Check it out on Amazon.

Would you recommend this? No. This is the worst spin-off of Bubblegum Crisis I’ve seen.

Technically any good? The acting was fine–I really liked the Boomer detective’s voice actor. The animation was pretty awesome, looking–liked the character designs quite a bit. It’s a shame no one ages over the 6-ish-year length of time the anime takes place over. It’s also a shame that the series doesn’t involve the Knight Sabers or even the main characters from AD Police. The lack of anything familiar but the word “Boomer” makes me wonder why they didn’t just replace the word “Boomer” with the word “robot” and let this anime to stand on its own, entirely apart from BGC.

Imagine how bad a Star Wars spin-off would be if only the stormtroopers were in it and the story was a fairly uninteresting series of robots-n-cops stories (that felt stupidly rushed), almost entirely featuring women being corrupt, sex-pots, or sex-pot-robots. Only one woman doesn’t fit this cliche and she was horribly underdeveloped, character-wise.

How did it leave me feeling? Yuck. Glad I’m done with the Bubblegum Crisis universe. :(

Would you sit through it again? No.

I’ve now decided that when I go back through the BGC saga again, I’ll be sticking to anime featuring the Knight Sabers only. Though, to be fair, the AD Police remake series was not bad–not great, but not bad. I already watched that remake series, within the last couple years and I’m 90% sure I Pocket Reviewed it, but can’t find the review. I’ll add a link to it to this post when I get a chance.

Buy the entire series!

Would you recommend this? Definitely! For anyone who enjoys cyberpunk and/or bad-ass women in robot-suits, this is a very worthwhile show.

Technically any good? The story is solid and there is a really nice, strong arc that you can follow for the entire series. It’s not perfect, and the show falls prey to the classic “what the hell?” kind of ending that a lot of anime suffers from. Still, the characters are well developed, the character and mecha designs are great, and while the animation isn’t perfect, it’s perfectly reasonable. The music is also awesome (and is probably my favorite of all of the music in the BGC universe). The acting is spot on and it’s great that they cast a woman for Priss who sounds like the previous voice actors who have portrayed her.

How did it leave me feeling? Definitely satisfied, though as with all anime that ends with the “WTH?” ending, I do wish there was a bit more of a recap. Sadly, there’s still no talk of a sequel series, despite the enduring cult following the BGC universe has around the world. Ah well.

Would you sit through it again? I’m SURE I will sit through this series again–this is actually the second time I’ve seen it and I still love it. It’s so great to see female characters being heroic, daring and still feminine. Who said women were the weaker sex, never messed with the Knight Sabers.

Buy it!

Positive Experience/Entertaining? DEFINITELY. This is among the most classic of classic anime. Bubblegum Crisis, I feel, can be credited with one-third of the inspiration behind the cyberpunk/technoir movement (the other two-thirds are Blade Runner and Terminator).

Technically any good? Some people complain about the abrupt ending of the original BGC series. I don’t know what they’re talking about. The final episode is just the final episode. Granted there is no grand resolution that so many anime series have these days, but it doesn’t really effect the quality or enjoyment of the anime.

All the high-standards are represented, quality-wise. Great acting, great animation (downright stunning for the time period), incredible mecha designs from Kenichi Sonoda and very tight stories. There were only a few times when I had to shrug off a contrived moment or two. The violence level is high, but the themes in Bubblegum Crisis are pretty mature, so kids won’t get much braintertainment out of the series, anyway.

However, the pretty ladies in the robot suits might look attractive to them, so if you’re a parent, don’t let them have access to this series. There is nudity (not excessive) and violence (fairly excessive).

How did it leave me feeling? Very happy. Bubblegum Crisis is the reason I fell in love with anime in the first place. Something about the no-holds-barred atmosphere of it makes it really stick to your ribs. It was great to watch it again for the first time in about fifteen years (only saw it the one time in college).

Final Rating? GSN – Go See Now! If you like robot anime or hot women in robot suits anime, see this series. Hell, even if you just like anime, you should see this historic series.

Buy it!

Positive Experience/Entertaining? I suppose on a very basic level this movie was entertaining. I just didn’t care for it.

Technically any good? The acting was fine and the animation was gorgeous. However, without an interesting story, I got bored fast. The story and script for this anime was as cliche as they come. The only thing not cliche was the ending which was unsatisfying. On top of that, this anime falls prey to a trap that no piece of animated art should ever fall prey to: there was no reason for this anime to be animated.

It was all realistically done, there were no monsters, no spaceships (well, there was one, but it could have been easily CGed)–it was just a straight romance that I probably would have enjoyed more if it was live action. Not everything has to be scifi/fantasy or crazy story-wise in animation, but for crying out loud, do something that you can only do in animation–camera angles that would be impossible to do with live action, SOMEthing. I suppose some of the train sequences would have been a pain to shoot live-action, but I’m thinking paying people to draw 24 pictures per second as opposed to hiring some people to shoot in the snow would be more expensive.

How did it leave me feeling? Unsatisfied. This “movie” is divided into three uneven chunks, one of which could be a completely different story but involved a character from the main storyline for no reason that seemed required. Ultimately, I felt this movie was very self-indulgent. I’m fine with realistic, non-scifi/fantasy stories being told using animation, but make it interesting, damn it. I’m almost done watching Satoshi Kon’s Paranoia Agent and this is a great example of animation that tells a non-scifi/fantasy story that is interesting and takes better advantage of the medium.

Final Rating? DNS – Do Not See – there are far better and more satisfying love stories done in anime. I’d suggest you check out Love Hina if you’re interested in good cliched storytelling that follows a romance. 5 Centimeters Per Second was sadly sleep-inducing.

FYI: Strangely (or maybe not so strangely), 5 Centimeters Per Second is not available on DVD in the US any more, but you may be able to score it used through Amazon–click the movie poster image above to get started.. I was able to find it on Netflix.

Buy it! Or click here to check out other volumes in the series!

Positive Experience/Entertaining? If you like flying ships and/or well developed (but slightly stereotypical) characters, Last Exile is for you. Wow did I enjoy the hell out of this anime series.

Technically any good? The series first aired in Japan back in 2003 so they were a bit ahead of their time in meshing CG animation with cell–sometimes it works well, but often, it’s distracting. Generally, the series is edited tightly enough to create enough resonance, excitement and intrigue that it’s easy to ignore the flaws in the animation. Of course, the brilliant character designs by Range Murata also distract from the CG failings. WOW are Murata-san’s designs good. The acting, as is usually the case in anime with the original Japanese voice-over actors, is spot-on. In fact, the woman who played the little girl was surprisingly good. She sounded like an adult doing the voice, but acting-wise, she spoke with the motivation and spirit of a child. It made her character resonate strongly with me.

Emotionally and character-wise, the script was very solid. I cared about everyone I think the script wanted me to care about. The only tricky bits for me were the cliched brooding captain (incredibly common in anime), the flatly-evil female villain (flat-bad guys who laugh for no apparent reason are cliche in western culture, too) and the pure as snow lead characters. Like Shinji in Evangelion or Renton in Eureka 7, Claus and Lavie are made pristine so they can suffer for our enjoyment. It works fairly well, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore the fact that it’s wicked-cliche. However, the ending, while slightly predictable, is poignant, bittersweet and generally satisfying.

How did it leave me feeling? Definitely with tears in my eyes. I highly recommend this show. It’s not the perfect anime series (still can’t work out how the vanships actually fly or what connection Al had with the Exile) but the emotional content of the series is what made me keep watching. I will miss these characters! Sadly, there’s a lot (if the show’s wikipedia article is to be trusted) that I completely missed, but I didn’t care that I did.

Final Rating? SIYL – See If You Like (good storytelling with positive characters and a happy, generally believable ending).

Buy it!

Positive Experience/Entertaining? Definitely entertaining–the original Macross was never quite this intense (or well animated).

Technically any good? As is often the case with anime, the voice acting is very solid. As is NOT often the case with Macross the animation is SUPERB. The mix between CG and cell animation works nearly seamlessly. The real surprise here is how detailed the flight sequences are. The cinematography will blow you away and you really get a sense of how these transforming fightercraft are piloted. Seriously–some of the dog-fighting sequences are better than anything else I’ve seen in any anime or live-action movies.

However, as a prequel to the original Macross, it makes very little sense. We see a familiar character and the mecha are identical but, aside from the story being set toward the end of the Unification Wars, there’s virtually nothing tying this show to the Macross universe. I suppose the “bird-men” in this end up being the Vajra in Macross Frontier? It’s not terribly clear.

How did it leave me feeling? Generally satisfied–while I don’t think it fits well within the Macross universe, it’s MUCH better than Macross Plus and stands on its own as a pretty good little anime. The ending is definitely intense, though there is a hook at the end that makes you ask “Whaaaa?”

Final Rating? SIYL – See If You Like. If you’re a Macross completist like me, it’s definitely worth checking out. If you’re just interested in checking out some sweet animation, some great dogfight sequences and some reasonably nice character development, it’s worth it, too. But this anime won’t change the world.

For anyone keeping track, this is the second-to-last in a long series of Macross-related reviews I’ve been posting over the last few months. Next week will be the last review, where I cover Orguss 02, the sequel to Super Dimensional Century Orguss, one of two anime series that shared the “Super Dimensional” moniker with the original Super Dimensional Fortress Macross.

Yep, it’s Friday again and here comes yet another (vaguely) Macross-related anime review.

Buy it on DVD!

Positive Experience/Entertaining? Definitely, but the ending was a little underwhelming.

Technically any good? The premise is straightforward enough: a survivor of a military team sent to Earth to fight back against an alien occupation attempts to complete his mission by recruiting civilians and soldiers to take on the Invid/Inbit. The good news is that despite that somewhat cliched premise, the show still manages to be a lot of fun to watch. Thanks to the story being so sparse, the show’s creators allowed the characters to fill in the blanks.

The most interesting of which is a soldier who hides from the alien invaders under the guise of a female singer. So, yes, one of the show’s leads is a male cross-dresser with an amazing singing voice. I guess him being a soldier falls under the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy the military would be required to have after an alien invasion.

Underground cities, old west cliches, man vs. the elements, evolution, and other concepts are explored but not overly-exploited in this series. As a result, the show seems tempted to get boring, but never quite does. In fact, of all the anime I’ve seen, it’s Mospeada has been the easiest for me to watch so far–the episodes fly by and I enjoy them quite a bit.

Sadly, the mecha weren’t terribly well designed, but they weren’t as bad as the designs for Southern Cross, either. I do like the design for the motorcycle that is driven by four of the characters, or “mospeada” as the show calls it. I also liked the actual character designs, themselves. Acting-wise, everyone was solid (I’m referring to the Japanese voice-over actors).

How did it leave me feeling? Unfortunately, the ending is a little flat. The good news is that it’s not one of those “Whaaaaaa?” endings that a lot of Japanese animated shows often fall back on. However, it’s not terribly satisfying, either. Still, if you like the Western genre, mixed with the post-apocalyptic alien invasion genre, this is a series for you.

Final Rating? SIYL – See If You Like. I wouldn’t say this was a must-see, but it is fun and, as the original version of the third act of Robotech, it’s important in a historical sense. However, as with the other two series that would get redubbed, recut and rewritten for the sake of Robotech, I think this series deserves to be watched on its own.

As an FYI, this series had a one-off sequel made called Love Live Alive, but it’s very hard to find copies of it. If you find one, please let me know where you got it. I’d really like to see how they handled it.

Every Friday I review the latest anime that I’ve watched recently. This week, it’s Macross II

Click to buy!

Positive Experience/Entertaining? Sure, but only in a way that most un-crappy Japanese animation is. Lots of explosions, sexy anime women and transforming robots.

Technically any good? First off, this isn’t a movie. It’s a video series they cut together to make a “movie.” I’m feel lucky they left the Japanese language track on it since I seem to recall too many “movie” versions of anime series being in English only. Speaking of which, the acting is just fine. The animation is more like Macross: Do You Remember Love than the original Macross series, which is a good thing. However, the story is the pits. It’s still got the love triangle that Macross fans love, but the music is kind of peripheral and the alien stuff just feels trite and cliche after watching everything else in the Macross Saga. The action was fun, but if you don’t care whether characters live or die there’s not much excitement in things going boom.

How did it leave me feeling? Disappointed. I just can’t recommend this one. I suppose if you’re a Macross purist you should check it out, if only to know how not good it was. This was the first attempt at a real sequel to the original series and thankfully, later attempts were much more successful at being entertaining.

Final Rating? DNS – Do Not See. Just check out Macross Frontier. Let’s just pretend that’s the final chapter in the saga. ^_^

Positive Experience/Entertaining? Yes, but it wasn’t super memorable, sadly.

Technically any good? The animation is beautiful–it looks better than the series. The voice acting (I’m referring to the original Japanese, not the dubbed version) is as solid and brilliant as it was in the series, but sadly the story ends up being on the weak side. Sadly, just too many of the interesting story-arcs from the series have already been tied up, so the few things left to do aren’t quite enough to make this a worth-while follow-up.

How did it leave me feeling? Satisfied, but not overly so. Ultimately, it felt like a last grab at cash for the folks that made the series. Still worth seeing if you’re a fan of the series–just don’t expect your mind to be blown or anything.

Final Rating? NFI – NetFlix It – A bit too intense for little kids, remember, Japanese Animation is often NOT for children. This is NOT Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh–this is WAY better and much easier for us adults to enjoy, though I recommend the series if you’re looking for REALLY good story.