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Anime Editorials Reviews

Feast or Filler? Full Metal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos

New anime movies rarely come to southern California (they tend to go instead to Viz’s theater in San Francisco) so I jumped at the chance to see the Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood movie at the Burbank Film Festival.  The movie, titled The Sacred Star of Milos, is the first Full Metal Alchemist movie set in the Brotherhood timeline.  Unlike the original FMA movie, this one is set during, rather than after, the end of the show.  While the producers managed to make a movie with an engaging plot and big budget visuals, they missed the chance to explore new themes.

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Anime Editorials Reviews

This place of dreams and ghosts

It was around this time last year that I started watching Aria. I loved the first series, but stalled at some point during the second (Aria the Animation.) This week, though, I came back to it.
It felt new to me all over again, that sense of peace so typical of how I’ve felt about Aria from the off. It must be a seasonal thing. It’s just an autumn kind of anime. Neo-Venezia is the land of frozen time, a place where one admires the breeze as it passes through fallen leaves and the way the sky’s reflected by the surface of the water.

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Anime Reviews

September 2011: What we're watching

(dengar) Our monthly (more like quarterly or semi-annual) anime feature continues with an update on several current series we’ve reviewed previously.  Read on for a return look at Steins;Gate, Tiger & Bunny and Mawaru Penguindrum.
(bateszi) I hope you enjoy the lovely colours I’ve used to mark our names this time! …What was that you mumbled just there? Crimes against humanity you say? I’ll have you know I’m a professional! We know how websites should look!

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Anime Editorials Reviews

Back to School

September in the US means the end of summer vacation and the beginning of the school year. Kids spend more of their lives at school than anywhere else and I’d wager that more shows are set in schools than in any other setting. Even though school based shows have the same setting, some of them couldn’t be more different. I looked back at three such shows, Azumanga Daioh, His and Her Circumstances (Kare Kano) and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Each show could be described as a slice of life story about high school students, but each show is unique.

A little taste of Azumanga craziness

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Anime Editorials Reviews

A cloud prairie

I’ve fallen behind on anime recently. I’m not sure if that’s down to a lack of interest in what I’m watching or if I’m just not in the mood for anime at the moment, but I’m feeling quite ambivalent about it all. In Celeste’s latest post, she shares the idea of “sticky anime,” positing that certain anime seem to stick with us in an emotional sense, and that others, well, don’t. They are forgettable.
Forgettable anime is a subjective thing, of course. It’s as much about circumstance and taste as anything else. So, for me to say I’m finding most currently-airing anime to be forgettable isn’t as much a comment on this season’s quality as my own indifference to it all.
I’m enjoying anime like Mawaru Penguindrum, Tiger & Bunny and Steins;Gate, but they aren’t affecting me. I’m watching these series because I’m an anime fan and that’s what I do, I watch anime, but it’s now more of a routine than a deep fascination for the medium.
Hence, I’ve fallen behind.

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Anime Editorials

Dedicated to all pioneers: sticky anime

At the risk of taking anime too seriously, a part of the reason my fandom has endured for as many years as it has is the idea of “stickiness”. And yes, feel free to leave your perverted jokes in the comments (jerks.)