mDuo13.com - The Amorphously Collected Thoughts and Works of Rome Reginelli

Inspired by the trend going around, I decided to post a collection of brief reviews of basically every anime I finished in 2011. I'm pulling from MyAnimeList, so it's possible I'm omitting a couple things that don't have "Date Finished" filled out, and I'm also intentionally leaving rewatches off the list. Ratings are out of 10, but skewed towards the higher end of the scale because I'm less likely to finish something I don't like.

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Tsunashi Takuto transfers to a high school on a small island in southern Japan in order to sing out the joys of youth and find his father. But the island holds a host of secrets: ancient traditions and inhereted super powers, a mysterious society, and marionette-like robots that could change the world if the four seals restricting them were broken. Embroiled in these conflicts, will Takuto find his father, find the strength to protect his new and important friends, and still find a way to live out a joyous school life?

Though I had seen a couple of preview images beforehand, my real introduction to Star Driver: Kagayaki no Takuto came from a friend after the first episode had aired. "Have you checked out Star Driver yet?" he said. "It's so fabulous!" He was, of course, not just using fabulous as a synonym for good, but rather as a way of describing the show's aesthetic. Bright, rainbow colors. Outrageous costumes featuring epaulets. Conditioned hand signals and long transformation sequences. Star Driver is a show that is defined by this aesthetic. It has catchphrases like, "Your galaxy, too, will surely sparkle!" But even so, to judge Star Driver by this aesthetic alone would be shortsighted.

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Studio Deen brings us a 12-episode adaptation of light novel series "Is This a Zombie?" about a high schooler, Aikawa Ayumu, who recently became a zombie, and the bizarre girls surrounding him, including Masou-Shoujo (magiclothes girls), Vampire Ninjas, and the mysterious Necromancer Eucliwood Hellscythe who raised Ayumu from the dead after he became a victim of the neighborhood serial killer.

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Fractale is an 11-episode series from A-1 Pictures, set in a future where everyday life is moderated by the "Fractale System" that provides for everyday needs and allows augmented reality projections worldwide. Clain is an ordinary boy who's a little disillusioned by the system, but after being visited by a mysterious girl, he embarks on a journey to find the truth behind the Fractale System and those who would oppose it.

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Dennou Coil is a 2007 anime by Madhouse, cryptically subtitled COIL A CIRCLE OF CHILDREN, which indeed follows a circle of children (and some adults) involved with mysteries related to cyberspace-viewing glasses and the strange beings reflected in them. Along the way it manages to explore themes of compassion, coming of age, and the nature of reality. The show's also known as Cyber Coil, which makes sense because attaching den- (electric- or cyber-) to the front of anything and everything is kind of a running theme.

As a quick aside, I had been kind of thinking about watching this show for a while, but receiving it as a recommendation Reverse Thieves' Anime Blog Secret Santa project was the impetus that forced me to get around to it. I also intend to watch and maybe review the two other recommendations I received, the Ghibli-sans-Miyazaki1 movie Only Yesterday and Yoshitoshi ABe's classic Haibane Renmei — but not before Christmas. As it is, with this season of anime being particularly above average in the number of enjoyable shows, and DJ Max Technika 2 also releasing around Thanksgiving and subsequently commanding a shameful amount of my time, I ended up putting off the show until the last few days and watching 23 of the 26 episodes in a whirlwind of 2 days.

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Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin, or just Occult Academy, is a recent series by Aniplex studio A-1 Pictures, part of their "Anime no Chikara" project that also includes So-Ra-No-Wo-To and Ichiban Ushiro no Daimao, with the goal of creating quality original anime series (not based on manga or other works). Set in 1999, follows Kumashiro Maya, heir to a school that specializes in the occult, and Abe Fumiaki, an ex-psychic who has been sent from 13 years in the future to search out and destroy "Nostradamus's Key", the artifact that will cause an catastrophic dimensional rift on the 21st of July. Aside: I like how the time travel in this show almost becomes 12 Monkeys and Back to the Future - two competing models for cinematic time travel - at the same time!

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