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Ok, a little bit of a disclaimer before I start my review. I'll admit it - this review is highly biased in the sense that I'm a highly nostalgic person, and I am giving this anime such a high score mostly because of the great memories it gave me as a kid.

Mysterious Cities of Gold (MCoG) is a personal favourite of mine - a classic anime from yesteryear. A literal gold nugget that popped up admist the overflowing sludge that was children's television programming in general. As Indiana Jones would say: "It belongs in a mueseum!"

The problem with this anime is that if you ... are watching MCoG for the first time you may end up thinking that this DOES actually belong in a mueseum and I can see how watching it today may present some obstacles in its enjoyment. To cut to the chase - this anime was made over 25 years ago and it has not aged well. On comparison to today's animation production standards the quality of the soundtrack ranges from average to downright bad (depending on what copy you get your hands on), the animation is mediocre at best, and the voice acting? Lets just say, avoid the English language version like the plague.

Now if you're a nostalgic old coot like myself who is looking to recover a long lost treasure from childhood these shortcomings probably won't be much of a problem - you see nostalgia tends to blind you to such deficiencies. You'll sit back on your rocking chair and start thinking: "Now, back in my day..."

My guess is though that there is a fairly high chance that you may not be a cantankerous old git like myself. You may well be full of pluck, used to anime with high-octane thrills, visceral explosions with a pumping soundtrack in the background, ala Tengen Toppa Gurren Laggan. If you are, I have to tell you in advance: despite the high score I have given to this, you MAY not get into this. You have been warned.

Now that that little disclaimer is over and done with, lets get down to why this show remains one of my favourite television shows, and why it will probably remain with me for the rest of my life.

Now I said earlier that MCoG has rather bad production values compared with a lot of material that is getting released today. You have to remember though, that at the time of its release this anime literally blew the competition away and reshaped the concept of what makes for a good animation both for myself personally as a kid growing up, but also for the animation industry as a whole. It's kind of funny to say this, but as a kid I never really 'got into' cartoon shows aimed at kids. I never really liked Disney or Warner Brothers cartoons - even as a kid they seemed pretty lame, and I hated it how the animators of these shows just assumed that kids wouldn't get into a cartoon with a deeper undertone. It was like they were making cartoons just to get you to shut the fuck up while Mum cooked the tea.

Then along came the Mysterious Cities of Gold - my first introduction the world of anime, and a cartoon with a riveting, exciting and at times highly emotional story.

Picture this. A wide eyed child of about 5 years old sits down with a bowl of ice cream and turns on the TV. The kid hopes like hell that he wouldn't get the fucking Roger Ramjet theme blare at him again. Silence... This could just be his lucky day...

A shot then starts to progressively cut in to South America and its temples from the far reaches of the galaxy while a man's voice booms:

"It is the 16th century, from all over Europe great ships sail west to conquer the New World, the Americas"
"The men eager to seek their fortune, to find new adventures in new lands"
"They long to cross uncharted seas and discover unknown countries"
"To find secret gold on a mountain trail high in the Andes"
"They dream of following the path of the setting sun that leads to El Dorado,"
"And the MYSTERIOUS CITIES OF GOLD..."

20 minutes pass and the show ends. The kid's ice cream, long since forgotten about, lies melted beside him untouched...

Now that's what I'm talking about! Finally there was a children's show that treated kids to something worth watching. The premise of it all - An adventure story with an intriguing, emotive plot and characters whose intentions were not always clear - finally a show that made you want to rush home from school and turn on the telly - it's all in the story. Yes MCoG is a children's show, but the story, setting and characters are so well done that I believe it can be enjoyed equally by adults - or, 'big kids at heart', much in the same way an adult may enjoy a Miyazaki film.

No, MCoG doesn't feature the pumping soundtrack, or the flashy visuals on offer as in the majority of anime today. But it does offer something extra, that little something that is so hard to define. The X-factor that separates a true classic from a passing fad. MCoG was and is so important for me personally because it was my very first encounter with 'classic' entertaiment - something deep and meaningful that sticks with you for years, decades later. I've seen a lot of other shows since then and I actually tend to like most of them, but I would have inevitably forgotten about them within a year or two. There is something about shows like MCoG and a handful of other 'classic' shows that makes them unforgettable entertainment. I can't guarantee that you'll get the same buzz that I got as a kid when I watched it all those years ago, but I can guarantee that you'll be watching a pioneering anime of the 80's, an eternal classic whose influence can be seen in a number of highly regarded anime of today's generation.

Kaiji is the devil child [insert Slayer- Hell Awaits soundtrack] among the 2007 Autumn season lineup, an outcast, the underdog just like the character himself – people take one look at those long noses and run for the hills – A TENGU IS COMING!! AAARGHH!!

It also just happens to not only be the best anime of the season; it ranks up among some of the best anime of all time. If there were to be a list of the current best five anime for the 2007 season it would be: 1. Kaiji, 2. Daylight, 3. Daylight, 4. Daylight, 5. Maybe Ghost Hound – nah, ... there is still a little more daylight between Kaiji and that show… Put simply, Kaiji is the type of anime that the gods sitting atop Mt. Olympus watch when they take a break from throwing down lightning bolts, swinging tridents, ruling the underworld or doing whatever gods sitting atop Mt. Olympus do. My reasons are explained below…

Firstly, a bit of background. Kaiji is based on Nobuyuki Fukumoto's award winning manga of the same name. More specifically, the anime is based on the first series of the manga containing the first 13 volumes of the story called ‘Kaiji – Tobaku Mokushikuroku', or, ‘Kaiji – The Gambling Apocalypse'. As no real English translations of the manga exist, the story is relatively unknown in the West. On the other hand, the manga, which first started being serialized back in 1996, went on to become extremely popular in Japan and Korea, producing two sequel series of manga which are also a superb read and are highly recommended. At the time of writing 38 volumes of the manga have been produced, featuring Kaiji putting it all on the line time and time again. The anime has followed this trend of popularity in the East, Kaiji the anime regular doubles the ratings for shows apparently popular according to this site, such as Minami-ke.

ART:

I am going to be blunt, the character design, like Akagi before it, is ‘bad’ in the traditional sense – but in all seriousness this is a very, very good thing. Let me explain by posing a rhetorical question: “Have you ever seen a good ‘bad’ film?” For example the film Evil Dead looks as though it has been produced on a 15 dollar budget but god damn it’s an awesome film! Titanic on the other hand was made on a bajillion dollar budget, won a whole heap of awards and raked in millions of dollars in profit but let’s face it – IT SUCKED.

Kaiji works in a similar way – the artwork is ‘bad’ in the same way Evil Dead is, and that’s what makes it awesome. Kaiji is not exactly a mainstream anime so it is never going to suit everyone’s tastes, but, as with Akagi, Fukumoto’s art style really does suit this kind of story – In pure Rocky fashion, here we see a gritty battler, the underdog in a fight, grappling with underground mobsters to get out of debt, to reach out and grasp the future within his hands – It’s never going to be a pretty picture…

SOUND:

Adding to the character designs are a variety of original touches, most notably Fukumoto’s trademark, ‘Zawa Zawa’ sound effect, which is derived from the Japanese word Zawameku, ‘ざわめく’ – signifying a tense state of agitation. To put it in layman's terms, it is kind of like the feeling you get when you take a dump only to realize that you are out of toilet paper – ZAWAAA!!! (Apologies for crudeness). In general the voice acting is superb, in particular the standouts being Kaiji’s V.O. Masato Hagiwara and the narrator himself, voiced by none other than Fumihiko Tachiki, the dude who is the narrator in PRIDE! Hideki Taneuchi picks up where he left off in Akagi providing an amazing score for Kaiji. Music is used in Kaiji to a perfect degree, and really helps build the ever-present underlying tension as Kaiji gambles with his life.

STORY:

Let’s face it, an anime with an art style as flipped out as it is, Kaiji (the anime) is never really going to get anywhere without a decent story. Well, it is in this area that the anime really shines. Thoroughly engrossing, this is one of the few animes around that makes it seem like a painfully long wait for the next episode to come out.

While the basic plot shows Kaiji’s struggle to get out of debt, to survive, the thematically driven story is as deep as an abyss – Fukumoto’s world view portrayed throughout Kaiji is at times deeply profound, at other times it simply rocks the core of your soul. Yes, the plot simply revolves around a series of gambles, but the world of gambling that Kaiji (the character) is drawn into is merely used as an analogy about the struggle to survive in the real world, offering existential notions on the human race itself, where we as individuals stand in the ‘rat race’.

Some of the statements that this anime makes are despairingly stark; sombre realities that really hit home. You will want to disagree with the scornful remarks made by mobsters like Tonegawa and Co. about how the debtors have lived their lives up to this point, but you can’t. You can’t because they simply state the harsh realities of life; realities that we choose to turn our heads away from in everyday life. While mobsters like Tonegawa appearing in this anime may be considered ‘bad guys’ in the traditional sense because they are wrong morally, they have a far greater perception about the realities of life and, dare I say it, simply act as they do to survive themselves in a dog eat dog world…?

The story of Kaiji on the surface, features and draws out just about every possible emotion on the spectrum – the thrill of victory, the despair of defeat, the grief of seeing comrades fall, the anger of betrayal, the fear of looking death in the eye… While this makes for a gut-wrenchingly intense enough experience as it is, the thematic psychological commentary into the human condition that makes up the core that is Kaiji the anime is even more provocative and carries a lot more weight than the gambling action itself. Simply put, this really pulls ‘Kaiji’ above the realm of a simple anime and onto a higher plane. If you watch this show and find that it doesn’t really have an effect on you, try watching the show again once you’ve entered the work force – that is when things will really hit home...

CHARACTERS:

Fukumoto’s world is world filled with men – the sole female survivor of the Gambling Apocalypse appears for about a minute at most. Hey, it’s one whole female character more than Akagi, a 100% increase!! Ahem.. Sorry guys – put away those tissues you had readied, if you look at anime for the fan-service, then you’re going to be one sorry fan. Look on the bright side though; brain-dead harem comedies are in plentiful supply…

Yes it truly is a man’s world in Kaiji, men gambling on the edge of despair. I won’t bother laying out each and every character for you, mainly because finding out about the personalities, traits and motivations of the characters that inhibit Kaiji’s world for yourself is a large part of the experience. I will give brief mention however to the lead, Kaiji himself because Kaiji’s character development is another one of this anime’s great points. As the plot summary suggests, Kaiji starts out the show a loser on his way out. A character simply floating through life, someone who chooses to not chase down ‘opportunity’, living in the medical sense that he has a beating heart and working lungs, but really ‘living’ to the fullest sense of the word. Not a real inspiring guy right? No, he isn’t, not to begin with. But as his dawdling way of life, where he cannot really see things as they ‘really’ are, places him into his predicament (i.e. a mountain of unpaid debts), his predicament is also what saves him, for it is only when Kaiji confronts the fear of death does he realize the value of his very existence, in a sense he ‘awakens’ from a deep sleep. With his back against the wall, he grows to become an absolute god of gambling in one sense, but in another way his development as a strong human being (both mentally and emotionally) is really what makes him an engaging character, one of the best leads I have ever seen in an anime. Personally I love the character of Kaiji and feel a lot more in touch with his struggle than I ever did with Akagi…

OVERALL:

God this is a long review… And I still feel as though I have only just scraped the surface of what makes Kaiji so great… Ah well, you can figure the rest out if you watch the show. I’m not going to guarantee that everyone is going to like it – hey, everyone has different opinions, tastes, personalities… But if I can convince someone who had no interest in Kaiji to at least try it, then I feel my job here is done. Excellent anime. Top marks.

Akagi is based around its titular character gambling his way to the top of the underworld, his enigmatic prowess for mahjong often turning the tide of certain defeat into victory. Akagi is a cold, relentless character. He cares little for money or for his own life. In the heat of the gamble he stops at nothing less than completely crushing his opponent's will to win...

Akagi is the first Nobuyuki Fukumoto manga to get the anime treatment and the anime has been executed surprisingly well. It is with reason that I say, 'surprisingly'. When considering Fukumoto's original, while particulary famous in Japan and Korea, you can't ... help but think that it would be very difficult to animate it well enough to make it appeal to a wide audience.

Firstly there is the subject matter, Akagi (the anime), as with a number of other works by Fukumoto, basically involves Akagi (the character) playing a couple of games of the Japanese version of mahjong, gambling for keeps. Next Madhouse have kept (thankfully) with Fukumoto's original art style, with all of its unconventional flourishes (read; big noses etc.). And finally, the lead character, Akagi, is not exactly the easiest character in the world to relate to. In short, he is out of this world, nothing short of a true "God of Gamblers".

With all of this in mind it is 'surprising' just how intense this anime is. In the next couple of paragraphs I'll try and breakdown how this anime overcomes all of the above, making it one of the most original, mind-numbingly insane animes in a long, long time.

Firstly the mahjong. I have to admit that when I first started watching this anime I knew nothing about mahjong in general, let alone the Japanese version. The good news is that it doesn't really matter. The basic goal of the game and the rules are subtly explained as the anime progresses, and while it does help learn a bit about the different 'hands' everyone is going for it is definitely not a pre-requisite. You see, mahjong is game based on points so it is always pretty obvious who is in the lead, what kind of a hand Akagi needs to win the game etc. The finer points of mahjong all seem to come in to place as the games progress. The anime's direction involves a lot of internal dialogue. The audience is always privy to each characters' thoughts, allowing them to (conveniently) tell the viewer what kind of tile the character in question is waiting for, the number of points the hand they are going for will land them etc.

Fear not, I can wholeheartedly say that the mahjong in this anime does not form an obstacle in the enjoyment of the anime in any way, shape or form. Like me, you'll probably get really into the game as you watch - The danger associated with having to throw away your tiles (with the possibility of the tile being picked up and used by your opponent as his victory tile) makes the game, and this anime truly absorbing to watch.

The mahjong battles are awesome, leaving you on the edge of your seat the whole time, however the real reason that the mahjong battles draw the viewer in is the interaction between characters, or more specifically, the carefully constructed psychological battles that are played out before our eyes.

The characters cannot be mentioned without some reference to the drawing style, which plays a large role in creating the tone of the series. As with anything Fukumoto, the character designs do take a little getting used to. Yes the characters do possess noses so large that Pinocchio would be put to shame. Yes the characters in general are kind of... angular. Yes there are no busty 2D babes providing you 13 year olds with fan service - Okay, deep breaths, deep breaths... If you watch this anime past the first episode you will (hopefully) realize that these features ARE NOT necessarily bad things.

Firstly the originality really makes it stand out, and as you watch further into the series you begin to realize that the character designs do actually really suit the whole grim, macabre feel of the anime - hey, we're talking about a bunch of men gambling with more than money, with their very lives here - it's not exactly The Brady Bunch... Trust me, by the time the anime ends you will think that the character design presented in Akagi is the ONLY true way you could represent the vile, ugly nature of underworld thugs. Personally, I love Fukumoto's ouevre. The characters are very expressive and the drawing style is perfectly combined with Hideki Taneuchi's brooding score to paint an intensely bleak pictue of the Japanese underworld circa the 1960's. I'm giving art and sound a 10.

Next, on to Akagi the character. He is a prodigy, an enigma - put bluntly, you are going to have a hard time understanding what he is going through. This is both a good and a bad thing. In a way his absoluteness, his superhuman insight wraps Akagi in a veil of mystery and, to paraphase the Fonz, is what gives him 'his cool'. On the other hand, when the anime ends you feel like you still don't really know anything about him at all. His existence in the anime is kind of like that of a mystery film. He reveals a little of his character, answering one question, only to pose two more...

Now I like a piece of entertainment that doesn't completely reveal itself to the audience, making each and every one of us think for ourselves about the story's meaning, about what happens next. With Akagi however, this is taken to the extreme. The anime just kind of ends (mid-match). I know, that this is not really the fault of the animators as the original manga had still not ended its run. (At the time of writing the manga is up to 20 volumes and is still ongoing - the anime version of Akagi ends at the start of volume 13). Having said that though I kind of wished that the animators would have veered from the original manga a bit towards the end, to give it a proper ending.

For me personally it is such a shame that such an epic anime ends with not a bang, but a whimper, and it has a point taken off it for that... I hold out hope that there is a second season (it doesn't look likely though).

While my review does end on kind of a sour note, let it be known that up until the ending this anime is pure gold, definitely a must see. If it is the mahjong or the character design holding you back, I urge you to give it a try - if you dismiss this one on face value you'll only be missing out on one of the most original, nail-bitingly intense anime series around. (No real biggie:)

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. I'd just helped myself to lunch at my girlfriend's folks' house. I was just about to head home when my girlfriend's sister held out the first volume of Yawara, recommending that I give it a try.

Ok I'm the first to admit I'm not the biggest fan of romantic comedy or the sports genre for that matter (having thought that that was what Yawara is all about at the time). I'd rather put out a cigarette on my eyeball than have to sit through an episode of Sex and the City. I'd rather inject sewrage shit into my arm than ... sit through an episode of Eyeshield 21...

So it was with a bit of trepidation that I approached Yawara. But I had a fairly long train ride home ahead of me and thought, what the heck? It's either this or looking at a bunch of derelict houses passing by the train window...

I'm happy to say that my impressions I had of Yawara before I read it were way off the mark.

The first thing that you notice is how superbly written Yawara is. Reading though it for the first time I was thinking that I SHOULD be hating this kind of story, yet here I am, nagging my girlfriend to get the next volume off her sister...

Yes it is a romantic comedy at times, and it does feature sports, but it is also a powerful character-driven human drama and so much more...

The story itself revolves around Yawara, a girl with god-like Judo abilities. Normally we get the same old story where the main character would start off a weakling and strive to better him or herself to the extent of their abilities in the hope of someday overcoming someone/achieving something. In Yawara we see a main character painted in a completely different light. Put simply, Yawara starts off the manga a Judo GOD... who wants to just live out her life as a normal girl.

Now you are probably thinking, "This must be the most boring manga of all time- If she starts out so strong and we know she's going to win, where's the sense of tension and excitement when she fights?" The big answer to this is that Yawara is a Judo manga that isn't really about Judo at all, rather Judo is simply used to bring all the characters together, to cause the drama. Even when Yawara is fighting it out on the mat, most of the time her attention, and consequently ours, is drawn to dramas taking place OUTSIDE the mat.

Yawara (the manga) essentially is based around the relationships Yawara (the character) has with everyone else. Firstly there is comedy found in the relationship between Yawara and her grandpa, Jigoro, who stops at nothing when trying to get his reluctant grand daughter to straighten up and realize (his) her dream of achieving Olympic Gold.

Next is the superbly written love triangle that is constantly at play between three characters focusing on the competition between Yawara and her rival Sayaka over Kazumatsuri, Sayaka's handsome Judo coach and an all round playboy to boot. This soon grows to four with the introduction of Matsuda, a sports newspaper reporter who starts off following Yawara in the hopes of promoting Japan's next sporting hero. The fifth member, "Kuni-chan" soon joins the fray, eyeing off Matsuda while working with him as a photographer. A love triangle with five people in the middle, what is that, a love pentagon??

Then there is friendship and rivalry played out with the strongest women of Judo; Jody Rockwell (Canada), Tereshikow (Russia), Christine Adams (Canada), Kim (Korea) all coming after Yawara with the aim to replace her on top of the Judo world. While these rivalries do have their moments, I much preferred the friendships Yawara forms with fellow members of the Japanese Judo team, her friend from high school (Hanazono-kun) and her friend from uni (Fujiko). The relationships with these two characters take a lot of turns, capturing just about everything, from love to drama to comedy to despair to shock...

The final "main" character provides for a lot of the mystery in the story, Yawara's father, who left Yawara's family home to go into training when thrown to the ground by Yawara when she was still just a child. Yawara and her mother's search for him is yet another well written, intriguing crux to a story that has so many points of interest already.

The characters, no matter how brief their appearance is in the manga, are all painstaking realized to give them three dimensional personalities. Whether hate them or love them, all characters instantly leaving an impression on the reader, which really makes the reader care about what happens to them next. In the end this, not the judo fights, is the real page turner for this manga.

On a side note, I have to say my favorite character in the manga (and also one of my favorite characters of all time) would be Matsuda. While Yawara is definetely the focus point of the story and the character that brings the story all together, I found that I read the story for Matsuda's exploits in pursuing Yawara, both as a news subject and as a love interest. His underdog charm, his all-round-good-guy-ness, that Yamagata accent!

Combined with Naoki Urasawa's distinctive and expressive art style this manga is a must-read. Hey, take it from a guy who starting out thinking that he'd hate this only to be blown away in a very, very good way.

Vagabond is perhaps the very epitome of a great manga. It has everything: action, suspense, excitment, drama and even a little romance - everything that is packed into Eiji Yoshikawa's amazing original story.

That's not to say it is to everyone's tastes. While I personally love Takehiko Inoue's drawings, the imagery at times is very graphic, bordering on grotesque at times. Limbs, guts, heads fly off in the heat of battle, the drawings are literally so good it's sickening. If blood is not really your thing, you might be better leaving this on the shelf.

For those who don't mind a bit of blood however, read ... on, because while Vagabond at first glance just seems to be yet another manga based on the era of the samurai, this manga has a great deal of depth that literally sucks the reader in.

For example, in countless manga involving fights (and in particular, American comic books as well) the reader is presented with a rather generic range of characters - the good guys... and the bad guys. This isn't the case with the characters that appear in Vagabond however. The characteristics of people inhabiting the world of Vagabond, their emotions, desires, despairs, fears etc. are all painstakingly realised that Vagabond on a whole seems to be a lavishly painted picture. All characters have their reasons for what they do, they all have both good and bad elements to their character which only further adds to the realism that the drawings provide.

In your stock-standard fighting story the death of the "bad guys" is inevitable, and one does not stop to ponder this into too much detail. However, in Vagabond when Musashi cuts someone down both Musashi and the reader are left to think and question the "correctness" of his actions. You really feel for the deaths of those that fall. As Takuan, the monk appearing in the story, says, all people killed by Musashi were just that, people. They are people with families, wives, children, pets, they are people who had hopes and dreams, or people who just somehow lived day to day.

However the real reason Vagabond is a favourite manga of mine is because of the main story thread, the growth of Musashi himself from a reckless 17 year old youth who plunges directly into the battle of Sekigahara seeking unparalled strength, to a well rounded young adult who learns how to pick his battles.

The contrast between Matahachi and Musashi is beautifully done. Matahachi and Musashi, two friends, start the manga off on the same footing and set off to be one thing -"Tenka Musou" 天下無双 ('the best in the land'). However Matahachi and Musashi soon walk down separate paths to acheive this goal. Matahachi chooses to pursue frivolous momentary pleasures, while Musashi instead chooses to devote himself to bettering himself.

Both make mistakes and suffer setbacks along the way, and both have their own ways of dealing with this - Matahachi digs himself into further into trouble while Musashi rises above the setbacks he faces and strengthens himself to unbelivable proportions.

After surviving numerous duels to the bitter end and overcoming many internal conflicts (the decision to leave his one true love, Otsu to pursue the life of the sword), only one swordsman still stands in Musashi's way...

Sasaki Kojiro - a deaf and dumb swordsman who literally lives for the sword...

While the story does drag at times (the Yoshioka arc), on a whole Vagabond is packed full of both emotion and gut-wrenching sword battles. It's relatively short on dialogue, but the images Inoue presents speak volumes. A picture is really worth a thousand words and this manga is a manga that attests to this. If only other manga could be this deep as well. Every single volume of the manga really leaves the reader pondering about what they've read for a long time after the manga has been put down.

Put simply, there is not a manga that I could recommend more.