Anime Reviews

Pompo the Cinéphile Celebrates the Raw Excitement of Creativity

Pompo isn’t your average film producer. She may look like a young girl on the surface, but she has the grit, determination and taste of a real Roger Corman under that adorable exterior. She works at a studio in Nyallywood that pumps out B-movies while …Read more »

JUJUTSU KAISEN 0 Delivers Supernatural Spectacle with MAPPA Flair

March 13, 2022

Joseph Luster

Disclosure: The author of this review is also an editor for Crunchyroll News. Like an American comic book in the mid ’90s, Gege Akutami’s JUJUTSU KAISEN manga opted to explore the past in a zero-numbered prequel story. That tale—appropriately titled JUJUTSU KAISEN 0—served as the …Read more »

Mamoru Hosoda’s BELLE Is a Feast For the Eyes and Ears

January 13, 2022

Danica Davidson

BELLE takes inspiration from the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, but it’s put into the modern world. Teenage Suzu has been struggling emotionally since a tragedy in her early childhood, but when she becomes “Bell” on the virtual platform U, things turn around for …Read more »

Arion: Collector’s Edition [Anime Review]

November 24, 2021

Daryl Surat

The “great anime titles we’ll never see released in the U.S.” list continues to shrink, because after 35 years of waiting—easy to write, but try LIVING it—it has finally happened: for the first time ever, the Greek mythology inspired Neo Heroic Fantasia Arion is legally …Read more »

Vampire Knight: The Complete Collection Includes Exclusive Anime Short

November 11, 2021

Danica Davidson

Cross Academy has an interesting setup: during the day it teaches regular humans, but its night school caters to vampires. Yuki Cross, the adopted daughter of the headmaster, finds herself torn between her loyalty and feelings for Kaname, a Pureblood vampire of the Night Class, …Read more »

Shaman King [Anime Review]

October 18, 2021

Brittany Vincent

Shaman King was always an oft-underlooked part of the shonen anime circuit. While shows like Yu Yu Hakusho and Dragon Ball Z pulled in massive audiences, Shaman King was content to settle in the shadows and attract its own loyal audience. Still, despite a somewhat …Read more »

SAKUGAN Gets Japanese Auction to Help Single-Parent Households

October 4, 2021

Danica Davidson

SAKUGAN makes its debut later this week, on October 7. From today, October 4, until December 19, a charity auction associated with SAKUGAN is taking place in Japan. SAKUGAN is working with auction site Mobaoku and charity group WakeAi, which helps with food and preventing …Read more »

Lady Oscar: The Rose of Versailles [Anime Review]

September 1, 2021

Daryl Surat

I could barely believe it in 2012, when the United States finally saw a DVD release of the 1979 shojo anime classic, The Rose of Versailles. In 2020, I was taken even more aback by the release of an English version of Riyoko Ikeda’s original …Read more »

Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting! TV Series Collection [Anime Review]

August 17, 2021

Daryl Surat

The most jacked featherweights ever The definitive boxing anime of the 2000s is back, and perhaps for the first time it’s getting a fair shot at success in the US. It took Jyoji “George” Morikawa roughly a decade before he would agree to permit his …Read more »

SSSS.Dynazenon [Anime Review]

August 15, 2021

Michael Goldstein

When Studio Trigger’s SSSS.Gridman (based on the classic tokusatsu series Denkou Choujin Gridman) dropped back in 2018, it wasn’t even a contest. It had a one-of-a-kind tokusatsu-and-mecha mashup and colorful presentation that—while it already makes for quite the contender—was only one part of the whole …Read more »

Back Arrow [Anime Review]

July 30, 2021

Daryl Surat

I used to be a fan of director Goro Taniguchi in the early 2000s. s-CRY-ed was a solid Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure-inspired series decades before TV adaptations of that began, Planetes was one of the best anime of the decade, and Gun x Sword was a …Read more »

Wonder Egg Priority [Anime Review]

July 29, 2021

Michael Goldstein

Ai Ohto hasn’t attended school for a while. You can’t really blame her; she just lost her closest friend to suicide, and she could’ve stopped those bullies had she not been so afraid of the consequences of speaking out. Not only that, but her heterochromia …Read more »

Amazon Streams Evangelion 3.0+1.01 Trailer for August 13 Release

July 26, 2021

Matt Schley

As a reader of this here website, we bet you’re already well aware that the final Evangelion film is set to hit Amazon Prime August 13. But we also bet you won’t mind checking out a new trailer for the film before it hits less …Read more »

Gakuen Heaven on Blu-Ray Is a Charming, Humorous BL

July 23, 2021

Danica Davidson

Keita Ito can’t believe that he’s allowed into the revered all-male Bell Liberty Academy, also known by the tongue-in-cheek name BL Academy. When he arrives, he finds himself surrounded by beautiful boys, with more than one of them openly crushing on him. He gets sent …Read more »

Akudama Drive [Anime Review]

May 16, 2021

Daryl Surat

The combination of the long-esteemed pedigree of anime Studio Pierrot and Too Kyo Games (its founders created the Danganronpa series) resulted in exactly what I want anime to be. For as Cyber City Oedo 808 established decades ago, the absolute highest form of narrative is …Read more »