Kaiba Review - 97.5/100.0

Every so often, something unique will come along and provide a different experience that is different to other  pop-anime's experiences. Sometimes this can be seen through the art design, story, characters and animation which give it a richer look and an in-depth quality in its characters. Kaiba is an anime that tackles every aspect of anime from the technical to the creative and achieves what most anime's can't do. 

Kaiba is a science-fiction story about a universe where all living beings physical bodies are nothing more than a surrogate to their mind, which can be extracted and put into a new body. 

The series begins as the main character, Kaiba, wakes up and finds out that he has suffered from traumatic amnesia. Knowing absolutely nothing of himself, he is giving a single clue of a photo of a woman inside of a pendant. He is thereon ventures around the universe trying to find out who this unknown woman is and who he is. 

From the get-go, Kaiba confronts you with its simplistic cartoon characters, these at first come off as something childish and innocent on the surface, and may convince some that its childish in character and storyline, but instead becomes more darker after watching the first episode. 

Kaiba doesn't treats its story or characters as other science-fiction anime do. Instead throughout the entire anime wants to shock its audience with the harsh and brutal world in which people live in, juxtaposing its simplistic visuals. 

Each episode is filled with new characters and new worlds in which Kaiba experiences first hand. Sometimes showing the world and its people on how exploitive and sinister they are toward minor characters and the main characters. Some themes that are tackles like surrogate stealing, prostitution, harsh violence and human suffering are executed perfectly with nothing holding it back. 

Every episode focuses many on some of these topics and it into the very details of the character who suffer gravely from it. Characters express themselves with personality and expression, even if the character is only featured in one episode the writers have carefully crafted it to help flesh out such characters.

It only goes to show that anime can convey such a masterpiece with conventional methods and express something far more visceral, frightening and amazing enduring. Without having to resort to old cliché and exhaustive methods of expression. 

True Tears Review - 97.5/100.0

Romance can be a tough and tricky genre to tackle in the anime and manga series. The amount of detail into character, plot and storyline is something that is vital in making a solid, but emotionally heartbreaking story. Many have come and gone, and have shown their abilities only to be an extreme melodrama, unrealistic with cardboard characters. True Tears on the other hand is something completely different. This is possibly the best romance anime one could offer. From the uniqueness of the characters, to the awkward motives and teenage fantasies. True Tears is dynamic and realistic to the point that these people could exist in real life. 

The story revolves around a student named Shin'ichirō Nakagami, who has a high artistic vision and imagination which he has great sensitivity for. Living at home with his mother and father, he is conflicted with an affection of one his classmates, Hiromi Yuasa who moved into Shin'ichirō house after her father died. After recieving a rejection letter over a his artistic works, Shin'ichirō disappointed and feels out of touch with the world. Until he meets up with a strange and yet alluring girl named Noe Isurugi which they become fascinated by each others their nature. This leads to an emotional struggle with both Hiromi and Noe on favouring Shin'ichirō. To add more to it, Shin'ichirō friend Aiko Andō, is going out with Shin'ichirō's childhood friend Miyokichi Nobuse, but Aiko really has affection in  Shin'ichirō and struggle with her feelings for him. 

Each character that is focused around love and affection has an interior struggle with their emotions. True Tears pick the most cliché of romance settings (teenage high-school characters) and produces are wide range of realistic motives, plot and character driven narrative. Each scene is layered with detail of each characters life and personal struggles. Each character expresses a non-grandiose like human behaviour, there's never any intense fights and overly dramatic bawling out of tears coming from each character. Even in the most extreme moment of  True Tears, all can be considered legitimate cause of the build-up toward that moment  and the emotional struggle of the characters. 

It never provides a romance of cliché love, but instead one of angst, anger, confusion and suffering. The three main characters all show these feelings and their desperation to have something that may be out of their reach. 

Even through their body language and facial expression they show their interior struggle of love, instead of a moments where their heads are hanged down as the dribbles out lines after lines of boring a monologue. The dialogue is engaging and paced out, it doesn't vomit out scenes after scenes of endless talking. 

Its tightly woven together into thirteen episodes, with fantastic visuals and animation which helps out a lot from where its set (The Seaside). When finishing this anime its nothing heart-warming or lovey-dovey, it gives a confrontation which has an everlasting impact.

 

True Tears is possibly the best romance anime out there and its a shame that it never got the recognition that other romance anime's got and after watching it you'll never think of romance the same way.