A Look Back: Summer 2014 Anime (Part 1)

         Okay... this #Anime #review was a much bigger task then I originally thought so I'm splitting #summer2014 into multiple parts. I will be going through each title in alphabetical order. My impressions here will be much shorter than my previous reviews, but hopefully it tells you something. I may decide to do a more in depth review about the more popular titles later, but for now this will be a good "should you watch" guide. I haven't seen everything, nor would I want to, but I've seen a good amount of them. If you'd like to know how much I've seen of a particular series, my hummingbird account is linked in the "about me" section. I try to keep it up to date. Alright, enough with the explanation. Let's get to it!

1. Akame ga Kill!

By White Fox and directed by Tomoki Kobayashi who worked on things like "Katanagatari" and "Monster"

 

It is basically a shonen with some harem influences. The show is bloody and brutal. In fact, I think the show tries too hard to be that way. The fights are great, but the story is a bit lacking. The art style is good for the most part. There are times when they try to show extreme emotion that looks awful. I think perhaps they were going for a manga feel, but it just came off as strange. If you can look past the lack of story, and characters being killed off, you may like it for the fights.

 

Anime you may also like: Berserk, Brave 10, Attack on Titan
Should you watch? Yes.

 

 

    2 Aldnoah.Zero

 

 

This was by A1- Pictures and directed by Gen Urobuchi. He is one of the better known directors and was the main guy behind "Fate/Zero" and "Psycho-Pass".

 

This is a mech political anime. There is a lot of back story they just gloss over. The characters aren't great. Other than the aloof main character, none really stood out. The music by Hiroyuki Sawano gets a mention for being amazing. It is truly the best thing about the show. It has great music and it seemed like the animation budget went to massive destruction. There is some heavy CGI use in parts. Unless you are a major fan of Gen, I would skip the show and get the sound track.

 

Anime you may also like: Code Geass, IS: Infinite Stratus

Should you watch? No