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Operation Sanctuary has a Lupin III-homaging car chase and some time travel stuff at the end. Is it actually good?

Wait a minute, this is an eroge adaptation, right? Was I actually expecting it to be good? HAHAHAHAHAHA

As anime fans, we've all heard of Nyan Neko Sugar Girls. Some of us have even seen it to the end and yes, we can confirm that it is the best animated series ever, surpassing the likes of LOGH and Disney's golden era. But building up to that pinnacle of art was crap like Operation Sanctuary.

I struggle to call this a harem or a romance anime (even though ... it technically is) because the characters are so freaking bland and lifeless they're barely capable of emoting. Operation Sanctuary is a thesis on why slice of life/high school anime are bad, and it's because they're nothing like a slice of real life and humanity! All the characters stand lifelessly doing nothing, while the plot goes by idly. It's like these characters are alien observers on Earth or zombies waiting to strike. Indeed, they are zombies who rot the brains of the viewers with coma-inducing boredom, an incredible feat for an anime with 10-minute episodes.

Like August's other eroge adaptation, Crescent Love, this has a sci-fi twist at the end. This could have been cool if the entire plot was about it and it wasn't delivered via the dreaded infodumps! Oh, infodumps! How you manage to make time travel and what should be a deeply human story filled with difficult decisions into bland, cookie cutter slop! This is so poorly executed that the last episodes aren't even worth watching for the twist!

Radix does manage to show off their "distinctive" visuals here a few times. The beginning has a lazy CGI effect, and there's lots of color oversaturation and reflection. The character designs also have this weird 2000s feeling you don't see much anymore and, combined with the primary colors, are somewhat appealing for moe art. Sadly, none of that makes this show remotely interesting.

Operation Sanctuary is pure timeslot filler and it shouldn't be seen as anything else.

This is bizarre in the bad way. It's a mishmash of disparate elements that ends up feeling like a postmodern abstract art piece.

An artistic, disco, anime version of Ovid shouldn't be bad, but those elements were thrown together haphazardly! We get a bunch of characters who look like they were designed by Tezuka observing incredibly surrealist vignettes that feel like they end as soon as they start, all to the soundtrack from first Gundam. The animation is very poor to boot, especially compared to Toei's feature films. I tried to convince myself I wasn't in the right headspace to appreciate this film or that ... my expectations were too high, but no, this is just a turd. It's a real shame since all of Sanrio's other animated features are great. I guess every creator has their flub, and this was Sanrio's.

When I was first getting deep into anime, I found this utter obscurity. Intrigued that I had found a series that seemingly nobody had heard of or discussed, I watched it, and I was immediately flashed with a fourth grader's giant bouncing breasts.

That is the main reason for my distaste for this anime: it sexualizes characters explicitly stated to be children. I know it's fictional and that fictional character ages can be arbitrary, so this means I either have to completely disengage from the story and see it as nothing but random squiggles in sequence, or I have to watch something extremely creepy. Neither ... are useful or enjoyable.

Furthermore, this is a TV adaptation of a legally distinct Rule 34/lewd fanfiction eroge of Cardcaptor Sakura. I mention Sakura because Chihaya, our main character, has a similar hairstyle and weapon. The sad thing is that, despite the distasteful elements, there is a story with potential underneath all this: there is an evil mahou shoujo, minimal characterization/greyness for the villains, and the helper creature (who looks like a purple Terriermon) is the love interest. This would make for a great season of Precure, and, with only 12 episodes instead of 50, this could have been a well-paced and interesting series! But, alas, it did what all seasonal anime do, which is have FILLER EPISODES! Yes, there are several episodes here where absolutely NOTHING, not even a monster fight, happens! There's even one episode where the characters go to Akihabara, because this is anime and Akihabara has lots of anime shops, geddit? This ends up making the story rushed in the last few episodes and ultimately unsubstantial and ho-hum.

Magical Canan is not only wasted potential, but also creepy. It is a dumpster fire of a show, and it deserves its obscurity. Thank God we are out of the time when every eroge with something of a following was getting a TV show!

Man, was this a bait and switch! I expected a shoujo anime about idol hackers; I got a fanservicey CGDCT anime.

All the mysteries involving Yui and the disappearing idols are resolved in an infodump in the middle of the series. Occasionally you'll see some cool flip phone designs, and the idols have a futuristic-looking tour van that appears once or twice, but that's it as far as the cyberhacking or this show being in the future go. The rest of the series is pure moe filler with some occasional idol concerts and fanservice scenes. None of the characters are well written; they're cardboard cutouts ... with different backstories and traits to differentiate themselves. They don't even have personalities! It's like watching a painfully unfunny, deliberately boring version of Hannah Montana! Because this series was made before Kyoani's rise to fame, the series attempts to incorporate J-Drama elements involving the idol industry on top of the moe, albeit unsubstantially and for a fake sense of story progression and tension.

What's interesting is that this series ended up predicting two huge anime trends before they went mainstream: this is a slice of life idol series before Aikatsu/Love Live/etc made that genre big, and the main character is a blue-haired girl with long ponytails! A time traveler must have come back to 2006 to make Lemon Angel Project in hopes that Radix would claim the successes of Hatsune Miku and Love Live for themselves!

Even though this is a Radix anime, it sure doesn't look like it! There are no weird uses of CGI except for a single CGI light rig, and the coloring is far less saturated and the characters don't have weird reflective skin. This series just looks like a regular, poorly preserved 2000s anime, so not even the visuals are interesting.

Even though this is the type of story and series that would appeal to little girls, this is made for grown men! It was aired in a programming block, Anime Spirits, that mainly specialized in fanservice anime, including Godannar and Radix's Divergence Eve and Heretical Love Hour, and eroge adaptations, including Radix's HaniHani, Wind: A Breath of Heart, and Comic Party Revolution. The anime is a homage to the real life 1980s idol group Lemon Angel, best known for creating TV tie-in shorts with Cream Lemon. Indeed, this seems to be the flagship of an attempt Radix was making to reboot Cream Lemon, since in this anime, the main character's VA also plays the (separate) main character of Radix's Cream Lemon OVAs. And, fun fact, this VA, Ryou Shihono, took on these roles when she was 15! And as part of a promotion for the Lemon Angel Project anime, the producers launched a podcast where Shihono would read letters from viewers, including lewd ones! Yuck!

Lemon Angel Project is trash of the highest order, which I only remember because the songs are so darn catchy. WATASHI DAKE, MITSUMETE YO- stop it, earworm! So, enjoy the songs on Youtube, but avoid this creepy snoozefest of a show. It's a shame, because this could have been peak 2000s Fruitiger Aero futurism and a decent shoujo series at the same time. Even if you're a Radix completionist, you won't get anything out of this.

Here we have it. The last mecha anime released under the name Gainax.

Despite being a regional copromotion, this is great! This is about battleship girls that can transform into giant battleship robots and fight interdimensional invaders. The robots look like they came from G-Reco (I'd be curious if Gyobu actually designed them), and they're hand-drawn! You get CGI seagulls in the opening and after that, it's all stylus-and-tablet drawings! By the way, the hero's robot is powered by a stationary bike.

The fights are nothing short of epic, intense, desperate, and high stakes. No Lelouchian tactics, just awesome attacks on the monsters! It's very retro! ... However, there is a lot of high school/slice of life filler and a harem setup with the male lead between these fights. It's not necessary and it's boring, mind-rotting filler.

In the 80s and 90s, many ambitious, cool OVAs got cancelled due to poor performance. Sadly, this has persisted into the ONA age. The third episode ends on a cliffhanger that will never be resolved, especially not now that Gaina has become an AI animation studio mass-producing AI isekai slop. I haven't seen any Japanese otaku mention this series, so it probably got cancelled just because it was poorly promoted. This could have been fixed if Gainax had gotten a Good Smile copromotion, but alas.

If you want some cool robot fights and don't mind filler, definitely try this! Did I mention the theme song is hype?

Despite probably being made as part of a money laundering scheme, this anime is beautiful.

Regional copromotion anime tend to be pure wastes of time. This show, however, is a series of excellent vignettes about life in Fukushima, from the comedic to the tragic. It uses a variety of artstyles, from standard TV anime to watercolors to paper cutouts to thick-outline characters to CGI cube people.

The standard anime style vignettes are pretty cringe, but everything else is a visual and emotional feast, about the struggles of rebuilding, living, and growing after a modern-day Chernobyl incident. Many of them aren't even about Fukushima; they're just great ... art pieces on their own. Gainax must have given their artists a lot of freedom to tell the stories they wanted to tell. Every anime studio probably has artists like these, and it's a shame they don't get to share these stories outside short films like this.

Mitsuo Fukuda's return to full-on anime direction after SEED Destiny was . . . a mobile game ad that took three years to make!

Sadly, very few of Fukuda's stylistic hallmarks are present. There's a flashback in the second episode, the third episode has a mystical ruler standing on a rock in space (like Embyro in Cross Ange), and the first ED is a slideshow, but those things are common in many other anime. The real Fukuda-ness isn't there. There's no hilariously bad melodrama. There's no wooden yet impassioned character writing. There's no cool stock footage. There are no intense, impossible situations. There are no homages ... to or plagiarisms of old Fukuda shows and other shows Fukuda likes. In other words, this is a bland, average modern anime! Ugh! Why couldn't you have made easy fodder like a mobage ad into something you can love to hate, Fukuda?! You have no problem doing that with literally any other show you touch!

Despite being 30 minutes, this manages to be complete filler. The second episode introduces a giant robotic monster hidden underground, and the third episode, which could have been a great battle with it, ended up being the blandest, most low-stakes fight ever. The only thing I remember is that the monster shot lasers from all over its body, which, considering that this is also a Gainax anime, I'm tempted to label as a reference to Gunbuster or Ideon, but thanks to Ideon, that kind of attack has probably embedded itself well into Japanese media that it wasn't consciously an Ideon/Gunbuster reference.

If you're a Gainax/Fukuda completionist, you might find some things in this show to like. Otherwise, it's a waste of time.

In 2003, a brave producer wanted to make anime that would send shockwaves through pop culture, like a stone thrown into a pond. Reflecting this mission, he established a company in 2003 called "Throw A Stone". What stones did this company decide to throw into the endless pond of Japanese media? Extremely bizarre, disturbing hentai games and OVAs!

The Guts is the second OVA produced by Anime Antenna Committee (Throw A Stone's animation studio), and this sure is bizarre! A guy gets a job at a construction site and finds himself surrounded by horny women. That's typical porno sludge, but remember, my friends, this company wanted ... to make media that would send SHOCKWAVES into viewers' minds!

At minimum, every woman in this OVA has K cups, and no, I don't mean they love instant coffee. And despite weakness being the main character's only discernible trait, every woman who sees him is instantly head over heels in love with him and gives him wild, mind-blowing sex 24/7! I'm guessing this is because women who work at a construction site don't see weak men often, so such a man would be an exotic piece of man meat (more like man skin and bones) to them? I put more thought into this than the writers did!

I guess, because consumers of muscle lady fetish content are actually really classy, this porn tries to be philosophical! It ends with the message "Women are the sea, men are the sky". What does that mean? I don't know! Is it some Japanese proverb I've never heard before? Maybe, but I highly doubt it! Perhaps this is a sentiment only understood by guys who like their women "strong"? That definitely sent a shockwave through my brain! The ED also attempts to appeal to higher art by being an orchestral soundtrack. Because this hentai wasn't made to fund the Giant Robo OVA, Throw A Stone couldn't afford an actual orchestra, so they used synthesizers. Synthesizers!

Surprisingly, The Guts is one of the less messed up things Throw A Stone would create! Throw A Stone did create two genuinely good products (audio dramas featuring Shuichi Ikeda and Norio Wakamoto), but most of their catalogue consists of porn games, hentai, and live action pornography that are revolting even by hentai standards! They're for guys who think tentacle rape is VANILLA!

Why hasn't The Guts gotten a comedy review like this yet? Thank you, Throw A Stone, for sending shockwaves through my sides.

Man, the anime industry sure can be unjust at times! We will never get a sequel to Shin Mazinger. We will never see the Siege of Babel. And a genuinely good fantasy series was only released as a hentai!

Dragon Pink is a parody of fantasy anime, which, for those of us who don't like anime's take on fantasy, is very welcome. The OVA manages to make fun of all the problems with the Dragon Quest-inspired stories that continue to flood Japan, so now that fantasy dominates anime, this is more relevant than ever.

Don't like the annoying characters of fantasy anime? Dragon Pink's characters are ... hot-blooded tokusatsu heroes and dysfunctional idiots!
Don't like the low stakes and lack of tension in fantasy anime? This makes fun of all that!

This is such a gem of an anime! Watch the censored version on YT and you'll be genuinely surprised.

Dochinpira tries to be a cool, mature seinen-ish show with adult characters, but it ends up sucking because the plot is about the protagonist meeting a bunch of women who want sex with him.

For once, at least, the women express interest in the protagonist first, so there's not rape. There is, however, a weird BDSM mistress scene, so it's not vanilla either. And the sex is just pure unrealistic pleasure chasing, not romantic at all. The porn tries to include a storyline about the protagonist fighting thugs, but it means nothing because this is porn and in porn land, all things lead to sex.

If ... you want a hentai with adult characters, no rape sex scenes, and something of a story, you'll enjoy this. If you want something romantic or actually sensual, you won't enjoy this.