High School of the Dead recently began air­ing and has brought the irre­press­ible zom­bie to a media which has pecu­li­arly ignored their arche­types in favour of more cul­tur­ally rel­ev­ant afflic­tions such as demonic pos­ses­sion and the like. Based on the manga of the same name, in only two epis­odes the series has shown a remarkably […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• Anime,
• battle,
• battle royale,
• commentary,
• dawn of the dead,
• death,
• friends,
• george a romero,
• george romero,
• gore,
• hell,
• high school,
• high school of the dead,
• highschool of the dead,
• message,
• meta,
• murder,
• royale,
• vampire,
• zombie,
• zombies

One cri­ti­cism that could never be lev­elled at Bac­cano! was that it was unori­ginal. So too can this be applied to Dur­arara!! which defies its lacklustre pre­de­cessor by going full bore for a mod­ern thriller with super­nat­ural over­tones, eking out some social com­ment­ary along the way. Fea­tur­ing an expans­ive cast and set […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• Anime,
• anri,
• baccano,
• bike,
• celty,
• drrrr,
• dullahan,
• durarara,
• ikebukuro,
• izaya,
• mikado,
• motorbike,
• murder,
• mystery,
• review,
• ryugamine,
• series,
• shinra,
• shizuo,
• simon,
• supernatural,
• sword,
• tokyo,
• urban,
• violence

First released: Janu­ary 2000
Boo­giepop Phantom is a series which imme­di­ately makes one won­der whether their tele­vi­sion is func­tion­ing cor­rectly. Shortly after the mel­an­choly open­ing it adds the speak­ers to that list. By the end of the first epis­ode it adds the viewer’s brain. It is a rev­erie of mad­ness, murder, altered states and […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• Anime,
• boogiepop,
• boogiepop phantom,
• bygones,
• fantasy,
• history,
• horror,
• madhouse,
• manticore,
• mindfuck,
• murder,
• nagi,
• phantom,
• powers,
• review,
• sepia,
• spirit,
• supernatural

First released: July 2007
The open­ing moments of Shig­uri are divis­ive: after a mont­age of linger­ing, abstract motions, a retainer pros­trates him­self before his lord and, in slick, gory detail, fatally offers his intest­ines up to enforce the sever­ity of his request. What fol­lows in the suc­ceed­ing epis­odes is often har­row­ing, fre­quently disgusting, […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• Anime,
• antique,
• bygones,
• death,
• death frenzy,
• harm,
• injury,
• katana,
• madhouse,
• murder,
• old,
• past,
• review,
• sadism,
• samurai,
• shigurui,
• swords,
• texhnolyze

The first story of Aoi Bungaku, No Longer Human, is covered in a soft, often wintry mist that per­meates through to the character’s unsur­pris­ing end. The remain­ing five stor­ies how­ever are vividly real­ised, vary­ing between sharp real­ity and kal­eido­scopic dream­s­capes; each con­veys the vagar­ies of human­ity with poignancy and skill. So too […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• Anime,
• aoi bungaku,
• blue literature,
• cherry blossom,
• historical,
• history,
• literature,
• love,
• murder,
• period,
• psychological,
• review,
• suicide