Anime Rec: One Punch Man

Anime Rec: One Punch Man

In this absurd parody of superhero stories, our bald hero Saitama has a major problem: no matter how huge or grossly overpowered or disgustingly evolved or city-destroying his opponent is, Saitama can always defeat them with, of course, just one punch.

Together with his cyborg protégé Genos, we follow Saitama and feel his growing frustration with the state of affairs: when he performs an amazing feat, he can get no satisfaction from it because the public and the Hero Association never give him credit for his achievements as a hero. Eventually you do feel really bad for the non-hero public who live in these cities (from “City A”-“City Z”) that are repeatedly invaded by monsters.

Recommended to fans of anime like Hunter x Hunter, One Punch Man features a cast of colorful characters and a world that gradually grows more complex.

There are also some fantastically funny moments when Saitama is thinking absentmindedly about food in the middle of what would otherwise be intensely serious battles.

This anime was lots of fun and has great potential with its characters’ backstories (like Sonic, an ultrafast ninja criminal), so I hope it will be renewed for more than 12 episodes in the future!

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Anime Review: Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu LOVE

Anime Review: Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu LOVE! / Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!

In this amusing parody anime, five high school boys in a club unwittingly find themselves meeting an alien wombat, who transforms them into magical boys, male Sailor Moon-esque members: they’re trapped in the outfits of an Earth Defense group and forced to say ridiculous lines against their will. Amusingly, they decide to make the best of their new situation, attacking evil with the power of love.

Of course this includes much suggestiveness and fan service, like bathing together, cuddling, and tickle fights. Oh, and the code phrase to launch their powers is “Love Making.”

While the anime is simplistic and often shallow, it is nonetheless ultimately quite sweet and helped lighten my mood whenever I watched it. Recommended for fans of light shounen-ai (like Gakuen Heaven).

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Anime Review: Meganebu!

Anime Review: Meganebu!

In this anime of humorous absurdity, the megane (glasses-wearing) club, a tight-knit group of five high-school boys, is on a mission of extreme importance: to create x-ray vision glasses…so that they can look at hot women naked without their consent. Once you get past that…rather creepy premise, this anime is incredibly sweet with the mock-serious way the characters treat their lives as glasses-wearers, under the direction of their leader Akira, who is determined to make the world a better place for everyone with glasses.

There are almost no female characters, but the relationships between all the boys are adorable (particularly all the brotherly relationships), and the slashiness is off the charts. The animation is brightly colorful and cutely stylized: any non-glasses wearing secondary characters (i.e., the other students) aren’t even animated, they’re just literal stick figures in uniforms, which is very funny.

Other than Akira, I liked the mechanical genius Yukiya and the spacey cream-puff loving Takuma; the jealous rivalry between the other two members (Mitsuki and Hayato) was a bit too spiteful for me (though I love the line “I’m not dead, but I’m only a provisional member”). Also, I guarantee that you will have “We are meganebu~” stuck in your head for days.

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Anime Rec: Knights of Sidonia

Anime Rec: Sidonia no Kishi / Knights of Sidonia

This is Netflix’s first licensed anime series, and it’s great! After Earth has been destroyed, the seed ship Sidonia makes its way through the galaxy, protecting itself from difficult-to-kill, creepily-morphing tentacle space monsters called Gauna. Enter Tanikaze, who has been living with his grandfather underground, and who becomes an ace pilot of the Gardes (fighting mecha).

The show-don’t-tell world-building here is fascinating, from the genetically engineered human photosynthesis and third gender, gravity festivals, robot fights, and onboard “sea.” The episodes are so exciting that for me they just flew by—aided perhaps by Netflix’s penchant for releasing all episodes at once and then having evil cliffhangers that make it impossible to stop watching. I loved Tanikaze and found him adorable with his constant cluelessness and his penchant for getting seriously injured.

However, unlike Attack on Titan (to which Knights of Sidonia is being justly compared), this universe feels much more sterile, with more technology and fewer colors, relationships, and characterizations. The character designs for the cadets in particular are extremely similar, almost clones of one another (11 are sisters who all look like twins), which makes it difficult to keep track of many of the cadets except poor Tanikaze and his rival, Kunato. A possible jealousy-laden love quadrangle between the four leads (Hoshijiro, Izana, and Midorikawa) feels a bit contrived.

But the world-building and space battles are definitely gorgeous, fun, and meaningful, and I hope a third season is in the works!

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