Tags: blog, tv, animation, sci-fi, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday October 25th, 2025
Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan!
What am I doing here? Watching anime as a middle aged man is a deeply weird experience. When I was younger I was witness to the original UK anime/manga boom of the early nineties. Akira, Appleseed, Manga Mania. It was always weird but... It was a kind of weird that was curated towards a young western audience. It was a slice of Japanese culture carefully selected for the kind of teenagers who'd be receptive to it.
Now though? There's so much of it, so many different styles, so many different genres, such a wide audience. And, seemingly, for this audience it's all so normalised. When I was reading Gunsmith Cats as a teen I knew, right from the get-go, that this was something a little out there. That was what I wanted. But it seems like Attack on Titan is as standard to today's kids as Stranger Things.
Which, conversely, makes the act of watching this stuff when you're not completely immersed in this culture even more weird. I have no way of understanding it as part of a wider culture.
Is DanDaDan normal? Is this level of bizarreness de rigueur? Or does it stand out even amongst the, quite frankly, impenetrable field of anime weirdness?
I have no idea. And I have no idea how to critically evaluate it or, ~waves hand at the entire, diverse field of anime~ how to evaluate that. I once watched two episodes of Attack on Titan and they were the worst two episodes I've ever watched of anything, in my entire life.1 So I clearly don't know what I'm talking about.
But I do know that DanDaDan manages to capture teenage friendship and crushes in a way that's delightfully endearing. The whole show is deeply, deeply horny but in that oddly innocent, early teens way of having deeply intense longings and not having a clue what to do with them. And even though there are whole episodes where all the characters are fighting demons whilst stripped to their underwear, it never leers or objectifies.
The most intense, and most affecting, moments are when they're just trying to navigate the fact that they think they've been stood up during lunch, or their fingers touch whilst sat next to each other in the car. It's oddly sweet for a show where the main running plot-line is about trying to recover a characters genitals.
Sorry, yes, the plot. Two senior school nerds meet and argue about the merits of the occult vs UFO's. Momo was raised by her (absurdly hot, ridiculously cool, seemingly barely older then her) Grandmother who's a witch and dares Okarun, an introverted sci-fi junkie, to visit a haunted underpass to see a ghost. In return, he dares her to go to a notorious UFO sighting spot. Obviously, he gets possessed by the spirit of a demon-witch and loses his balls, she gets abducted by aliens.
That's episode one. It get's rapidly more grandios and unhinged from there.
It does do some of the stuff that turns me off of a lot of anime. Characters start shrieking at each other for no reason. In the rush to the next plot device, nothing ever gets completely resolved. And whilst it's attitude to gender and sex is mostly positive, series one is bookended by threats of sexual assault. The fact that these are kind of played for laughs makes it even more of an incongruous miss-step.
But somehow, it has a charm and vibe that's infectious. Two series in and I'm looking forward to a third.
Where to Watch
1. I only watched the second one because I couldn't believe that anything could possible be that bad. It was.
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Tags: blog, film, animation, comedy
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday August 17th, 2025
A very goal-orientated film
When Bull finds out that his owners are going to have him neutered, he and his pack of buddies decide to have one big night out before the chop.
What follows is cartoon dog version of frat/sex comedies from the eighties-noughties. Think Porky’s or American Pie. As a result, this film feels old fashioned. It tries its best to convince that it’s shocking and transgressive and that nothing is off limits. And yet it has very clear lines as to what it will and won’t depict. Balls, blood and bums: yup! Dicks, vaginas, vomit: absolutely not. After twenty minutes, once you’ve worked out where the lines are drawn, it all feels very safe.
It’s a shame that it can’t draw more inspiration from Ren & Stimpy. The animation is clearly in debt to it (one scene involving a skunk is a flat-out homage) so it would have been great if it had borrowed some of that duo’s anarchism.
One part that did feel surprisingly modern is the characterisation of Bull and his friends. They’re all quite kind and sweet to each other, they look out for each other and care about each other’s welfare, without asking for anything in return. It’s actually quite good natured, even when they visit a dog sex-club, and the result is that on the occasions when the comedy falls flat, you’re never irritated by the characters.
Thankfully, the comedy is pretty good most of the time. It’s at its best when it’s being smart rather than crude, which admittedly it doesn’t do quite often enough to make this an essential viewing. But often enough to have me chuckling most of the way through and, on the odd occasion when the crudity combines with smart observations on dog behaviour, a few belly laughs as well.
Tags: blog, film, animation, fantasy, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday August 28th, 2025
Alrighty Meow
Young girl Karin is abandoned by her dad at a temple where she makes the acquaintance of a ghost cat called Anzu.
The most obvious point of reference for this film is Studio Ghibli. This film borrows heavily from My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away1 with the obvious limitation that it hasn’t got anything like the budget of those films.
But it turns that into a virtue, this is a low budget film about low budget people. The characters are…well they’re…let’s just say: highly flawed.
Karin is a con-artist, always trying to manipulate people for her own gain, or just to be spiteful. She’s very much her Father’s daughter. Anzu is a gambler who wastes the money he does earn and cheats on the bets he makes. He also goes to the toilet where ever he pleases, because he’s a cat.
For the supporting cast there’s: two doofus boys who are dumb-struck by the new, pretty girl; a gullible temple attendant; a depressed god; a tunnelling frog; assorted sad-sack demons; a bunch of boring forest spirits who just hang around and play cards; and a run-down, Japanese town that’s sweltering, borderline melting, in the summer heat.
Everything feels real and personal. It matters because you recognise these people and their lives. Even the depressed gods. It feels like a British kitchen sink drama, with all of its money problems and annoying scrotes. It is exquisitely well observed and extremely funny as a result.
Its depiction of spirituality felt close to revolutionary. Here, spiritual enlightenment isn’t wisdom, or calm or devotion. It’s the willingness to get the crap kicked out of you in a fight you can’t win because your neighbour needs to be stood up for. To have this stated so boldly, so eloquently, is very timely for the world right now.
This film is a minor key masterpiece that deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as any Ghibli film you care to mention. A heartfelt, joyful, beautiful triumph.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Oh, and Trainspotting. It literally pilfers a scene directly from Trainspotting.
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Tags: blog, tv, animation, drama, recommended, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday November 08th, 2025
It's business as usual for privately-owned taxi driver Odokawa as he drives a variety of passengers around the city.
A misanthropic taxi driver gets in way over his head in a tangled web of mysteries and messy lives.
Each of the the passengers that Odokawa ferries around becomes another thread that spirals out, weaving around the other stories, eventually looping back round to arrive at Odakawa's taxi door.
The whole thing kicks off with a mystery about a missing teenager but then, Katamari-like, rolls ups stories of corrupt and incompetent cops; social media influencer vigilantes; wannabe comedians; a pop group and their controlling manager; competing gangsters; a thieving nurse; a mobile-game addicted teen; a debt ridden janitor; a caring but intrusive doctor; a catfishing extortion scheme and an otaku lottery winner.
The use of anthropomorphic animals as characters serves two functions. Firstly, with such a huge cast, it allows every character to be distinctive and immediately memorable. It's easy to remember the cast of pop group Mystery Kiss as they're all cats. You can't get any of them mixed up with Miho as she's an alpaca.
Secondly, and conversely, it highlights the deeply human nature of the characters and their stories. The animation style strips each character back to only the qualities needed to tell us who they are. Each character gets their own back story, their own motivations and their own vulnerabilities. There are no purely good guys here, but then even the worst characters here are relatable. You end up rooting for them when they have a chance at redemption or realisation.
The biggest mystery is Odakawa himself. He's obviously highly intelligent, an early scene where he masterfully diverts his prying doctor's conversation onto the subject of Bruce Springsteen is comedy gold, but he only shows that guile in brief spurts. Other times he struggles to get to grips with what's unfolding around him. He's no mastermind, which means that when the web he's helped to spin begins to tighten, the way it shakes out is believably messy, but also beautifully poetic.
There are some criticisms. There's a Tarantino-esque propensity for characters to monologue their backstory, or recite a wikipedia article that introduces a plot element. This is not helped by the perfunctory-at-best translated subtitles. And the subtitles are at their worst for the character of Yano, a character who raps every line. They technically work but they're unbelievably clunky and clash badly with the original audio. Every scene he's in is almost painful to watch.
But overall this is a genuine one-of-a-kind tv show. A magnificent blend of empathy and intricacy, noir and kitchen sink.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, animation, drama, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday April 01st, 2024
A lonely dog builds a robot to be his best friend
A beautiful movie that never goes where you expect it to. The animation is clean, un-showy and yet packed with detail and imagination. The story matches it precisely, characters are clearly defined, their motivations always explained plainly through the story.
And yet, it has no easy answers to the questions it poses. I was left with an ache in my heart, unsure just how happy the ending I’d just witnessed really was.
Funny, poignant and wonderful.
Tags: blog, tv, animation, sci-fi, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday April 25th, 2024
Stranger, Wilder Things
A standard way to start a review like this would be to give an overview of the main characters and the start of the story. But the characters who find themselves crash landed on an alien planet aren’t really the protagonists and it’s not their story.
The star here is the planet itself and the ecosystem that exists on it. The story is one of billions of years of evolution and adaptation. The ecology here is wild and fantastical. Some things are seen in the context of a co-dependant ecosystem. Others are presented completely devoid of context or explanation, with no clue as to whether it’s a once-in-a-millennia moment or an every day occurrence. The planets complete indifference to the characters who are journeying through it is both terrifying and awe inspiring.
Terrifyingly, the only thing on the planet that really pays attention to them sees them as a resource to be exploited. 1
That’s not to say that there’s nothing to the character’s stories. Whilst the beauty of the alien world is incredible, it’s the beating hearts of the humans that drive us through it and allow us to experience it alongside them. Whilst the animation is the showstopper, it’s the warmth of the story that’ll get you to binge watch it in a few evenings.
Unique and essential viewing.
1. Whilst the humans only want to survive and get off the planet, the only alien that is interested in them is driven by traditional human motivations of exploitation and greed ↩
Tags: blog, film, animation, sci-fi, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday March 08th, 2026
Back to the Future's Future
There can't be many films involving time travel where the past the protagonists travel to is our future. Not just a few years either. The past Arco travels back to has robot shop workers, hover shopping trolleys and large, retractable domes covering every house and building from the massive storms and wildfires that periodically rage around the picturesque town he lands in.
The imagery of everyone blithely ignoring the massive electrical storm whilst sat in the comfort of their own garden is a very on-the-nose comment on our current attitude to the climate crisis. It's to the films credit that it lets the imagery do all the work, the story refuses to comment further.
That imagery is suffused with influences from Studio Ghibli. Wonderfully, it's not just skin deep, it shares the same fascination with nature, flight and the small details of peoples lives that Ghibli does. And whilst the quality of the animation can't match up, the colour palette is absolutely stunning. Every frame has a warmth and vibrancy to it that feels deeply cared for. Somebody spent a lot of time ensuring this film looked just right.
The future Arco travels from, by stealing his parent's rainbow flight/time machine cape, is a future where small communities live on platforms above the clouds. The time travel is used as a way to scavenge material to allow them to eke out an existence. The Tech is High, but the resources are slim.
Stranded in this new time, he meets and befriends Iris, a young girl living with her baby brother and robotic nurse maid, Mikki. The rest of the film is mostly concerned with depicting their developing friendship as they battle various adults in their attempt to get Arco home.
This narrow focus feels quite old fashioned for a kids film. There's not much in the way of side plots or narrative complications. It's a simple story, clearly told through the eyes of the kids involved. Background details, like the environmental catastrophe unfurling around them or that Iris' parents are only ever present via projection holograms, are never explained.
This seems perfectly aimed at pre-teen kids who'll love the depiction of childhood friendships and adult stupidity. But it was a little too simplistic for my taste, the story failing to raise the stakes enough to be thrilling, not original enough to surprise. That is until near the end of the film when the results of their decisions come to bear, managing to hit a lot harder than I was expecting. The message of the film is clear: actions have consequences. And they can't be remediated or rectified, you just have to live with them and do your best.
That's all any of us can do.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, animation, sci-fi, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday January 27th, 2026
Emo's in Space
OK, let's start with a controversial opinion/hill I will die on: Luke Skywalker is a bland, boring, uninteresting and unlikeable character who only works because the rest of the movie(s) is so spectacular. It's not until Rian Johnson turns up that he actually gets a personality.
Sadly, Lesbian Space Princess steals Luke's personality traits for it's main character, Saira, and then proceeds to do absolutely nothing with it.
She is terminally dull. She starts the film with no personality beyond 'Sad she's been dumped' and ends with no personality beyond 'Is OK to have been dumped'.
The main villains of the piece though, the Straight White Malians, actually are kind of fun. They look out for each other, role play through their feelings, try to build for a better future. They're arseholes, obviously, but they're still more rounded, lively characters than Saira. They even have a multiplayer Daytona cabinet.
I really don't think that the film was aiming for a message that being a straight white male is more interesting and fun than being a lesbian, but it accidentally implies it all the same.
Does the film get away with such a dour character by making the surrounding world vibrant and interesting? No. There's less plot and less comedy here than a ten minute episode of Pinky and the Brain. Everything is so incredibly slow and obvious. The jokes are good but when you can see all of them coming round the corner they lose their shine.
If you want an hour and a half of knockabout screwball animated comedy, just go watch The Day the Earth Blew Up, it's great.
You could edit this down to a decent half hour episode of a tv series, especially if it took it's cues from the other great tv show about lesbian princesses in space1 instead of the film it's actually riffing off, what's it called? You know... the one about the space hairdresser and the cowboy… he’s got a tin foil pal and a pedal bin.
Spaceballs! That's the one. Just go watch Spaceballs again.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. The actual hill I will die on is that She-Ra and the Princesses of power is one of the truly great modern tv sagas. If it was a re-booted He-Man, N.D.Stephenson would be lauded alongside Genndy Tartakovsky as one of animated tv's current heroes.
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Tags: blog, film, animation, fantasy, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday February 17th, 2026
Nature vs Nurture vs a giant bloody Dragon
A heavenly decree is made that the Chaos Pearl is split into two and born as living embodiments of it's two halves, the Spirit Pearl and the Demon Orb, with the Demon Orb having a curse on it such that it will be destroyed by lightening in three years time. But a devious mishap means that the Spirit Pearl half is stolen and the Demon Orb half is born to kind and decent noble parents. Which means they have to try to help their son live as good a life as possible, trying to nuture the good in him over his demonic nature, before fate ends his life in three years time.
The plot may be a bit clunky, leaning on prophecy to make sense, but the way it pushes it's characters to make difficult moral decisions is superb. The weight on each character from the decisions they've made and the decisions they are going to have to make feel heavy and important. This extends to the antagonists as well who are believably characterised and motivated.
Unfortunately, the way most of this is communicated is by huge chunks of exposition. Almost the entire plot is explained by one character standing around and explaining it to another character. It's tolerable at the start when it's used to set everything in motion, but when it's still being used deep into the ending of the film it gets a bit wearing.
It's a real shame as when it stops telling and starts showing, it shows real heart. The best, most important scene of the film being a silent game of hacky sack on the beach. We don't need to be told what's happening, we can see it.
The animation is a curious mixture. On the one hand the amount of money and colour that is thrown at the screen is incredible. For anyone who wants to show off a large, high-end TV, this is one hell of a way to do it. But there's an odd lack of artistry. All the characters have that Dreamworks face that makes it look like they've been workshopped to deter as few people as possible. The environments have a stunning level of fidelity but no distinct artistic direction. The animation is vibrant and constantly in dynamic motion but lacks the subtle touches of the best animators.
The result is a kind of blandness which is compensated by a level of commitment to spectacle that is frequently jaw dropping.
The Dreamworks similarities doesn't end there. The side and background characters are pulled directly from the Dreamworks/Disney school of 'comedy sidekicks'. But they lack any kind of warmth or invention, one villager only existing to provide a disappointingly homophobic running joke. Despite the freshness (at least to my western eyes) of it's Chinese mythology settings, the template seems very familiar.
This is entertaining enough and I suspect the sheer velocity of it's action scenes will enthral any kids that watch it. But the amount of exposition got in the way of the story for me. I understood everything but didn't feel enough of it.
I've heard good things about the sequel though, so we'll be giving that a try soon enough.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, animation, fantasy, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday February 21st, 2026
I'll have a 屁 please Bob
Blimey. I had a lot of issues with the first film but I'm pleased to say that this film fixes pretty much all of them whilst retaining what worked.
The amount of exposition has been toned down. There's still a fair bit of explaining to be done, especially at the start, but it's paced more evenly throughout the film and gives way to the action when it needs to.
The Dreamworks/Disney template is mostly discarded, aside from a few residual characters and comedy scenes, and instead leans heavily into the genre of fantasy epic. And it is, indeed, epic.
Within the first fifteen minutes it's already made the battle of Helm's Deep look like waiting for Godot, by the end it's eclipsed Avenger's Endgame by a comfortable margin. It's no exaggeration to say that I've never seen a film so heavy on scale or spectacle before. I described the first film as 'jaw dropping', which I now recognise as a somewhat premature exclamation as I have no idea what body part 'dropping' would accurately describe the sequel.
This would all be worthless if this were all fur coat and no knickers. If the story doesn't hold up then it's just boring flashing lights. Thankfully, the excellent plotting is kept from the first film. Yes it's all contrived fantasy nonsense1 but it puts all the characters in difficult situations with difficult moral choices. Everybody behaves in ways that are believable, even if the magic and the physics aren't. And as a result when it comes to the important emotional scenes, they hit hard. One scene involving a curse and a death had me wincing in horror and sobbing in sympathy, both at the same time.
I'm not a huge fan this type of sweeping fantasy/historical action usually. I prefer films about characters, or ones with more intricate plots. But I'm happy to oblige when a film shows this much ambition and commitment.
There's probably a lot to be said about the importance of Ne Zha to Chinese cinema. With American soft power on the wane, and Chinese economic and cultural visibility on the rise, it's tempting to think of whether we're witnessing a shift in who's able to make the biggest blockbuster movies. I'm not remotely qualified to give my thoughts on that subject, but watching Ne Zha 2 definitely feels like a bar has been raised somewhere.
This is the most blockbusting of blockbusters I've ever seen.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. I know Ne Zha is based on ancient Chinese mythology but to this westerners ears it doesn't make any logical sense. But then it doesn't have to, I'm not watching a fantasy film for it's water tight internal logic. It feels right and that's what works.
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Tags: blog, film, animation, comedy, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday February 07th, 2026
Genocide in Busytown
The first Zootopia delighted by not only being funny and witty but having a story that you thought was going to be about one thing, and then pulls a fantastic bait and switch into something else. What looked like a fairly simple story of triumphing over sexism turns into a surprisingly deft exploration of systemic racism.
Zootopia 2 has no such narrative flair, sadly. But it's subject matter is arguably even darker, dealing with a genocide fuelled by a billionaire property developer. It manages to walk a careful line between making the subject palatable for youngsters whilst still making it's point very clear.
Where it falls down is that the world is not as clearly drawn or explored as it was in the first film. In trying to expand the boundaries (almost literally) it rattles through it's locations and inhabitants with out really getting to know them. It's something the first film excelled at so it's sorely missed here. Gary De'Snake, the character whose quest to find his homeland is the driving force of the story, is barely given a personality. We understand his purpose but never actually feel it.
And ultimately the resolution seemed a little glib. The idea that if people knew the truth behind an injustice they'd think differently about it seems like a liberal wet dream at the moment. I'm not going to criticise a kids film for trying to deal with a weighty subject, but the disconnect between the films ending and what's happening in the world right now means the ending doesn't really stick.
On the plus side, the pairing of Judy and Nick is given ample time to develop and their relationship never stops sparkling. They have a genuine connection and their tribulations are the one part of the story that feels consequential. That plus the sheer volume and quality of sight gags (some of the visual jokes are Wallace and Gromit levels of genius) propels the whole thing along at an entertaining pace.
