Agent Aika
Akira
Amazing Nurse Nanako
Appleseed
Armitage III

Treefinger's rating:
Treefinger's comments:
Lots of nudity and low jokes, not that it's any problem but it lowers the storyline a bit which is otherwise quite ok. Aika has got this metallic symbiot which gives her superpowers after a quite perverse transformation, but anyway, I still live after watching it.

Karja's rating:
Karja's comments:
Excellent movie! It has everything - action, interesting characters, a subtle, multi-layered story and large explosions. The fact that it is extremely well animated helps too.

Treefinger's rating:
Treefinger's comments:
This was the first anime I ever saw and it is quite good, but after I saw it for the third time around it became well... It was a really long time since I saw it.

C-Pol's rating:
C-Pol's comments:
Finding a good anime movie is like finding a diamond in a sea of varm offal but Akira is that diamond. Unlike all other anime I've seen it's got good animation, no (or very little in any case) static backgrounds, a fantastic music score, believable (and genuinely likable) characters and absolutely no bigeyed-ninja-teensexmodel-promqueen-highschoolers. It's even got a good story, something of a rarity in a genre populated by 'small girls save world from big monster' stereotypes. It's one of the few anime movies realy worth watching.

Having said that one has to mention it's weak points. First of all it's adapted from a manga (read comic for the uninitated) series of some 30 or 40 fullsize (A4) 100 page albums. Condensing that into some 2 hours of film and still retaining comprehension is a herculean task and the movie understandable fails. If you haven't read the comics you'll either go 'huh?' a lot (if you've got a brain) or ignore it and drool (if you're the type of person that jerks off to violence). Most of the comics social critique abunding in the comics are lost in the adaptation but enough remains to pose a few questions for those of us that use our brains for something else than storing alcohol.

One final point: see the subtitled version. The dubbed one realy sucks and the dubbing director should be dragged behind a truck, shot and his bloody carcass hung from the Hollyweed sign as a cautionary example. If you can't handle all the text in the subtitling go rent Bubblegum Crisis or buy a Penthouse, you'll get more out of that.

Oh, and go buy the soundtrack, it's worth it (or download it from Napster you cheapskate pirate you).

The two first episodes establish the five characters and Nanako's background as dr Ogami's adoptee.

Quest's rating:
Quest's comments:
This review is written after seeing the first two episodes.

The fundamental episode-spanning plot in this series is actually quite interesting and the first two episodes manages to establish some very interesting bad-guys, including a Vatican (?) conspiracy.

The series has two main problems. First is the fact that it is badly directed. Scenes are a bit haphazard and frequently feels disjoint. Second is the mistreatment of Nanako. Not only is dr Ogami being violent to her (grabbing her neck in the crook of his arm, pulling her hair), even characters who should have little knowledge of her is bullying her. This smacks a bit too much of unthinking discrimination for me to consider it funny, particularly given the frequent shots of the heroine's bouncing breasts and panties as she clumsily falls over. I can't help but think that a boy would never have been submitted to the same degrading treatment.

Treefinger's rating:
Treefinger's comments:
Well, I like action, but this is quite mainstream. The landmates are cool and there should have been more landmate action!

Treefinger's rating:
Treefinger's comments:
Armitage is small, the cop is muscular, the scientist is quite mad, you know... I almost got frustrated at the end but anyway this is an excellent action/cyborg flic.