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

When begin­ning Umineko no naku koro ni, it was been dif­fi­cult to pre­dict that the series would by the end fea­ture no less than six witches, one dragon, one but­ler, three mil­it­ary bunny girls, seven float­ing females wear­ing school uni­forms crossed with leo­tards, and hordes of sharply suited goat-men. Say­ing that it […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• adaptation,
• Anime,
• battler,
• beatrix,
• facial distortion,
• game,
• gore,
• higurashi,
• logic,
• murder,
• mystery,
• review,
• seakitties,
• studio deen,
• umineko,
• umineko no naku koro ni,
• visual novel,
• when the seagulls cry,
• when they cry,
• witch

Kara no Kyoukai
Kara no Kyoukai is, without hyper­bole, one of the most ambi­tious and intel­li­gent series, movie or oth­er­wise, to come out in the past ten years. As the pro­gen­itor of the Type-Moon dyn­asty it is afforded the means to avoid the over­bear­ing fran­chise over­load that can scare away fresh view­ers. It presents a world […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• Anime,
• anime of the decade,
• azaka,
• boundary of emptiness,
• garden of sinners,
• hollow,
• kalafina,
• kara no kyoukai,
• kokuto,
• mikiya,
• movies,
• murder,
• oblivion recorder,
• overlooking view,
• paradox spiral,
• remaining sense of pain,
• series,
• shiki,
• souren,
• speculation,
• toko,
• ufotable,
• yuki kajiura

Black Lagoon
The first two epis­odes of Black Lagoon are a car­ni­val of ridicu­lous­ness. The cli­max of the open­ing story sees a boat use a ramp to launch tor­pedoes at a pur­su­ing heli­copter while the instig­ator of the plan flips off the doomed pilot. To say the series is quite silly would be an under­state­ment. Even […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• Anime,
• anime of the decade,
• balalaika,
• beach,
• benny,
• black lagoon,
• criminals,
• dutch,
• guns,
• japan,
• madhouse,
• mercenary,
• murder,
• revy,
• roanapur,
• rock,
• snow,
• sun,
• villains,
• violence

The last movie in the Kara no Kyoukai fran­chise is in no hurry  —  two full hours to com­plete one of the best series of recent memory and it does so with grace, thought­ful­ness and poignancy that sur­passes even itself. Pulling together threads which have run through­out all of the films, it sub­limely finishes […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• animal,
• Anime,
• beast,
• boundary of emptiness,
• drugs,
• fight,
• gender,
• gore,
• kara no kyoukai,
• kokuto,
• lio,
• lion,
• lsd,
• marijuana,
• mirror,
• movie 7,
• murder,
• murder speculation,
• part two,
• predator,
• rape,
• review,
• satsujin kousatsu,
• shiki,
• souren,
• yuki kajiura