude, Homura isn't exactly the pleasant moe blob she started out as anymore. The really fun part is that in one time loop she tried to warn them all, but seeing the ultimate fate of Puella Magi, one of the especially nice and friendly ones goes nuts and kills most of the rest of them.

The one let-down for me was kind of a big one in that the ending was pretty much a cheat. I have to admit that there isn't a whole lot they could have done because they'd essentially written themselves into a corner, but this is probably because the pacing had been set too slow for such a short series. Now, I'm not saying the show was boring, and to be fair, I tend to like it when a show takes its time, slowly unraveling everything for us, but when there were only 12 episodes to play around with, saving the resolution for the last episode kind of made it come off as very sudden and a cheat. I say cheat because the ending basically was a way for the show to have both a happy and a depressing ending, both resolving the series and leaving it unresolved. It could be that the creative staff is trying to hook us for another season, but at the same time there isn't a lot they can do without again cheating, the same way Code Geass did.

The characters in this show were for the most part kind of "meh." The focus is fairly limited, so we don’t get to learn all that much about anyone other than Madoka, Sayaka, and Homura. To be honest I didn't care much for Madoka. As was pointed out by Homura in the show, she's kind of selfish and honestly seems to be depressed about nothing. She has a loving, wealthy family, at least two close friends, and yet feels like something is missing in her life even before the whole magical girl thing comes up. So I found her kind of boring. Sayaka, honestly not a whole lot better. For me, Homura was the interesting one. She went through hell and was very versatile despite not having the kind of flashy powers the other Puella Magi had. Instead, she used her time manipulation power to steal guns that she hid in her own version of hammer space. She was also a very pragmatic character, and I dig that. The only other character I much cared for was ironically Kyubey. I thought he was written fairly well as far as the alien aspect of him. Much like the Borg from Star Trek, he honestly thinks he's doing these girls a favor, even if he's actually doing something quite horrible to them. He honestly doesn't understand why the things he does end up disturbing some of the girls he makes contracts with, because an alien probably wouldn't.

While the ending was kind of a let-down, I would still recommend that you check this series out, even if the whole magical girl thing isn't normally what you'd watch. If you stick it through to the third episode, this series will surprise you, hopefully to your enjoyment. 8/10.

/人◕ ‿‿ ◕人\

Burn-Up!
(single episode OVA)

This show was immature and actually a little painful to watch. It focuses on a mostly female police squad as it investigates a female slavery ring run by some gangster type. As one might expect, this means some fan service, but while I usually kind of enjoy this kind of thing, it really wasn't worth it to watch this stinker. The English dub was especially annoying, but having to read the moronic conversation taking place in Japanese didn't improve on anything. It was just stupid, both the plot and the characters. Don't waste your time with this one. 0/10.

Burn-Up W
(4 episode OVA)

This OVA didn't have much to do with the first one beyond names, so I guess it had that going for it. For about the first half of it, it seemed like it was going to be nudity and comedy, not unlike GoldenBoy. There was a villainous plotline in the background the whole time, but it seemed like it was more about making a VR orgasm machine than anything really threatening or dangerous. Honestly I probably would have enjoyed the show a lot more if that were the case, but it turned out to be something actually sinister, and the show took a turn for serious with the third episode. Basically we got introduced to one of the character's friends only to have that friend wind up getting shot in the face. And even after the show turned mostly serious at that point, it still tried to throw some comedy and fan service out there, and that didn't really come off well in my opinion.

Really this show would have been improved had it simply chosen whether to be serious or to be a comedy, because mixing the two just didn't work. 4/10.

Burn-Up Excess
(12 episode series)

Actually fairly good as far as being basically a sex comedy. As with the 4 episode OVA, this series pretty much focused on fan service and comedy, which was mostly about the fan service. It's refreshing to see an anime that doesn't really take itself too seriously. Actually, this series reminds me a little of Desert Punk as far as how over the top the action and comedy can be without overdoing it. The problem is, much like Desert Punk did toward the end, this series just had to get serious suddenly in its last few episodes. We're talking a major terrorist plot here, along with major betrayal from characters who were supposed to be "good guys". It's somewhat frustrating that once again, the people making this series had to ruin what they had by introducing a serious plot.

As for the plot itself, well, for a while it was refreshingly episodic with some minor connection with the big evil secret plan that finally reared its ugly head at the end of the series. The character design and voice talent is the same as Burn Up W, which at first lead me to believe Excess was a sequel to it, but as someone turned up who was killed in the OVA, I guess there is no real continuity between the OVA and this series. Oh, and speaking of character design, the Warrior Squad's only male team member, Yuji, looks a lot like the main character of GoldenBoy, so that helped sell both the OVA and this series to me initially.

I'd say this series is worth a watch if you're up for some adult comedy. Much as with the OVA, though, the ending kind of spoiled my enjoyment of it, so I'm not going to score it much higher at 5/10.

Burn-Up Scramble
(12 episode series)

This series features a new character design and animation style that frankly makes the older versions of this franchise look a lot better by comparison. This series also features a new voice cast along with having a new continuity completely unrelated to the other versions of the franchise, but what really makes this version suck in my opinion is that it's way too serious. It reminds me of other "future cop" animes which also bored the hell out of me so much. The fan service is still there, albeit much tamer and therefore less fun as far as I'm concerned.

I have to be honest though and admit up front that I couldn't watch this entire series. Even if I didn't have a massively huge list of things I want to watch and get through, I probably still wouldn't take the time to watch the entirety of this series, because at points I was tempted to quit before the first episode was even done. That being said, I only made it through the first episode. 0/10.

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Forum - View topicCX's Anime Reviews (can be spoiler-ific). Latest: Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dir

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CX's Anime Reviews (can be spoiler-ific). Latest: Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dir