Attack On Titan
When studio sales come up or various retailer sales, we always get questioned across various social media locations as to what we recommend. To help with this, and to help raises awareness of the titles that may not be on folks radar, we’ve got our batch of recommendations. Everyone knows the next big thing that’s coming out and are pretty primed for it, but what about shows you missed that may have been released before you were a fan? Or one you forgot about that you never got the Blu-ray upgrade for? We’ll be polling our review team regularly to add and build to this list as time goes on so when never studio sales come along, we’ll have more additions to it with what we recommended you check out. You can also click on the title to see our news, reviews and clips from those shows as well as clicking on the reviewer in question to see what else they’re raving or ranting about these days.
The latest sale comes from Right Stuf who has kicked off their FUNimation studio sale, which you can see here.
So take a chance on something new, revisit something you haven’t thought about in years and enjoy all the anime!
| Shiki | Recommended By Chris Beveridge |
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| While vampire anime isn’t quite as common as you would think, a lot of it tends to play more for the comedy type than anything else these days. With Shiki, we get a full on horror show that’s done in the classic style where it’s about the tension, the slow but steady build to events and then the realization of just how terrible things are.With some disturbing imagery, intriguing character designs and a real sense of intensity about it as the mystery unfolds and it turns into the kind of old world style resolution, Shiki is one of those must-own under the radar series that demands attention. And it must be watched late at night in a darkened room to really up the atmosphere of it all in a great way. | |
| Spice and Wolf | Recommended By G.B. Smith |
| Normally, people won’t look past the cute wolf girl but that would be a mistake. Both for those who would simply dismiss this show as pandering to certain fetishes and those who think “ooh, cute animal-ear girl” and immediately think it will be good simply for that reason. Spice and Wolf is actually a very deep and engaging tale about commerce and economics…not exactly the most exciting subjects on their own. While learning the ins and outs of economic activity does not sound like the basis for good entertainment, the journey of Holo, the wolf girl/demon/monster/god and Craft Lawrence, the human traveling merchant is both a moving character study (they are both seemingly self-suficient loners who in reality want and need human contact) and a hard-nosed look at how people can be extremely deceptive and downright despicable when it comes to “getting ahead” in the world. You will learn more about currency exchange and the value of goods than you might think possible from a show set in a pseudo-medieval fantasy world featuring an animal-eared girl. | |
| Welcome to the NHK | Recommended by Kory Cerjak |
| I didn’t really know what to expect going into Welcome to the NHK, especally with its off-putting cover art as well as the really, really weird opening theme song. I mean, what’s with that opening? But what I got was a great distillation of being an awkward dude that we will possibly ever get and isn’t eclipsed by anything but perhaps Watamote. But what Welcome to the NHK does that I feel Watamote does not is make its characters sympathetic instead of pitied. Welcome to the NHK, compared to Watamote, pulls a few punches and build to a great emotional climax between two people who are, no matter how you look at it, broken. Sato is the hikkikomori (NHK stands for Nihon Hikkikomori Kyokai – Japanese Hikkikomori Association) that can’t even leave the house but to sit on a bench in the park, alone, dark, cold, and yet vast and warm to Sato’s heart. The person who brings him out of his shell, to the point that he begins working when before he couldn’t even leave his apartment, is Misaki, herself a broken little girl. Without spoilers, she has been through a lot that has shaped her in a way where she hides inside of her shell much in the same way Sato does, but for far different (and more understandable) reasons. In truth, all the characters are believably broken in Welcome to the NHK and that’s what brings these cartoons to life from the television. It’s all believable and not only do we care, we sympathize and see ourselves within them, sometimes seeing more than we want to. But by the end, we see hope. And that’s incredible for what was once a dark and depressing series. | |
| Toriko | Recommended by Chris Kirby |
| As I’ve stated multiple times in my manga and anime reviews of the series, Toriko is the best Shonen Jump series currently running that isn’t called One Piece. Filled with all the intricate world building we demand, the eccentric characters that we can endear to, action that hearkens back to the older days of Shonen Jump, and humor that is constantly hilarious while being extraordinarily bizarre. Like most SJ series, it takes a while to get going, but when a series is as long as Toriko is it’s better to take a bit to get going than it is to taper off and become terrible down the road. And Toriko just keeps getting better and better! | |
| Jormungand | Recommended by Thomas Zoth |
| If you’re a fan of Black Lagoon’s Revy, you might want to make the acquaintance of another woman of mass destruction, Koko Hekmatyar. More cool-headed (some might say cold blooded) than Revy, she’s the brains in charge of an elite squad of professional soldiers who pull the trigger at her command. Born on the high seas to a dynasty of arms dealers, Koko continues her family business in her own idiosyncratic way. This includes adopting child soldier Jonah as her own special bodyguard. The politics of Jormungand get a bit outlandish, but the action is cold, swift, and calculated: Just the way Koko likes it, The real selling point of the show is Koko herself, the rare leading lady of action, and a whirlpool of conflicting impulses and emotions. She keeps all of her conflict hidden behind the mask of her ever-present viper’s grin, but you can catch glimpses in the interations she has with Jonah and her other bodyguards, including know-it-all Lehm, and woman tank Valmet. And if I’ve made it sound too serious, it’s also a great series to watch hot ladies smile maniacally as they get into close-combat knife fights. What is Koko really after? Only one way to find out. | |
| Ergo Proxy | Recommended by Thomas Zoth |
| What a strange odyssey of a show this is. Years ago I picked up the first volume from Geneon, containing only the first few episodes, and I was dumbstruck by what seemed to just be a more confusing, jargon-filled version of territory Isaac Asimov explored decades earlier. I abandoned the series, not knowing what radical changes were to come and shake up everything I thought I knew about the world of Re-l Mayer and Vincent Law. Now with a complete collection available, you won’t make the same mistake I did. What the show is supposed to be about: In a domed city, policewoman Mayer is investigating a strange virus that makes androids become self-aware and, in some cases, murder their owners. What the show is really about? Now that would be telling! All I’ll say is that action is not confined to a single claustrophobic dome, or a single strict narrative thread. Experimental episodes with guest talent like Sayo Yamamoto and Shinichiro Watanabe explore different ideas and shine new light on established sci-fi concepts. I thought it was a bit of a chaotic mess until the final shot of the last episode, when every unexplained twist cohered into a perfectly engineered sci-fi saga. It was then I knew I’d be a fan for life. | |