One of the staples of popular anime has always been robots, often giant in scale and battling in space. Long before Gundam and others, Astro Boy, created by Osamu Tezuka, was the fir…
Oct 27, 2023 • Subscribe
More like this
First Impressions – Pluto
For Pluto to have been worth the wait when the wait was as long it was is the sort of success story we almost never see.
Pluto
Pluto is currently streaming on Netflix....
First Impression: ODDTAXI
Odokawa is an odd duck (or rather, walrus) by most any measure. He’ll take an inappropriately long amount of time to think of an answer to a question…
First Impression: Opus.COLORs
Two adults doing tai chi while wearing high-tech goggles and hand gear are watched by three enraptured boys. When they’re done swooshing their arms and tiptoeing through the…
First Impression: SHY
A snazzy comic book-style intro and voice-over catch us up on the state of the world: it seems that planet Earth is awash with…peace and tranquility? That’s right,…
SSSS.Dynazenon (First Impression)
“One day, Yomogi Asanaka, a first-year student at Fujiyokidai High School, runs into a mysterious man named Gauma who claims to be a “kaiju user.” The sudden appearance…
First Impression: Kakushigoto
Kakushigoto looks to be a lighthearted comedy. The title itself is a pun: It’s a story about the “kakushigoto” (i.e., secret) of Kakushi Goto. Kakushi is a mangaka…who…
First Impression: Kaginado
A familiar little girl wearing a sailor fuku with stuffed dango in hand walks into a planetarium, where she’s greeted by another familiar face, an android with blue…
First Impression: Noblesse
Okay, before I get into my first take on this one, I need to clear the air about something. Yes, I am aware that Noblesse has an OVA…
First Impression: Tamayomi
As children, Yomi would toss a “magic ball” to Tamaki, a curving pitch that the latter wasn’t able to catch. The two agreed that when Yomi mastered it…
Sakugan (First Impression)
“Far in the future, the human beings were pushed into the deep underground world called Labyrinth and they are living shoulder-to-shoulder. The Labyrinth has several colonies with severe…
First Impression: AOASHI
Aoi Ashito has enough natural talent to carry his backwater middle school soccer team to victory single-handed. He also has enough confidence for an entire 11-man team, and…
First Impression: OVERTAKE
Kouya Madoka is a photographer who is having trouble with his work. He gets tense and anxious before a photo shoot, and this is causing him to be…
First Impression: Bucchigiri?!
Arajin Tomobishi has a habit of losing things. First, he leaves his bass guitar in the classroom on his first day at a new school, then he leaves…
First Impression – ID:INVADED
Have you ever wanted to enter the mind of a murderer? There have been several shows that have attempted to explore this in detail, to see why criminals…
First Impression: Revenger
It’s nighttime in the dregs of the Tokugawa era, Japan, and assassins abound. This particular one kills his mark, but not before the victim is able to plant…
First Impression: Helck
It’s a difficult day for Lady Vermillio, a powerful fire sorceress with an administrative position in the Demon (Oni) Realm. After the death of Lord Demon Thor, the…
First Impression: Arte
Set in Florence, Italy, early in the sixteenth century, this is the tale of a young noblewoman named Arte trying to become a proper artist and make a…
First Impression: Gibiate
In the year 2030, Kathleen Funada is seeking a cure for a horrible disease that has ravaged the planet, one which turns humans into monstrous creatures. Gibiate, as…
First Impression: Noblesse
Okay, before I get into my first take on this one, I need to clear the air about something. Yes, I am aware that Noblesse has an OVA…
First Impression: Tonbo!
Kazuyoshi Igarashi accepts a job on the remote Hinoshima island, where he meets the island’s only middle schooler, Tonbo. The girl is energetic and rambunctious, but more curiously,…
First Impression: Re:Monster
If you were resurrected into another world, would it matter what form you were born into? Would you immediately give up on this second life if your new…
First Impression: Sakugan
A little girl is running from a man with a gun through a sci-fi city. The tension grows. He is near. He looms over the square, then jumps.…
First Impression: Onipan!
Three typical slice-of-life girls arrive in the big city. There’s Himawari, the confident blond sporty one, Tsuyukusa, the sleepy-eyed, dessert-loving blue-haired one, and Tsutsuji, with the reddis…
First Impression: Gleipnir
Shuichi is about to graduate high school, and those his grades are good enough for college, he’s hesitating. Something doesn’t feel right. He doesn’t want to stand out—but…
First Impression: Maesetsu!
After years of failed auditions, comedy duo Tokonatsu, consisting of Mafuyu Kogarashi and Fubuki Kitakaze, finally get their first break—a slot at Shoka-Yono High’s cultural festival! There&#…
Gekidol (First Impression)
“Set five years after the mysterious disaster of a city’s sudden disappearance, a group of girls fascinated by the “Theatrical Material System” using 3D holograms aims to brighten…
First Impression: Horimiya
Kyoko Hori: Smart, beautiful, popular, but for unknown reasons, she rushes out of school instead of spending time with the rest of her clique. Izumiya Miyamura: Quiet, introverted,…
First Impression: Pet
The physical world is immense and full of possibilities—good and bad. But the world inside our minds is even more vast, full of imagination, potential, and horror. There…
First Impression: Listeners
Well. Umm. Huh. The first episode of Listeners was…trippy? Yeah, let’s go with that. I mean, it’s a music-themed, post-apocalyptic, giant robot adventure, so what do you expect?…
First Impression: Ishura
It’s the first day of school in a vaguely medieval Ottoman-like world (with robots) when timid Yuno first encounters Lucelles, the sparkling, confident girl who quickly becomes her…
First Impression: Cue!
Action music. A deep blue sea with emerald green coasts. Pursued by their enemies, a boy and a girl are entering the fantasy world where she was born.…
First Impression: Wargroove
It is no secret that I was looking forward to Wargroove for quite some time. It was clear from the start of the project where the developers inspirations…
First Impression: BULLBUSTER
For the past year, Ryugan Island has been overrun by large, hulking creatures known as “Giant Beasts.” To deal with the creatures and make the island inhabitable again,…
First Impression: SSSS.Dynazenon
The episode opens with a rapid montage of ambiguous scenes: teenagers hanging out along a riverbank; a muted argument in a school corridor; a hand releasing pearl-like beads…
SK∞ (First Impression)
“Reki, a high school sophomore and skater, is addicted to “S,” a highly secret and dangerous downhill skateboarding race that takes place in an abandoned mine. The skaters…
Horimiya (First Impression)
“Although admired at school for her amiability and academic prowess, high school student Kyouko Hori has been hiding another side of her. With her parents often away from…
First Impression: Chimimo
The everyday life of three sisters—Mutsumi, Mei, and Hazuki—is thrown for a loop bythe appearance of a bouncy, cute, spherical creature with an oni-like horn. Soon, Mochi, as…
First Impression: AYAKA
As an island breaks apart, with magna spewing from the earth and scorching the surface, two boys escape to the beach where they and other islanders are being…
First Impression: Koikimo
Another day, another conquest—though truth be told, misogynistic businessman Ryo Amakusa doesn’t seem to take much delight in taking so many women to bed. But his mindset is…
First Impression: Orient
Musashi and Kojiro grew up thick as thieves, brothers in all but name, tussling with each other and bandying with swords under the tutelage and stories of Kojiro’s…
86 (First Impression)
“The Republic of San Magnolia has been attacked by its neighbor, the Empire. Outside the 85 districts of the Republic there is the ‘non-existent 86th district,’ where young…
First Impression: UniteUp!
Akira may be a bit of a curmudgeon (as far as perky 17-year-olds go), but he’s a good son and devoted friend. He’s just been a little bit…
D4DJ: First Mix (First Impression)
“Having moved back to Japan from abroad, Rinku Aimoto transfers to Yoba Academy where DJing is popular. She is deeply moved by a DJ concert she sees there,…
Pluto – 04
I was spellbound for the entire hour, but my instant reaction when it was over was "how the hell am I supposed to write about that?".
Review: PLUTO
Of course, I can't talk about robot manga without talking about this one. While it's only tangentially connected to one of mecha's foundin...
Pluto – 03
It's all pretty breathtaking to be honest - the sheer weight and dexterity of the storytelling and the way it's brought to life both.
Pluto – 07
I only just realized it, but there's something just a bit childlike in all the great robots of Pluto as Urasawa writes them.
Pluto – 06
Pluto as a whole is Urasawa Naoki's creation, but of course the roots of it are in Tezuka Osamu's creation.
Pluto – 05
I can't help but wonder what inspired Urasawa to take something that was already seminal in Japanese culture and reimagine it like this.