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I'll try to update this review periodically as more chapters are available, but it should give a fair indication if this manga is for you or not. There may be some spoilers of the first 5 or so chapters so that I can give you an informed opinion, but nothing too major.

To preface this review, I'm a sucker for the horror genre as a whole. The terror, the hopelessness, the gore and nudity, and how ridiculously over the top the genre can be sometimes. This manga falls solidly in "the over the top" camp.

We have intelligent killer apes that seem more like monsters than ... animals (Planet of the Apes meets Ito Junji's style), someone that can talk to animals, someone who gets off on gore, more characters with other zany powers, and a girlfriend that "looks like a grade schooler but we swear she isn't™".

Most people would likely write this manga off after reading the above paragraph, but if you are still here and the above doesn't sound like a deal breaker, I welcome you to another fun read my friends.

Even though the characters have about as much depth as a puddle, some of the archetypes are a lot of fun. The art is really nice and the gore is over the top and awesome.

If you like over the top horror that's sometimes more funny than scary, you'll find a lot to like here. As it stands now I can't imagine this being anyone's favorite manga, but even so it is an entertaining read that will tickle that special spot some of us have in our hearts for absolutely ridiculous horror.

This was the other TV short by Ghibli, along with Sora Iro no Tane, to be aired in November of 1992.

The art is more in line with what I expect from Ghibli than it was in Sora Iro no Tane, complete with an eccentric and immediately lovable mascot creature.

Even though there wasn't a background song to accompany Nandarou, it's sound effects make up for that thanks to signature Ghibli charm.

I recommend this for Ghibli aficionados. It's impressive that they can instill charm into something less than a minute long.

Say what you will about Ghibli and Miyazaki, but they know how to catch ... a viewer's attention nine time out of ten.

Wow! Who knew looking through anime from the 80s would let me find such a breath of fresh air?

This short anime, directed by the acclaimed Tezuka Osamu, is about a child that starts walking down the street and has to jump to avoid an accident. After that, he decides to keep jumping and goes higher and further each time.

The awesome thing about this (at least for me) is that it is all in first person perspective the entire time. Perhaps there were other anime shorts that used first person before Osamu thought of the idea, but this is the first one that I know of, ... and it's a blast to watch. The sound effects add a great deal of enjoyment to it as well.

If you enjoy the evolution of animation, or even just want to see all of Tezuka Osamu's works, I wholeheartedly recommend giving this one a watch. It is short, sweet, and worth every minute!

Here comes a short review for a short ONA!

Keifuku-san is about a girl and her manta ray creature in a strange seemingly abandoned (by humans) world. I think they are getting parts to piece together a world or something? There's not much to say about the story, as it is pretty vague.

The animation is primarily CG and it's decent. Nothing impressive to behold, but you won't find yourself cringing at anything either. The color palette is pleasing to the eyes at least.

My favorite part of it was the sound direction. It had simple, yet fitting, BGM, but the best part were the sound effect/voices. ... The manta ray flies around murmuring "kosho~ kosho~" in a pleasant whisper throughout. I know that hardly sounds praise worthy, but something about it is just so fundamentally pleasing to my ears.

This was able to catch my attention enough that if it were made into a movie or longer series I would check it out.

This is worth a watch if you have five minutes to spare and want to see something carefree and pleasant.

Key, as a studio, often finds itself in a situation similar to that of KyoAni. Many people refuse to believe anything good can come from these studios, and they decide that watching the anime from them aren't worth their time. While KyoAni gets a lot of flak for its art style, Key usually takes fire because of its melodramatic plotlines and character arcs. In this reviewers humble opinion, I do not think a show can fail for melodrama alone... when it's done right. Unfortunately, Angel Beats misses a few marks.

Let us start off with the high point, and probably what will draw the viewer to ... this if they aren't familiar with Key already. The artwork. While some of Key's earlier works have suffered from amateurish artwork, this series can only be described as beautiful. This is in large part due to the massive detail that went into shading. Colorful and bright for the most part, this anime can easily use shading alone to change the tone of a scene, as well as give life to characters and backgrounds. The only issue here is that some viewers might find the vibrant colors a bit too oversaturated. This is generally true, so I recommend watching some of the first episode or the opening video to decide if the art is a deal breaker for you.

Since I've started off with the technical side of things, I'll continue with the sound. In general Key's anime have a high quality of music, and this series is no different. The general BGMs alone are enough to captivate the audience even when the anime begins to fail. This is no surprise since Maeda Jun is the composer for the series. Then Key takes it a step further by adding in a girl band with some stellar pop tracks. The song that arguably rises above them all is none of these though. It is in fact the opening song. My Soul, Your Beats by Lia. Lia is very popular in Japan, and I feel that she just keeps getting better. This song is emotional and catchy. I still find myself listening to it occasionally.

All good things can't last. Now onto the negatives of the series, starting with the characters. When creating a drama anime, it is of utmost importance to make relatable and/or compelling characters. When the viewer can't connect with or care about a character, the drama moments can't pack the emotional punch that they need to, and the anime begins to fall flat. This is the case here. The characters fail for two reasons. First, Key picks and chooses which characters to develop. This leaves a large portion of the cast underdeveloped, which in turn means when something tragic happens involving these characters, the viewer has a hard time caring. The second reason is rushed/forced development. When characters do get development, they generally only have one or two episodes to do so. Because of that, the development is incredibly rushed and the viewer doesn't have the build up needed to care about these characters.

The other big negative is related to the story. The idea behind it is quite fascinating. A school in purgatory, where teenagers with unfinished business go until they are ready to move on. The first issues lies within that sentence. Teenagers. Regardless of the intended audience, the fact that purgatory is reserved solely for teenagers is silly. It also makes no sense why it is a school. This could work symbolically, such as "they are learning to move on" thus the school setting. However, judging from the story it is obvious that Key hadn't thought of that connection. If the sentence went "Purgatory, where individuals with unfinished business go until they learn to move on" then this anime could have been exponentially better. The term "wasted potential" fits well here.

Despite its ups and downs, I enjoyed this anime. The art and sound are undeniably burdened with carrying it most of the way through, but they do their best to do so. Because of how rushed most of it felt, I can't help but think that it would have benefitted from being a 2-cour anime. There is some entertainment value buried under all of its failings, but Key can and has done much better than this.

I remember first seeing this when I was 12. My mom let me rent it from blockbuster without checking the rating, and I watched it that weekend. At the time I didn't understand much of it, so I never put it on my completed list. I did like it a lot (probably because it was gory and had fight scenes) back then though. So how do I feel about it 9 years later?

First off, the story isn't anything new. Even for its time, the concept of an assassin group raising teenagers/kids into killers was far from novel. I do feel that this OVA was a ... contribution towards the better anime of the genre that would follow in later years (Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom and Gunslinger Girl to name a couple). There were many scenes that had me in disbelief, and one scene in particular involving twins was not thought out at all. The ending fit the OVA, but the execution of it and the open end left much to be desired.

The characters are barely passable, and don't have any development. At times their actions are downright unbelievable. I had a hard time understanding if the protagonists were trained assassins or not, as they made a lot of questionable choices when going after their targets. The antagonists fare slightly better only because they are meant to be seen as rotten to the core, so they do evil things like you would expect.

The art quality hasn't stood the test of time. It's not necessarily ugly, but unpolished. The animation has stood it's ground much better, and I was surprised at how well the characters moved and how convincingly the flesh... ripped. This OVA is definitely gory.

On a side note, this OVA is classified as a hentai. This is literally true, as there are a handful of sex scenes sprinkled throughout the total runtime of 50 something minutes. Yet, it doesn't feel like one. It is uncensored and graphic, but the scenes only last a minute at most. Despite what some people say, most of the sex scenes weren't necessary. Still, as long as you are mature enough to handle these scenes they shouldn't detract from the show. Just don't come here to get your jollies off, because it ain't happenin buddy (If it is happening with minute long sex scenes, you might want to get that checked out...). Surprisingly, the only scene of this I remember from seeing this as a kid was the guy shooting the basketball. You would think as a child with barely any exposure to sex that the sex would have stuck with me, huh?

Before I wrap this up, I'd like to talk about the sound. Perhaps it is a bias of mine, but I felt that the jazz BGM was a great fit for such a dreary OVA. I am a big fan of jazz music, but it has always seemed to suit dreary fiction set in cities. Meh, maybe it's just me. Either way, I don't see much wrong with the BGMs and think they were the best thing to come out of this.

All things considered this is worth a watch solely if you like gritty and violent stories. Of course I'm including fans of the assassin genre in that category, as this is a kick to watch if you want to see one of the bricks that helped build the genre to be capable of producing some original, quality entertainment. Unfortunately, this is neither original nor quality, but it still manages to entertain most of the way through.

When constructing a building, a strong base is important. Once a solid base is in place, you can then proceed to add the scaffolding, walls, roof, furniture, etc. However, if the base is weak, the structure will crumble.

I'm sure you've heard this analogy before, so you figure I must be talking about how the core of the anime, the story concept/idea, couldn't support everything the show did right. That is not the point I'm trying to make here. In all actuality, the idea behind this show is quite interesting. The problem was that the creators made a very solid base, and added it in ... last, on top of everything else, and crushed the whole damn thing.

The story revolves around the idea that when a human dies, their memories are stored in stone tablets called "books". So far so good. And there is a group of "librarians" that are actually talented individuals tasked with guarding the library. Alright. An early problem is that throughout the story, various plot lines are dropped and forgotten about, most of the time without resolution. So we have a tale that stops being told once it finally gets started, yet the anime manages to hold itself together by strongly using "Chekhov's Gun" to bring seemingly unimportant things into the story as things that really do matter. Unfortunately, once all of these intricacies come together, the creators seem to not know where they were going, so they make one of the most ridiculously, bullshit, out of nowhere endings in anime history. The ending phase I speak of is only four episodes long, but it completely crushes everything that came before it into meaningless drivel.

The characters themselves range from awesome to stereotypes to completely uninspired. Hamyuts is a blast to see on the screen most of the time, and Noloty is a character you come to root for even if she is a bit generic. The anime has a hard time choosing which characters to develop though. Characters we see almost every episode never get any backstory/development, while characters we see for 3-4 episodes get at least two of the episodes they appear in focused entirely on them.

The art quality and animation are definitely the highest point of the anime at all times. Fluid, colorful, and robust. There's better out there, but at least you have something to look at when the story starts diving into a very deep pit.

TL;DR: Before the final four episodes, I was going to give this a 7. Once I finished it I gave it a 5, then came back a week after finishing it and decided a 6 was fair. Despite the ending ruining the story (not because it was bad, or because it didn't end the way I wanted it to, but because it was utter nonsense) there is some entertainment to be had in the first 23-24 episodes of this. Plenty of action, and the occasional plot twist, though plot points are dropped and character development is spotty throughout.

When I heard of this anime I thought the concept sounded ridiculous. A highschool boy becomes the manager of a magical theme park in an attempt to save its workers from doom. To be honest, it is ridiculous. There's no way around that. Luckily, this anime is so fun and entertaining that it's easy to forget how stupid it should be.

The characters help this aspect a lot. All of the main characters get ample development, and a lot of the side characters as well. This helps pull the anime through some of its sillier scenes, and lends weight to what should be cheesy dramatic moments ... sprinkled here and there.

Both the animation and sound are spectacular. There are many memorable bgms, and the opening song is a good way to get fired up for the next episode. The animations and art are precise and colorful, with some surprising flair to be found every once in awhile.

I'm not a big fan of comedies. You could even refer to me as a killjoy. However, this anime made me laugh more often than not. There were some comedic misses here and there, but if something can make you laugh even once, then it succeeds as a comedy. Together with some pleasantly heartwarming scenes and endearing characters, this anime manages to avoid the trainwreck it so easily could have been. Worth a watch if you are in the mood for a light, funny, heartfelt dramedy.

This was the best oneshot I have read in awhile. It is always interesting when an author tries to convey the emotions of something that is unknowable, because that is when an author must push their imagination the furthest. How would the gods, undying and eternal, feel about this world?

I'm glad that Kataoka Jinsei, the author of Deadman Wonderland, shared her opinion on the matter with us. The story itself has a strong core. A god who is tired of living, and his feelings toward Earth. The concept is both strong and uniquely compelling, allowing us to emphasize with a power far greater than ... us, if even for a brief moment.

The two characters are two gods, who each have a different personality and outlook on things. The characters don't develop, and I like that fact. As gods who have spent an eternity watching Earth, I would find it hard to swallow if they developed over the course of the few hours this manga seems to cover. We are given insight into each god, and how they cope with eternity, as well as how they feel about Earth and its inhabitants. Since this is only 16 pages, it isn't a perfect picture. It is, however, a gorgeously thought provoking one.

Speaking of gorgeous, this manga looks great. The character designs are unique and interesting, and even the backgrounds and environments are given careful attention. I would expect no less from Kandou Kazama, the illustrator of Deadman Wonderland.

This is a great oneshot to read. It gets your mind going and gets you to consider the perspective of something greater than us all, if such a thing exists. One of the better oneshots I have read, and I recommend it to anyone.

From the time we're born, humans are fascinated by mysteries. As babies everything is a mystery to us, and we become curious. Because of that, as our brains develop we seek to find the answers to the mysteries we could not understand as babies. As we mature and grow older, we are each faced with a mystery that we want to solve no matter what. Can I be a good parent? Why am I alive? Is there any other life in the universe? Some of these mysteries we can find answers to, others we cannot. But every human is constantly trying to solve some sort ... of mystery, rather they realize it or not. That is why the mystery genre is one of my favorite. It taps into one of our most base desires as human beings. The desire to not only solve, but understand, mysteries.

13 Club is centered around mysteries. Sometimes these mysteries are solved, sometimes they are simply archived by our recurring character, Kudan. Luckily, they are always fascinating. From the first mystery I was hooked. While not always original, the mysteries are structured in such a way that they feel unique. The manga is not linear, and each mystery is separate from the others. The final mystery was weaker than all the rest, and raised some questions that weren't worth raising in the final chapter. The only thing that all the mysteries share in common is Kudan, the owner of the 13 Club website.

Kudan is an interesting character. While he is fascinated with, and at times at the heart of, numerous mysteries, he himself is perhaps the biggest mystery in the manga. We don't know who he is, why he is fascinated with mysteries, how he met his assistant, or anything else for that matter. We don't learn much about his assistant either, but to me I felt that rather than being a mystery, she was an unnecessary character. The one off characters that were contained in each story segment were almost always interesting, with a few being weaker than others.

Despite the backgrounds being rather simple (which, let's face it, is pretty common in manga) the art was well done. The character designs were good, and all of the artwork was sharp, clean, and up to snuff with today's standards.

If you are a fan of the mystery genre, this manga won't disappoint. It is an exciting ride through the mystery that is the human psyche, and is presented in such a way that it's hard to feel lost or bored for even a moment. Once this sinks its teeth into you, it won't let go. It has some character and story issues depending on which mystery you're reading, but it scratches the mystery loving itch that we humans are born with. If you aren't a fan of mystery.... well, you are lying to yourself, so get reading.