Wednesday, 5 January, 2011
Review: For his classmates Katsuragi is only a game obsessed nerd, but on the Internet he is known as the “God of Conquest”; the one man who can conquer all the girls. Or rather all the 2D girls in dating-sim games that is. Yet that is what the demon girl Elci didn’t understand when she formed a contract with him. It’s her mission to catch escaped souls that hide in girl’s hearts and can only be drawn out when that girl falls in love. Even though Katsuragi has no interest in the real world, he is now forced to conquer the hearts of girl after girl for Elci while using his not always very helpful game knowledge.
The World God Only Knows is based on a long running comedy manga and portrays how an otaku tries to use knowledge from fiction to conquer real girls. The funny and entertaining concept is a little weakened by flashy childish fantasy animations. However, it is a comedy anime after all and if you don’t try to take it too serious, it’s pretty entertaining.
Rating: 8/10
Thursday, 25 November, 2010
Review: Tsukimi Kurashita is 18 years old and lives a drawn back life in Tokyo together with 4 of her otaku friends. Together they form some kind of sisterhood with its own set of standards and rules. Other than small jobs like managing an Internet store or drawing shounen-ai manga, they pretty much live only out of their parents allowance; despite being in their mid twenties that is. Rejecting make-up and trendy hair styles in general and taking no care of their outer appearance whatsoever only underlines the otaku shut-in lifestyle they lead. Even after several years the death of her mother still plagues Tsukimi and the only thing to calm her down is looking at jellyfish, which reminds her of the happy times she spent with her. It was during one of these times when suddenly a stylish young woman came up and helped he save a wrongly held jellyfish inside a shop. After some talking Tsukimi lets her stay over in her room. It is only in the morning that she notices that this woman actually is a cross-dressing man. How will she explain this to the sisterhood?
The Kuragehime anime follows a similar concept like Genshiken or Honey and Clover, yet with the difference of clearly being targeted at women. This becomes clear when the crossdressing man appears as a main character, who will clearly fill the role of transforming the sisterhood into beautiful maidens as a step for them into a brighter future. Yet, if you are able to overlook this, Kuragehime has many outstanding comedy and story elements to offer that make this anime attractive even to male viewership. The funny short-info inputs on the sisterhood and the parody of high ranking politicians are only a few examples. So this is an anime for all anime fan-girls, but also for all open minded anime fans in general.
Rating: 8/10
Sunday, 24 October, 2010
Review: Kyousuke is a normal highschooler who doesn’t get along very well with his popular and stylish younger sister Kirino. It’s not like she hates him that much, but rather that she ignores him as something low and dirty not worthy of her attention. That’s the way they both lived their live until the day Kyousuke finds a “little-sister-eroge” r-18 erotic anime game DVD that his sister dropped in the hallway. After this he gets to know her other personality; the personality of a not so confident girl, who uses the money from her modeling jobs to pay for tons of anime and eroge DVDs, which she hides away in her closet in fear of social consequences. Kyousuke does not judge her because of her hobbies and decides to support her from now on, while enduring her still continuing insults.
The Ore no Imouto anime offers a known concept in a new light. Being based on a novel of the same name, if found the artwork of the manga much more appealing than that of the anime. None the less the anime gets the message through and shows us a fine otaku comedy story of a girl that has a hobby she must keep secret from her strict parents and friends, and her brother who tries to support her, but isn’t familiar with the otaku community at all. Critics might say this anime is just another Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, only with a tsundere instead of a shy deredere, but I find Ore no Imouto superior in many aspects and thus worth recommending.
Rating: 8/10