Hello welcome to my anime thoughts page! This is where I will put whatever reviews I infrequently make for anime I watch! I also put these up on MAL. ;P These reviews are ordered from newest to oldest! Thanku for checking out my shit 
Gal and Dino is a delightful little show with a strong main dynamic that it builds off of and makes for a fun time all around. Its a simple premise, a broke gyaru gets really drunk and then somehow brings home a dinosaur. Her and the Dino live together as basically roommates and we get to see their daily lives as Kaede (the gyaru) learns more about her strange new roomie. Its a very silly idea that makes for a surprisingly healthy and chill dynamic between the two and makes for a strong foundation for the show's stories to be told!
I think my favorite part about their relationship is how nonchalant Kaede is about all of this. She just treats Dino like any other person and tries to be considerate of them and understand what it likes. And Dino just kinda chillin in their apartment and learning about the world while also being very sweet in a well meaning naive kinda way. It really ends up with Kaede and Dino knowing enough about each other where they can casually talk to others about what they like and I think that makes for such a genuine feeling and fun central character pairing!
The other side characters are good too. Shouta is Kaede's ex who's desprate to get back together with her and its kinda pathetic, but Dino likes him so she puts up with him to make Dino happy. xD He ends up being a nice guy but was the side character I was least into. Reika is just a chill friend of Kaede who likes hanging out with her and Dino. And Nanami is Kaede's coworker who's sincerely awkward interactions with Kaede were entertaining. They aren't complex characters but the compliment the main dynamic really well and I think they add nicely to the show!
The thing that really put this show over the top for me was the multi media approach this anime has. It feels like the artists on this anime had so much fun messing with Dino in so many different mediums of animation! From traditional animation, to many different styles of 3D animation, to stop motion, even to live action, there is so much experimentation with this anime and it gives the fairly simple characters and story so much interest! In fact that simplicity is what makes Dino such a great character for a show like this. That fact allows the animators to mess around with Dino and interpret it in so many different ways with different mediums! I absolutely love this show's standard style of animation with its eye candy colors, thicker solid lines, and shifting line art color. It makes for a very unique and striking visual style that is very fun to look at. All of the animation is really cool and enhances the show a lot for me.
The sound design was also really good, especially for Dino in the animated half of the show. Dino, being mute, can not speak and only talks through body language and facial expressions. This makes Dino a really expressive character and how Dino reacts to things without being able to speak is where a lot of the humor can come from. Because of this the sound design of how Dino moves and expressive themselves is very important and I think the show nails it! Dino's movements are very bloopy and a lot of the sounds they use almost sound like retro video game sounds. This really adds so much personality to Dino and makes them very expressive even without saying a word!
Most of this review so far has been about the first half of the anime, the animated half. Just as importantly, the second half of the show is completely live action with real actors and a person in a bigass derpy Dino mascot costume. This part of the anime has a distinctly similar yet different vibe to the rest of the show. It starts of much more chaotic and strange than the first half with some intentionally bizarre lore shit going on which I found very funny. xD But as that dies down the tone of the live action bits becomes much more similar to the first half of the show, if a bit more absurd, which I don't mind but I found to be a bit boring. There also seemed to be random ass cameos from what I can only assume to be Japanese celebrities??? Maybe internet celebrities? I have no idea. They just like show up to do silly dumb gags out of nowhere which I found hilarious without knowing the context of who these people are. Intentional or not I laughed really hard at some random Japanese dudes just showing up and doing skits. xD
Another quirk of the live action segments is how they do the sound design on Dino. Instead of the gamey boops and blips of the main animated segment, they use like lightsaber sounds, rubbery balloon sounds, and air horns at different pitches??? Its a strange directing choice but it gives live action Dino a unique identity I guess. Makes me wonder if live action Dino and animated Dino are the same character from different timelines ;000
One other minor thing about this anime as a whole is that its very 2020. One segment is framed like a YouTube video, one gag was about video calls (this was produced during covid19), social media as a minor focus in general, lotsa modern slang and such. This isn't necessarily a bad thing to be apparently modern, I actually think the show's modern sensibilities add to it from time to time, but I do find it interesting and wonder if it will date the show for future audiences.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this anime! Its very unconventional and strange ,but it has a lot of heart and that unconventional side of it is what makes me like the show so much. Absolutely worth a watch if you are a fan of unique animation or down to earth slice of life silliness with an absurd premise! Such a fun show -v-
Do ya ever hear a joke and you can tell that it was well delivered and would probably be funny but you simply don't have the knowledge to understand the joke? That's how it feels to watch Joshiraku ;/. Much like most other comedy anime, Joshiraku has a lot of humor that is especially hard to translate into other languages, especially English. Japanese wordplay, politics, the anime industry as a whole, and the many nuances about Japanese culture are some of the main focuses of this series' humor. All of this combined with the fast pace of the jokes can make Joshiraku a very alienating show, especially to people new to anime or Japanese culture.
Even though I've been a fan of anime for years and have researched Japanese language and culture both for fun and for class, much of this humor flew over my head. I think its the kinda thing where you'd get it more if ya lived in the area. In spite of me having a skill issue, the jokes I did catch were super clever and overall the show has made me laugh out loud a lot! Many jokes aren't one time gags either, they often carry over jokes from previous episodes and play off of them in even funnier ways. I especially like the jokes where some character or random absurd thing is happening and they just don't acknowledge it at all and keep going on with their life. That shit is so funny and is the signature Japanese weirdness that I look for in anime like this. xD
I think I got the most out of Joshiraku's comedy when it focused on poking fun at the anime industry and is self aware of established trends and tropes! For example the first segment of the first episode is about how terrible of an idea adapting a manga about girls sitting in a room and talking into anime is. And while they joke about this there's lotsa subtle jokes like a character talking about how there'd be nothing to animate while they're super over animated compared to everything else so far xD. Or in that same segment a character calling out how people will watch the anime for free and pirate it (;3c). This kind of layered humor portrays an intricate understanding of those who view anime as well as the anime industry, which is what makes Joshiraku so great.
Another thing I really appreciate about this anime is the character design! All 5 of the girls are very distinct and memorable and they use their designs to play into some fun gags. I also really love their casual outfits! Whenever the girls are outside of their room, they are always wearing a different adorable outfit that really expresses their character without saying a word. Doing that kinda thing can be difficult as well as a lot of effort that can be seen as unnecessary. I really respect that and I think that good character design can do wonders -v-
Overall this anime has really well structured humor that you'd get the most out of if you are either Japanese or very knowledgeable about Japan. It also taught me about Rakugo which was a concept I wasn't familiar with before! If your interested in this anime I think you should look it up, it puts things into context and its pretty cool! I desperately wish I knew enough to get most of these jokes because if I got them I think this would be a solid 8 or 9/10. Even though there is a language and cultural barrier here, I think this anime does so much right and I've had a great time with it!
Pugyuru's entire identity is being extremely strange and being full of absurd comedy that strives to make you laugh through how weird and unexpected the situations the characters go through are. If that's the kinda thing you could see yourself laughing at I think Pugyuru is totally worth a shot! Its whole runtime is like a little longer than your average anime episode so its no huge investment. It made me laugh with the stupid and nonsensical situations and made me say "what the fuck xD" multiple times so I think this anime did what it stood out to do. Cheko's stupid, never changing, face and amorphous nature is so funny xD
Technically the anime isn't impressive. The animation is pretty cheap and shitty but the voice acting is surprisingly solid. The voice actors expressive and silly voices really add to the absurdity of all these stupid gags in my opinion. The characters pretty shallow but I think that's fine. As long as they mesh well with the gags I think their one dimensional personalities can be forgiven. You don't go into a 3 minute long dumb gag anime for the deep characters anyway
If you like stupid, weird, shitposty humor I think this anime would be right up your alley! However if you dont like this kinda humor I could see some finding the nonsensical nature of this show off putting and rating it poorly. The anime isnt particularly special or innovative but I'm happy I had a little laugh with it. At the very least the absurdity of it all made me laugh more than some more traditional comedy anime, , albeit with less substance to the actual show as a whole.
Simoun is a perplexing anime. It's a political war anime with a heavy focus on character drama, usually relating to their relationships with each other.
At the start, the anime throws a lot of terminology and such at you very fast, and it feels as though it's starting in the middle of a story instead of the start. That isn't an inherently bad thing, it can be done in a way to throw the viewer into an interesting situation immediately, but I found it a little jarring and hard to follow for the first few episodes. Eventually you do start to understand what these words mean and what's going on, but it took me a few episodes.
While this anime is about a war between two factions, the heavy focus on character drama made what the opposing side was fighting for kinda vague. A few episodes early on focus on the enemy side, but it feels as though their motivations were given less focus to give more room for drama between characters. I don't mind this focus on character drama, but I feel as though that had the consequence of making it very hard for me to get invested in this war when we really only see one side's conflict. Another thing about the enemy faction is that they speak a language the characters cant speak, which they portray with reversed Japanese. I guess this decision gets across that the characters are unable to understand them, but every time I heard the enemy soldiers talk it sounded awful ;/
Speaking of the characters along with the drama, at the start it felt like there was too much of both. Starting with like 10 main characters, and ending with like 13, it became hard for me to get invested and as a result I felt quite bored and confused. But as I stuck with the anime I grew to understand these character's dynamics and became quite invested in most of their drama, especially Aeru and Neviril (Left image). They're both deeply flawed people with intriguingly similar yet repellant personalities. Seeing them come together feels quite engaging and very interesting. I think my favorite characters were Rodoreamon and Mamiina(Right image). The themes of class disparity and the discrimination Mamiina went through for being lower class made their relationship my favorite. I would have really loved to see more of it TvT.
The anime also has a focus on gender, everyone starting off as a girl and being able to chose your gender once you turn 17. This was the main factor that indulged me into watching Simoun since it's so rare to see any anime with something so overtly transgender, especially from 2006. How is Simoun when viewed from a trans lens? It's intriguing, I think the mere concept alone is a great vessel to tell a story about gender. Early on in the story, it's shown that gender dysphoria is a thing that can seriously harm someone psychologically, but it doesn't really go very deep with that. There are also a few characters in the main cast that don't want to decide a gender, I find acknowledging that possibility at all feels ahead of its time for this anime. It's a shame that the anime doesn't really feel as though being agender as much of a main focus.
Although this anime can also come off as weirdly essentialist when it comes to gender and portrays choosing a gender as an inevitability. Men in this world get better jobs, if a character becomes a man they have to have short hair and boyish clothes and vice versa. Multiple times, characters will say they want to become a man to be in a relationship with someone. As if the show feels two women can't be in a relationship, and that one person must always be a man and one a woman. Which is especially jarring for this anime! The Simoun are literally yuri powered!!!!! Like they literally kiss and use their connection to each other to make the ship fly properly xD. It's a very odd double standard.
As flawed as the commentary on gender is in this anime, I would have liked to see more of a focus on it within the story. I think even more of a focus on these characters' gender identity and how that meshes with their psyche would have been fascinating, adding an extra layer to these characters and their interactions. Alas, the anime somewhat does this, but it never feels like a main focus.;/ Even then, for 2006 this anime tackles the topic in an interesting and not immediately hateful and stereotypical way and I respect that a lot.
Artistically, Simoun is very apparently low budget and the visual style can be slightly inconsistent. Characters will usually stand around or sit in place, not moving much, and most of the action is shown through extremely dated 3D models of the simoun flying around and drawing symbols in the sky. Despite that I do quite like the look of the characters, especially when they're given varying line weights in their line art, that kinda thing is very appealing to me! The character designs were all around solid, and I grew to appreciate the dated 3D models. As much as they stand out from the hand drawn backgrounds, the ships are well modeled for the time, and I think there's a charm to the slightly shitty mid 2000s CG look!
I also took note of the soundtrack. In many of the fights or preludes to fights, they use these accordion and piano tracks instead of a more traditional battle music. Some have said that this is unfitting and took them out of the fights, but I found this really caught my attention as a unique directing choice. It's as if the simoun are dancing in the sky as they draw patterns in battle, cool stuff imo.;3
In the end, I was very mixed on Simoun. It could have been a lot better in quite a few ways, but I think that there was an okay story and I don't regret my time watching this anime. I wish I could have liked it more.
