Time of Eve

Genre: Sci-Fi
Age Appropriate: Any Age
Emotional Response: Huh
Notable Features: androids, human conditions
Language: Japanese
Length: 6 episodes
Overall Recommendation: Not for me

"Just follow the rule." - Nagi

Time of Eve centers around a high school age boy living in a futuristic world where humanoid-androids are house servents and workers as a normal part of everyday society. The news talks about different issues in the background of episodes and often hits on social aspects per episode. One of the major themes is the relationship between humans and androids, both negative and positive. Those humans moving toward the side of androids being considered more human are even called android-holics.

Rikuo, the main protagonist, follows his android one day, after discovering an interesting anomoly in her travel log. He, and his friend, Masaki, find themselves inside a coffee house where the rule is no discrimination between humans and androids. While in the outside world androids have rings floating above their heads to signify their status, inside the cafe no one has any identifiers. The boys find the whole process very controversial, and find themselves learning more each time they arrive.
Each character finds a different path in their understanding of android/human, human/human, and android/android relationships.

-----

Time of Eve feels like a mix of AI and I, Robot. Partially because of the human characteristics given to androids, and partially because of the result of those characteristics. It was a truly intriguing series, but I'm also glad it was short. I found myself struggling to watch multiple episodes in a row. I think, perhaps I would've been more likely to watch this for someone else. I don't think I would've chosen to continue it for my own personal interest in a regular situation. Or, maybe I just wasn't in the mood for it. I can think of a few of my friends, who are more sociologically inclined, that would really enjoy the commentary present about the human condition combined with technological morality issues. It was done really well, but it just wasn't my particular cup of tea (pun not intended, but why not?). I guess, the only disappointing thing that I found, in general, is that the ending was a little lame, but I should've expect much out of a 6 episode series.

Given the brevity of the series, it's a pretty short review. If you liked AI and I, Robot - or any similar movie/series - then I would definitely recommend this. If you didn't really care about them, then I wouldn't recommend it.

-----

Order Up!: High School DxD

The Mystic Archives of Dantalian

Genre: Horror/Gothic
Age Appropriate: old enough
Emotional Response: uhhhhh
Notable Features: demons, magic, books, dark
Language: Japanese
Length: 1 season, 12 episodes
Overall Recommendation: Sure, why not?

"...are you humanity?" - Huey / "No, I am the world." - Dalian

Huey received a letter from his grandfather that he's inherited his estate. This estate includes his very extensive library, with the condition that he take care of Dalian. He's actually under the impression that Dalian must be his grandfather's dog. It's not a dog. It's a girl! Dalian is one of Wes's (grandpa's) friends, who often enjoyed his library and seems to now be under the care of Huey. She has a haughty attitude, which likely comes for her real age and wealth of knowledge. While he seems a little weirded out by the whole situation, he takes on the role with a certain amount of grace.

Then the real action begins. They go to visit the rival of his grandfather, hoping to find clues that this rival actually had his grandfather murdered (rather than just a burglary gone wrong). In the process, they discover the household virtually slaughtered and under attack by a strange demonic-looking creature. It is the result of a Phantom Book.

There are a number of Phantom books, that if read by something "not worthy," create havoc and death around them. With the help of some acknowledgement and magic, Huey and Dalian are able to work out his role as keymaster and open the Mystic Archives of Dantalian, the magical library of everything that is hiding within Dalian, to pull out new books to defeat whichever book is causing problems. Their contact and subsequent defeat of these Phantom books is the driving force behind the series.
-----

Before I say anything else, I need to warn you. However weird and dark the series can get, nothing can match the end credits. They're creepy and nightmare-inducing. The music stays in your head. I played Devil May Cry (bought after the series because I wanted to get the story), as a way to get the music out. That's right. I played a game with creepy marianettes and sin scissors to wipe out the end credits....followed by a musical. Stay away. Far, far away. Unless you like that kinda thing, then more power to ya.

Mystic Archives is just plain weird. It wasn't weird in a can't watch it kind of way. It didn't completely turn me off, but I think I kept watching it out of a compelled need to see what was next. It was a bit like watching a car wreck. Or pringles. I just couldn't stop. I think that actually might have been the creators' goal, and if it was they succeeded. I didn't really get involved with the characters, but I did want to know what the relationship between the little boy and girl was going to turn out to be. It took awhile for there to be a reason for the story, a plot to appear. ION, the music is quite pretty (minus the creepycreep at the end).  I found myself watching the opening credits purely to hear the theme song alone.

I would actually recommend it for someone specifically looking for something of this type. Definitely not for girly-girls who run away from wierdo-magic-pseudo-bloody stuff. It might actually be better to watch in the fall. Yeah.

-----

More fun to come!: Vampire Knight (season 1)

The Sacred Blacksmith

Genre: Comedy/Action
Age Appropriate: Teen
Emotional Response: ....hahahahahahahahaha
Notable Features: sword, demons, magic, teen knights
Language: English
Length: 1 season, 12 episodes
Overall Recommendation: Pretty Good

"Thank you, Luke. You saved my life, again." - Cecily (x11tybillion)

The Sacred Blacksmith is Luke Ainsworth, but it isn't Luke that is the main protagonist. That would be Cecily Campbell - a Knight Guard of the Independent Trade Cities of Housman. She's a brand new knight, following in her father's footsteps. She trips over herself often, and has a hard time killing people. It takes a bit for her to be willing to hurt others - not to fight, but to actually take that final step. The captain of the guard gives her a very special job, of which he says she's the perfect fit for: guarding the demon sword Aria, who takes human form and controls wind in sword form. Cecily's main requirement is actually just that she's female.

Of course, Cecily makes friends along the way. Luke becomes a reluctant friend with Cecily's constant poking about getting a special katana for herself. Lisa, Luke's elf assistant who is mysteriously named after someone else, adores Cecily (and her breasts). Aria, of course, becomes Cecily's good friend and helper as her sword. Throughout the series, Cecily also finds great friends with minor appearances.

There are also bad guys, mostly of the mysterious sort. Valbanill is the end all be all of bad. The best equivalent is that he's the devil coming to rain destruction on the world. There is mention of Valbanill Wars frequently in the episode as wars that happened 40-50 years prior to the current storyline. The most devestating part of the war is the use of demon contracts. Demon contracts are pretty much what they sound like. People make a contract with someone who controls demons and they get power but have to offer up their soul in the end. The process is pretty gruesome. Along with Valbanill, there is "The Man in Black" who controls and signs demon contracts in the current time period and seems to be sneakily running schemes in the background.

So, that's the basis. Good guys (or girls!) versus the bad guys.

----

The Sacred Blacksmith is both fun and serious. It seems to be a running theme, right? There isn't actually much focus on the serious aspects until the last few episodes. Mostly it's about annoying people and annoying situations that pop up as vehicles to boob jokes, and the complicated relationship of Luke and Cecily. Aria becomes a more major character the further the episodes go - almost like the writers realized near the end, "Oh yeah. We should finish this, huh. But it was so fun!" They might have been able to stretch the story out, but I can see why they wouldn't.

The end theme is really poppy, but it's really nice with the occasional cliffhanger endings. Wipes away anything that might have created baby nightmares. Cecily is a good character for young ladies, as she's very relateable in her awkwardness. Luke is all grumpy growly, but nice inside. He made me both want to give him and hug and stick my tongue out at him in defiance. Stupid boys are stupid. Ha.

I gave it a Teen rating because of all the boob shots. The boob jokes themselves are relatively tame. There isn't much blood all over and the storyline isn't too complicated. Without the breasts, I would probably have left it a PreTeen. It got a "Pretty Good," because that's what it was: pretty good. It was a nice diversion, and I'm happy to have seen it for free.

----

Coming to a blog near you...: Black Blood Brothers

High School of the Dead

Genre: Action/Drama
Age Appropriate: Older teens+
Emotional Response: gross, sadness, anticipation, GO TEAM
Notable Features: ZOMBIES
Language: English
Length: 1 season, 12 episodes
Overall Recommendation: Not bad

"I like turtles" - Hirano

High School of the Dead is essentially what it sounds like. It's an anime series about a group of high school students battling the living dead, aka ZOMBIES. You can't have a review of anime series without zombies, right? The zombies are traditional, stumbling, bumbling, mindless creatures who only respond to sounds. The infection/disease is spread through bites. The transition doesn't take very long, actually. The only difference between this anime series and a typical zombie movies is live action vs. animation.

There is a set of main characters that meet up in the first few episodes; primarily focused on Rei and Takashi - a set of friends with an unbalanced romance. Each group member has a specific role to play: geek weapons guy, kendo captain, school doctor...etc. They attempt to make their way to safety outside the high school while picking up stray survivors along the way. The main focus of their travels is to reach each other's families in the hopes that their parents are still alive, and throughout their journey they ride on motorbikes, drive an SUV, jump fences, and have multiple group battles agains the evil dead forces.

I'm shocked, really, at how much I ended up liking this series. I admit my primary decision to watch it was because I realized that I've pretty much liked everything I've reviewed and wanted to give myself a chance to delve into something I wasn't sure about. Oops. I'm still not a huge fan of zombie movies, but if I had to, this would work for me. Perhaps it's just live action zombies I don't enjoy.

The characters are actually pretty intense, and when they're not brooding and yelling, they're doing ridiculously inappropriate things. Sometimes the timing felt a little off for shenanigans but they were definitely necessary to make it through. There are quite a few T&A shots, in true anime fashion. Good anime for typical guys actually.

While I felt that it started a little slow and depressing, by the end I was shouting encouraging things at the characters - because, you know, that helps. Some of those fight scenes were pretty cool. Given the zombie battlegrounds, there was plenty of grossness, but not as much as you might expect. I've definitely seen worse. I think my "Older Teens" rating is much more for lewdness than violence. Recommended for zombie fanboys and girls with zombie fanboy boyfriends - or zombie fangirls.

-------

Next for Mini-Geek Girl: Elfen Lied