Mononoke: Creepy trip

Unusual visual effects, crazy art styles, creepy stories, put them all together, you get Mononke. The whole series is made up with segments of short mysteries. All of them involves ghosts, devil, daemons. They are all quite creepy as well. While watching it, it feels like going through a creepy acid trip. The difference each and everyone made sense after it ended.

I have to say, this is one of the most unusual anime I've ever seen. Nothing even comes near it. Therefore, I'm awarding it:

Award: Weirdest Anime...Ever

also:

Award: Best Horror of 2007

(Actually, Ghost hunt would have beaten Mononoke in this category, but I conside Ghost Hunt 2006 anime because it started airing October 2006)

Now, let's see the score card:

(Full score is 5)

Drama: 5 (Very very interesting)

Comedy: N/A

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 5 + 1 bonus = 6 (I award extra credit for its unusualness)

Sound/Music: 4.5 (Creepy sound effect, not much of music though)

Character: N/A (It really doesn't apply here in this anime...)

Plot: 5 (Great mysteries)

Re-watch value: 3 (After having seen the facts behind the mysteries, you really don't go back to watch the stories again, butO you can watch for creepiness sake)

Overall (not average): 4.7

Recommendation: Unless you really really really couldn't get around the crazy art style and visual effect, I highly recommend it to everybody (everybody that doesn't mind creepy stories that is).

October 2007 New Anime: Sketchbook ~ full colors ~

Link: (official) http://www.sketch-full.net/ (No English sub yet)

Genres: Light school drama / Light school comedy

I've watched:

Art style: Childish / a bit simplified

Recommended to: If you want to see a somewhat retarded comedy

Recommendation level: Follow along

Summary: The story is about sketching. The main character is a girl that likes to sketch everything, but afraid to talk to people. It's the story about her and her friends in the art club.

Richard's rating (of 5) - first impression: 3.5 ( +0.5 for retardation) = 4 - Retarded but interesting

Personal comments: It's a bit...retarded, and it feels pretty retarted just watching it too. But somehow it's interesting.

October 2007 New Anime: Majin Tantei Nōgami Neuro

Link: (Official)http://www.ntv.co.jp/neuro/ (No English sub yet)

Genres: Comedy / Mystery / Supernatural

I've watched: 1 episode

Art style: Common with something very bizarre

Recommended to: People like fantasy supernatural drama

Recommendation level: Somewhat recommended

Summary: Neuro is demon from hell likes to eat "riddles". He forced a high school to act as a private detective so he'll eat the "riddle" when he solves the mystery. (Don't ask, I'm not quite sure how that works either). She's called upon to solve mysteries.

Richard's rating( of 5) - first impression: 4 - Too weird to say anything

Personal comments: Some of the art are just plain bizarre. The rest are very normal. First episode's mystery is fairly simple. I assume it gets more complicated as it goes. With right amont of comedy mixed in, it's quite interesting. It's worth to keep following for time being.

October 2007 New Anime: Myself; Yourself

Link: http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/1100.html

Genres: School Drama / Light Comedy

I've watched: 1 episode

Art style: Common (Somewhat similar to Futakoi) / H-Game

Recommended to: People like light school drama

Recommendation level: Follow along

Summary: A boy left his hometown when he was 11. 5 years later he returns to his home village. Things have changed, but his old friends are still around.

Richard rating (of 5) - first impression: 3.5 - Average

Personal comments: Good but not exceptional. The art work, presentation, even voice reminds me of Futakoi. So, that's where I'm going to set my expectation - light school drama plus light comedy, nothing special, nothing too dramatic, just something light and cute.

October 2007 New Anime: Night Wizard

Link: http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/1105.html

Genres: Comedy/Present day fantasy

I've watched: 1 episode

Art style: Common

Recommended to: People like present day fantansy, closest one I can think of would be like Fate/Stay Night

Recommendation level: Follow along

Summary: The world is constantly invaded by daemons. The ones that have the power to fight them is called Night Wizards.

Richard's rating(of 5) - first impression: 3.5 - Average at best

Personal comments: The fight scenes seemed a little cheesy. The comedy scenes seemed to be bolted on. But overall, it's still interesting enough to watch. Not sure how long I could hang, it's a keeper for now.

October 2007 New Anime: Blue Drop: Tenshi-tachi no Gikyoku

Link: http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/1104.html

Genres: Supernatural/SciFi

I've watched: 1 episode

Art style: Mostly common, but something is weird

Recommended to: People like some weird SciFi anime

Recommendation level: Not sure yet

Summary: Um....Some girl, lost her memory 5 years ago, came to a boarding high school. She's a bit anti-social. Then some weird things start to happen.

Richard's rating (of 5) - first impression: 3 - sub-par

Personal comments: Something about the art work bothers me. On top of that, it's a very slow start. However, the last minutes or two got me interested what's going to happen next.

October 2007 New Anime: Bamboo Blade

Link: (Official) http://www.bambooblade.jp/pc/ (no English sub yet)

Genres: School Comedy/Sports

I've watched: 1 episode

Art style: Common

Recommended: Everybody, unless you really don't watch watch Kendo related anime

Recommendation level: Moderate

Summary: The faculty advisor of a high school Kendo club made a bet with his friends who is also a advisor for Kendo club for a different school to compete against each other. The only problem is, currently, there is only one member in the Kendo club. Now he and his energetic member of Kendo club is on a quest to seek out the best Kendo students in the school.

Richard's rating - first impression (out of 5): 4.5 - Better than I thought

Personal comments: It's light comedy in general with some outrageous comedic scenes thrown in. The comedy is just right in the right moment.

Darker Than Black: It's an end, but...

In last review about Darker, I said, whichever ending they decide to go with, it would be a good finish. After viewing the final episode, while I'm sticking with my statement, I do want to add some comments.

Yes, things does get resolved. But in my opinion, they did kind got away with a "jail free" card. Generally I consider this kind of ending is "cheap", in this case, however, throughout the series, they did have hints of it. They didn't just slap it on there for no reason. I'm ok with that.

Enough said, this is my score card for Darker Than Black:

(Full score is 5)

Drama: 5 (Great, just great drama)

Comedy: 4.5 (Not much of it, but right amont at the right time)

Action: 5 (Fantastic actions)

Art/Amination: 5 (Quite flawless)

Sound/Music: 4.7 (Original score is a bit generic, but still good. Both opening songs are great)

Character: 5 (One of the best I've seen lately for character development)

Plot: 4.5 (I was hoping for better ending, but everything is still great)

Re-watch value: 4 (I'm sure some new details can be picked up when watching it again, it won't be too bad to watch it all over again)

Overall (not average): 4.8

Award: Richards' Pick: Best Drama of 2007

Recommendation: If you haven't seen it, I would recommend you to go watch it right now. It's one of the best in 2007.

October 2007 New Anime: Da Capo II

Link: http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/1099.html

Genres: School Drama/Comedy/Supernatural (maybe)

I've watched: 1 episode

Art style: Common

Recommended: People liked original Da Capo, or Da Capo Second Season

Recommendation level: Not sure yet

Summary: In the same place as the story of Da Capo occured, new story is unfolding. This time, it involves the daugher/son (or granddaugher/grandson, need to do some more research on that) of the original Da Capo.

Richard's rating - first impression (out of 5): 2.5 - Did not meet my expectation

Personal comments: A slow starter for sure. Nothing is really happening, and it's not energetic or funny as the original Da Capo. Basically, nothing grabs me at all. I'll give it several episodes before I make a decision. For now, it is hanging on barely.

Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpucho Tou 2nd Act ~ Spectacular Battles

So far, Tokyo Majin 2 has been nothing but excitement. There are 1 or 2 slow episodes, but the plot flow never slowed down. Season 2 has more, a lot more spectacular battles than season 1. While more time has been devoted to battle, there are still quite a lot in depth character developments which some animes tend to miss out when lots of epic battles are involved. It is definately one of the season's (or maybe even the year's) best.

Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei: Um...No....

I'm not going to say anything about this anime any more...

Score card (full score is 5):

Drama: 2

Comedy: 2

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 3

Sound/Music: 2.5

Character: 4

Plot: N/A

Re-watch value: -1

Overall: 2

Recomendation: No

Shakugan No Shana Movie 2007: Shorter but better

There are two types of anime movies: a special event from the tv series (or OVA), or a shrunk down version of the full series. Shakugan No Shana is the latter.

Obviously, a movie is going to be shorter than a tv series, much shorter. In my opinion, some series are not fitted for shrunk movies because the plot line is way too complicated to be compressed into a reasonable time. Before I watched Shakugan no Shana Movie 2007, I would have thought that's the case for it. However, Shakugan no Shana Movie 2007 did such a good job of cutting irrelevant stuff out and keep important stuff in, I actually think the movie is better than the tv series.

Of course, to shink a 26 episode series into a 90 minutes movies, some subplots have to be cut, even some important ones. Even so, Shakugan no Shana kept most of its core plot and only very few loose ends are left open.

Shakugan no Shana Movie 2007 servers as a precursor for the up coming Shakugan no Shana II tv series which will premiere October 4th, 2007. In fact, if you have missed Shakugan no Shana season 1 and want to catch up quickly without having to go through the entire first series, the movie is quite a good choice. There will be some missing links, but I think it'll be easy to figure out early into the second series.

Score card (full score is 5):

Drama: 4.5 (Tight, very well built)

Comedy: N/A

Action: 4.5 (I like the visual apparance of the actions scenes)

Art/Animation: 5 (Beautiful color, lovable characters arts)

Sound/Music: 4 (Good, but I like the original tv series' better)

Character: 4.5 (Very good character development)

Plot: 4 (There are some unexplained stuff, but mostly minor)

Re-watch value: 3.5 (I think it's still enjoyable to watch it again once a while)

Overall (not average): 4.7

Recommendation: Definately one of my top picks of this year. If you're interested in watching the second tv series but missed the first tv series, this movie will bring you up to speed.