DVD Review - I ain't afraid of no ghost

Eat your heart out, Bill Murray. There's a new group of ghostbusters in town.

The first part of the "Ghost Hunt" anime series will grab your attention with intriguing scientific investigations of curses, ghosts and supernatural phenomena.

The story begins when the main character, Mai Taniyama, finds a teenage boy investigating the building next to her high school for ghosts and powerful psychic beings.

The boy, Kazuya Shibuya, heads the Shibuya Psychic Research Center. His assistants include an electrical equipment specialist, a Buddhist monk, a Shinto priestess, an Australian Catholic exorcist and a spirit medium on a popular television show. Each character has a special power to suppress the power of demons and spirits.

Shibuya determines the occult phenomena taking place using carefully deduction and keen technology. His crew uses everything at their disposal, from thermal temperature readers to hidden cameras and microphones.

This series most likely won't scare the bejeezus out of  you in the beginning. However, as the Shibuya Psychic Research Center discovers more ghastly figures to purify or exorcise, the series turns into a frightening, fascinating X-Files-style mystery. Mai even discovers her own psychic powers as she investigate with her new friends.

The series hits an emotional peak with the third case, "The After School Hexer." Their biggest enemy curses the students and teachers around a high school with voodoo doll-style hexes known as hitogata. When the doll with the victim's name is destroyed, the person suffers fatally. Mai and Shibuya run into some precarious near-death situations, even falling into a sewer.

"Ghost Hunt" makes for a great alternative to the boring American prime time whodunits. The anime features some unexpected comedy episodes, including a gut-busting romantic episode in the park. An airheaded ghost possesses the spirit medium's body and starts cuddling next to the nonchalant Shibuya.

The series isn't perfect. The opening and ending credit sequences are disappointing, with cheap orchestral music and lame computer-generated images.

The characters are undeveloped and somewhat goofy. We don't completely understand why all these spiritual people are working for Shibuya in the first place. People will also wonder how the Lord's prayer and "holy water" would actually weaken the powers of ghosts. Fortunately, the anime is more based on religious and ghoulish mythology, so we expect to see some fantasy stories in the show.

"Ghost Hunt" is a surprisingly enjoyable show. Although Shibuya acts like a cold fish for the entire series, Mai and Shibuya make a lovely team. I'm looking forward to watching more mystery stories in this anime.

Image courtesy of rightstuf.com

DVD Review: Killing people while eating potato chips

I've held back on reviewing "Deathnote" for about a year, because all the characters look so stereotypically emo. L looks especially goth and emo, and I really hate the entire goth community for being so emotionally pissed off.

Now then, where was I? Oh yes, the review.

Anyhow, "Deathnote" is an excellent shonen anime, with a gripping plot about a boy who can kill people by writing their name in a notebook. This review covers volumes 1-3.

This boy, Light Yagami, was a goody two-shoes law student, until a shinigami spirit drops a "Deathnote" book. If anyone writes a person's name in the book, the person with that name will die of a heart attack.

Light thinks this is a joke at first, but he soon discovers the ruthless power of the book. He starts killing prisoners left and right, hell bent on removing all the evil people from the Earth to create an ideal world. Light pronounces himself to the world as a god, simply known as Kira.

Fortunately, the Tokyo police have implemented every effort they could to defeat Kira. They hire L, the most famous detective in the world, who has never lost a case. L is so elusive that hardly anyone knows his real name. Thus, Light and L engage in a battle of wits, each hoping to outsmart the other to reveal his true identity.

This is one of the more violent anime series. Just from what I've seen in the first three volumes. Numerous people die of heart attacks or gunshots in the series. Although there isn't anything that resembles the grotesque gore in "Fullmetal Alchemist," this series features so much killing that one has to wonder whether Light has even a shred of humanity in him.

Thankfully, the series isn't completely composed of gloom and doom. Light has an especially humorous photo-opportunity moments, in which he epicly pronounces in the middle of one of his killing sprees that he's going to take a potato chip and eat it. And for some reason, Light's shinigami friend Ryuk, who gave him the Death Note, spends most of his time eating up apples. L and Light even engage in a tennis match, in which each characters is plotting their next move while they are playing their game.

While the series gets really overdramatic and over-the-top, "Death Note" is intriguing for the deep mind games which the heroes and villains play against each other. For example, L spends plenty of time predicting how Light will react, so that he can calculate the odds that Light really is the mysterious Kira. L even uses Light's deducing skills to his advantage, so that he can brainstorm what to do next.

And even if the characters yakkity-yak a little too long while standing still, they are very smart at predicting each other's next move.

Although "Death Note" is an overdramatic action anime, the characters still manage to pull off brilliant voice acting. Shonen anime fans may want to pick up "Death Note" just to see how cerebral the series gets.

Images courtesy of randomc.animeblogger.net

DVD Classics: Get Your Boogiepop On

"Boogiepop Phantom" is easily one of the scariest anime series ever made, with violent ghosts, scientific drugs and exploding kitties (I kid you not).

The series starts off with a beam of light stretching through the sky. Without giving too much away, a hunter vanquishes a demon in an electric beam to save a city. But remnants of the demon still haunt the unknown city in Japan, where the story takes place.

Rumors are abuzz at Shinyo Academy about a man known as the Boogiepop Phantom, who kills students at night. Although it appears to be only a rumor, more and more schoolkids are either killed, killing each other, or killing themselves.

All these murders circle around a drug at a prefectural hospital administered to students, causing them to see and hear phantoms. And these ghosts are definitely not as friendly as Casper.

Although many of the mysteries remain unanswered in the series, the cinematography of "Boogiepop Phantom" is incredible. The entire series is shown through a grainy camera effect and the color is faded to a pale green. And this series is oh so dark. Viewers will undoubtedly jump at the screams, intense loud noises out of nowhere and the bloody deaths of students.

And while nobody may ever figure out the entire mystery of the Boogiepop Phantom, they will be fascinated with the scary transformations caused by pharmaceutical drugs, the secret organization fighting these phantoms and the shocking scares.

But everyone will be shocked in episode nine, "Until Ure In My Arms," where a boy appears to use his mind to maim and explode students' body parts. Or is someone else killing them?

Image courtesy of espvisuals.blogspot.com

Review - Welcome to Kanon, world of amnesiacs

Based on what I've seen from volume one, "Kanon" is probably best compared to the sleeper hit anime "Haibane Renmei." Like that series, nearly all the characters are amnesiacs who only recover their memory in their dreams. Thankfully, almost all the girls in the anime remember the male lead, Yuichi Aizawa. They are all somewhat related to Aizawa. And they all seem to like Aizawa.

Aizawa moves to the mysterious snowy town, meeting his cousin, Nayuki Minase, at the train station. He hasn't been in town for seven years, and his own memory is sketchy. Nayuki is very close to Aizawa--she shows him around the town and introduces him to her friends. While Aizawa is waiting for Nayuki at the supermarket, Tsukimiya Ayu suddenly bumps into him. She grabs his hand and runs with him to a restaurant to hide.

She was hiding from a street vendor selling taiyaki, a small fish cake. She took the cake, but a cat nearby ate a cake from the vendor. Ayu was scared and she ran away from the vendor to bump into Aizawa. Fortunately, Aizawa took Ayu back and apologized. However, Aizawa remembered a pinky promise he made with Ayu when he was young.

While this entire anime is an adaptation of a dating video game for the PC, Playstation 2 and the Dreamcast, this isn't a typical romance anime. The entire town is a mystery. Almost all the characters are amnesiacs--they cannot remember their past. The most shocking image appears in episode 4, when Aizawa sees one of the girls, Mai Kawasumi, standing in a classroom holding a sword. Only in the preview for episode 5 do we discover that Kawasumi is a demon hunter.

For mystery fans, "Kanon" is a very intriguing series. Although this was released early in 2008, it could turn out to be one of the most interesting anime of the year. The white snow also contributes to the subtle mystery of the town, in the same way that "Fargo" featured plenty of white snow. While "Kanon" is not as good as "Haibane Renmei", which also featured an nearly all-female cast, "Kanon" is still fascinating nonetheless.