Everything will be all right! – a Cardcaptor Sakura review

Left side: Shaoran Li, Meilin Li, Kero, Sonomi Daidouji, Touya Kinomoto, Fujitaka Kinomoto. In the middle: Sakura Kinomoto. Right side: Yue, Tomoyo Daidouji, Kaho Mizuki, Eriol Hiiragizawa, Suppi, Nakuru Akizuki.

Sakura Kinomoto was an ordinary 4th grader until the day she opened a strange book and let dozens of powerful magic cards loose on the world. Keroberos, the Guardian of the Clow Cards, informs Sakura that it is now her responsibility to find and capture the freed cards. However, much to the reluctant Sakura’s dismay, things aren’t going to be easy for her; simply saying magic words and waving her wand around isn’t good enough. Each card is a living, thinking, extremely powerful being. She’ll have to learn to cope with her new responsibilities, as well as ordinary troubles involving love, school, family, and friends. With the support of her friend Tomoyo and a young boy with powers of his own, she must learn how to use her newly awakened magical abilities to collect each card and prevent the disaster that will befall the world if she doesn’t.

The wish that one cannot fulfill on one’s own- a Wish review

from left to right: Suichirou, Kohaku, Shuishirou, Kouryuu, Hari & Ruri (the cats), Hisui and Kokuyo

One moonlit night Shuichiro saved an angel stuck in a tree. The angel granted him a wish to repay his generosity. Shuichiro said, “I need no wish, I can get what I want on my own.” But they’d both soon learn that some wishes can’t be fulfilled alone.

“So take me someplace far away; I want happiness” – a CLOVER review

from left to right: Suu, Kazuhiko, Oruha, A and C (Ran) – the initial four covers

Kazuhiko is a young, but already deeply wounded black ops agent of a baroque, retro-tech future – pulled out of retirement to escort Sue, a mysterious waif, to a destination she alone knows. Suu and Kazuhiko have never met . . . yet she knows him, having grown up since the age of four with her only human contact being two distant voices: that of her elderly “grandma,” General Ko, and of Kazuhiko’s dead girlfriend, Oruha. And Suu has been kept in that cage all these years because of what she is, and what the Clover Leaf Project found her to be — a military top secret, and the most dangerous person in the world.

Grief and Loss in Anime: a case examination of Puella Madoka Magica Magi, Mawaru Penguindrum and X

Whether you are recently introduced to anime or you are a seasoned fan, it’s highly unlikely you haven’t watched or simply heard about the first two shows in the picture above, because twitter, forums and blogs were abuzz and overly hyped about them last year. Now, it’s highly possible you don’t even recognize the hunks in the bottom and the anime/manga they are from, unless you are an obsessed fan of CLAMP or a MADHOUSE admirer. All three of them have as central themes the loss and how people face them. The important issue here is how these series present the themes and how well they handle them… 

Retrospect on CLAMP: In good and bad times…

5 things I LOVE about CLAMP and 5 things I want to complain about…

Their destiny was foreordained – an X/1999 review

The seven angels and the seven seals.

  At the millennial edge, the concluding battle for humanity’s future is staged. Kamui Shirou’s destiny has been decided as he returns to Tokyo to face his ultimate challenge. The Dragon of Heaven, defenders of the Earth, stand ready to protect the world from the Dragon of Earth, the seven angels of legend, who embrace the devastation of the planet to bring about its purification. Now Kamui must decide which side to fight for although he finds the idea utterly unappealing. It isn’t until realizing that his two childhood friends, Fuma and Kotori Monou, are in grievous peril that Kamui decides to step into his fated position in the climactic struggle of the Year of Destiny: 1999.

Do you love Tokyo? – a Tokyo Babylon review

From right to left: Subaru, Hokuto, Seishiro

The year is 1990. The city is Tokyo, a busy megalopolis where people are caught in dreams, anonymity, loneliness, sadness and crushed hopes underneath the fevered rush for success and wealth. Sometimes the high-pitched emotions and acute despair manifest themselves into ghosts and curses.

Enter Sumeragi Subaru, 13th head of the Sumeragi clan and a 16-year-old onmyouji. He uses his spiritual power and genuine compassion to help people, exorcise trapped spirits and undo maledictions. In this modern world, where nothing is truly black and white, this is hardly easy, especially because of Subaru’s tendency to care too much for people. His twin sister Hokuto is there to help him, to cheer him up, and to make him wear eccentrically fashionable clothing. Sakurazuka Seishirou is a (male) 25-year-old gentle veterinarian friend of the twins, who professes to love Subaru.
Hokuto thinks that making them a couple would be a marvelous idea, even though – or maybe because – she believes that Seishirou is the mysterious Sakurazukamori, an assassin onmyouji said to protect Japan from the shadows.