I have never been able to fathom the Japanese obsession with robots and all things mecha. I am sure that if you did a run-down of anime themes, that genre would be at the top of the listings. I can’t go a week anywhere without seeing (or hearing) of another mecha show. The problem is that we have honestly seen this before. “BBK/BRNK” (also known as “Bubuki/Buranki”) is our latest venture. Let us go back ten years, but only to visit, OK. And no souvenirs, either!
Have you ever been to New York City, so great, they had to name it twice? I was there recently and it is everything they say it is and more. As “The Town That Never Sleeps”, it is a magnet for all kinds of movies and shows based there. Although never officially named in this anime, it takes place in The Big Apple, or, as they call it, Hellsalem’s Lot. You see, Hellsalem’s Lot was created when a portal to the “Beyond” opened, becoming, in the process, a paranormal melting pot of monsters, magic and the everyday mundane life. Three Card Monte was never like this!
“Blood Blockade Battlefront” (“Kekkai Sensen” or “Bloodline Battlefront”) tells the tale of Leonardo Watch (to the left, grasping a beer mug), a photographer who has come here to help his ailing sister. But for some strange reason, a mysterious entity gave him the “All-Seeing Eyes of God”, granting him a variety of ocular powers (he normally wear a special set of goggles). He ends up being recruited by the organization “Libra”, who is tasked to clear the streets of trouble and prevent the horrors of this city from spreading to the outside world. Now, it does help that NYC….I mean, HSL, is blanketed in a perpetual fog, so you can’t really see what’s going on or going down or going away, but it makes for overall dreary days. Continue reading
This was a show that went in a different direction than I had imagined, in that what (or who) should have been the ‘star’ was relegated into being a support player. But I digress. Welcome to the world of “Heavy Object “(“Hevī Obujekuto”).
We are in an alternate future (and can a future be ‘alternate’? It’s the future; who knows what it may hold? Except no hover boards), and war as we know it is obsolete. Well, not completely, as war is war, but instead of sending in hordes and hordes of soldiers to shoot and stab and bomb and blow up, we send in the “Heavy Object”, a massive orb on tank tracks. And I mean heavy. Aside from being 50 meters in diameter, it is also 200,000 tons of hugeness. And those are the ‘small’ ones! Part of the issue is that where it can go is somewhat limited. You had best have something special when you go to the desert (and, yes, there are floating versions of this weapon as well).
I am so very tired of superheroes. Everywhere you turn around, another superhero pops up, having epic fights with epic villains or the Old Guard is trotted out to battle yet another implacable foe, bent on world conquest or world destruction or world series. I had some resistance to “One-Punch Man” (“Wanpanman”), as I felt it was more of the same. Well, it IS more of the same, but it is done in such a cavalier, toss-off, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot kind of approach, you are drawn into it, like a cheese log at the company party. Continue reading
This one is a combination of magic and survival shows, kind of what might happen if “Chrome-Shelled Regios” and “Blade Dance” merged ideas, so we end up with “Sky Wizards Academy” (“Kūsen Madōshi Kōhosei no Kyōkan”, “The Instructor of the Aerial Combat Wizard Trainees”).
In the alternative world of the future, humanity was driven off the land by the threat of magical armored insects and now lives in aerial floating cities. Its defenses lie in wizards who fight the insects with magic in mid-air. They are able to float and soar about and use a variety of weapons to dispatch these ‘Devil Beetles’. Continue reading
There are two anime genres I do not really like: yaoi and yuri. It’s just that it comes across to me as letting me know it’s OK to watch two guys or two gals expressing how they feel about each other in a rather intimate manner. I guess. But this show that I saw, “Valkyrie Drive Mermaid” (“Varukirī Doraivu Māmeido”) has two gals making out, but it’s a real means to an end and not just to show canoodling…..although that splash panel up there makes me a liar, eh?
The world that they live in is fraught with peril. Some girls are infected with the A Virus (no, not ‘a’ virus, the A Virus.) “A” means “Armed” and some ladies can turn into weaponry. Those are known as Exters. The other part of the virus gives us a Liberator. When these two get together, via some foreplay arousal, the Exter goes into “Drive” and becomes the weapon, although you have no idea what she will be: a sword, a mace ball, a powerful rifle. It’s pot luck at best. Continue reading
