Over the pastone year, I have watched a lot of animes. Seeing as I was visiting and having an amazing time at anime conventions, might as well, right? So five animes I'm just gonna write about. Agree, disagree, whatever. I just need somewhere to write stuff. And no, I do not read mangas.

Death Note: 4/5
The general idea: Death gods overwatch the world, able to write down who they want dead and how. Being bored one day, one deathgod drops his book down into the human world. From there, a guynamed Lightpicks it up and reads the rules of the book called the Death Note. All he needs to do is to write the name and see the face of who he wants dead, and they're dead how he wants. Trying it out a bit, he decides to embrace the power of it, and to use it to kill those who deserve it. The spike in death of criminals around the world however gets police involved, and a detective only known as "L" with no name or face to the public begins his attempts to catch the killer.

This has been an anime that has gotten a lot of discussion, mostly due to the shock it has on the common public. When people think of animes, they think of Pokemon or Dragonball Z. What they don't expect is an inteligent well though out story. Going from beam throwing and friendship speeches to a tale about murder, justice, and corruption is a bit of a jump. Being one of the deeper animes out there, it held a lot of responsibuility. It had to be darker, it had to be well thought out, and it had to be every bit as intense as it's more action packed retarded cousins. I would say it succeded. The entire idea is amazingly thought out and many parts will keep you on the edge of your seat, problem is, like many animes, it drags on and on. If I was reviewing the first season alone, I would give this an easy 5/5, but when you get to Light not even being involved in the story anymore, you start to get confused what anime it was you were watching. The last season changed pretty much all the characters but Light, drastically increasing the scale of all the things Light does til you can't even follow a single "master plan" he came up with because they're so absurd. Overall a great anime I will recommend, but the other seasons don't keep their quality and given it's amazing first season, you'll be forced into watching the other seasons, no doubt about it. It's just too good for it's own good at cliffhangers.

Yu Yu Hakusho: 3/5
The general idea: A smart mouth'd punk known as one of the toughest guys around school is killed oddly while saving a little kid from a reckless driver. Introduced to a weird version of the afterlife, he find out he wasn't supposed to die, and gets the chance to come back to life. After finally getting back to life, he's hired as a spirit detective to basically act as a police for the heads of spirit world. This includes learning how to control spirit power, beating up demons running loose around town, and... well that's about it.

Yu Yu Hakusho is deceivingly well written in the first few parts of the story. Enough so to make you think it might have a lot to it. His solutions to problems can often be clever and work arounds for just brute forcing a situation, there are many episodes without so much as a single real fight scene, and Yusuke, our main character, is set up as a pretty likable guy, neither being too heroic or overly anti hero but rather set up as just a punk in school. The problem comes in that this stuff doesn't hold it's own beyond the first set of episodes. Yusuke quickly becomes more of a hero than anything when there's a danzel in distress, he quickly learns how to be the most powerful in the world, and the only thing that stays the same about him is his smart mouth. All of the plot pretty much boils down to who Yusuke needs to beat up next. As an action anime though, it's pretty good. I don't hold a grudge against animes for not being deep enough, I just didn't like it pretending to be something completely different at first. Fight scenes are well animated for a while, they exploit each character's powers well, and it's not so clear at times who the winner of the fight will be. Just don't expect too much from this anime after they enter demon world, and don't expect anything but what you can find in DBZ durring way later episodes.

Naruto: 4/5
The general idea: A loud mouthed kid named Naruto was fused as a baby with the soul of a demonish 9 tailed foxin order to get rid of it. As such, people hate him in general and blame him for a lot of what happened. The anime generally follows him and his attempt to rise through the ranks and become a respected ninja in a town of ninjas. Eventually though, his powers get him dragged into far bigger things.

I really am shocked I'm calling this a good anime, but it is. It's not the deepest of animes, and it has it's problems, but it really does a lot well for being more focused on the action. The fights actually take place for the most part, having only a couple character able to do that "too fast for the eye" thing that has made DBZ so lazly drawn. The characters all are very well developed and are unique, main character or not, all having their own abuilities and stories. Naruto and the gang remains through the course of the anime unable to take on his masters in power, and most amazingly, characters actually age. Looking back on the first few episodes, it was just a subtle change from episode to episode how much the crew grew up in general. Having not many animes do that it took me by surprise. Generally, it's just a well written anime with good twist and turns. The point off however, is fortwo reasons. One being that the main characters are the least likable of the characters they made. Naruto being comic relief, Sasuke being an impossible to understand prick and Sakura having absolutely no moment that justifies her main character status. Two being that there really is basically 200 episodes of filler after the main story is done. It's like if pokemon cut out everything but the gym battles and elite four, but then went back to do all the episodes they missed inbetween.

Paranoia Agent: 5/5
The general idea: A city is full of many people all with their own story. Their stories however all get linked at the end as they all end with a kid on rollerblades bonking them in the head with a bat.

This is the best of the animes I've seen. Like deathnote, it's a deeper darker anime. For it's rediculous description, it's all really not out of this world. Each character introduces a completely different set of characters. This ranges from a kid who is being overshadowed as the big shot at school to a woman getting married but whose second personality is basically a hooker on the street. They're all thought provoking mini stories amusing in their own way, but as you get later into the anime, themain story gradually becomes clear and the overall idea presents itself. The series however might be more along the lines of a mini series though, being only 13 episodes long. It's refreshing to find an anime that knows when to stop, and I don't feel left wanting more out of it, but it's hard to define this with the others for that reason. Overall, I cannot find a flaw in this though, and there's no tale told throught the series that I did not like. This is an anime to reccomend to anyone.

Bleach: 1/5
The general idea: A guy named Ichigo was born with the odd abuility to see ghost. However, he never understood the inner workings of the afterlife. One day however, a deathgod fighting a demon outside his house causes him to rush out to try and protect his family. One thing leads to another and he ends up taking the deathgod's power, becoming one himself and ends up with a duty to protect the people around him from demons and to save the deathgod he ended up stealing the powers from.

Unlike Naruto, I really wanted to like this anime. I just wanted something simple to watch at the time, and did like it for a bit, but Bleach becomes nothing more than Dragonball Z with swords VERY fast.Who are the characters? Well, there's ichigo whostands as the most generic main character ever, and that's about it. Why do I stop there, you watched the intro, you saw all those characters? Well I stopped there because outside of maybe 2 episdoes of the hundereds, they are ALL unimportant. Like Krillin inDBZ, they're too weak to contribute anything to combat, and they're given worthless backstories that are deserving of no more than 1 episode of screen time. This is all about Ichigo really. So there's no real depth I guess, but this is an action anime, right? So then where's the action? I don't know. Most of the fights are rediculous to say the least. Let me sum up one for you guys, man with chain sword turns chainsword into giant dragon capapable of leveling entire buildings. Other man however in the blink of an eye nearly kills man with now giant dragon sword with nothing more than pedels around the screen for animations and art. That's the main problem with this anime really. Following Ichigo and his fights against all the other people in this deathgod world for hundreds of episodes, it really boils down to everyone using the "too fast to see" trick in what I can only assume is the drawers of this anime being too lazy to show even a simple colision of swords. All the hype I've heard about this anime, worthless. What's sad too is it looked like it had some slight potential when you see how they set everything up before they knock it all down.

Sorry for the bad spelling, late at night and gamespot apparently doesn't use the real spellcheck function for their blog. I'll fix it soon, and my game review I do next is going to be Henry Hatsworth, can't wait for it to come out tomarrow.