My first review of Project 1000 Video Game series is a little known Toriyama title.
After 50 years of slumber, Ackman awakens to his 200th Birthday which allows him to harvest human souls for the Great Demon King. No sooner when he awakens, he gets pursued by the angel Tenshi, however Tenshi ends up killing a ton of humans unintentionally helping Ackman collect a ton of souls and making tons of money, the short OVA runs with all the same Toriyama trademarks including recycled designs, juvenile humour, unapologetic sex jokes, cannon fodder humans and even a Dragonball reference. The games are alot more fun producing three in the franchise on the Snes in Japan.
As an anime it's okay but it's hardly original, the concept was done better by Disgaea, Ackman looks like kid Trunks and the need to make sex jokes really lowers the quality of what was a fairly decent dark humour series.
No dub but would easily fit with the Dragonball dub cast.
Final Verdict: It's typical Toriyama writing, juvenile dark humour with a lack of restraint in sex jokes, the games make up for the cheap writing.
Now for something that will test your trap knowledge.
Himeko is a plain ordinary school girl until a glamourous boy named Mikami arrives to school dressed head to toe in Princess style attire, with his help, Himeko awakens as a stylish beautiful girl, as Mikami is intent on making the whole school glamourous.
Sort of caught this OVA by sheer accident and being honest it's actually a good mini series, reminding me of Princess Jellyfish only the boy in question is way more convincing than any other kind of cross dresser ever seen in anime. There's not much more to go into, it's a rich colour palette, it doesn't outstay it's welcome, there's no dub but it's not required, it's a nice little mini series to digest.
Shojo magazine Ciao have the first 3 episodes on their Youtube page, there are six others that haven't gone up and are hard to locate, finding information on even the manga is limited.
Final Verdict: A cute little OVA that can test your perception of gender in the most fabulous way.
Now for a series that has the weirdest adaption history.
Chacha is a young witch dressed like Red Riding Hood with ambitions of being a great mage like her Guardian Seravy but is bad with her incantations because Japanese Grammer is hard. When it's time for her to start Wizard school she is given trinkets that allow her to become a magical princess in order to defeat the evils of Daimao; to become the princess she requires two trusted friends in the form of werewolf Riiya and young wizard Shiine to use two of the three trinkets. With a hilarious cast of characters, will Chacha succeed and claim her destiny as a Princess?
The way this is adapted is really weird, the first two seasons uses anime only content and the 3rd season actually adapts the manga which makes the first two seasons glorified prequels; the reason for this was to capitalise on the Sailor Moon craze of magical female warriors but for a series of young mages attending magic school with heavy emphasis on gags, the magical princess element feels forced.
The gag element works for the anime as everything is suitably over the top and the expressions take full advantage of it, even the so called best mage in the Kingdom has an unhealthy obsession with his friend Dorothy's appearance as a child which he shows by carrying a doll in that likeness and doing ventriloquism with it.
You can probably guess by now is that it's really silly, 90s silly.
There is a dub which is considered lost media which reminds me a bit of 4kids dubbing. There are some clips around youtube to make your own opinion but since much of the humour relies on Japanese puns and word play it really doesn't work dubbed.
Final Verdict: A hilarious gag comedy with a bolted on magical girl subplot because Sailor Moon said so. I also suggest watching in small doses, it's a little exhausting at times.
This will be a unique experiment in how to make a normally notorious genre into something more mature and grown up.
Set in the 80s, it focusses on the romance between University Student Toya and upcoming Idol Singer Yuki and the trials and tribulations of maintaining a relationship through difficult conditions such as conflicting schedules, advances from rival women including Yuki's Idol friend Rina who starts as a supporter to their relationship only to develop feelings herself and this being a harem there are also childhood and school friends along with another girl that Toya tutors. But there is a difference between this and every other harem series. It's actually a very serious romance story.
Right from the get go, you get a good glimpse of the type of character Toya is and how conflicted his mind is through the silent inner monologues that pop up through out each episode and clearly fears Yuki drifting away from him yet not really knowing how to answer the feelings of the other women that come his way as he deals with the difficulty of staying with Yuki as her career starts taking off. There is so much to read on everything and the anime does a fantastic job of remaking every scene like an encounter from a visual novel which of course is what White Album is based on. The fact that it's set in the 80s takes away the conveniences of modern technology making the telephone a major plot device on it's own. All this from a harem, proving it can act all grown up.
I'd be conflicted with the idea of dubbing this especially if the monologues suddenly got voiced so I'd rather there wasn't one.
Final Verdict: It's a mature grown up romance, harem story that doesn't need cheap fan service to sell. While it is slow paced and the story gets told the same way as a visual novel, it really sets up well with the characters and setting as well as time period. Definitely worth a shot if you are sick of harems being cheap fan service and stock characters.
Now for a history lesson.
Oedo is home to a plethora of crime that normal police aren't cut out for so it's left to Hasegawa to offer three highly dangerous convicts a chance to reduce their sentences by dealing with these crimes instead each under threat of execution by bomb collar. The convicts reluctantly agree and set off to fight some pretty bizarre crimes.
Our convicts are: Sengoku, a street wise smart talker who usually has a good one liner to go with each takedown.
Gogul, a hacker who has a big enough reputation that he's targeted by the military.
And Benten, an effeminate assassin who looks like David Bowie with even more 80s hair, he was supposed to be female but it was overruled which was a better call as he's a lot more memorable and not because of his hilarious British dub dialogue.
This was British dubbed and in a very 90s way, so expect plenty of swearing which actually improves the experience as it's unapologetically dumb and fun, I miss anime like this.
One of the reasons why I deviate to older anime is because I want to watch something fun and action packed; Cyber City fits the bill well as it benefits from being a Cyberpunk show that can forge any kind of plot possible. From episode 1 we get a beyond the grave revenge from a corpse wired up to a skyscraper, episode 2 has an experimental psychic cyborg powered by a human corpse and episode 3 has immortal vampire battles on a space station.
It's easy to like this show for how well it can create stories from it's setting and still work without going so insane that it pulls me out the anime. The only shows I know that can pull this off are Dirty Pair, Slayers and Black Lagoon of which all three shows are in my top 5.
Anime struggles to come up with this today as much of it relies on trying to please certain demographics and trends, even with legit decent anime around I can't go five minutes without someone writing a page on why a certain character is trash or writing bullshit on how the current trendy anime offends everyone.
I openly praise streamers like Retro Crush (where's my british version dammit) for reminding everyone that anime can be fun.
Final Verdict: Cyber City is a perfect blend of cheesy cyberpunk action that only serves to entertain the viewer. It's not complex, it's just pure unapologetic fun and that's how I like my anime.
