Nanananana, ZETMAN? Scowling Men: The Anime? In a world without irons, there are only CRUMPLED CLOTHES?
It's hard to be serious with a name like ZETMAN but the first three episodes give it a good stab regardless. The story of a boy born to to science and raised by a homeless Santa Claus tries its best to be affecting early on, but with no context to the death of a loved one, who could for all we know be the head of a child prostitution ring and prolific giraffe smuggler, it's hard to feel anything but mildly perplexed.
character motivations are handled with all the subtlety of a howitzer
Voiced admirably by Edward Elric, the tribulation and tears of a young orphan has a genuine emotional core to it. Then tongue demons and an alternate reality Charizard are wheeled out and it all falls apart. The most cringeworthy of these is the rich best friend who does his darndest to emulate Batman with gadgets and chutzpah but, miraculously, comes off as more annoying than his demure sister who may as well wear a t-shirt emblazoned with "Monster Bait!" on it.
Looking over the list of anime Sunrise have produced, it's clear that sequels and continuations are their bread and butter. Before them however there must be a seed, a rare series that sparked the continuations and alternate universes and other tortured ways of wringing all possible money from an idea. My-HiME is one of those sparks, a precious mixture of innovative ideas and superlative execution that, as is so often the case, much better than the follow ups and subsequent adaptations.
one of the most gloriously over-the-top underwear focused episodes ever conceived
Mai and her brother recently obtained scholarships to the prestigious Fuka academy but while travelling to the school, their boat is attacked and eventually scuttled. It transpires that Mai is a HiME - an obtuse acronym for Highly-advanced Materialising Equipment - a valkyrie able to summon a beast forged more of metal than flesh, a Child, and tasked with fighting wayward monsters known as Orphans. All is not as it seems though when the source of the Orphans is defeated: prior alliances begin to crumble and the school becomes a battleground. As the fighting intensifies, a distant star draws closer and threatens to bring a cataclysm to Earth.
