Adventure Time with Finn and Jake
A kid and his dog have adventures. The artwork is very surreal. It harkens back to the early ‘rubber animation’ days but with a healthy dose of Salvador Dali thrown in. On the face of it a children’s show but with a grain of LSD in the mix. Odd but entertaining.
Ah! My Goddess
A not too successful engineering student through a rather improbable series of events ends up with a "Goddess" (more like a guardian angel). She follows him everywhere and it's the story of her getting used to living on earth and with people and him mostly acting like a total doofus. I really don't like to review a series without watching the whole thing. However average animation and bad sitcom writing made me bail after the fourth episode. It's gotten great reviews from others. That's why I was so disappointed: I was expecting it to be better. Unfortunately I found the plots to be painfully insipid. Maybe it's just not my kind of show. YMMV.
Akira (Movie)
After a huge war Neo Tokyo is run by gangs, military police, and corrupt politicians. Kaneda`s friend is hurt in a motorcycle crash and is taken to the hospital. There experiments give him mysterious powers. Is Akira the name of the experimental project or is it a person involved in the project or is it the power? Who are the children with ancient faces? Is there some knowledge that humanity is not ready for? Does power always corrupt? Violent, graphic, thought provoking, and superb. Make sure you see the original version in Japanese. A later English dub replaced the words and they re-edited the film. In the minds of many the later version is quite poor.
Amazing Spiez
When you take a successful show and remake it with little kids the best you can hope for is mediocre. Muppets were good, muppet babies was unpleasant. Bugs Bunny was great, Tiny Toon Adventures was average. Such is the nature of things. The remake is never going to be better than the original. Now what happens when you start with a terrible show. Amazing Spiez is a spin off from Totally Spies, one of the most annoying programs with offensively vacuous characters ever made. As you might expect the spin off is painful to watch.
American Dad
Proof that TV is not a meritocracy. They gave the guy who came up with Family Guy another chance. What did he do? Family Guy all over again. Dad is thinner, mom is blonder, the talking dog is a talking fish, the awkward brother is an awkward alien, and the misunderstood sister is a misunderstood sister. Other than these cosmetic changes the scripts could be interchanged with less than an hour of rewriting. Very self conscious, and clumsy. The creator must have pictures of Rupert Murdoch in a compromising position. That would be the only way I know of that someone with such little talent could keep getting his shows on the air.
Angela Anaconda
Stop Motion animation using photographs chopped into body parts. It is targeted toward little kids. I can not say too much about the show because the effect of the animation style is so creepy and bizarre that I have not been able to watch more than a few minutes. It is the animated version of fingernails on a blackboard.
Angry Beavers
A very old premise. Two characters, one emotional and not that bright, the other cooler, more calculating but only somewhat brighter. We've seen this in Ren & Stimpy, Beevis & Butthead, and many more. In this case the characters are stylized beavers, who get in trouble and have adventures. The writing is better than most of these shows.
Animaniacs
This was on in the early 1990s. Warner Brothers finally put aside the zombies of Bugs Bunny and Co. and came up with completely original characters. Hip, very creative, and not afraid to push the boundaries, it was a wonderful break from the doldrums of late 1980s American animation. The show was an ensemble style with the Animaniacs (the Warner Brothers and the Warner Sister), Pinky and the Brain (two lab mice trying to take over the world), The Goodfeathers (three tough New York pigeons) and Slappy Squirrel (an aging cartoon star from the 1930s with an attitude). A few of the characters did not work; Buckles became repetitious very quickly for example. Overall, though this show was a delightful discovery.
Another
Sakakibara transfers into a new school, grade 9, class 3. He immediately notices something strange. A fear is stalking the class. They act like one girl, Mei, does not exist. Secrets, whispers, and fearful glances are everywhere. There is talk of a curse on Grade 9, class 3. Then people start to die. This is a fairly well written horror story with surprise twists and unexpected discoveries. Toward the end it does become a bit of a teen slasher film, but fortunatly without any gratuitous gore. A few plot weaknesses detract from the whole, but overall it’s a decent production. The creepiest thing though was the end music. The singer sounds EXACTLY like a Japanese Karen Carpenter.
Antz (Movie)
Follows the story of a worker ant (Woody Allen) as he tries to get along and come out in one piece when the soldier ants stage a military coup and take over the ant hill. There is even a Dr. Strangelove kind of plot where the soldiers want to flood the ant hill and drown the other casts leaving the soldiers on top. Too poorly written for adults. Too dark for kids.