Anime

Neon Genesis Evangelion (Episodes 14 – 26) Review

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My review of the first half of the series can be found HERE.

The second half of Neon Genesis Evangelion is a hard one to crack. It has several episodes that are a bit more “introspective” which some fans try to spin as completely intentional but the creators themselves have admitted it was born out of necessity due to running out of budget and time. The most obvious example of this is the final two episodes, which when I first saw it back whenever it aired on the Sci-Fi channel I was pee’d off at how… nothing it was, but what about now? Has mentally maturing and being armed with the knowledge of what the ending was supposed to convey made me go easier on it? Let’s find out, with once again a “warning” that this is a very surface-level review, so no deep dive into religious themes and analysing every scene, I’ll leave that to those more engrossed in the series…

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Neon Genesis Evangelion (Episodes 1 – 13) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

As promised (a while ago now, stupid busy summer!) it’s time to finally tackle this behemoth. “Neon Genesis Evangelion” is not only massively influential but it also has thousands of pages, podcasts and videos analysing every frame, slight story nuance and every potential reference, meaning I didn’t know whether to really bother reviewing the series in my more casual format, but you know what? It would be weirder if this site never had Evangelion on it at all, so now I’ve watched the official blu-rays its now or inevitably later, so may as well be now! The first half of the series is undeniably great, which won’t take any of you by surprise, so let’s take a look!

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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Hashira Training Arc Review

David HoganLeave a comment

Time to cover more Spring 2024 anime with the latest Demon Slayer season, though if you thought my review of the previous one was a bit harsh, just you wait! Yes, sadly the Hashira Training Arc was just a small handful of chapters in the manga to prepare for the finale but Ufotable decided to take those couple of chapters the stretch them out for nearly 10 hours before announcing a trilogy of films to cap the series off. So in order to make the most money they couldn’t actually start the final arc at all, so it’s no wonder this “season” was so poorly padded! Oh well, let’s take a look…

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My Hero Academia – Star and Stripe and UA Traitor Arcs (Episodes 139 – 143) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

I’m not sure what’s weirder, putting up a review of a currently-airing series just five episodes in or the fact that those five episodes officially include two “story arcs”, but there you go. My Her Academia’s seventh season has kept its strong ties to the manga source material and got to the start of the final arc in record time, which at least means this review won’t take long to write! Let’s take a look…

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Gunbuster Review

David HoganLeave a comment

The next batch of older anime reviews was originally just going to be me finally re-watching and reviewing the original Evangelion series / film but between me planning that and now Hideaki Anno’s prior work, Gunbuster, was released on Blu-Ray here in the UK so I thought, why not? When it popped up in a recent Super Robot Wars game that featured the series I thought how some of the character designs were familiar but I didn’t remember much of anything else, so I assume it was one of those anime that aired in the late 90s / early 00s on the Sci-Fi channel that I watched but never recorded / rewatched, so I was looking forward to this! Was I right to look forward to it? Well…

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Sand Land – Angel Hero Arc (Episodes 7 – 13) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

The second, anime-exclusive arc (though again this is my first time experiencing the series anyway…) sees an expansion from Sand Land to Forest Land and introduces an “evil angel” to go along with series lead Beelzebub’s “nice demon” schtick and it works well. They also go from evil ruler of Sand Land to nice ruler of Forest Land, though he has been overthrown by the military, leading to a good old fashioned underground resistance story. Overall it was a fun watch, though I’m happy to see there won’t be any more after this, the setting and the characters already feel pretty thinly stretched… Let’s take a look!

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Sand Land – Fiend Prince Arc (Episodes 1 – 6) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

As a quick little break between older anime reviews I took a look at the adaptation of the sadly now late but certainly still great Akira Toriyama’s Sand Land over the last week or two, that’s the anime series that’s half a cut-up version of the film and half an original story, not the film adaptation or the video game adaptation… that’s a lot of adaptation for a short manga one-off from over 20 years ago! Anyway, these episodes are the film cut up into six with some added bits, but given I never watched the film it was all new to me (beyond a vague memory of having checked up about the manga online in some form or fashion over the years…) So let’s take a look!

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One Piece – Fishman Island Arc (Episodes 554 – 574) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

After spending an extra review’s worth of time with the Fishman Island arc it’s time to bring it to a close, thankfully. Okay, the finale has some classic One Piece “satisfying villain beatdown” about it, but really thanks to not really caring about either the villains or the new good guys it doesn’t have the same impact as it has done in previous, or indeed future arcs. Either way, let’s take a look and get this arc out of the way for good…

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One Piece – Fishman Island Arc (Episodes 539 – 553) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

The Fisman Island Arc continues to chug along with an extended flashback in order to set up a lot of the characters and conflict that have already been of central focus so far and completely failed to gain my interest… In fairness, the flashback does hit heavy with the theme of illogical racism that is the core focus of the Fishmen, but once we get back to the present day I still can’t say I particularly care about any of them… Which makes me sound like a Fishman racist (whatever that means in real life) but I’m just talking about the lead villains and the stuff… Anyway, Let’s take a look!

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