It has been a long time since I've seen Wrath of the Ninja. In fact, the last time I watched the anime movie was on a VHS tape well before a DVD was released. The details of the show had been lost on me but I remembered enjoying it somewhat because at the time I was enthralled by Ninja Scroll. Since then I had actually lost my tape and forgotten about the show but when I saw a new 2 disc DVD release for it I thought it couldn't hurt to check it out.

Unlike the old release that I had seen, this new one actually features two versions of the anime. One version is the horrendously spliced together movie that took bits from the three episode OVA and spliced them together to form a borderline incoherent and poorly paced theatrical experience. The other edition is the actual OVA itself completely left intact though to be fair it still isn't much better than the movie exp...Read the entire review

In the first show, Mikiki Ohguro obtained her dream job, working ata small time anime studio as a production manager. At the time, itwas her job to make sure that the show they were working, Time Journeys,stayed on schedule. She was able to do that, and the show did well,but it was cancelled after one season. The quality of the show washigh enough though that Studio Petit was able to get three series on theair! This brings a whole new set...Read the entire review

Movie: As a fan of shows dealing with war and the various aspects of it, I have long appreciated the outlook provided by one of the great war-like cultures of modern civilization, Japan. This small island nation had dominated a huge region of the globe based on sheer force of will and the culture surrounding it, even though they had few natural resources to provide an advantage. Even in WWII, they managed to provide superior tactics based on ages old philosophies, inflicting heavy casualties on vastly superior forces (numbers and technology) so it should come as no surprise that the lessons they have to teach us in their anime are also of interest (losing was not in their vocabulary until WWII). One of the best anime series dealing with the subject of war is Armored Trooper Votoms, a 54 episode series that centered on Chirico Cuvie, an incredibly talented combat expert. As detailed in my ...Read the entire review

An OVA sequel to the 2004 film Munto, Munto 2:  Beyondthe Walls of Time is a very gorgeous looking show with wonderful characterdesigns, detailed animation and some impressive battle scenes.  Unfortunatelythe confusing story and drab characters and uneven pacing do little tomake the program enjoyable.

Yumemiis a young high school girl who has a special ability.  Ever sinceshe was a young girl she could see a floating island in the sky, an islandthat no one else could see.  In the first movie, Munto, the rulerof this island known as the Magical Kingdom, came to Yumemi for her helpwhen his kingdom was under attack.  Now, a year later, he needs herh...Read the entire review

Movie: Science fiction in anime is one of the leading genres if you think about it, largely due to the manner in which so many titles incorporate various fantastic elements to tell what often amount to very human stories. One series from over twenty years ago is now being re-released by Central Park Media and that is the extensive universe of VOTOMS. The former version was satisfying for fans in that the entire 54 episodes were released in relatively untouched form but this new set of releases breaks the show down into four arcs with today's review of the first one, Armored Trooper VOTOMS: Stage 1: Uoodo City, here before you. There are some minor spoilers in the review but I've gone out of my way to limit them in order to facilitate the discussion but allow a whole new crop of fans to learn the reasons why the series has such a loyal following. Here's a quick look at the series wi...Read the entire review

Otaku Unite! (2004) attempts to do for anime fandom what Roger Nygard's insightful and often hilarious Trekkies (1997) did documenting fans of the Star Trek universe. Otaku Unite! isn't nearly as funny though partly this is by design. Instead, it attempts and mostly succeeds in providing an informative overview / history of how Japanese animation permeated the American market, its distributors' symbiotic relationship with anime fandom, and how American anime fans differ from their Japanese counterparts.

The 69-minute film, shown at various film festivals prior to its DVD debut, notes how some of the earliest Japanese television animation, notably Speed Racer (Mahha Go Go Go, 1967) and Kimba the White Lion (Junguru taitei, 1965) had wide exposure in America during those pre-cable, pre-VCR days when children had far fewer viewing choices and became engrained i...Read the entire review

Originally released in Japan as an OVA in 1986, Outlanders was distributedin the US as a dub only video tape in the early nineties. (At leastif there was a subtitled version, I never saw it.) Since Dark Horsehad released the manga series on this side of the Atlantic, the tape soldfairly well. This was back in the day when there were few licencedreleases of anime shows, and even though the dub was about par for thattime (i.e. horrible) fans were happy that some anime was being released. Now CPM has acquired the rights to this early show and released it on DVDwith both the original track, for the first time in the US, and a new Englishdub. While this show did have a lot of charm a decade and a halfago, it hasn't stood up well to the test of time.

This show starts off with a bang as a giant space battle fortress entersEarth's a...Read the entire review

In recent years it seems like all the best horror films have come fromAsia.  With films like Audition, Ringu and Ju-on gettinga lot of press (not to mention American remakes for the latter pair) everyoneis looking to the East for their chills.  Kakurenbo: Hide and Seekis a horror anime show that I had high hopes for.  With the freedomto animate things that couldn't be done in a live action film and the Japanesepenchant for horror, this should have been a really scary and edgy show. Unfortunately it wasn't.

There is a story, told among school children, of a special game of hideand seek.  When the lights of the city dim, if you follow certainclues they will lead you a place where you can play O-to-ko-yo; a deadlyform of hide and seek that involves demons and monsters.  Accordingto the stories, some of the kids t...Read the entire review

Movie: Recent developments in anime have shown the world that Korean Anime has made large steps towards becoming a force outside of the work farmed out to them by the usual Japanese and American production companies. Whether the art form becomes as well developed there as it has in Japan is anyone's guess but there is reason to believe the competition will help spark a friendly rivalry that benefits fans everywhere as a result. The latest release in this vein by Central Park Media is Hammerboy: Collector's Series, a story about a wayward youth set in the future where things all seemed to go wrong for mankind as he attempts to scratch out a meager living from the sea.

Hammerboy's real name is Mangchi, a young child with a sense of adventure most around him think is problematic at times due to his sheer exuberance in ...Read the entire review

Usually when you find yourself asking aloud "What the hell is going on?" in anime, you can dismiss the confusion and settle for the eye candy and action. In Kizuna, both are sparse, and both would be welcome distractions to a story that has no discernable plot.

If you're heterosexual, it's nearly impossible to get into yaoi anime, unless it's funny or action-packed. Kizuna is neither. Yaoi, for the anime newbie, is homosexual drama, mostly involving impossibly beautiful men. It's like most of what Wolfe Video in San Francisco puts out on DVD, except animated and very Japanese. It doesn't necessarily have to be erotic, just gay.

Kizuna is erotic, and may send a tingle up a gay man's spine, but even the most simple-minded of yaoi fans have got to be wondering where the s...Read the entire review

When I viewed the second volume of Shadow Star Narutaru, I wasn'treally impressed. The characters never engaged me and the low gradeanimation turned me off a bit. The third volume improves the series,but not much. The animation is still lousy, but some of the charactersare starting to get interesting. It's too bad these are mostlythe villains. The show's fatal flaw though is that it can't seemto decide what story it wants to tell, since it continues to develop moreand more storylines, while never resolving anything.

This show is about Shiina and Akira, two teenage girls who share somethingin common: they both are psychically linked to a pair of "dragon childs." They can communicate with their dragons which are able to fly, but theyaren't sure why they have them.

There are other teenagers who have dragons too. Some of the...Read the entire review

Movie: Those of you that like watching the usual mech-robot fighting series have probably developed very specific tastes in what you like due to the large variety of such titles on the shelves. One of the more interesting to me over the years was the Patlabor shows since they had some realistic aspects to them. When a robot was damaged, there wasn't an endless supply of funds to fix them, they didn't always get magically fixed within a day or two of being damaged (if it takes longer than that for a simple car repair, a huge, electronically complex machine is certainly going to take weeks or months, yes?), and the dynamics of the crew were often something more down to earth. While US Manga/Central Park Media continues to release the original series (sorry that they aren't reviewed here but that could change in the future), they have also begun to issue out the next set of shows from the OV...Read the entire review

Teenagers controlling powerful dragons and even more destructive angelsunder no one's command turns the lives of two young high school studentsupside down in the second volume of Shadow Star Narutaru. This volume introduces new characters and plots, but when all is said anddone the three episodes on this disc don't really explain much.

Shiina and Akira are two teenage girls who share something in common:they both are psychically linked to a pair of "dragon childs."  Theycan communicate with their dragons which are able to fly, but they aren'tsure why they have them.

Meanwhile there are other teenagers who have dragons and dominate theirfamiliars to advance their own agendas.  One wants to kill all ofthe intellectuals and weak people, and another wants to destroy the army. Added into this ...Read the entire review

Sexuality can, to say the least, be a tad complicated. It is a rocky road that can involve everything from gender issues, to disease, dysfunction, and the deepest of emotions. Of course, when it comes to sexuality, most relationships are pretty healthy, however you'd never know that from film which seems to mine only the darker, freakier aspects of man and woman and what guides their groins.

The Japanese, though a notoriously reserved people, also seem to regard sexuality in some of the more extreme terms. From glorifying cannibal murderers to fetishizing teen girls, the Japanese view of sexuality is akin to a transgender gimp locked in a dark closet waiting to spring out and be gang raped by a pack of wild boars.

Close Your Eyes and Hold Me (1996) is very much in the tradition of the Japanese roman porno film, the less extreme version of the dirtier and to the point pinku films. Businessma...Read the entire review

Is Black Jack in love? He's had other girls infatuated with him through his medical adventures, and he's most always rebuffed them. But when a crippled beauty suffering from a disease caused by biowaste meets our super surgeon in Biohazard, Black Jack may be interested in more than her ailment.

Black Jack has been called to a Japanese bayside town, where years of a company dumping toxic waste into the bay has taken its toll on the locals. Many people are sick, and the best medical minds in the world are stumped as to how to cure them. But Black Jack, our unlicensed medical miracle worker for hire, ...Read the entire review

OK, what's with the get-up, kid? A young psychic crime investigator – dressed like Boy George and sounding like him too – uses powerful runes and innate abilities to help solve crimes in Tokyo Babylon. With the help of a similarly talented twin sister and a family friend, the boy shows maturity beyond his years in his abilities.

Split into two parts, Tokyo Babylon is two separate OVA stories based on a manga (and it's the prequel to X: The Movie), following a trio of psychic private investigators, led by the young Subaru Sumeragi, an onmyouji, or shaman. Usi...Read the entire review

In a nutshell:  A show thatparodies an anime series that you've never seen.

Tatsunoko is a Japanese production company powerhouse that has createdmany popular animated shows in its over 40 year history.  Speed Racer,Gatchaman, and Generator Gawl are only a few of the many shows this studiohas cranked out.  One of their shows that is apparently well knowin Japan is Time Bokan, a 65 episode series from 1975 that generated severalspin-off series.  This DVD that CPM released isn't the first volumeof this classic series.  It's actually a more recent 2 episode OVAseries that parodies the classic show.  Since the original show (orit's many related shows) were never shown or released in the US, most ofthe jokes and guest appearances don't make a lot of sen...Read the entire review

If you're the sensitive type and found yourself fighting back tears during Bambi, you'll let them flow freely during The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Bear.

This touching, thoughtful family film from Les Armateurs, the French studio behind the Academy Award nominated Triplets of Belleville, is based on an Inuit legend about a boy torn between the human and animal worlds.

The same day a polar bear gives birth to a stillborn cub, an Inuit family gives birth to a new son. The humans name their son Bear after hearing the anguished cries of the mother polar bear. When the father Inuit leaves one day to hunt bear for clothes for his son, the father bear wanders in...Read the entire review

The final chapter of Shootfighter Tekken features the final grudge-matchshowdown with Iron Kiba to prove if the Nanshin Shadow style of martialarts is truly the most powerful.  With more training, more fightingand more splattered blood, this last DVD ends this mediocre series nonetoo soon.

Miyazawa has developed a new muscle growth system named Power-chan #1. Kiichi trains with this system and pushes himself to the limit.  Eventhough Miyazawa is set to fight Iron Kiba, he trains and trains Kiichitill he almost breaks.  But a couple of weeks before the big fight,Miyazawa gets in a car accident that leaves him in a coma.  With thereputation of Nanshin Shadow style on the line, young Kiichi agrees tofight Kiba, the undisputed champion of the world.

To get ready for the fight, Kiba goes back to training again, gettingstronger ...Read the entire review

This time, Black Jack doesn't have all the answers.

Our medical miracle worker meets his toughest challenge yet, when a rich businessman hires him to remove a talking tumor - in the shape of a human face - in Mutation.Metropolis creator Osamu Tezuka's doctor-for-hire is usually infallible, able to solve most any medical problem - no matter how wildly imagined – as well as a crime or two along the way.

Mutation throws two crimes in the mix: a young boy is putting a serious hurt on luxury cars in the city, and a woman dressed like an office worker is luring men into hotel rooms and murdering them. Motives unknown.

Of course, these crimes are con...Read the entire review

More fighting, more splattered blood and more broken limbs are featured inthis second volume of Shootfighter Tekken.  If you are looking for action, this fighting showoffers a lot of battles without much plot or story to get in the way.

Kiichi has been trained by his father from birth to become a masterin the secret and deadly Nanshin Shadow style of martial arts.  Asthe second volume starts, Iron Kiba, Kiichi's nemesis from the first volume,retires from the wrestling ring.  Although he has promised to leaveKiichi and his family alone, he still wants to get revenge for his previousdefeats.  So Kiba tracks down a martial artist who can take on Kiichiwhile Kiba goads his father into a fight afterwards.

The fighter that Kiba picks is a Jujutsu expert.  This fighterhas the ability to read all of his opponent's attacks before t...Read the entire review

Black Jack was only an obscure OVA (Original Video Animation) on VHS, before the domestic anime fans were given Black Jack: The Movie, a 90-minute DVD release from Manga in 2001. That hooked a lot of people on this super surgeon for hire, but it took three years for the original series to make its way to DVD.

That's a long time for those of us who wanted to know more about this medical miracle worker, a creation of Osamu Tezuka, the "pioneer of anime" who gave us Metropolis and Astroboy.

Central Park Media released the first six, 50-minute episodes on three DVDs, starting with Infection in February, and pared down the stories to one per DVD beginning with episode seven.

In this eighth episode of the original series, Parasite, Black Jack is called on to help a young boy who has been infected with a plant seed, se...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Going into Munto, the expectations are very high. After all, it's billed as "a magical adventure from the key animator of Grave of the Fireflies and Akira," two highly respected, excellent anime titles. But by the time I finished with Munto, I was not only disappointed, but bitter. Heck, I was a little angry.

That's because Munto tried to do way too much in the 50 minutes it was given, leaving the casual American anime fan confused and wanting someone, anyone, to explain to them what they just saw.No doubt, the animation is lovely: Sprawling, dynamic views of the mystery world above the Earth are prevalent, and excellent animated battle sequences are drawn to the smallest detail. But that's all there is to Munto, one long pretty picture, because the story is so lacking, you find yourself screaming at the characters, wanting them to tell you what they're...Read the entire review

The Movie:

This short, animated prequel to Takashi Miike's signature opus to cartoon violence, Ichi The Killer, is an interesting if very flawed look at some of the events that transpired before the feature film and that shaped some of the characters we know from that movie.

The film introduces us to Ichi's character and fills us in on some of his past. We know he was bullied a lot as a teenager and that he had some issues with his parents during this time as well. He doesn't do so well in school and is the butt of many a joke, some of which are quite cruel. He also has to come to terms with the fact that his parents are very much into some nasty S&M, which being socially inept, is a very difficult task for the young man who sees it only as violence and nothing more (and it just might be).

One night, while getting out of the house and trying to escape from the compre...Read the entire review

A son fighting a much stronger opponent to defend the honor of his fatheris the basic premise behind Shootfigher Tekken: Tough, the firstchapter in a three part OVA series.  Being a fighting anime, theyreally don't cover a lot of new ground, but the show is fine for what itis.

Kiichi has been trained by his father from birth to become a masterin the secret and deadly Nanshin Shadow style of martial arts.  But when Kiichi stops a professional wrestler from beating up on someonein an alley, he finds that his father, Otan, has a secret.  In hisyounger days Otan was in the ring and fought the wrestling star Iron Kibain a death match.  The match ended with Otan being seriously wounded,but not before he plucked Kiba's eye out.  The wrestler has held agrudge all these years, and want...Read the entire review

I don'tthink there is anyone who won't admit that creating an animated half hourshow about an anthropomorphic pile of dog excrement is a little strange. At least that's what I thought when I first heard of Doggy Poo,a stop motion animated movie from Korea.  Based on a popular Koreanchildren's book, this is not an excuse to get some cheap laughs. Rather Doggy Poo is a thoughtful examination of how all things areinterrelated.

In a small dirt road in a rural village a small dog stops to relievehimself and a pile of doggy poo is born.  He is young and unsure ofwho or what he is.  A bird lands nearby and pecks at him.  Itthen flies away and calls him disgusting when it realizes just what ithad been pecking at.  Having been physical...Read the entire review

I went into this film with the expectation that I would be sobbing by the end due to overwhelming emotional content. One of the things I do as an animator is study character design, acting, empathy, storytelling and delivery. I am certainly not a big fan of Anime in the character sense, but in the pure artistic sense I am often dazzled by the beauty of it. I come from the Warner Bros., Disney, Tex Avery school of animated character appreciation so my tendency is towards a much tighter style of movement and acting to deliver a story and characters that evoke empathy in an audience. Anime typically uses a lot of holds where there is no movement at all, or uses animation based on a change in picture every 3 or 4 frames. To contrast this, Disney animation normally changes the image every 1 or 2 frames. This gives a much more fluid and lively picture in every conceivable way.

This film is the s...Read the entire review

Review:
Movie:
Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight, the TV series of 27 episodes, is now available in a special 4 DVD box set from Central Park Media. This series contains a few major and minor differences from the Record of Lodoss War OVAs; While the OVAs deviated from the novel, the TV series re-tells the original story in a much more complete and unabridged fashion. As such, they are best viewed separate and distinct from each other, though they are set in the same world and contain a lot of the same characters.

The series takes place on the isle of Lodoss, an island composed of many different kingdoms. Ashram, a servant of the Emperor Beld, dreams of one day uniting and controlling all the people of Lodoss. To fulfill this end, he must find the Scepter of Domination, one of the five Governor's treasures entrusted to five dragons by the King of Kast...Read the entire review