Yu-Gi-Oh; Pyramid of Light: This seems a bit excessive for a card game...

The push to capitalize on Pokemon's fame was a strange time for shows and anime, as many shows tried to tap into that market by making their worlds revolve around their takes on Pokemon. In the case of Yu-Gi-Oh, that included things like making an entire city crawl to a halt just due to competitors in a corporation dedicated to the game's competition, used as a ploy for the owner of said corporation to try and get his hands on three cards, and unintentionally drawing in the attention of a crypt keeper and his servants joining the tournament to try and get them and a puzzle from a kid who has the spirit of a Egyptian pharaoh that shares his body. No really, all of that happens, and I'm even skipping parts of it. Point being, this universe is weird, and it gets weirder when it wants to go cinematic, so let's see how weird it gets with two of the localized movies, starting with the first (to my knowledge) that got released in English, Pyramid of Light. Before you ask, yes I did try a World of Light joke, but nothing worked for me.

Sailor Moon Marathon; Sailor Moon (DiC Dub): This is not an excuse to ask me to review Dragon Ball!

Before we begin, there is something I should clarify with this. Like with all my other anime reviews, this marathon will be reviewing the English dubs of the shows. However, as some of you might be aware, there are two English dubs. A more recent one by VIZ Media, and another primarily done by DiC Entertainment, the exception to this being Sailor Moon S, which was done by Cloverway. This marathon will be primarily focusing on the DiC/ Cloverway dubs, VIZ's is one best saved for another time if there's interest.

If I was to ask you to name an anime you watched as a kid growing up that you remember off the top of your head, what would you answer with? Dragon Ball? Cowboy Bebop? Pokemon? To a lot of people, they might say Sailor Moon, born from a manga of the same name and one of the defining choices in terms of the Magical Girl story structure, about a group of ever growing friends destined to come together to stop evil threats that lurk in the night and shadows. For it's time it was popular, enough to still be going to this day. Time, however, is a fickle thing and is harsher to some ideas than others. So, how kind was time to Sailor Moon? Ignore the fact that I'm clearly not the target demographic for this and let's find out! Welcome, to the Sailor Moon Marathon starting with the original show.

Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters: This tutorial sucks

The joys of being a child in the 2000's, you couldn't escape anime. No, not the good ones, this was the era of 4-Kids, so this was the time when anime was like 80's cartoons in that they were there to sell products. Sometimes it worked, such as with Pokemon. Others... not so much. One of the reasons I started this site was an excuse to look back at my childhood, and see how well it holds up. Pokemon Emerald, that was rushed thanks to ORAS, as I was planning on reviewing it November last year, but that was one example of me doing this, another being Transformers Armada, Energon and Cybertron. So now we have another, being the Duel Monsters iteration of Yu-Gi-Oh. I have others that I'll  be getting to, but for now, let's take a look at the best example I have right now of what kids imagine when playing card games. Care to put your faith in the heart of the cards? (Of course I was going to have that somewhere).

The First Season of K-On Anime... I got nothing for this...

It's hard to put into words what I think about K-On overall, there are aspects that I like but a big issue that I have...

I should explain the plot though, the story follows four high school girls Yui Hirasawa, Mio Akiyama, Tsumugi Kotobuki and Ritsu Tainaka with Azusa Nakano joining in around half way through the series (you can thank Wikipedia for the names) as they keep the light music club alive, including song writing, a few gigs, ect. The characters themselves are ok, their personalities and the way they behave are consistent but the big issue I have with the series is one thing: THE PERSONALITIES BELONG TO THOSE OF (Middle school???) (this is a Australian talking where the educational system is literally Primary School (Prep (5 years old) to year 6 (11-12 years old) and then High school which is essentially Middle school and High school in other places combined, from there its straight to University). I guess it should make sense in that regard but because K-On loves to shove it down your throat that it's set in Japan, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

The story itself is mediocre at best. The day to day episodes are ok but there are a lot of gaps in a year. When they managed to fit two years in 13 episodes and then have enough material for a second, larger season, it comes off as a bit lazy to me. I get that their High school students but a Year is a long time...

Because the plot is based around the idea of belonging to the "Light Music Club", there are a lot of singing in the show. I watched the dub and while the non singing parts were ok, I was grateful that the dub kept the Japanese songs and subbed them. The songs have a nice melody to them but shouldn't be herd or read (if you want a good example, listen to the Lucky Star theme in Japanese and then English).

You'd have to be a specific target demographic to like something like K-On, it might be because I don't watch a lot of High School anime (this being my 3rd ever), it didn't keep my interest very well. I've started watching the second season to see if they improve but my hopes are low. If you like High School anime, then by all means watch it if you haven't already, but otherwise just skip it.