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Columns > MomGamer > #65: The Anime Primer - TV Series
Japanese animation is sweeping the nation! Is this a good idea for our kids? Here's a quick look at what some of the fuss is about...  TV series are a different animal than the movies. You'd think it would be safer, but it just seems like given enough time and temptation, they tend to end up going someplace odd at least once in their run. There are plenty of individual episodes of these series that I'd recommend higly, but none of them in their entirety. I can't say this enough times - you really need to watch these before you let your children. I purposely didn't list the major "kid" series - Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Pokemon, Digimon, or Yu Gi Oh. These are all on TV, and edited to a fare-thee-well. If you have kids of a certain age and you've already managed to avoid them and all their trappings, we're all impressed and want to know how! Mom-sense is tingling on these...  Appleseed (movie) The year is 2131 A.D., and the world has been devastated by years of war. The war is over, but there are soldiers cut off from communication all over out there still fighting it. Deunan Knute is taken from the hopeless battlefield and brough to the new utopia, Olympus. But something is rotten here, and it's up to her and her now cyborged boyfriend Briareos to figure it out and find the Appleseed data. With it's thrashing techno soundtrack and it's R rating, you'd think I'd pan it. You'd be wrong. Technically it's gorgeous - the entire film is done 3d, but they rendered the characters cel-shaded so they look like cartoons. They manage the blending remarkably well in most places. The story is pretty good - Shirow Masamune of "Ghost in the Shell" fame is at it again. This movie is yet another case study in the vagrancies of the rating system. No real sex - not even a good mashing scene. It has some bloody spots(particularly in the very begining). To put it in simple terms, if you'd let them watch "Aliens vs. Predators" you're fine. There's a sequel and a TV series due out next summer, too, if you like what you see here. MPAA Rating: R for "some violence" Momgamer Age Recommendation: 15+, mostly due to the opening sequence; if you skip to the opening credits I'd go 13.  Escaflowne (movie and series) Hitomi is taken to another world, where the Earth is only known as the "Mystic Moon". She finds that there she's the Winged Goddess, with the power to see visions. There is an actual TV series called "The Vision of Escaflowne", but it's only available in the US on VHS at this time and the movie is the same story cut into an hour and a half. The series is a great sword-and-sorcery anime, but the movie cuts the story into teeny little bits leaving you wanting more. Expect crushes (teenage and mature), wings, mecha, magic, bloody battles, mysticism, and characters with some depth. No sex or drugs. If there was nudity it was so brief I can't remember it. Rating: Series T-14, movie PG-13 Momgamer Age Recommendation: 13 would be fine. There's blood, but it's mostly green dragon blood.  Evangelion: A shy and lonely 14-year-old boy is pulled into a world of giant organic robots by his father along with two other children. The Earth is in danger from creatures called "Angels", and it's up to EVA01 and the others to save us from them. A much more complex story than I can cover in just these few sentences. There are several parental land-mines buried under the complexity. They use a great deal of Christian imagery, and it's not a flattering portrait. There are a lot of heavy philosophical concepts. And there is some of the most egregious fan-service I've seen and some sexual concepts involved with the lead kids that will raise a nearly Vulcan eyebrow, especially as the series progresses. Please watch the ENTIRE series before making your choice - this one starts out pretty standard, but as it goes on it just goes deeper and deeper into the strange. The ending is just plain twisted. And the movies.... don't even get me started on the movies.... Ask me on the message boards if you're interested in them. Rating: TV-14 Momgamer Age Recommendation: 15+, mostly because of the last several episodes  Gasaraki This one is a head-scratching combination of mecha (big robot) anime, mysticism, Noh plays, huge shadowy conspiracies and a strange study of the relationships between the characters. Unlike most mecha stories, this one is set right here in the very close future. The machinery is really not that far ahead of us right now. The story is very politically driven as well as action driven - the uncomfortable parallels between this series and Iraq made me wonder if maybe our President has been watching this series or something. I enjoy it a lot, but I also don't mind the droning of Noh chanting, which was a big turn-off for the kids. Rating: None Momgamer Age Recommendation: 13+, a few scenes of implied nudity and lots of heavy combat that's bloodless for the most part  Inuyasha A macabre violent fantasy saga of ancient Japan. A girl is dagged into a well by a demon who is looking for a specific gem. She wakes up at the bottom, but when she climbs out finds hereself in th distant past and befriended by a half-demon boy. Don't be fooled by the drawing style - this isn't Dragonball Z. Not by a frickin' long shot. Inu-yasha (the half demon boy) spends a fair amount of time rending and tearing, and there's some blood. There's some rare, very brief nudity. This one's being shown on Adult Swim on Cartoon Network, so it'll be easy to judge for yourself. Rating: none Momgamer Age Recommendation: 15+, with a parent's explanation  Gundam Wing (movie and several TV series) There are about fifteen different things out there with the word "Gundam" in the title. The ones I've seen were pretty stereotypical mecha anime with the usual rogue's gallery of misfits to fly them. A better than average storyline, and it's status as a foundation work for the mecha genre keep this one going strong. Get ahold of the movie boxed set (which is all three movies, which are actually the entire first series edited together into movie format). Watch it yourself first. Just for an idea of tone, if you've ever seen Macross or Captain Harlock on TV when they were part of the Saturday morning cartoons, you know what this looks like. Rating: none Momgamer Age Recommendation: 13+; lots of bloodless battles and some brief nudity  Bubblegum Crisis A vigilante team of armored do-gooder girls with secret identities protect the innocent citizens of a glittering metropolis from the evil malfunctioning robots of a megacorporation and with a lot of flack from the local authorities. If you'd like your mecha to have girls kicking butt instead of guys, this is a fairly good bet. The new series, Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040, is a lot darker than the original. The hardsuits are cool and the entire production is well done, but if you get annoyed at all the emotional and other chick entanglements from Sailor Moon, I'd give this one a pass. Rating: none Momgamer Age Recommendation: 13+; some blood, lots of violence, scantily clad ladies Danger, Danger Will Robinson  Now and Then, Here and There Shu stumbles across a strange yet mysterious girl, and is thrown into a futuristic world where most of the Earth's population is dead. He's forced to live in a large mechanical structure of a town that wanders the deserts in the search for water. Everybody is part of the military, with kidnapped children making up the bulk of it. Not very many people like him, either, due to his pacifistic viewpoint. Shu's main goal is saving the girl he once came across and getting out of where ever he is. This series is beautiful, but there just isn't a lot of happy in this world. The main bad guy is a seriously twisted freak you have to see to believe. Even though the main characters are children, this one is most definately not for them. Rating: none Momgamer Age Recommendation: 15+; blood, violence, mature topics including torture, looting, rape and just about every other brutality you can think of  Cowboy Beebop (movie and TV series) Spike, Faye and Ed are back, after the biggest bounty of them all. A bioterrorist has gotten his hands on something nasty. A truck explodes on a Martian highway and releases a biochemical weapon that kills hundreds. The largest bounty in solar system history is offered to find them and bring them in and Spike and his gang of interplanetary bounty hunters are on the case. There are 25 episodes of TV series, and the story of the movie is sandwiched between episodes 22 and 23. It's just an extended episode, really. This is one case I know of where the English version of the soundtrack is superior in many ways to the Japanese. Rating: M (for the movie), TV series not rated Momgamer Age Recommendation: 15+; blood, violence  Reign: The Conqueror Set in a 21st century vision of ancient Macedonia, REIGN follows the exploits of Alexander the Great. Controlling both science and magic, Alexander spurs on his army of followers as he strives to gain control of the European continent through forces both natural and supernatural. Very violent, very very strange stuff. Some indescribable stuff with Alexander's mother and a snake. I don't recommend it for anyone, much less kids. If they have to watch something about Alexander, I'd rather they watched that awful Colin Firth/Angelina Jolie thingy (and that's saying something). Rating: none Momgamer Age Recommendation: 15+, very violent, very very weird.  Berserk Guts was a camp follower's child. After his mother's death he was taken in by a cruel man who used him until he'd grown strong enough to go off on his own. His quirk is he's trained with adult weapons from the time he was three, so by the time he's 14 he's stronger than any 10 men and his sword is the size of a garage door. He meets Griffith, the leader of a mercenary band, and together they scale the heights of power. Along the way, something dark and terrible begins to slink out of the shadows. The first disk of the series is actually the one of the "last" episodes, with the rest as a sort of prequel. Pitch-black dark and extremely bloody, but with one of the most fully realized and conflicted villains I've ever seen in either live action or anime. I enjoyed it, but no kiddies, that's for sure. You can get the entire series in a boxed set. Rating: none Momgamer Age Recommendation: 18+, dark and dripping with blood, huge battle scenes, demons eating people, a couple flashes of nudity and some implied sex (both gay and straight). Oh, and don't forget your Prozac - this does not start out in a happy place, and then it really gets depressing.
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