Banri HIDAKA

ANNCast - Viewers Like You: The Brave and the Old
It's a Call-Out show! You remember these! We chat it up about Gundam, Evangelion, good endings vs. bad endings and a whole bunch of other stuff, because that's what we do around here! C'mon in! 2011-11-11

Hey, Answerman! - Double Dip
In this week's Answerman, Brian, ever-vigilant, stands tall against the scourge of multiple DBZ Blu Rays! Then, he takes on yet more questions on streaming, and gets into a rambling discussion about anime being a "hobby"! Plus, a long-overdue return of The Flake of the Week! 2011-11-11

Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Dodekain
Jason fires up his BURNING PASSION and checks out a manga that featured planet-sized robots way before Gurren Lagann. 2011-11-10

Fate/Zero Episodes 1-6 Streaming
In trying to express the breadth of this epic war, Fate/Zero stumbles too often in the beginning, a victim of its own towering ambitions.

Skip Beat! GN 25
This latest volume of Skip Beat is just as compulsively readable as its predecessors, and it does provide a good boost to the romantic subplot. It's just too bad that that romance comes with a creepy factor attached.

Naruto Shippuden The Movie: Bonds DVD
Bringing in new directorial blood and heavier ties to the franchise's main body isn't going to help anything if your script is an assemblage of used parts.

Sakura Hime: The Legend of Princess Sakura GN 4
Most of this volume's action is in the past, but the last chapter sets the characters up for a grand battle for the princess. It is easy to overlook the lack of forward movement in the plot, but it still may be more rewarding to read this and volume five together when it comes out.

Gate 7 GN 1
If you have never read a Clamp series before, you have more of a chance of enjoying this one. If you've been a reader of the group for a while, however, you may find yourself less thrilled, as Gate 7 really does nothing new.

Yu Yu Hakusho Blu-Ray Season 3
The Dark Tournament ends and the Chapter Black saga begins as the series enters perhaps its strongest run of material to date. Still too predictable to be great, but pretty good nonetheless.

Dragon Ball Z Kai Blu-Ray 6
Despite some annoyances and repetitiveness, this portion of the Android Saga, which overlaps into the beginning of the Cell Saga, still conducts an involving build-up towards upcoming epic battles.

Tenjo Tenge GN 3
It truly is the fighting that makes the series worth it—the crushing in-your-face blows, the crackling bursts of superhuman energy, the intense looks on the combatants' faces. But how much longer will readers be satisfied with that?

Himawari! Season 1 Sub.DVD
A girl struggles to become a proper ninja in this innocuous and surprisingly clean 2006 series. Its quirkiness is mildly entertaining, but it only occasionally goes far enough on dramatic or comedy fronts to achieve better than that.

Rurouni Kenshin: Reflection Blu-ray
A sad farewell to a long-running franchise, as well as a very final conclusion.

Demon King Daimao BLURAY
This lively variation on the harem romantic comedy has lots of fan service and some great concepts, but its shaky plot is a hurdle which trips up the whole production. Condition yourself to ignore the plot, though, and this can still be an entertaining view.