With a premise reminiscent of My-Otome and championing the current trend of snotty faux-aristocrats, Ladies versus Butlers starts as it intends to continue: copious, pointless fanservice. The frantic first episode is chase across palatial school grounds which sees girls of an acutely fair disposition faint at the very sight of a teenage […]
Queen’s Blade (Season 2)
The first season of Queen’s Blade was underwhelming, beyond the initial deviance on display it went only slightly further than many of the other fighting-fanservice genre shows and exploited none of the opportunities a guaranteed late night, paid channel slot offers. Season two does nothing to change this status quo and, if […]
3 Episode Taste Test: Fairy Tail
Casting Aya Hirano as the lead character is not the worst thing that Fairy Tail does, but it comes close. Her voice is so identifiable and her status so confoundingly overwhelming that it overshadows many of the other more accomplished actors such as Rie Kugimiya (Alphonse from Fullmetal Alchemist) and Tetsuya Kakihara […]
3 Episode Taste Test: Sora no Otoshimono (Heaven’s Lost Property)
Around the ending credits of the second episode one realises that they’ve just watched a flock of women’s underwear take flight, some with mock jet-streams behind them. That the key element of Sora no Otoshimono’s story — a busty, docile angel that fell from a hole in the sky — is the most tame concept of the series demonstrates […]
3 Episode Taste Test: Seiken no Blacksmith (The Sacred Blacksmith)
Seiken no Blacksmith is about as close to sword porn as anime is likely to get — gratuitous close-ups of everything from katanas to two-handed broadswords, even a sword that turns into a scantily clothed female — there is no doubt that someone on the production team has a borderline fetish for the weapons. It is […]







