Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie (2015)
A flagrantly mercenary reboot that offers spectacular animation but insipid ideas.
A flagrantly mercenary reboot that offers spectacular animation but insipid ideas.
Those who’ve followed this site for a while will have noticed that all the coverage of contemporary cinema is periodically punctuated by reviews of fanservice anime. In my first such review – of Ikkitousen’s third season – I made a serious attempt to grapple with the politics of a genre operating in the vein of…
I was a teenage Evangelion tragic. You don’t need to know all the details – we’ve all read enough white dudes futilely strive to define their cultural background through television/movies (see: every Star Wars review) – but my fandom consumed me for a while there. I read all the fan theories. Found all the fan…
Despite growing up at pretty much exactly the right time to be exposed to Sailor Moon on a daily basis, the recent remaster rerelease of the show on Australian DVD is actually the first time I’d seen a whole episode of the show, let alone a whole season. As a child I’d always dismissed this…
I can’t really complain about the woeful storytelling on display in Dragon Academy’s first episode. The series – set in a medieval-kingdom-slash-high-school where students train dragons – is the kind of slight anime entertainment that I don’t expect much from. So I can forgive the preponderance of “As you know, your father, the king” dialogue…
It took me until the third episode of Ghost in the Shell: Arise (the first instalment of which I reviewed precisely one year ago) to realise that this was a prequel, rather than an alternate universe take à la GITS:SAC. That’s as much a reflection of my obliviousness as it is Arise’s similarities to its…
Space Dandy’s second season keeps pretty well to the tone of season one – reviewed here – which means plenty of restlessly-creative, energetically-absurd space nonsense revolving around the most narcissistic, impressively-coiffed man in the universe. If you dug the silliness of season one, you’ll be equally appreciative of this, though it’s worth noting there’s slightly…
So I Can’t Play H! is a fanservice anime. Or maybe the fanservice anime, given how shamelessly it’s calibrated to accommodate animated depictions of the naked female form. Here’s its premise: a slender Grim Reaper named Lisara (Aya Endo) strikes a deal with perverted high-schooler Ryosuke (Hiro Shimono), wherein he will supply her with ‘energy’ that…
If we’re lucky, we begin our lives in a community of warmth and acceptance, a family where our status as loved goes unquestioned. But as we age into adolescence, that haven is inevitably breached by doubt and distrust, as we begin to question our position in the world. Those questions are exacerbated when you’re an…
I’m more of anime consumer than aficionado – or ‘otaku’, if you prefer – so I don’t pay a lot of attention to anime auteurs, the behind-the-scenes movers and shakers that shape the animation I enjoy (give or take a Miyazaki or Anno, naturally). So it wasn’t until about halfway through Michiko & Hatchin that…