Playing fast and loose with fairy tales, Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi is a surprising comedy that straddles the line between familiar and fresh, whimsically mashing up elements pluck from its contemporaries. Certainly the protagonist’s hair colour and demeanour could have been lifted wholesale from Toradora, her pugilistic attitude and deviant sidekick […]
3 Episode Taste Test: Amagami SS (Gentle Bite SS)
Amagami SS parades hollow, vacuous simpletons around in a grotesque approximation of a romance plot; cretins drawn with all the grace of a gorilla with a crayon shoved up its nose, splattered wholesale into a story that is as if the plot of a romance novel were faxed to the writers but […]
Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou (The Demon King in the Back Row)
Takashi Watanabe obviously woke up one morning, head still groggy from a night of drink, drugs and debauchery, one hand clutching a napkin with a list scrawled on it — ninjas, cyborgs, magic, gods, dragons, breasts — and in the other a production contract, sloppily signed by himself. There is no way else a series as […]
3 Episode Taste Test: Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou (The Demon King in the Back Row)
Harry Potter can’t be entirely to blame for the continuing creation of series based upon a school for adolescent magicians, but Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou borrows a lot more from the ubiquitous boy wizard than can be easily overlooked. Thankfully the pilfering doesn’t last beyond the opening ten minutes, from there the […]
3 Episode Taste Test: B Gata H Kei (B-cup Sex Maniac)
On the face of it, B Gata H Kei has a throughly lamentable premise, one sure to invoke a slow shaking of the head, perhaps only piquing one’s interest to understand if it is really as misogynistic as it sounds. It isn’t, but still squirms awkwardly around the core premise of a […]







