TheAnimeGuardians

The Sacred Blacksmith? How do you make a show about a blacksmith? Would the audience be forced to watch the blacksmith at work, which typically involves a lot of hammering more than anything else? Despite the title, this anime wasn't really about a blacksmith at all, but instead focused on Cecily Cambell, a fledgling knight guard for the Independent Trade Cities of Housman, who just so happens to know a blacksmith.

  The show begins, and... See full review

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia makes a good first impression. The opening song, “Choir Jail,” is a heavy metal assault beautifully accompanied by 15 year old singer Konomi Suzuki in her debut hit. The anime's visuals are stunning and the color palette can only be described as kaleidoscopic. The first episode is comedic gold. But despite the pretty package Dusk Maiden comes in, there's more wrapping paper in this gift than anything else. Dusk Maiden of Amnesia begins on a comedic note and establishes a rather playful atmosphere for our characters. In typical harem fashion, the... See full review

I've heard a lot of good things about the Grappler Baki franchise. I was first introduced to it through the forty-eight episode television series; I always find my younger brother studying the show intensely, as if he'll learn the fighting techniques it flaunts and become an MMA champion. I don't typically watch anime about martial arts and fighting, because in paradoxical fashion there tends to be more talking than fighting (Dragonball Z easily comes to mind). The Baki television anime juggled dialogue and action rather nicely, so I chose to give the original OVA a shot. The OVA... See full review

I like to constantly remind people that reviewing shows isn't an objective process, but a rather bemusing mix of personal opinions and facts. I'll admit that I'm partial to shows about the man-machine interface, forcing people to reconceptualize what it means to be alive and to have a soul. When my friend told me about Time of Eve, a short web series about a robot cafe, I was definitely intrigued. The regular customers. In the not too distant future Japan begins to employ heavy... See full review

Shortly before the turn of the century the Internet revolutionized the way humans exchange information. In many respects, mankind managed to create a world parallel to our own. There have been countless works of fiction devoted to expounding upon the implications of our inception of virtual reality, the book Neuromancer being among the earliest examples. Human beings, as such fictional works continue to demonstrate, are inherently curious as to what our lives can evolve into if only we were able to directly connect with this intangible network of raw data. As confusing as it is for some to define what... See full review

Drawing the line between duty and desire is not always simple. Ga-Rei-Zero presents us with an orderly system of family honor and duty based upon a single principle: those who inherit a family's ga-rei or spirit-eating beast must vanquish “spirits that defy the natural order.” But what happens when a spirit possesses someone you know? Having to rain justice upon a former ally is a theme hundreds of shows and films have adopted, a famous example being Obi-Wan fighting Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars. Gai-Rei-Zero takes us through a similar betrayal in a way only anime can: in the end, nobody... See full review

A name carries a lot of weight. The proper name to this second season is in fact Birdy the Mighty: Decode 02 and not Birdy the Mighty: Decode, Season Two, as if to suggest that this is a newer model, a better version than the last. That is exactly what Decode 02 is. If the first season did a decent job of introducing us to the Birdy the Mighty universe at large, Decode 02 zooms in on the personal affairs of our female protagonist Birdy and creates a visual vignette where memories are as vicarious for the viewer as they are for the show's characters. Decode 02 pushed the series to a TV-MA rating, in... See full review

Haunting memories and lingering hatred pervade this anime, so much so that the notion of "despair" is almost what comes to define Canaan. There is certainly a light at the end of the tunnel for this anime, and the show is not without its laughs, but it takes a long time for us to finish the journey and be left with a satisfying semblance of hope. Canaan's characters are real and visceral; the antagonist is as haunted as everyone else in the show. It's not very often that an anime is able to pull that off with as much finesse as Canaan. ... See full review