Four young ladies in mechanized battle suits fight against bio-androids that run amok.

This anime feels like a much more serious version of Tenchi OVA. In fact the were both done by the same director and the original concept for Tenchi was “a less serious/sillier” version of Bubblegum Crises.

The four central characters are: Shilvia, who is leader of the Knight Sabers (that’s what they called themselves), she’s generally intelligent and quite put can have violent mood swings. Priss, who is a hard rocker and just does the whole Knight Saber thing for the thrill. Lena, a country girl that comes to Tokyo with the hopes of joining the Knight Sabers and fighting for justice. And Nene (who is my personal favorite) is a cute computer hacker with a day job at the police. All the characters grow a lot during the show and are very interesting. Action scenes are great. One of my favorite series.
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Introduction

Belldandy from Ah! My GoddessWhen it comes to culture, for a long time after the end of WW II, the U.S. and Japan were like father and son. In the post WW II era Japanese culture was nurtured on a steady stream of American movies, animation, and comic books.

“All the American movies banned during wartime came back in a flood, both new ones and old ones. It would have been strange for me not to have overdosed on them. I must have been seeing something like 300 films a year.”*1

It was not uncommon for Japanese comic and animation creators to use Hollywood actors as characters in their creations or for them to translate stories from American science fiction magazines and sell them as original work. It was under this shadow of American culture that modern Japanese popular culture developed, and thanks to many creative pioneers Japanese animation has developed into an unique medium exported around the world.

“From pop music to consumer electronics, architecture to fashion, and animation to cuisine, Japan looks more like a cultural superpower today than it did in the 1980s, when it was an economic one.”*2
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A futuristic submarine takes on the forces of a mad scientist who is trying to flood the world by melting the polar ice caps.

OK, this is going to take some imagination. First imagine a cool version of Seaquest DSV, then imagine a cool version of Waterworld. Then add them together.

This is a short OVA that plays more like a movie. The two main characters get as much development as can fit in-between action scene, but it is done well. The action scenes them shelf’s are nicely made with a combination of CG and traditional animation.

The sound effects are loud and vivid. The music is fast and jazzy, just wonderful. Great theme song too.
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Roger Smith is a private investigator / giant robot pilot in a world where everyone lost their memories forty years ago.

Big O struck me as a cross between Batman and Evangelion. Imagine Bruce Wanye as a giant robot pilot with Rei Ayanami as a sidekick. The characters in Big O have well rounded and dynamic personalities, which makes them very interesting to watch as the story progresses. Big O is one of the few giant robot series with more than just mecha bashing each other. The plot centers around the jobs that Roger takes and how the assignments he’s set on slowly reveal the secret of what caused the massive destruction and memory loss forty years ago. The first season of Big O is wonderful, but story quality tapers off in the second into a very dissapointing Evangelion-ish ending.

The background music sets a good tone for the dark environment that the show is set in. The opening song is very good but doesn’t seem to match the feeling of the world of Big O.
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A cute android girl becomes a bounty hunter in a post-apocoliptic city.

This movie reminded me of Final Fantasy Seven. People in a dirty city on the ground live off the scraps and garbabe from a paradise city in the sky. Bad androids lurk in dark streets waiting to find people whose brains they will eat, and the bounty hunters go after them. The animation is very smooth and life like.

The story centers around Alta (the battle angel) as she becomes a bounty hunter, falls in love, and then the tragic end. The only really negative thing about the anime is how short it is.

The opening and ending sequences are not very moving, but the music in the show is great and sets the atmosphere up wonderfully.
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Ryu Soma is a double agent working for an organization called Funeral whose job it is to protect the earth against giant aliens. Ryu passes information about Funeral to a man who mysteriously identifies himself as “the Devil.”

Agent Soma is a fairly unique series, it’s hard to compare it to other anime. The craft Soma (and the rest of his team) fly are like a cross between a Evangelion and a Macross jet. However the overall visually style of the show isn’t close enough for me to make any great comparisons.

Ryu Soma himself get most of the character development, the series almost totally revolves around him. But the supporting cast gets enough background to make the show interesting.

The music and sound effects are done well, but not very stirring. The opening song and sequence are very well done and setup the feeling of the show very well. But the ending is some obnoxious jap-pop song that doesn’t go with the show at all.
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A high school girl from modern Japan is mysteriously taken to a magical world, along with two of her friends.

The series is very close to Escaflowne, but with out the mecha. Neither does it have romance as major them. Evangelion fans many also like one of the female characters, who is very Rei-like.

The two female leads get most of the development in this Anime. The supporting cast seems flat by comparison. Also some really good sword fights.

The sound effects are standard fare and uninteresting. But it’s more than made up for my the stellar music which is a great sounding old world classical mix. The animation quality is also very high, lots of rich vibrant colors.
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