Hanime on Anime

Hello, planet Earth!  Sadly the Miyazaki May event has come to a close.  And as always, I’ll end this event by announcing the Character of the Month for the first Miyazaki May.  I’ll admit, I had a hard time picking this one out.  I had three great movies and a handful of great characters to choose from.  But in the end, I went with probably one of the most famous.  So famous in fact, that he is literally the face of Studio Ghibli.  That’s right!  This month’s Character of the Month went to none other than Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro .  Totoro is the spirit of the forest in a rural town in the Japanese countryside.  He later befriends the Kusakabe sisters, Satsuki and Mei, and becomes a frequent visitor to the Kusakabe household.  Totoro has a number of other forest friends including two smaller, similar looking creatures and the spirit Catbus-who looks like, well, a giant feline vehicle.  Totoro later becomes a great h...

Greetings all!  This week I will be doing my last review for the Miyazaki May event, but this review will be on one of Miyazaki’s greatest films.  This Miyazaki film is considered an ultimate classic in anime films and has created some of the most memorable scenes and characters in anime today.  I’d even argue to say that it’s thanks to this film that Studio Ghibli has the famous logo that it has today.  So what film could I possibly be talking about?  I’m talking about one of Miyazaki’s earliest films, My Neighbor Totoro .  You know the drill, let’s get to the review! In My Neighbor Totoro , the Kusakabe family moves in to a new home in a rural area where they can be closer to their sickly mother who is hospitalized.  However, it doesn’t take very long for the two young girls Satsuki and Mei to realize that there’s something different about their new home.  To add to the fact that the home is the residence of some harmless sprites, the young...

Greetings all!  Welcome to my second Miyazaki film review for Miyazaki May!  This week, I’ll be reviewing one of my personal favorite Ghibli films- aside from Howl’s Moving Castle .  This may also be one of the more intense of Miyazaki films in terms of content.  Still, it’s definitely one of Miyazaki’s most memorable.  So enough with the talk and let’s get to reviewing this week’s second pick, Princess Mononoke. After a boar demon named Nago tries to attack his village, Ashitaka is cursed.  His only hope is to travel to a forest in the far west to find a cure and investigated the circumstances of the boar demon’s own dreadful end.  He travels far west to find the forest and Iron Town, an industrial town meant to serve as refuge for prostitutes and lepers.  There, Ashitaka meets the founder of Iron Town, Lady Eboshi, and learns of the forest area surrounding the village.  After killing the forest’s giant boar inhabitants-one of them the ...

Greetings, people!  Today marks the first anniversary of Hanime on Anime, and the beginning of the Miyazaki May event.  As promised, I will be revisiting the first anime I reviewed for the site and be giving a fresh new review on it.  Kicking off Miyazaki May will be Miyazaki’s final work before his retirement.  It’s a work that I entitled in my first review as “Miyazaki’s Farewell.”  Though Miyazaki may be out of the anime business, his legacy certainly won’t be, and neither will this film.  So enough talk and let’s get to my review on “Miyazaki’s Farewell” masterpiece, The Wind Rises . Since this is a re-review on a film and I already have a decent one available and see no reason to rewrite it, I will be using the synopsis from the first review: “ The Wind Rises is Studio Ghibli’s latest film that tells the story of Japanese engineer Jiro Horikoshi and his life, up until his creation of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero- one of the most well-known fighter plan...

Hi everybody!  I have returned this Sunday in spite of my numerous projects that are due.  Besides, I’m a little behind after missing last Sunday.  Anyways, before I announce the Character of the Month of April, I want to thank everyone who followed my “Hanime on Autism” posts.  I really do appreciate all of the feedback that I’ve gotten from them, especially considering that this is something that personally affects me-after all, I do have Asperger’s.  This was by far my most successful event of 2015, and it will definitely be back again for next year!  Now with that out of the way, let’s get back to the other business at hand.  April’s line up for reviews was definitely promising.  Granted, I pretty much knew where this month’s character was going to come from, but choosing the character was another matter.  But I have made my decision!  So let’s get on with this month’s Character of the Month: Slaine Troyard from Aldnoah.Zero . ...