Milly Schaefer

Senna here! I’ve been back from my semester in Japan for nearly two weeks now, and I’m *finally* back to writing articles for A2M. Who can resist writing a bit about the new season, after all?

I didn’t feel a point in blogging all the season’s episode ones, because I realized so many bloggers would do so long before I got around to watching the episodes in question (and sure enough, that’s what happened ^^). But now that we’re a few episodes into the season, I figured it was time to offer up some impressions.

I’ve seen plenty of anime series that play around at the outset and don’t get serious about the plot until partway through, just in time to build for a glorious conclusion. Since Terra e (Toward the Terra) was fairly serious with its plot and character development from the start, I figured it couldn’t get much better. I was so wonderfully wrong.

One of the very few otome games (female-targeted romance games) available in English, Hirameki International’s Yo-Jin-Bo (The Bodyguards) is a fun way to kill a few hours. The selection of guys and the art could be better, but its great sense of humor makes this game a good introduction to the world of visual novels. (Long, picture heavy entry ahead!)

Gankutsuou is amazing. I could end the review here and have said all I need to, but of course you’ll want to know (and I’ll be quite happy to tell you) just what Gankutsuou is and why it’s amazing. Well, bide your time; hold out hope!
Or, so says the catchphrase of this exquisite […]

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure — or in the case of Planetes, a story about trash turns out to be quite the treasure.
Where many science fiction anime seem to focus on aliens, mecha and/or cool spaceships, Planetes (based on the manga by Makoto Yukimura) takes a somewhat less epic and more realistic look […]

Gilgamesh is a strange beast, with many promising moments as well as characters. Unfortunately, the characters I found interesting were cast to the side, and the plot moved very slowly until the final episode, where everything was thrown into disarray for a rushed conclusion.

Whisper of the Heart by its name alone sounds like the kind of movie that women gather to see armed with boxes of tissues. But though love is certainly a topic — and certain elements sound suspiciously like something that belongs in a Hallmark movie — Whisper is no tear-jerker. It’s a human coming-of-age story.