It has been a remarkable ride following this series for so long, and looking back at how The World God Only Knows has impacted the anime community, it’s not far off to say that it changed harem anime as we know it. It shows that you don’t need to show girls in suggestive situations all the time to provoke entertainment or emotion into your harem. Sometimes all you need is genuine emotion and intelligent comedic writing to create a meaningful love story. Or, in this case, multiple love stories.
Whether disturbing or not, any subject matter should not be shied away from being written into a story narrative because it’s too dark for the mainstream audience to handle. Since the last century, almost all the well-regarded films have implemented controversial social commentary and brought about heavy subject matter that involves sex, violence, and political corruption. These days we don’t often see anime take advantage of showing people the profound impact our world has within the dark deception of our own universal culture. Gunslinger Girl will leave some people with a sour taste in their mouths; whether they were expecting action-packed girls with guns show, as the title Gunslinger Girl represents just by saying it aloud, or because of the disturbing nature of the characters. However, the actual argument is how it handles developing those themes and characters mentioned beforehand.
With a genre that deals with many action set-pieces, a show of this specific genre is usually bogged down into mindless entertainment territory with absolutely no substance to it at all. There have been in the past many action films and TV shows that have shown to become competent in the history of film-making, examples in mind are the works of John Woo, Michael Mann, and Quentin Tarantino. But what if I told you that there is an anime show that encompasses everything that is great about those three directors and succeeds on every possible level? The show in question is Black Lagoon, a show that showcases a blend of mindless Hollywood action and juvenile humor in the best possible sense of the word juvenile. Continue reading
Wolves are beautiful creatures to look at. You see them creeping around the woods with their pack and ruling the territory that they claim as their own. There is no doubt that they have been the focal point in some anime shows over the years, but when have you seen them being used as an intelligent focal point in a show’s narrative? Outcomes Spice and Wolf, a tale that follows two of our heroes in their journey involving mercantilism, convinces us that you can pull off a simple concept and make something brilliant out of it. Continue reading
When there is beauty in life, a utopia lies beyond the horizon.
The utopia in question would be Gargantia, the setting in the show Suisei no Gargantia is centered. We are thrust into a world with no boundaries, no territories, and no international law anymore. It’s just the endless sight of oceanic currents and the clear blue sky. It’s not often we get a mecha anime with this amount of ambiance or majestic atmosphere that could almost be as close to Aria quality to a bit degree. Going into this show to form my opinion of a positive or negative nature is still hard to express because the anime is excellent in quality, but it could have been a masterpiece in the grand scheme of things. Continue reading
Gonzy's Anime Love Shack 