Ao no Exorcist Mini-Review (Blue Exorcist)

Ao no Exorcist (or Blue Exorcist in English) is a great anime, if a bit on the short side.  It is a fun watch, with engaging characters and good humor, even if not the deepest or most poignant work ever.  I would definitely recommend it to anyone seeking a relatively tame anime to watch in a few sittings.

The basic premise is that high school student Rin is training to be an Exorcist to avenge his adoptive father, while dealing with the revelation that his biological father was actually Satan.  As a result, the anime is largely split between the 'academic' portion and the 'action' portion, like many such anime are.

I rated this anime at 66.6 points out of 100, which makes my review 4 stars.  What it lacks in literary merit, it makes up for as a fun watch.  And no, I couldn't resist making the score of an anime about the spawn of Satan, especially one that I couldn't make up my mind between a score of 66 or 67 for anyway, have the score I gave it.  I wouldn't have done it, if not for the fact that the score fell in just the right place, anyway.

Halo Legends Mini-Review

Halo Legends is a series of 7 anime shorts produced by  a variety of animation studios.  Several of these are quite big names, responsible for anime or manga such as Bones (Wolf's Rain, Eureka Seven, Soul Eater, Fullmetal Alchemist), Production I.G (Ghost in the Shell, End of Evangelion, FLCL), and Toei Animation (Dragon Ball (Z, GT), Sailor Moon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Digimon, and MUCH more).

I'm a huge Halo fan, although that bias doesn't show in this review.  I was fully expecting Halo Legends to be just a major corporation milking a cash cow.  I expected it to be crap, but crap that I would enjoy watching for ~70 minutes.

Holy hell, it was actually amazing.  Not only was it not a shallow action piece, but somehow they managed to achieve character growth in several of the shorts.  Character growth and poignancy, in 10 minutes.  There are some that are more action, and one that's comedy, but the overall grouping is amazing.  I rated this anime 93 out of 100, for a 5 star rating.  Ironically, despite what I commented above, poignancy and character development were actually the most heavily penalized categories (though they are still above average).  I heartily recommend this series, especially since you can watch it easily in a single sitting.

Ayakashi Mini-Review

Ayakashi is a lesser known anime, and is generally pretty average in most respects.  It poses an interesting premise, though it's execution leaves much do be desired.  If you're a fan of anime that focus on summoned creatures fighting for the summoner (a sort of pokemon or digimon like approach), then you'd probably like this anime.  I'd also recommend it if you're just looking for another enjoyable anime to watch, too.

Basically, these supernatural parasite creatures bond themselves to an individual, and can then manifest themselves into a physical creature by tapping the host's life force.  This has the expected nasty side effects of, say, slowly killing the person when they are physically manifested.

I overall give this anime a 55 out of 100, which is a 3 star rating.  This is unfortunate, as it had the potential to be much higher.

Neon Genesis Evangelion (Series) Mini-Review

Neon Genesis Evangelion, or simply Evangelion for short, is, to put it simply, a brain fuck.  The entire series is a train that has been derailed.  You wait for it to finally wreck, with a morbid fascination at each bump and jostle that threatens to cause it to finally come to a fiery end, and right when it's about to tip, it's hit by a meteor instead.

The anime follows Shinji, a rather pathetic young boy thrown into the middle of a battleground between giant mecha and giant alien-monster-things called Angels.  The focus is on about 3 primary characters or so, who collectively have enough issues to archive in a 20 volume set, and enough baggage to open up their own airline.  Add to this a world bordering on apocalypse, secret cabals, and an emphasis on Freudian symbolism, and you have a pretty good description of Evangelion.

I give this anime a 54 out of 100, which is 3 stars, though I wouldn't recommend this anime to someone looking for anything other than character growth and a philosophical debate.  The anime has some interesting moral and philosophical themes regarding life, individuality, and abandonment.  Expect to have no idea what's going on, even after the series ends, though.  The character perspectives are also intriguing, though much of the development occurs right at the end of the series.

Glossary

Mecha:  Giant robots.  Most accurately, mecha are generally piloted machines of war in a generally humanoid shape.  They are a common staple in anime.