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.
↩
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.
↩
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 ↩