The latest entry for Anime of the Day is the romantic comedy from Japanese animation studio J.C. Staff. I am talking about the quite popular anime series which had a 25-episode run in Japan’s TV Tokyo from October 2008 and March 2009. The series is Toradora! and is based on the light novel and manga by Takemiya Yuyuko.
This series is a romantic comedy and also one that is full of well-done drama. It’s an anime about relationships and stars two very atypical leads in Takasu Ryuji and Aisaka Taiga. Ryuji is the misunderstood highschool boy whose squinty eyes has labeled him a thuggish, criminal-type which causes some hilarious reactions from classmates and teachers both. Taiga is the doll-like tsudere-type who manages to scare everyone in her school due to her quick temper and improbable strong attacks. The two end up accidentally bumping into each other in the first day of classes and hilarity ensues from there.
Other characters such as Taiga’s friend Minorin (the weird, ditzy girl) and Ryuji’s best friend Kitamura Yusaku also lend their own personalities and relationship issues to the mix which ends up complication everyone else’s hook-ups. There’s also the kyuugere character in Kawashima Ami who is Yusaku’s very beautiful childhood friend whose attempt to hook-up with Ryuji causes other relationship complications which doesn’t untangle itself until very close to the end of the series.
Toradora! looks like the typical romantic comedy at first glance, but as one gets deeper into the series deeper layers in how the characters behave and their motivations for their earlier behaviors shine through. The comedy in the series actually begins to take a backseat to the complex romances in the show. We know from the beginning who should end up with who, but the journey the characters take to finally get to where they need to be in the end is the high point in the show.
For people new to anime this series is actually a very good starting point in the romantic-comedy genre as it takes the subject matter seriously and doesn’t pander to the usual easy hook of ecchi scenes and over-the-top comedy.
Believe it or not, originally I was brought on to be the anime guy. Granted, I haven’t always been the most active of people, but that’s my natural laziness taking over. But with the season being what it is, and me having drank enough, allow me to enlighten everyone about one of the finer horror anime out there, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.
Previously Arleigh had posted up another yandere classic, School Days. The Higurashi visual novel predates said visual novel by three years. The big difference is that while School Days was a fairly well funded project (with many, many bugs in it!) and Higurashi was basically a doujinshi project.
Let me explain doujinshi for a very little bit. A lot of people make the mistake that doujinshi instantly equals porn comics. Now, if you attend Comiket, which is the single largest doujinshi convention in Japan, you could be excused for thinking that it’s all about comics, and more importantly, comics that solely deal in erotic content. However, doujinshi basically just means “self published”. Again, not a literal translation. You want literal? Fine. The literal translation is “same person periodical publication”. Basically this can be taken to mean a project taken on by someone without the financial backing of the mainstream media. This could mean either comics, games, or even anime. Yes, the more common genre are the comics, but there is a fairly decent market for self published games. Higurashi falls under the blanket of the self published games.
But if you can get past the rough character designs, (keep in mind that the true meat of the game comes from the story, not the graphics) then you’re in for a very good story with many a twist and turn along the way.
One thing I must say, based on the experiences I’ve had with people is that you should probably watch the anime first. Perhaps I’ve just been subjected to extremely rabid fans, but too many of them have an irrational hatred of the anime. I’ll accept that there is a chance the complaints are valid, because I have not personally played the visual novel (you play them, not read them. Trust me on this) but having seen all of the anime, even if the transition is not perfect, it’s still a fun watch that will keep you guessing right up until the answer arcs are shown.
Each arc starts out in a very light hearted manner, but make no mistake, this is a horror series at its core. The fact that such cute girls are at the center of it all makes it seem all the more horrific, especially with the actions that are taken throughout the various arcs. While it’s very difficult for anime to effectively show gore without getting to the ridiculous buckets of blood level, Higurashi manages to be very effective in its depictions of it, and some scenes are actually a bit shocking to see.
The thing is, you have to watch both seasons of the show, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, to get the true ending and find out the reason for all the happenings in the town of Hinamizawa during June of 1983, but it is well worth the time spent, and shows that anime can successfully pull off the horror genre.
For our latest Anime of the Day I have chosen the very controversial title School Days which aired from July through to September of 2007.
The series was adapted by anime studio TNK from the visual novel and eroge of the same title published by the company Overflow. School Days was your typical “harem” visual novel eroge where the main protagonist (most of the time male though there’s a few where it’s reversed and it’s a female) becomes involved with several of the female characters in the game. The goal of these eroge was to try and navigate through the many relationships between the protagonists and the many female characters around him (usualy in a sexual nature) and get the perfect ending which always ends up being the so-called “good ending”.
With School Days the main protagonist is one Makoto Ito who starts off as being a mild-mannered and polite high school student. This doesn’t last long as he become embroiled with the many female classmates he’s known for years and those he recently met. To say that the character of Makoto becomes addicted to having sex with his female classmates would be an understatement.
While there are several female characters in School Days who become involved with Makoto in one way or another it’s the duo of Kotonoha Katsura and Sekai Saionji who become rivals for Makoto’s affection. Just like the visual novel the anime series was adapted from (the visual novel was also adapted as a manga series) the complex and increasingly malicious attitudes by some of the leads in the series would lead to more than one tragedy for all involved. This is a series which starts off as a light-hearted harem title but as the series progresses towards its climactic finale it somehow takes a huge turn into the darkside that by the time it does make that turn the viewer has become so invested in the characters and the story that it becomes a major shock to the system.
School Days has become controversial since its release due to a real-life killing where a young high school girl kills her father with an axe which some thought as being too similar in tone to a sequence in the series. The controversy from such a real-life event caused the tv station broadcasting the series to replace almost half the running time of the final episode with an image of a nice boat and classical music playing in the background. This became such a major internet meme that saying “Nice Boat” has become the comment of choice when discussing controversial scenes and plot developments of any series that’d be ripe for studio censorship.
The series in all its form also emphasizes the character stereotype of yandere. School Days definitely has its major share of yandere characters and the many different endings to the visual novel shows how some of the yandere characters in the story deal with the callous way Makoto has dealt when dealing with their affections towards him. It gets bloody, violent and more than just a tad crazy-insane.
School Days is definitely one of the more seriously twisted anime offerings out there which doesn’t involved hentai in its description whatsoever. It’s a series that if it was a live-action series would be similar in tone and scope to many of filmmaker Ken Park’s films which deal with teenage highschool relationships, sex and the consequence which can come from it.
A couple weeks back I posted an article about Warner Home Video and Madhouse (anime studio) collaborating to adapt the very popular CW supernatural series Supernatural into anime. The series will comprise of 22-episodes and has a tentative release date in Japan around January 2011. More news has since come down the pipeline that the 22-episode season will see a DVD release with English-subtitles a couple months later.
From the preview trailer which has come out since it looks like the anime keeps the core theme of the show with the two Winchester Brothers fighting not just through demons, monsters-of-the-week and other supernatural problems, but also their own familial issues. The animation by Madhouse should appeal to non-anime fans since it skews more towards a realistic style instead of the hyper-kinetic wide-eyed animation style many non-fans think all anime looks like. I like to compare the animation to this series to a classic supernatural action anime which came out during the early 1990’s, Ninja Scroll.
The use of deep blacks to shade the character animations and give some definition to their faces gives the whole animation style quite the fleshy, rounded look instead of the angular, almost mechanical style of current anime. The incorporation of typical anime-style monsters was a nice touch. That was definitely tentacles coming out of that monster/demon. Though I must say that I’d be surprised if this series used said tentacles in other ways other than to be an instrument of destruction and bloodletting. I don’t think Supernatural the Animation will have much hentai qualities in it.
Anime horror usually don’t come out as often and when they do they’re usually of the hentai variety. If the folks at Madhouse even do half a good job in adapting the original tv series then this is one anime series I will have on my must-see list.
….And yes, that is a Japanese band cover of Kansas’ classic rock song, “Carry On Wayward Son“, which has become the tv series’ unofficial theme song.
Hentai: slang for the Japanese term “hentai seiyoku” which literally means sexual perversion. A word used by Western fans of anime to signify anime/manga as being of the pornographic variety.
In 1990, during my junior year of high school, I was introduced to a form of animation unlike anything I had known before—the darkly imaginative and transgressive world of hentai. While explicit Japanese media had existed long before, the particular title that marked my first encounter with the genre was Chōjin Densetsu Urotsukidōji. The work did not simply define hentai; it transformed how adult animation would be viewed by audiences in both Japan and the West.
Prior to its release, erotic or explicit manga had long circulated quietly within Japan, often categorized separately from mainstream entertainment. Yet when mangaka Maeda Toshio’s Chōjin Densetsu Urotsukidōji was adapted into animation by director Takayama Hideki in the late 1980s, something shifted. The result was a film that combined the grotesque, the apocalyptic, and the erotic into a single overwhelming experience. Takayama’s adaptation was not content to merely illustrate Maeda’s ideas—it amplified them into a fever dream of violence and desire that pushed the medium into territory rarely explored in animation.
This era in Japanese media was also defined by strict obscenity laws. Direct depictions of genitalia or explicit intercourse were prohibited, both in live-action and animation. To circumvent these limitations, artists employed mosaics or invented visual metaphors. Takayama approached the problem with disturbing creativity: he replaced human anatomy with monstrous, tentacle-like appendages. These served a dual purpose—they satisfied censors while reinforcing the story’s occult and otherworldly atmosphere. Inadvertently, this gave rise to one of the most infamous tropes in hentai culture: “tentacle rape.” What began as a method of evading censorship evolved into a symbol of perversion, horror, and fascination.
Though Maeda initially regarded Takayama’s interpretation as excessively cruel and sadistic, he expressed admiration for the director’s ability to explore the darker undercurrents of his story. In time, Maeda’s own works would adopt similar motifs, blending eroticism with the supernatural. His later projects—including Yōjū Kyōshitsu Gakuen, Adobenchā Kiddo, and the enduring Injuu Gakuen La Blue Girl—refined the sensibilities born from Urotsukidōji, mixing violence, humor, and demonic imagery. These works often shifted in tone but never strayed far from the genre’s defining combination of horror and sexual excess.
Chōjin Densetsu Urotsukidōji can best be described as a collision of disparate influences: the mythic nihilism of H. P. Lovecraft, the explicit confrontational style of Larry Flynt, and the occult transgression of Aleister Crowley, all underscored by the philosophical cruelty associated with the Marquis de Sade. The film’s narrative combines apocalypse with pornography, constructing a universe where gods, demons, and humans become locked in violent and erotic cycles of destruction and rebirth. It is both a nightmare and a spectacle, a work that examines desire as an extension of cosmic chaos.
Watching the OVA as a seventeen-year-old was an experience of shock and bewilderment. Nothing in my understanding of animation prepared me for it. The optimism and adventure of series like Robotech, Starblazers, and Voltron stood in stark contrast to the nihilistic intensity of Urotsukidōji. If such a term had been common at the time, “culture shock” would have described it perfectly. Yet beyond my initial disorientation, I recognized something compelling beneath the shock value—a strange vision that treated eroticism not as mere indulgence but as a reflection of human fear and fascination.
Takayama’s film succeeded because it used obscenity as both spectacle and metaphor. The sexualized violence was horrifying, but it also emphasized the collapse of moral order within its world. The boundaries between sensuality and monstrosity blurred, suggesting that both sprang from the same primal source. In this way, Urotsukidōji transformed its limitations into aesthetic strength. Censorship forced invention, and invention created symbolism: the tentacle became an image of corruption, domination, and inhuman desire.
When Urotsukidōji began circulating in the West through VHS imports in the early 1990s, it acquired immediate notoriety. For many international viewers, the notion that animation could contain such extreme imagery was almost unthinkable. Western audiences, accustomed to animation as a medium for children or adolescent adventure, suddenly encountered a work that combined cinematic brutality with mythology and eroticism. Owning or viewing it became an act of curiosity and defiance. Accessing such media often meant seeking imported tapes or attending small conventions—a process that only heightened its sense of exclusivity and taboo.
Not everyone perceived Urotsukidōji as art. Its reputation became divisive; for some, it represented the most exploitative and grotesque tendencies of Japanese culture, while to others, it was a bold exercise in creative freedom. Regardless of one’s stance, its influence was undeniable. The film inspired countless imitators, establishing a visual and thematic template for subsequent hentai and “erotic horror” animation. Even as later works diversified into comedy, fantasy, and romance, the long shadow of Urotsukidōji remained.
There is also a deeper irony in its legacy. The same adaptation Maeda once criticized expanded the reach and visibility of his creation beyond what any manga publication could have achieved. The collaboration between artist and director—however fraught—produced a convergence of imagination that shaped both the erotic and horror dimensions of modern anime. In a broader sense, it demonstrated that the animated form could explore the same depths of transgression, myth, and existential dread that live-action cinema often reserved for its most daring auteurs.
Seen through this lens, Urotsukidōji becomes more than a piece of pornographic shock cinema. It emerges as a cultural artifact—one that reflects how desire, repression, and fantasy intersect within specific historical and artistic contexts. The work exposes how censorship and creativity can collide to produce unexpected invention, and how audiences, whether through fascination or outrage, help define a genre’s legacy.
For those of my generation, encountering Urotsukidōji was a defining moment that reshaped perception. It suggested that animation could express not only beauty and adventure but also the darker instincts of the human psyche. What began as disbelief evolved into a kind of reluctant respect for its ambition. Beneath the grotesque imagery lay a thematic depth that continues to invite examination—questions about power, violation, and the thin line separating horror from desire.
Today, both Maeda Toshio’s manga and Takayama Hideki’s adaptation occupy a controversial yet essential place in the history of Japanese media. They are remembered not only for their sensational content but for their cultural and aesthetic audacity. The story of Chōjin Densetsu Urotsukidōji endures because it refuses simplification—it is at once abhorrent and visionary, obscene yet strangely philosophical.
From the most ardent anime historian to the casual viewer, its reputation persists. Whether reviled or revered, Urotsukidōji remains the ultimate symbol of hentai’s origins and its infamous reach. It stands as both a warning and a testament: that art, when unfettered by convention and driven by instinct, can explore places society dares not name.
CW Network’s very popular tv series Supernatural looks to expand into a new media as Warner Home Video plans to release a 22-episode anime adaptation of the tv series. The series will come out in Japan this January of 2011 with acclaimed anime studio Madhouse doing the animation. The series’ first season will encompass the breadth of the original series’ first two season, but will have room for new content which explore and expand of the two Winchester Brothers’ early childhood as Hunters. Some secondary characters from the original show will also get a much more expanded role within the anime series.
I, for one, was quite excited when I first learned of this development. The original show has been a favorite of mine since it first debuted in the Fall of 2005. While for some the idea of an American TV series getting an anime adaptation might seem farfetched, but I think Supernatural‘s aesthetics lends itself well to the hyper-realistic conventions of anime. Madhouse has already shown it could do straight up horror with its very popular zombie anime series Gakuen Mokushiroku (Highschool of the Dead), so creating a series out of a show based on the supernatural and monsters and demons wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for the studio.
The Winchester Brothers in the anime will be voiced by the two same actors who dub the original series for airing in Japan: Yuya Uchida and Hiroki Touchi. There’s no word on whether the series will get an American dub version when the dvd/Blu-Ray comes out in the US so fans hoping to hear Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles voicing their anime counterparts may have to temper their hopes.
Time will tell if this anime adaptation will catch on in the US, but with Supernatural having such a huge and vocal fan-base there’s a chance it may just and allow a second season to be made.
Another AMV from the romantic-comedy anime series Toradora! is my pick for AMV of the Day.
There’s not much else to say about this series other than it’s a must-see. Unlike most romantic-comedy series this one actually tries to tone down the comedic aspect of the series, but not enough to give the whole thing a too-serious vibe. The characters have believable motivations and reactions to the goings-on around them. The series also dos a great job of matching up several characters initially only to have these matches re-done until the couples people want together end up together.
This particular AMV was created by Youtube user ChangitoLoko who also made four other AMV’s using Toradora! and its many characters. I will take a huge flying leap and guess that ChangitoLoko really enjoyed this series. The song he used for this AMV is Vanessa Carlton’s song, A Thousand Miles. This song has been used in many other romantic-based AMV’s in the last. I really liked this song as paired with scenes and characters from Toradora! though there might be spoilers for those who haven’t seen the anime so beware.
We are down to the last final episodes of this first season of Madhouse’s anime series adaptation of the zombie and ecchi manga series, Highschool of the Dead. The last episode was the start of the calm before what I hope to be the major storm that will take this series into a second season.
Episode 11 didn’t linger on too much on the fanservice side of the series with the exception of an all-too-brief look inside the school bus of Shido-san and his sex cultists. We get a glimpse at how Shido deals with the students who don’t conform to his twisted (albeit must be quite fun) outlook on the new world order as it stands now. The manga had shown that particular sequence of why that one student was thrown off the bus to be taken by the zombies. In this episode we didn’t see what caused his expulsion, but got a sense that the student didn’t want to join in on the bus orgy going on between the students with Shido-san acting as a sort of Aleister Crowley-like figurehead.
While inside the Takagi compound it looks like the episode skipped some more of the manga and didn’t show how Takagi’s father was finally swayed to allow Kohta to keep the groups weapons. I can understand the Madhouse writers trying to cram as much of the manga into a 13-episode season, but the way they’re going about things they could catch up to the manga by episode 13 which would definitely might be a sign that a second season won’t be in the offing. Here’s to hoping that the writers were just trying to move things along to the crisis which sends the group out of the compound and back into the dangers of the city-proper.
While the fanservice was limited the harem aspect of the story continued to grow as Rei literally threw herself at the mercy of Komuro but to no avail. Does Rei know that Saeko and Saya may be competing with her for Komuro’s attention? If that’s the case then Komuro definitely has shown quite a bit of restraint when it comes to Rei’s increasingly aggressive advances. There’s also the fact that Komuro and Saeko may have already sealed their partnership a few episodes past though we never really saw it but definitely implied.
The arrival of Shido-san into the compound definitely explains why Rei was so adamant to leave the safety of the bus early in the season. The fact that Rei dismissed Shido-san as less than worthy of her attention was a nice touch even though this could become a major problem for the group down the line. Even in the manga the fate of Shido-san and his group of students were not truly explained though not all of them could’ve survived their subsequent exile.
With two episodes left and with the major superpowers throwing nukes at each other, I hope that this calm has finally ended and the storm that’s been brewing since the group arrived at the Takagi compound can finally smash into the city. If there’s to be no second season then these last two episodes need to put the previous 11 in terms of action, horror and fanservice to shame. It’s the only way for the series to go out with a huge bang.
We’re now heading towards the end of this first season of Madhouse’s anime adaptation of the zombie manga Highschool of the Dead. It is still up in the air whether this 13-episode initially produced will be the first season or just the first half of what will end up being the only season. If the latter is the case then the series just took a relaxing calm before the storm of what will be episode 11 thru to 13.
Episode 10 brings everyone in the group back together as Takashi Komuro and Busujima Saeko finally makes it back to the relative safety of the Takagi fortress-compound in the previous episode. This episode was actually pretty devoid of much of the fanservice which were prevalent in the last 5 previous episodes. The only nod to it’s ecchi side of the series was in the beginning where one might think Rei and Komuro might just end up going all the way (something that suspiciously might have already happened between Komuro and Saeko in the last episode), but alas it was not meant to be. It was just a medical intervention to help Rei heal up from being sorely bruised from the action of episode 8.
While within the Takagi compound we get to know more about the life of Saya and her relationship with her parents. To say that she has lived quite the privileged life would be an understatement. But while in other media the privileged children of rich and powerful parents end up being useless beyond being spoiled and entitled, Saya seems to have grown past being just a spoiled brat and into a child who has tried to live up to the perfection that are her parents. I mean her father is the lord of the manor in more ways than one as the Takagi-clan looks to have been the same clan in centuries past which ruled over the city during the Feudal-era of Japan. Takagi Souichiro and his wife Yuriko are quite formidable parents and we see where Saya gets both her beauty and coldly, logical brain.
This episode to me also shows us just how far Hirano Kohta has come from the geeky and shy introduction from the first couple episodes. We’ve seen him become quite the badass to help bookend Saeko in terms of pure zombie killing power. He’s been the most useful of the group not just in how expertly he handles the guns the group comes across, but in teaching others how to operate them. This new zombie apocalypse world has made Kohta useful in his eyes. So, when the demand by the “adults” at the Takagi compound for him to hand over the weapons he and his group brought with them his reaction was both understandable and quite saddening.
To survive the last couple days as a highschool student while adults around them died and became “Them” it’s jarring to Kohta and the rest of the group to suddenly be treated as children once more. While his tear-filled reaction to not wanting to go back to being a helpless otaku seemed overly dramatic it’s easy to sympathize with him. Thus, it was great to see not just for the group to have his back and support his decision to hold on to the weapons, but to see Saya do the same. The fact that she uses Kohta’s help in securing her safety a way to show her contempt for her parents for not trying to find a way to save her shows the rift between daughter and parents.
While this respite from the doom and gloom action of the previous 3-4 episodes was quite good, this partcular calm before the storm looks to be ending quite quickly as the sneak preview for the next episode show the return of Shido-san and his bus of cult followers. Plus, just when I thought Madhouse was going to cut the bus orgy scene from the manga it looks like they just kept it for the end of episode 10. Now all is right with the world.
I finally came across an AMV which does a great job at melding song and images from the romantic-comedy anime series, Toradora!. This series is just getting it’s North American release and I saw the first episode (subtitled of course….don’t believe in dubbing) while over at this summer’s Anime Expo 2010 in LA. To say that the series put it’s romantic-comedy hooks into me would be an understatement. It helped that one of the characters sounded just like one of my favorite anime characters ever. I speak of the very awesome Manabi from the slice-of-life series from a few years back, Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight!which also happens to be my favorite series ever. EVER.
For the past year or so one particular song has been used over and over again by AMV creators that it’s gotten to the point I’ve tired of hearing it. I’m talking of the song Fireflies by the group Owl City. So, it was a surprise that when I came across this Toradora!-based AMV using this Owl City song and I wasn’t bored by it. The song definitely fit well with the images the AMV’s creator (SweetMina93 on YouTube).
The AMV definitely has spoilers but it matters not as I’ve seen the whole series already, but even those who haven’t should still watch it even if they already know what happens. The joy sometimes is not the surprise of how things turn out but the journey the characters take to get to their destination. So, while I make this post I’ve been watching this AMV over and over for the past couple hours and I can’t stop.
I see that as a sign of a well-done and catchy AMV. Now, I must go back to watching the AMV for another hour or more.
Through the Shattered Lens 