K to M

Kyousuke and his family possess ESP. When they move to a new town, Kyousuke immediately falls in love with beautiful Madoka. But Madoka's exuberant best friend Hikaru falls in love with Kyousuke and declares to the world that they are a couple. Indecisive Kyousuke cannot bring himself to choose one or the other, especially since Madoka turns out to be an unpredictable person with radical mood swings.

Madoka! Madoka! You guessed I was gonna say that, didn't you? Madoka Ayukawa is quite possibly the best female anime character in existence. She is gorgeous, she lives alone, she goes to bars, she can kick the ass of anyone dumb enough to pick on her, and she plays a mean saxophone. To put it simply, she has style, and the other characters just fade next to her. Yet, she is also deeply human, she has a vulnerable side, and she gets easily jealous, especially of Hikaru, since she really does like Kyousuke even though her pride won't let her say it. She also cares a lot for her best friend and doesn't want to hurt her. The supporting characters are just that, supporting, and they don't keep one's interest. While one can't help but sympathize with Kyousuke, one also wants to hit him upside the head so that he chooses Madoka. As to the rest, the music is simply wonderful, especially Madoka's saxophone solos. And the series creates an uncanny nostalgic atmosphere that makes you long for your high school days and your first love.

Plot: 3 out of 5. The plot isn't really the point here.

Animation: 2 out of 5. Even though this is an old series, one would expect better.

Music: 5 out of 5. Why do you think I give a Madoka award for great music?

Cute factor: 3 out of 5. The rounded look of Akemi Takada's character design, especially for Kyousuke's sisters, and Jingoro the cat, account for two points. This is an OK kind of cuteness. But the third point goes to Hikaru, who has the irritating kind of cuteness. I really don't like her. The word "clingy" comes to mind...

Fun factor: 3 out of 5, due to the funny situations created when ESP is involved. Especially the poor cat Jingoro, who is made to levitate outside the apartment!

Cool factor: Madoka! Madoka! 5 out of 5, and a Rukawa for coolness!

Overall rating: 5 out of 5. One of the best!

Lupin III - Castle Cagliostro

In pure James Bond fashion, our gentleman thieves Lupin and Jigen find themselves mixed up in a counterfeiting scheme and have to rescue a damsel in distress from the clutches of an evil Count.

Who can NOT like Lupin, especially if it's Lupin by Miyazaki? This particular thief just oozes charm, and his sidekicks are loveable and funny. Add in a dash of car chases, wild gadgets and the hopeless Inspector Zenigata, and you will have your money's worth.

Plot: 3 out of 5. Strictly speaking, the script isn't all that great, but its execution is flawless.

Animation: 4 out of 5.

Music: 3 out of 5. Not great but not bad, IMO.

Cute factor: 2 out of 5. One point for the general look of the anime, and another for Jigen and Goemon, who are cute in their way.

Fun factor: 5 out of 5 and a Ranma award! This is what Lupin is all about, folks! Take your average James Bond movie and add in a dash of comedy, and you've got Lupin!

Cool factor: 4 out of 5, for Lupin and Fujiko.

Overall rating: 5 out of 5! Simply great!

Macross - Do You Remember Love?

In the future, humanity is reduced to a few millions living in the space fortress Macross. This film is about the love triangle between a hotshot Valkyrie pilot, his supervisor and Macross' very own idol singer; and their roles in humanity's battle against the alien Zentraedi, a race of warriors.

Well, it's Macross, and it has had a huge impact on everything anime, not to mention obtained millions of fans. The film is really not all that bad, especially when it's considered that its story is the condensed form of a long TV series. All in all, a good watch if you can sit through the 120+ minutes.

Plot: 3 out of 5. Would be higher if there was another method for defeating the aliens rather than just singing at them...

Animation: 2 out of 5. The character designs didn't sit well with me, as for the rest, the film is pretty old, so...

Music: 4 out of 5. Anything with the name Macross in it has good music.

Cute factor: 3 out of 5. Minmei. Ugh.

Cool factor: Heck. 3 out of 5, just for being Macross.

Overall rating: 3 out of 5. A nice if somewhat outdated film.

Macross Plus

Take all the classic ingredients of Macross: a story in space, away from Earth; a love triangle involving a hotshot, impulsive pilot and a singer; an Zentraedi, cool mecha and great songs. Then bring the animation up to date and get a new character designer, and you obtain Macross Plus.

Macross Plus is, in director Shoji Kawamori's words, Macross as it should have been. It watches more like a live movie than an anime. The atmosphere is superbly done, with bright, lively colors, and the characters have a lot of depth to them.

Plot: The actual premise has already been done (Macross, anyone?) but there are many layers to this story, and if you go deeper into the characters you can write entire webpages. I wrote a fanfic :-) 4 out of 5.

Animation: 5 out of 5! There are some excellent computer graphics seamlessly integrated into the top quality animation. I quite like the chara design.

Music: Macross Plus is probably the most popular introduction to the music of Yoko Kanno, an extremely talented composer who has written breathtaking soundtracks for Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop... Great mix of jazz, pop and classical music.

Fun factor: 4 out of 5. Some great dogfights, Isamu taking Lucy out for a crazy ride, plus references to movies. Jan's umbrella in Ep. 3 is a homage to Blade Runner while in Ep. 2, Isamu is dressed exactly like James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause!

Cool factor: Great! 5 out of 5, mostly for Isamu, but also for the music and the animation and colors. A Rukawa for coolness!

Overall rating: 5 out of 5, and a Nakago for being one of my favorite anime!

Magic Knight Rayearth

Three girls, Umi, Hikaru and Fuu, get transported to the magical world of Cephiro, and they have to become the Magic Knights from legend to save it from doom.

This is standard magical girl fare, really. I don't like stereotyped characters, and I think these three girls are just that. The huge popularity is due, IMO, to the reputation of the group who wrote the manga, the famous CLAMP. Speaking of the manga, I think the artwork of CLAMP was beautiful, and the character designs in the anime seemed to me to be downright ugly in comparison. The story itself doesn't exactly shine, though the ending of the first season comes as quite a surprise.

Plot: 3 out of 5, mostly because of the aforementioned ending.

Animation: 3 out of 5. Ugly character designs.

Cute factor: 4 out of 5! Argh! Save me from Mokona! Why on earth do people like that shapeless idiot thing?! It looks more like a blob than anything else! Also, plenty of SD scenes, which I don't think sit well, considering the anime tends to be pretty serious.

Fun factor: 1 out of 5

Cool factor: 2 out of 5, for Umi and her fencing skills.

Overall rating: 2 out of 5. A big disappointment for me, but then I've never been a fan of the magical girls genre.

Maison Ikkoku

Yusaku Godai lives in Maison Ikkoku, a mediocre boarding house where the other tenants make studying for college entrance exams very hard with their partying. Fed-up, Godai decides to leave, but that same day a beautiful young widow arrives, announcing that she's going to be the new manager. Godai falls hard for her and decides to stay at Maison Ikkoku.

A long-time favorite among the college crowd, Maison Ikkoku was written by Rumiko Takahashi, that wonderfully talented master of insanity! In this series, she has created another one of her typical situations: guy and girl fall in love, yet they can't admit it, partly due to the people around them. Said people usually happen to be a bunch of lunatics, and it is no exception here, what with a half-naked sexy young woman, a permanently drunk gossip bag, a guy who slithers through holes in the walls, and a tennis coach with dangerously shiny teeth... Yet Takahashi has taken care to make each of the characters human, except maybe Yotsuya *grin*, and they get ample time to develop and change in the 96 episodes of the series... It is nice to see characters in real life situations, instead of crazy martial arts competitions and invading aliens. I think it is this mundane atmosphere that is partly to credit for the series' success.

Plot: 4 out of 5. It is to the author's credit that she can come up with such crazy situations in such a mundane setting.

Animation: 2 out of 5. Medium-quality TV series.

Cute factor: 0. Yes!

Fun factor: Rumiko Takahashi = fun. 5 out of 5 and a Ranma award.

Cool factor: 0. Mitaka isn't all that cool in my opinion. What does he use on his teeth, glitter?

Overall rating: 5 out of 5! Smashing entertainment. A Nakago for being one of my favorite anime!

Minky Momo

Momo is the princess of the Land of Dreams, which, as the human condition gets worse and the belief in good weakens, is getting further away from Earth. To prevent this from happening, her parents send Momo to our planet where, thanks to her appearence-changing magic stick, she can perform good deeds.

Momo is possibly one of the most famous examples of the magical girls genre. It has a heroine who can take on very attractive appearences, and a surprise shock ending. Older fans of anime might not like this but children will love it.

Plot: 2 out of 5. Would be lower if it wasn't for the ending.

Animation: You know, I watched this on TV, and I don't really remember much about the animation. Probably between 2 or 3 out of 5.

Cute factor: 5 out of 5. A pink-haired heroine. And why oh why must every magical girl have annoyingly cute animal sidekicks? This merits a Pikachu award.

Fun factor: I quite liked watching Momo's transformations, and her parents (the king and the queen, not her parents on Earth), are pretty funny. 3 out of 5.

Cool factor: 1 out of 5, for some of Momo's transformations which turn out surprisingly sexy.

Overall rating: 2 out of 5.

Mononoke Hime

The story is set in medieval Japan, where mystical animal gods rule the forests. Ashitaka is a young prince who becomes cursed by a rampaging boar god gone mad from the pain of being shot. Ashitaka travels to the west in a quest to be cured, and becomes involved in a war between a clan of ironworkers and the animal gods, who are angry because the ironworkers destroy the forest. Also caught up in the conflict is San, a young girl raised by wolves who hates humans but can't help falling for Ashitaka. The latter, meanwhile, risks his life to bring about a peaceful coexistence between humanity and nature.

Mononoke Hime was the first DVD I ever bought after having acquired a DVD player, and I have never regretted the purchase. The movie's message is very noble and entirely relevant to our time. However, this message isn't only about the environment, it's also about the value of hope and survival, and I think that having such a human message makes it a richer and more fully realized movie than Miyazaki's other works (except of course, Nausicaa). Yet, Mononoke Hime isn't perfect, as a lot of people claim it to be. The story is of extreme importance here, but amid all that's going on, the characters get little time to develop, and San especially is pretty flat. In a movie where everything else sparkles, it is a shame that the viewer's emotional involvement with the characters stays at a lower level than that in Totoro, for example.

Plot: 4 out of 5. Filled with ingenious and marvellous creations by Miyazaki.

Animation: 5 out of 5. Mononoke Hime is simply breathtaking in this aspect, with a flawless blend of traditional and computer animation and wonderful depictions of the forest that make it a pleasure to look at.

Music: 5 out of 5. A luminous soundtrack.

Cute factor: 1 out of 5, for the hilarious clacking kodamas. But beware, there is nothing cute about the rest of the movie, and a lot more violence than in Miyazaki's other works.

Cool rating: 4 out of 5. Just the animation would be enough for this rating, but I also loved the serene, mystical, almost surreal atmosphere Miyazaki used in certain scenes.

Overall rating: 5 out of 5, but doesn't get a Nakago rating due to the somewhat two-dimensional characters. Is this a great movie? Yes. Is it a masterpiece? Yes, like everything Miyazaki does. But is it his best work? I think not.

Mysterious Cities of Gold

During the Spanish conquest of the Incas, Esteban, a young boy who can apparently control the sun, embarks on a ship to New World to find his father. Once there, he joins up with two native children, and they set out on a quest to find the mysterious inca cities made entirely of gold.

The Inca civilization has always been a popular subject, so I figure there'd have to be an anime for it. The Mysterious Cities of Gold, or by its original name Taiyo no ko Esteban, takes the viewer into an unknown, strange and fascinating realm where we live adventures along with the heroes. And just the idea that there might have been entire cities constructed of gold sends a shiver of excitement down your spine. There was a lot of research that went into this series, and it shows: at the end of each episode, there is a short live documentary of a few minutes about the Incas and their descendants.

Plot: 5 out of 5. Very interesting and researched, not to mention informative.

Animation: 2 out of 5. The only bad point about this show, but then it is pretty old.

Cute factor: 2 out of 5, for Tao and his bird.

Fun factor: 3 out of 5. Nothing fun per se, but this is an adventure show.

Cool rating: 3 out of 5. Like I said, nothing like the thrill of being transported into the realm of the Incas.

Overall rating: 4 out of 5, an excellent watch.