Lotus Watches You Are Omasou [Anime] (2010)

This anime is part of my Année Anime 2024 Challenge.

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This all-ages dinosaur anime follows the story of a young T-Rex named Heart, who was raised from an egg by a plant-eating dinosaur as one of her own children. Heart, alienated from others of his own kind as well as from the rest of the herbivore herd that raised him, finds history repeating itself when he finds becomes the adopted father of an adorable, newly hatched herbivore he was about to eat before it called him Dad. This charming film is about love, compassion, and the urge to nurture, in full knowledge of complications, differences, and paradoxes.

Title: You Are Omasou / You Are Delicious / Heart & Yummie
Anime Type: Film

Année Anime 2024

I enjoy to-do lists and film challenges, and I’ve been wanting to expand my anime watching and reviews. I looked around for existing participation lists, but I didn’t find much that resonated with me. I did find a list challenge on Letterboxd called Anime Marches On, which I think is a fun premise, though I confess I’m not wild about the implications of that name, and a month is just not enough time for an anime challenge for me anymore (especially for watching a whole season of something).

I thought maybe I’d start my own, brand-new premise for a challenge list.

Edit: I originally called it 2023. I’m super on-the-ball.

Lotus Watches Genocyber [Anime] (1994)

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OVA are the direct-to-video “wild west” of anime; they can range from awesome to unfortunate, as they adhere to zero specific rules. Genocyber leans towards awesome. It’s an ultra-violent, phantasmagorical descent into annihilation in the form of a 5-episode OVA from Bandai. A scientist develops the Mandala, a high-tech, cybernetic engine built to harness vaguely-defined psychic energy “mind shadows” called “vajra” to create a new kind of mechsuit-style weapon, named after the ultimate cosmic weapon of Hindu mythology. This project is convoluted, involves some kind of crime syndicate, and involves a fusion of two psychic sisters and an artificial body. To say it (and its ensuing projects) backfire is an understatement, as the OVA transitions into a post-apocalyptic dystopia in the wake of total global destruction.

Title: Genocyber (1994)
Type: OVA
OVA Type: Series
Episodes: 5

Lotus Watches Berserk [Anime] (1997)

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Berserk is the story of Guts, a muscle-bound, relentless, brutal mercenary in a dark-fantasy, western European, medieval world, who wields an impossibly large, blunt sword. It’s a stunningly beautiful, blood-soaked show with a surprising amount of depth, that is somehow too long and too short at the same time.

Note: I’m including this in my Année Anime 2024 challenge, though I wrote this in Dec 2023. I’ve been working on the idea for the anime challenge for quite some time, and this review was part of that effort, so I’m cheating just a little.

Title: Berserk (1997)
Type: TV Series
Seasons: 1
Episodes: 25

Lotus Watches Cowboy Bebop [Anime] (1998)

Cowboy Bebop Opening Credits

Cowboy Bebop is one of my favorite anime series. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, in its art, music, animation, writing, and world building. It’s a unique blend of action, interpersonal drama, western, film noir, comedy, mystery, horror, very light magic realism, and occasional space crisis drama, all played like wildly different instruments in a kind of audio-visual jazz the sprawling background text of the opening credits informs us is a jazz fusion of this studio’s creation, which they call Cowboy Bebop. It literally declares itself to be a genre unto itself. And it’s right.

Note: I’m including this in my Année Anime 2024 challenge, though I wrote this in Dec 2023. I’ve been working on the idea for the anime challenge for quite some time, and this review was part of that effort, so I’m cheating just a little.

• Title: Cowboy Bebop
• Type: TV Series
• Seasons: 1
• Episodes: 25

[Film] Wicked City (1987)

Wicked City, directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, is a Japanese OVA about a human and a demon special agent who must work together to ensure a peace treaty is signed between their two worlds. It is an brutal, stylish, violent, erotic film with seriously beautiful animation. There are times when the dialogue and plot seem lacking, or even childish, but every demonic foe is a phantasmagorical wonder, and even scenes of just night-driving in the city are mesmerizing.

[Anime] Armored Trooper Votoms (1983)

Armored Trooper Votoms was a 52-episode made for TV anime series. It is set in a (relatively) hard science fiction space setting, with its focus entirely on a mech pilot named Chirico Cuvie. While the character designs and development can be thin in this show, the mechanical illustrations are pretty lavish. It’s got a pretty slow pace, but the subject matter is fairly involved for a children’s program. Chirico is a mech pilot who gets caught up in a conspiracy when his mission turns out to be a raid on one of his own government’s facilities. He is left for dead in space, but when he survives, he swears to get to the bottom of whatever happened to him and whomever was responsible. As he does so, the show explores slave labor, despotism, secret societies, war crimes against civilians, mercenary culture, paranoid politics, cult fanaticism, and an ancient secret hidden on a mysterious desert planet.