Review: Ai-Mai-Mi Mousou Catastrophe

Last year, I wrote a review of Ai-Mai-Mi, a short length comedy series about three schoolgirls in a manga club. Except, of course the show was actually about anything but three schoolgirls in a manga club. While I thought the first half of the show was bland and uninteresting, it did start to win me over in its second half. So when its sequel Ai-Mai-Mi Mousou Catastrophe was announced, I was interested to see if the show would continue to improve.

Let’s see if that happened, shall we?

Review: Wakakozake

Sometimes the elevator pitch of a show can be a really hard sell. For example, let’s look at the elevator pitch of the subject of today’s review, Wakakozake. The elevator pitch is “Woman eats food and talks about it.” Not exactly the most exciting pitch in the world. There aren’t any ninjas, pirates, or giant zombies to be found! So when I’ve talked about this show to my friends, it’s been really hard to sell them on the show. With that said, let me tell you why I love Wakakozake and why you should absolutely check it out.

Review: Pupa

The largest problem short anime face is trying to create a complete episode in 5 minutes or less. In theory, comedy series are the easiest to write for this format as punch lines can be set up and delivered in a very short amount of time. But what about the horror genre? Typically, horror requires time to build up mood and atmosphere in order to create a scary experience. So can a horror show with 5 minute episodes achieve that goal? Well the anime series Pupa tried to do just that. Although, that may not have been the show’s intention...

Review: Encouragement of Climb Season 2

The original season of Encouragement of Climb was a real surprise to me. Despite having episodes than ran less than 5 minutes each, the show managed to pack a ton of story, character development, and charm into its limited running time. It really managed to stand out among the other short form anime airing at the same time. However, because each episode was so short, the show left a feeling that there was so much more they could be doing if given the time. Not to mention, the ending left the impression that there was more to be done. As a result, fans of the show were left hoping that they would be given more time and more episodes.

Guess what? That’s exactly what happened.

In a rarely seen move, season 2 of Encouragement of Climb evolved from a 12 episode season with 5 minute episodes, to a 24 episode season with 15 minute episodes. Technically, that means it turned into a full length series. Needless to say, the episode and time increase was shocking. As a result, Encouragement of Climb Season 2 manages to improve on the original season in every way possible.