Anime comes in 2 major categories - shojo(for girls) and shonnen(for boys). Shojo deals primarily with romance/idealistic type stories and examples are Kodacha, Sailor Moon, Wedding Peach while shonnen is mostly action/adventures stories. I prefer shojo but I will check out SOME shonnen too, just to see how the other part lives. Some shojo also irritates the hell out of me, they assume all girls are some silly empty headed cuties who only dream of landing a good man. If I sound too critical in my reviews, well, thats just too bad, it's the fault of people making all those crappy series imitating what's popular and assuming people whould accept just about anything today as long as it's enterntaining. Quantity ain't substitute for quality and Theodore Sturgeon's law still applies: "95% of everything is crap." I am lookin' for just a bit more than that. Enjoy!

Bakuen(Bersek?) Combustuble Campus Guardess is a limited 4 parts show. Totally outrageous, I recommand it highly. Good solid story, great artwork with nice attention to details and the backgrounds. The show starts very darkly then slips into high energy comedy. I laughed all the way through. Bunch of great characters, such as the gay-leather-byker daemon for example who must be seen to be believed. He is so absolutely campy. The story is about this hight school girl who is being trained to take part in a 3000 years old battle between daemons called Reminans and the humans. Lots of action, lots of laughts, the obigatory panty shots. Watch for the surprise appearance of Sailor Mars in a dance club in ep one. I can't think of nicest introduction to the world of Japanese anime. Not really for kids, for it has cursing, sexual situations and is very violent.

Card Captor Sakura is your typical "magical girls" genre anime, aimed at pre-teen girls 8 to 10 years olds. Sakura(Cherry petals?) is your average 10 years old who opens an old book and lets magical cards escape, so then it becomes her "job" to find them all and capture them back. Cutesy stuff, better than average drawings, pretty imaginative story. To tell you the truth I don't care for the main character, for she is without much personality, undecisive and sais "Huh?" and "Oh?" a lot. Her best friend is a lot more interesting than her. Watching it, I can feel my diabetics kicking in, and I often wonder why there is all those strange relationships b'tween the characters, such as how Sakura's best friend keeps on telling her how kawaii(cute) she is...Hmm...maybe I am just reading too much into all this...^_^...Nice soundrack with lots of good numbers- jazzy, classical style, ets. More info and pic at www.CardCaptorZ.com, illusions.f2s.com and http://www.redrival.com/moonbrat/cherryblossoms/.

Daa!, Daa!, Daa! Something new I haven't see before....OK, two teen kids(a boy and a girl) end up living together in a temple without any adult supervision because the boy's father runs off to India(he is a Buddhist priest I guess) and the girl's parents go to America to be austronats. Then a weird pink UFO lands in the back yard. A whole bunch of weird but very cute small creatures come out...That's all I seen so far. I dunno 'bout you, but the words pokemon! pokemon! keep on flashing infront of me for some weird reason... Artworks is kinda simple.

D4 Princess is the story of Dorisu-Something who is attending a private school where she is being trained to fight with other girls in very gladiator like settings. She is your "ordinary-girl-who-transforms-into-a-strong-warrior- with-a-short-skirt" girl. The eps are 7 minutes long and total 24. Dorisu is incredibly whiny little brat who the need of lots of dicipline. I have now watched all the 24 eps in raw-subbed eps, but since my japanese is still very bad, I don't really know what's going on and can only make uneducated guesses. Yet another show that gets my diabetics to act up, but the art is crisp, clean and there is lots of slapstic commedy. It's a light, dumb, but fun thing. The closing song(RunKURINRIN) is a gem.

Di Gi Charat is NOT really a show, but I am adding it here, for I love it so much! In actuality, Di Gi Charat started as 7 minutes long TV commercials for a store in Japan. In the shows, these 2 Extra-terestrial girls land on Earth. One is this nasty 8 or 10 years old brat with green hair, a tail and dirty mouth and the other is a dim 6 years old girl. They both work in a store selling vid games and other merchidaize. There is also a 3rd girl who is older 14 years old with giant rabbit ears and a pair of dice in her purple hair, and a bunch of weird customers who shop at the place all the time. The girl characters are extremly cute, but there is no real story line per se. The girls fight and blow each other up, each one has a male fan who likes her, or monsters appear and level the city. Everything is very surreal and cartoonish. You have to be totally into anime to like the weirdness of it, the total lack of restrain. The original comercials are 16 in number. My prayiers have been answered and now Di Gi Charat has had several specials- 4 summer specials and 2 winter specials. Even more characters were added, including a nemesis for Digiko. This show MAY look like a kids thing, cute and harmless, but don't be deceived. It has taken the world by storm now, he-he. Much info with the songs and the eps available at crosswinds.net/~jeleinen/DigiCharat and their main page is at e http://www.di-gi.charat.net/DiGi

Hana Yori Dango is romance genre anime, this 50 eps series follows the live and loves of a poor but smart 16 years old girl who attends a rich kids school, where she hooks up with the 4 most popular students there . It's a she-likes-him-but-he-likes-another-girl thing. The male lead character is a creep, the story mienders, has ridicilous twists, is melodromatic and oh so predictable, I find myself mouthing the words right before the characters say them on screen. The show is obviously aimed at teen girls. Oh, yeah, the girl and the guy get married at the end and live happilly-ever-after. Yawn...Whatever...There is even a live-action movie too. The eps are available at all over the place.

Hand Maid May is 10 eps limited series. The whole thing seems like a set up for an OVA, because it had an open ending. It's the story of a college student who gets this little robot(cyber) doll as maid for him by mistake and now everyone wants to either steal it or take it away for non payment. Then 3 other robots appear, all as girls of different ages. The story line is pretty simplistic and made up, without any real tension behind it. In the 5th ep, the robot doll came back and she was full sized now. Oh, what a surprise! (sarcasm). The guy doesn't seem at all interested in his next door neibour who wears the shortest skirts in the known universe and rubs herself all over him, instead he is more infatuated with the girl robot. That tells you something about the mentality of Japanese men, I guess they can't handle real women, so robots are better? I must admit, the panty flashes are the only thing thats kept me intersted. You can get the 1st 3 eps + the translations(the .SMI files) from http://www.myspace.com/Folders/5737496/ share password : handmaid

Ghost in the Shell by the famous Masamune Shirow is a full lenght theater's movie. Poor Shirow is trying so hard to be hip, tch, tch, his desperation can almost be smelled. Nothing original there if you have already read writers such as William Gibson, Neil Stevenson, and the like. We get the usual predictable cops-n-robbers routine from Shirow, except this time change the word "robbers" to "hackers". It was pretty amusing how many times he used the tired cliched word "cyber". Frankly, the artwork dissapointed me, it looked cheap and quickly made in several places. The story(such as it is) is about this cop in the future whose brain has been implanted into a cyborg body. Oh she is a female too. WoW! And she fights crime and she is deep and she's got a nasty atitude. Quiotes from the Christian Bible galore too. This movie was a big hit, but to me it was old hat. I like the soundtrack though.

Kiki's Delivery Sevice is a full lenght movie about a little witch andher life by the same person who did the wonderful Tonari no Totoro(look bellow). Totally a family movie, it is the height of what great anime can be. Everyone working on this movie gave their best and it shows. The artwork alone is worth the price, it's as great as the old classic Walt Disney's Snow White. I simply can't think of anything better than this movie to introduce soembody to the world of japanese anime. The highest recommandation possible.

Kodomo no Omocha(Child's toy) is my fav show! My friend Ramses made me d/l a few eps, promising I'd like it and as usual, he was right! The show is about the life of an 11 years old TV actress(Sana), her fights with the bullies at school, her mother, ets, Sana is a great totally wacky character, fully rounded, she is SUPER hyper, she never stops talking, running, singing. She acts the way she does for she thinks the world expects her to be that way, and so she can hide her sadness and her troubles behind a smile. Sana always tried to fix everyne's life around her and she always screws up because she babbles whatever comes into her mind(I have the exact same problem too ^_^). What can I say, its a GREAT show and you MUST see it!Total of 101 eps, so far I have seen the first 28. The show has a somewhat cartoonish style-full with slapstic comedy(more than usual?), but it works. The soundtrack's one of my fav too, I play it all the time to the astonishment of my housemates. You can get all the translated 28 eps from either www.lunaarts.com/anime/ or animemetropolis.com/kodocha/main.html What are you waiting for? Go there and d/l them like right now!

Princess Mononoke Just saw this movie andthe only thing I can say is...WOW! This ain't your average TV series anime. It is a full lenght feature film and when it came out in japan, it grossed more money than Titanic did. Guess that's something, eh? The Japanese sure love it and so did I.

Project A-KO...hmmm...well, see, there is this girl called A-KO who is like super strong and she has this friend, another younger girl called C-KO and they always hang together, and there is this other girl called B-KO who declairs that C-KO is the love of her life[AHEM!] so she fights A-KO. Can you say rezu here? Lots of senseless silly fighting between A-KO and B-KO and we get to see both A-KO's and C-KO's panties a lot, and they are very cute panties, mind you. ~_^. Uh huh... C-KO's voice is so annnoying and she is just a little cry-baby, so I don't see why anyone would wanna be with her...AHEM! Enjoyable in a dumb sort of a way, it is somewhat of an oldie, it dates from 1985 now so we consider it an "old-school anime". I'd watch it for free, but I'd certainly ain't gonna spend money on it.

Sailor Moon is totally ridicious but a huge hit. It's another of the "magical girls" anime genre, where this 5 girls all become super power heroines with short skirts to fight the Mega-verse. Pretty old show, it dates back from 1992, now taking United Kingdom by storm. The main character is this increadibly whiny, not very inteligent 14 years old girl named Usagi(Rabbit), who may or may not have been a princess in the past and will be in the future. Totally ridicilous concepts, but if you can get beyond the foolishness it's great fun. Total of 200 eps, most translated. Everyone has a fav Sailor Scout and mine is Rei Hino(Sailor Mars-look to the right-there she is! ^_^) , for she is intelligent, looks like a Japanese, she lives in a temple, I like the way her eyes are drawn and she has a fierce personality. Plus she was born in April which makes her Aries. Sailor Moon may sounds like a kid show, but its trully NOT, for it has open lesbian characters, but from what I know about the Japanese society, nobody makes a great fuss about people's sexual orientation there ^_^. Can you guess who's the lesbian in the group pic..^_^?!

Serial Experiments Lain is obvously trying to cash in and immitate the cyber-punk sci-fi created by Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell for example. Come to think of it, Shirow is also simply imitating William Gibson and Bruce Sterling...but thats another story. Let's go back to Lain. It is a full lenght movie devided into 13 half an hour each episodes. It begins with a girl commiting suicide, then she starts to send e-mail messages to her friends. Then a nano-drug is introduced into the story, then the cliched "she-is-dead-but-she-lives-in-the-wires" story line again(William Gibson did this story like 15 years go already, sheesh!). The artwork wasn't that good, the story was a mish-mash of other ideas, seems to me the makers were going for the "throw-stuff-at-the-wall-and-see-how-much-of-it-will-stick" gambit. And the main character is not very engaging either. 12 eps X 30 minutes, that's 6 hours of viewing. Don't waste your time.

Tonari no Totoro(My neibour Totoro) is a full lenght anime movie, sweet, gentle and full with wonderful images. Its is the story of a father and his two little dauthers who move into an old house into the country. Turns out the house is haunted and a nice monster named Totoro(who is invisible to adults but the little children can see him) lives into the huge old tree outside. The animation is top notch, with NO sortcuts. The story is not terribly original, it was borrowed from several sources including Alice in Wonderland, but it will be fresh enough for small kids. I just wish more anime was like this. This movie has my highest recommandations too.

Video Girl AI is a limited 6 parts anime, not a TV series. (AI means love so I guess it translates as "video girl love"?) A girl comes out of the TV into the "real" world from a video this boy is watching. It was painful for me to watch, the guy is such an annoying little loser pathetic creep, he really should commit suicide or something. He likes this other girl, but she likes this other guy, you get the picture. He is always walking around, mopping. I guess it was made that way so all the losers can associate with the main character? It's supposed to be about deep feelings like love and loneliness but it comes across sappy and fake. The series gets increasignly creepy as he goes inside the TV reality to fight for the video girl. Weird....weird and disturbing...The animation is pretty good but it has its share of nudity- naked breasts, panty shots, sexual situations, so this is definetly not kid's stuff.

Wedding Peach. WHAT THE FUDGE?!....Oh...My...God! By the powers invested in me I command thee sorry @ss back to the lowest circle of HELL! May Satan rip...Damn, it didn't work! Oh well, just know that I DID try.


more to come...I hope...~_^

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Good places to d/l anime from: LunaArts, animemetropolis.com

another thing I wanted to mention is the kissdolls . They are these tiny 2.5 centimeters animated programs of little anime girls who sit on the edge of your open windows and blink their eyes. The 2 images of my fav kissdoll in her 2 outfits. You can also tickle her with your mouse pointer and she will giggle. I know, its goofy but it's a great conversational piece and whoever made them has a sense of style. You can find the animated Kiss Dolls at the following places:
the FKiss dolls archives kawai.com FTP kISS The World KISS Project The Adult KISS page the FKiss dolls link the FKiss dolls archives


and this is Aska:



are we throwing up from SO much cutesy stuff yet? ^_^..............
oh, yea, no more FAQs page, he-he