Displaying items by tag: review

A direct sequel to last year’s release of Heaven’s Lost Property, Heaven’s Lost Property: Forte is a great example of a sequel improving on the quality of the original. Much like Francis Coppola’s Godfather II, as fun and entertaining as the first series was, the sequel improves on it in both story and entertainment value.

If you were given a sexy, busty, female android who would do anything for you, what would you do with her? If you’re anything like me, you would make her get down on her knees and give you fanservice. Not that kind of fanservice you sick minded person, but rather “fan” service as in using a traditional bamboo hand fan to cool off. Hey, it’s hot here in California and I have a robot that will do whatever I want! That’s the premise behind FUNimation’s fourteen-episode ecchi series, Sora no Otoshimono or Heaven’s Lost Property, where run-of-the-mill protagonist Tomoki Sakurai gets the chance of a lifetime to experience true bliss and yes, he’s a lucky bastard for it. At first, though, he finds the idea rather repugnant.

Fresh off her 2012 world tour announcement, J-Pop singer May'n's third album "Heat" is a j-rock and j-pop purist's delight. Featuring the songs "Scarlet Ballet" which was used for the anime Aria the Scarlet Ammo (Hidan no Aria) and "Brain Diver" featured in Phi Brain: Puzzle of God, the album is hot enough to warm any pair of frozen ears on a cold day.

Way back during the Nineties when the VHS was king and not Blu-Ray/DVD, there were tons of classic and beloved anime that were released into the United States.  One particular series, Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, holds a special place in my heart as one of the first anime series I really got into and one of my personal favorites. It is also perhaps one of the first anime brought over here to the West to incite the cyberpunk genre fandom for English speaking audiences.

Fate/Extra is one of the latest chapters in the highly popular Fate/stay night series by visual novel maker, Type-Moon. Fans of the franchise will be pleased to know the game scenario was written by Kinoko Nasu who wrote the original Fate/stay night story and most of Type-Moon's flagship titles. The game was developed in collaboration with Imageepoch who also worked on the Black Rock Shooter PSP game, while Aksys Games handled the American localization. As a warning, this review does contain a few minor spoilers but nothing you won't figure out within the first couple hours of playing.

Arakawa Under the Bridge is an anime adaption of Hikaru Nakamura’s ongoing work in Young Gan Gan. It was produced by studio Shaft and broadcasted in Japan on April 2010.  Nakamura Sensei is known for her previous work, Saint Young Men, which was the tenth best manga series in 2009 and received the 2009 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for short work manga.  Arakawa Under the Bridge will have a live action film in the spring of 2012 in Japan. Hit the jump for the full review!

The-O Network Online has been undergoing some staff changes as of late, and we're all very lucky and very glad to have snapped up a new anime reviewer, Ken Ohata! Ken will be laying the smack down on the good, the bad, and the ugly of Japanese animation, so keep a lookout for more from him. After the jump we have his first official review, Working!! Read and enjoy! --Stephen Bajza, Editor

Square Enix's beloved franchise is back and has landed on the Nintendo DS. The Kingdom Hearts series is a collaboration of characters from one of the biggest animation studios of all time, Disney, and one of the most popular RPG production companies, Square Enix. When these two companies combine, it's like magic. While Disney's games are pretty dismal, with the help of Square Enix, Disney characters can make an appearance in a deep RPG as well.