Jeff

Sticking with the movie trend, I decided to do a critically acclaimed masterpiece known as Howl’s Moving Castle. Again, I was worried this was going to be a girl’s fantasy anime with no action and no plot really. But again, I was only slightly wrong. Howl’s Moving Castle has a great story line, plenty of action, and was a total let down.

Howl’s Moving Castle
2 & 1/2 Stars

At the start of the movie, you follow Sophie, a plain girl that works at a hat shop and goes unnoticed by everyone around her. She lives in a small riverside market town. One day after work, she goes to see her sister that works at the bakery when she was stopped by two soldiers. They harass her a bit before a mysterious man saves her. He escorts her down the street when he is attacked by gelatinous creatures. He tells her to hold tight and jumps high into the air. They calmly float down into the balcony of the bakery where Sophie’s sister works. The mysterious man bids her a due and jumps off the balcony and disappears. Sophie is awestruck by the spectacle. She wanders into the bakery and tells her sister about what happened. Her sister was worried since it sound like a wizard, which to them, try to steal people’s hearts, and tells her to avoid him.

Sophie returns home at the hat shop and locks up the place. A large, wealthy woman comes in and starts to poke fun at the “tacky hats”. Sophie gets mad and tells her to leave. The woman gets angry reveals she is the dreaded Witch of the Wastelands. Sophie tries to get away but is stopped by the witch’s henchmen. The witch then casts a spell on Sophie that makes her a 90 year old woman. Another part of the curse is that Sophie can’t talk about it.

She stares at herself in disbelief and goes to bed thinking it’s just a horrid dream. She wakes up to find out that it wasn’t. She goes out to the Wastelands to find a wizard named Howl and this magical Moving Castle. Before she leaves, she hears that a neighboring kingdom declared war on them because of their missing prince. She leaves town before any military action occurs.

While traveling to the wastelands where Howl’s Moving Castle was seen last, she finds out the limitation of her new body and almost gives up. She finds a scarecrow that is knocked over in a bush. She sets it upright and heads off only to find it actually is possessed by a demon and it follows her. She is first afraid of it, but when it helps her find Howl’s castle, she learns to enjoy his company.

She meets a flame demon (which is actually voiced by Billy Crystal) and falls asleep in a chair. She wakes up to a young boy named Markl running around doing errands. Howl later joins them and Sophie finds out he is the mysterious young man that saved her from the soldiers. He doesn’t recognize her with the spell. She volunteers to be their house keeper.

She quickly becomes loved by the whole gang and gets involved in a scheme to try to get Howl out of having to fight in the upcoming war. She claims she is Howl’s mother and goes to the head sorceress of the kingdom and says he is a coward and wouldn’t be any help. While Sophie is at the castle she runs into the Witch of the Wastelands. But the head sorceress stole her powers so she is just an old woman with no powers. The head sorceress sees through the disguise and attacks her. Luckily Howl is disguised near by and stops the sorceress from harming Sophie and pulls Sophie and the Witch of the Wasteland to safety. Sophie takes the witch while Howl provides a distraction and both of them escape safely to the castle.

Howl later returns all beat up but safe, but with a terrible cost. Using too much of his magic, he has a hard time turning back to his human self. Sophie is really worried and confronts him about her feelings. He takes them into consideration, so he decides to move them to a safe location. He moves them magically into her old hat shop, but with some serious redecoration.

They live in secret for awhile, but the head sorceress finds their location and tries to capture them, but the flame demon keeps them protected. The war finally finds its way to their doorstep and Howl has to come out of hiding to save them. Sophie tries to stop him, but he just flies off.

Trying to save him, Sophie mounts a rescue operation to save Howl, but it backfired, nearly killing Howl and his fire demon. She finds out that the demon has Howl’s heart and she puts it back in Howl’s chest. He is fine and they find out their scarecrow friend is actually the prince of the neighboring kingdom and his disappearance was the reason for the entire war.

So the war ends and Sophie and Howl fall in love and wander the world in his Moving Castle.

Well, this one was… different I guess. I was first surprised that Billy Crystal voiced in a anime cartoon. Also another odd thing was that the Moving Castle seemed like a reference to a Russian Fable about Baba Yaga’s Dancing House. Other than that, this anime was ok. I was a little let down because it wasn’t as amazing as I heard it was. It was just a normal movie to me and the plot was a little weak and spotty.

Overall I’d have to say this is one of my least favorite movies I’ve seen.

This movie was previously mentioned on our site here.

At first glance, I was really skeptical about this movie. It seemed to be some third rate production that was put out there to make a buck or two. The basis of the movie looked like a normal girl with a bunch of cats, but I was pleasantly showed otherwise. The Cat Returns is a delightful story about a girl who helped out a cat and got thrown into an adventure of a lifetime.

Neko no ongaeshi (The Cat Returns)
4 Stars

The movie begins with a ordinary girl named Haru being late and scurrying off to school late like she always does. She arrives late and gets laughed at by her class and gets stuck on cleaning duty. Her life seems to really have no point and only seems to be getting worse and worse.

She was walking home with her only friend when she spots an odd black cat walk by with a little package in his mouth. They stop and watch the cat as he walks his way to the road and attempts to cross. Haru notices a large semi-truck hurling towards the unsuspecting cat and she makes a mad dash to save his life. Armed with only her lacrosse stick, she skillfully sweeps up the cat from harms way and they both go tumbling behind some bushes. She notices her lacrosse stick is broke and looks up at the cat, but he is standing on his hind legs and brushing himself off. Staring at disbelief, she questions the cat, and oddly enough he talks back. He thanks her and scurries off. She sits there bewildered by the talking cat when her friend catches up and starts yelling at her for her recklessness. Haru ignores her still speechless from the talking cat. Haru gets home and heads to bed to try to forget the events that happened that day.

She is rudely awoken by the cats of her neighborhood making an awful fuss at night. She goes outside to see what the whole commotion is all about, to see a parade of cats on their hind legs carrying torches. She hides behind her gate and watched the strange spectacle take place. In the center, guarded by four Secret Service looking cats, was a chariot carrying an abnormally large cat with a crown. The cats around him seemed to be his servants. Finally the parade stopped in front of her gate and one of his servants spoke up. He said that the King of the Cat Kingdom, King Cat, wanted to meet her personally and thank her for saving his son, Prince Lune, earlier that day. The fat cat finally spoke up and told her that she will be showered with the gifts of the Cat Kingdom in hopes to please her. Then they marched on. Speechless again, Haru decides to go back to bed in hopes that this was just a bad dream.

She wakes to her horror to find it was not a dream. Her house is swarmed by cat tails, her locker stuffed with mice, and every cat in her neighborhood follows her everywhere. Things just seemed to get worse for her. She is greeted again by one of the King’s Servants and he says that they will take her to the Cat Kingdom that night and she will wed Prince Lune. She seems intrigued by the offer of going to the Cat Kingdom, but she thinks it would be weird marrying a cat. She ponders the idea. the cat grows impatient, takes her delay as a yes and heads off to the King. She sits there worrying about what to do when a voice says to go to the “Cross Roads” and find a white cat and ask about the Cat Bureau. She doesn’t really question the fact that she is hearing voices, and she decides to do what it said. She searches in the “Cross Roads” and gives up. She goes to a small outside restaurant to take a seat and accidentally sits on a really fat cat. He seems to ignore her when she tried to talk to him, but once she said “Cat Bureau”, his ears perk up. He finally talks back and leads her to the Bureau. He leads her around corners and through alleyways until they hit a part of town where everything seems to be a lot smaller, including the buildings. She is introduced to Baron Humbert von Gikkingen, or Baron, a high class, and well-dressed cat that wants to help her with her problems. Baron also introduces the fat cat as Muta. Later a crow named Toto joins them while Haru explains her problem with the Cat Kingdom. Intrigued by her issue, Baron agrees to help her, but it was too late. The cats find Haru and drag her off to the Cat Kingdom. Muta jumps into action and sticks with Haru while Baron and Toto are left behind to catch up.

She wakes up in the middle of a grassy knoll and is dragged to the castle and is dressed to meet her groom, Prince Lune. The king holds a large banquet where Baron comes to her rescue and steals her and Muta away and tries to escape to the portal to the human realm at the top of the spire in the middle of the castle. The are stopped by the king at the top and when all hope seemed to be lost, Prince Lune shows up and declares that he has found another cat to marry. Free to go, Haru returns home with Baron and Muta.

 

As I stated before, I was really worried this was going to be a horrible waste of time. I kind of found myself wishing there was a bit more afterwards, a sequel or something. I really enjoyed this movie a lot. The voice acting was spectacular, and the art seemed it took some time to draw out. It was a bit on the cartoony side, but that just gave it even more charm. A great find for those cat lovers out there.

Enter a worn torn empire that has it’s Government corrupted and it’s citizens on the brink of revolt. It’s been three years since the end of the war against the Republic of Frost. The Army is trying to bring peace and give aid to their citizens, but to no avail. Thus, the Imperial Army State Section III is created with the sole purpose to bring aid to the common folk. The setting of this series takes place in a Post World War One setting in Eastern Europe with many resemblances to Germany and the surrounding countries.

Pumpkin Scissors
4 Stars

The Imperial Army State Section III, also known as the “Pumpkin Scissors” is lead by a Noble named 2 LT. Alice L. Malvin. In the series, the population is divided into 3 main categories. The Army, the Nobles, and the Commoners. The War brought famine and poverty onto the Commoners, and hardly affected the Nobles’ way of life.

The Pumpkin Scissors team is often the butt of all military jokes. They are considered the easy team because they only do simple tasks such as distributing food and calming the Commoners, rather then doing and offensive military tactics.

The show starts off with the Pumpkin Scissors unit, led by Alice, on their normal runs of scouting out villages and sending back reports. When they scout out a group of Army deserters that terrorize the local towns. Her Warrant Officers, Officer Martis and Officer Oreldo , advise her to take the easy route and report the location and wait further orders. However, due to LT Alice’s head strong attitude and determination, she decides to lay siege to the marauders. They travel to a local town to seek reinforcements and and advise on the enemies fortress. The stumble upon a tattered soldier that is well over seven feet tall and has scars all over his body. He is Corporal Randel Oland from the 901-ATT unit. Not much is known about him at first, besides the fact that he is a giant man that carries a lantern around with him. Corporal Oland gives his aid to the Pumpkin Scissors unit and they successfully take down the insurgents. They report back to base and make the Corporal the newest member of the unit.

The rest of the series is dedicated to showing how the Pumpkin Scissors is criticized by everyone as either a waste of time, or just a propaganda unit for the government. They start facing very dangerous tasks that actually put their life in danger, rather then their simplistic missions in the past they start to face many challenges where Corporal Oland has to use his mysterious lantern and a large pistol he carries around with him. The strange lantern he carries emits a blue light when opened. Many say it’s the Will’O the Wisp and it possess the body. He rarely uses the lantern but it seems to be a deep secret that make the Army go through a lot of trouble to hide his past.

Along one of their fairly unorthodox missions, they stumble upon what seems to be a huge conspiracy that tries to make the Commoners revolt and disrupt the Noble’s activities. The Pumpkin Scissors unit springs into action, led by their fearless leader in hopes to save a war torn empire.

Overall this was a very clever series. I really liked the post World War One references that where placed in this series. Many references to trench warfare and the first usages of tanks on the battlefield. The setting of a destroyed Germany was also a pretty neat thing as well.

The series and unit being named “Pumpkin Scissors” was kind of a let down for me. With a name that awkward, there should be some deep significant meaning behind it. You find out about 10 episodes in that the pumpkin represents hard times with it’s hard outer shell and the scissors are a special tool used for harvesting pumpkins. Alice links that to their job to cut through the hard times and hard lies to expose the truth and finally bring peace and reconstruction to their beloved Empire.

As for the characters, they all seemed to have their odd quirks that made them unique. Lt Alice’s background of being apart of the more well known Noble Families makes her job extremely difficult. Commoners usually call her contradictive and no good. She tries really hard to be strong and lead the under funded, and commonly the butt of every joke unit.

Oland has almost his own subplot with his past. It’s revealed that the 9 Units are a taboo and where kept top secret using the code name Invisible Nine. He was part of a experimental unit designed to take out the new threat of tanks with a 13MM Handgun known as the “Door Knocker”. They run into other 9 Unit survivors, all usually being used for evil gains and to demoralize the commoners. His gentle nature is unfitting of his size and purpose in the Army, making it a desperate moral struggle every time he uses his powers.

Pretty much a World War One buffs anime. The story line is also very twisted and riddled with many unanswered questions that leave the series open up to other series or sequels. Well worth the watch!

Having a horrid nightmare, Muto Kazuki dreams he was brutally killed by a serpentine creature while trying to save a girl. He wakes up screaming, thinking it to only be a normal nightmare. He attends his normal high school life with his friends and sister, Muto Mahiro, and gets sentenced to an after school detention for misplacing his school briefcase. He seeks out his teacher after the sentence only to find out it was the creature from his nightmare, disguised as a his teacher.

Buso Renkin
4 Stars

Mahiro comes looking for Kazuki because he was out so late, only to find him running from the beast. They are both rescued by the girl from Kazuki’s dream. Her name is Tsumura Tokiko and she is an Alchemic Warrior. Mahiro is unconscious from the battle so Kazuki returns her home and seeks out Tokiko again. He finds her in the old abandoned factory on the hill and she is locked in combat with a giant beast. He charges in and summons a lance out of no where and ends up dealing the final blow to the creature. Tokiko was amazed and infuriated at the same time. Kazuki had no idea where this lance came from. Tokiko finally begins to explain what has been going on.

Kazuki’s nightmare wasn’t a dream, he actually was killed. He tried saving Tokiko from a beast known as a homunculus. A homuncului is a creature with an embryo-like creation from a plant, animal, or even a human that has been placed inside a human. The embryo then crushes the brain and takes control of the body, giving it abilities that mimic the natural talents of the embryo’s origin. Feeling bad for him, Tokiko used a Kakugane on him to replace his pierced heart, causing him to live again. Hoping that he’d live to be a normal person still, she fled and didn’t tell him what happened. Leaving it to seem like a normal nightmare.

A Kakugane is a tablet that transforms a person’s Buso Renkin, or will to fight, into a tool used to defend themselves. Kazuki’s lance is his own Buso Renkin. People with Kakugane are typically an elite group of warriors known as Alchemic Warriors. Their purpose is to rid the world of homunculi and try to restore what is commonly known as the Philosopher’s Stone. Kazuki begs for her to train him to be a Alchemic Warrior. She takes him under her wing and tries to keep him undercontrol. 

They continue to fight Homunculi until Tokiko gets an homunculi embryo attached to her. She is diagnosed with 7 days left of human consciousness before becoming a homunculis herself. They track down the culprit responsible for her condition. It is a fellow student of the highschool that Kazuki attends. He is a genius, but deathly ill boy that is trying to form a human based homunculi embryo so he can live on forever. His name is Koshaku Chono, or Papillion. Kazuki chases him down, but is too late. Chono becomes what is known as a Super human and Kazuki fights him to the antidote to save Tokiko. After an epic battle, Kazuki wins and saves Tokiko from her fate. Chono is also saved by his great-great grandfather Chōno Bakushaku, or more commonly known as Doctor Butterly.

Doctor Butterly restores Chono from his decrepit state and recruits him into the LXE or “League of Extraordinary Elects”. This organization is made up of homunculi with the sole purpose of restoring a super Alchemic Warrior named Victor. Victor possesses what is known as a Black Kakugane, or a super charged Kakugane. It makes him extremely powerful with a power to drain energy from everything around him and use it as fighting strength. Dr. Butterfly manages to restore Victor and he wreaks havoc on the world. Kazuki tries to fight him, but ends up using all his energy and changing his Kakugane into a Black Kakugane himself.

The other Alchemic Warriors find out and try to kill Kazuki, causing him and Tokiko to flee. They try to find a way to neutralize the Black Kakugane while the rest of the Alchemic Warriors try to put an end to both Victor and Kazuki.

 

 

This series really surprised me. I was really addicted to it. The plot itself takes many twists and turns that leaves you begging for the next one.

The one thing that really stands out is the relationship between Kazuki and Tokiko. At first Tokiko barely tolerates Kazuki, thinking him as a child and incapable of understanding what’s really going on. But by the end, they appear to be in love. It’s really touching how all the battles and hardships brought them together.

Another thing that interested me about this series was the battling. There was plenty to go around and with every individual having a unique buso renkin with different powers, it made every battle fresh exciting!

Amazing series for the action fan or the romantic warrior lovers out there. A great series to get hooked onto!

Enjoy ghouling ghost stories? I know I do, and I loved the series Ghost Hunt. It starts with a simple school girl named Taniyama Mai and her fellow classmates telling chilling ghost stories in their class after school. They are interrupted by another classmate, Kuroda, who claims she can see spirits and that they haunt the school. Little did they know, telling their stories lead to serious consequences at an abandoned school right beside theirs. The stories brought spirits back from the after life to the abandoned school, where they haunted it. A team from Shibuya Psychic Research Center (SPR for short) came to investigate and Mai is thrown into a world full of crazy phenomenons and ghosts.

Ghost Hunt
4 & 1/2 Stars

Mai and her friends peeked in a dusty window at the abandoned school to find video cameras placed everywhere. Mai walks inside, and is instantly attacked by a ghost who tries to drop a shelf on her. She is saved by one of the SPR workers, Koujo Lin. He gets injured and Kazuya Shibuya, the teenage director of SPR, forces her to take his stead.

They work as a duo for awhile, observing the school for any ghosts with sophisticated cameras and scanners. They later teamed up with other psychics that are called in to help with the exorcism. Houshou Takigawa, or Buo-san as everyone calls him, is a Buddhist monk from Mt. Koya. His main job however is a bass guitarist for a big band in Japan. Another exorcist that joins the group is Ayako Matsuzaki, a head strong self proclaimed priestess that seems to fail at every turn and appears to be a sham. Also the famous spirit medium that has a show about speaking to ghosts, Masako Hara, joins the SPR force. Then finally, the team is completed with a nineteen year old Catholic exorcist from Australia named John Brown.

The SPR group is followed by Kuroda as she insists that there are spirits that haunt the school. Despite that the medium, Masako, claims that there are no evil spirits, and the tests conducted by Naru (aka Kazuya Shibuya the SPR director). They conduct numerous of exorcisms and tests, but they could not find the answer to the problem. Naru then used his clever means of implanting a thought to the the team and see if they acted on it. He discovered that Kuroda, had some spiritual powers and rigged the entire school for attention

With that case solved, Mia is allowed to work part time with the SPR. They solve very dramatic cases and put their lives on the line many times to seek the answers as to why these spirits will not leave. Mai is taught to do minor exorcisms as well and tries to aid as best as she can. Although her knowledge is some what lacking in the phenomenal arts, she tries her best to please Naru to be a worthy asset to the team.

 

 

 

 

Starting out, I was a little nervous that this series was going to disappoint me. Seeming like some school girl drama show toward the begin was a big let down. Once the show got rolling however, I found it more chilling then some of the big Hollywood Horror hits! The writer was really thorough in his use of Ancient Japanese and even Ancient Chinese rituals and beliefs.

Another interesting character in this series is Mai. She is a orphan school girl that is very head strong and voices her thoughts and opinions a lot. She doesn’t have any special skills like the other psychics at first, but then she discovers that her sleep is a form of telepathy that shows her what spirits feel and even their memories. She becomes a big asset for the group, because her telepathic dreams lead to the solutions of the hauntings.

Overall, this is a great series filled with tons of scary stories ranging from devestating heartbreaks to vengeful spirits seeking retribution. A must see for ghost enthusiasts and anime fans a like.