quacker

(spoiler warning)

I watched Gundam 00 for the third time recently. It's a bigger mess than I remember. The premise is interesting. The first season overall is okay, but the second season devolves into sloppiness.

There are a lot of characters I don't have much reason to care about,

- Wang Liu Mei and Hong Long are two entirely hollow characters. They make no difference to the story and could have been left out entirely, yet we constantly see scenes with her giving color commentary or whatever.
- Setsuna is such a one dimensional character. He's almost as bad as Heero Yuy (although... See full review

The typical Gundam series is a space epic, filled with politics, drama, intrigue, tactics, technology, and so forth. There's narration and exposition about the conflict at large (usually between space and earth). The battles are over the top. There's a huge cast of characters, but always with one small group making a big difference, thanks to the idealistic drive of the main character. It's been done so many times that it's formulaic now - the original Gundam, Zeta, SEED, 00, Unicorn are all copies of each other with some variations. 08th MS Team maintains some of these elements but dials everything back... See full review

Here I am, like 10+ years later, just now discovering Mushishi. If you haven't seen Mushishi, do yourself a favor already. Ignore the descriptions that sound boring ("varied lifeforms known as Mushi surround and affect us...") and kick back and enjoy Mushishi. Mushishi is one of those wonderful shows about nothing. There's no overarching plot, and episodes are only loosely connected because Ginko (our main-ish character) and Mushi (ethereal lifeforms) are involved. But don't misunderstand: Mushishi is not about Ginko or the Mushi. Rather, Mushishi is just about life. It explores people and their... See full review

Gundam Unicorn takes place in the same universe as the original Gundam, I think 20 years or so afterwards. There is a mysterious and unknown thing they call Laplace's Box that is supposed to spell doom for the side faced against it. Nobody knows where this box is, what's inside of it, or if some joker fabricated the whole story. Thus, the series is reduced to this treasure hunt. The grander politics I expected, while still sort of present, are side-stepped because of the focus on this box. Instead of the usual fifty episode anime (totalling about 18 hours of content), Unicorn is told in seven... See full review

Monster is an incredible series. It weighs in at a long 74 episodes told at a slow and steady pace, with an extreme devotion to its characters and its story. Monster is the only anime of its length (that I've seen) that maintains a consistent quality for the duration of the series. There are no filler episodes; every episode is essential, each having its own relevance to the story. The plot maintains its focus and the characters' motivations are consistent from beginning to end. It's really quite a masterpiece. Story The storytelling and dialogue are exceptional. The themes it touches on are an... See full review