It’s easy to feel old as a console gamer. It’s not the march of technology, its when you realise that most of the real greats are now older than the average gamer, and I don’t mean stuff like Pacman. The Metal Gear series has been around for twenty odd years, although only available in English for ten. Now it seems to be ending, with a game based around the last days of its lead character. This could easily get depressing, but given the success of previous installments, how can it fail to be brilliant?
Often in anime, sequels are as much renewals rather than continuations, the same themes stripped down and retooled for a younger audience, sometimes retaining continuity with the original, but often ignoring it. Look at the many editions of shows like Sailor Moon, Bubblegum Crisis and Tenchi Muyo. Even the mighty Gundam franchise has been eating its own tail for some 13 years now. Macross Frontier seemed fated to follow this trend, as it was developed to mark the 25th anniversary of the franchise. Has it gone beyond that? And is it any good?
This series was a bit of a milestone for me, it was the first anime I saw at my first convention. I was pleasantly surprised when it appeared at the club. But is it any good? (People, who know me, know the answer.)
On paper, the developers of this movie seem to have been asking for trouble. Following the TV series would be tough for anyone, but setting it in a parallel world? With Nazi’s seeking supernatural power? Talk about tempting fate. Did disaster strike? Read on to find out.
The anime industry is a lot like Hollywood, in that you often get loads of variations on the same idea in a short space of time. In the 1990’s Hollywood did disaster movies, but Japan did space westerns. Outlaw Star is a product of that period, coming to the west at roughly the same time as the massively popular Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, but it certainly isn’t as famous. That isn’t fair.
Orguss 02, surprisingly, is a sequel to a TV series called Orguss, which has only recently been released in English, and probably won’t be released in the UK. Orguss 02 has however been in the UK for ages; dating from Manga Entertainment’s videotape days .Why should you want to watch an old and obscure sequel to an even older and more obscure series? Because it’s damn good, that’s why.
All little boys love to play war. What happens when one little boy finds an actual one on his doorstep? What happens if he tries to join in? War in the Pocket, the first of several side story type sequels (see 08th MS Team and Stardust Memory), takes this as its main idea. The real question, is it any good?