Avatar: The Last Airbender

You would guess I am too old to watch this show (aired on Nickelodeon), but hey the story is good, the animation is great, so why not?

Aeria Gloris - Flying in Glory

In the past few weeks I managed to finish watching the second season of the Anime television series "Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex", which is based on the critically acclaimed motion picture "Ghost in the Shell". The series shows the work of a small japapanese anti-terrorist/-crime unit called "Public Security Section 9" in 2030 AD with a lot more depth and background information than in the motion picture.

What I like about the series beside the great artwork, is the fact the story is not entirely black-and-white, with the government essentially being the good guys and the terrorists being the bad guys, as in, for example, "24". There's a lot more backstabbing and scheming going on, although the philosophical side comes up a little short in comparison to the original movie. The only real short-coming of the series is that the individual episodes are rather short (about 22 minutes), which is made up by the fact, that there is a strong story arc throughout both seasons.

The TV series is IMHO definitely not suitable for kids, since the violence is quite graphic, expect some blood splattering here and there. If you want to get a first impression, you can check the article on Wikipedia or the american official site. If are hooked, do not buy the rather expensive individual DVDs (with up to four episodes), but the DVD collection, one for each of the two seasons. Hopefully there will be a 3rd season someday.

To see with eyes unclouded by hate

One of my all-time-favourite movies, if not the favourite, is Princess Mononoke, a Japanese Anime movie directed Hayao Miyazaki. I can only recommended watching this movie, since it is really different than your standard Tolkien-like western fantasy epic. The story is rich, there is no black-and-white good guy vs. bad guy confrontation, and the animation is really amazing.

Here's the trailer of the English dubbed version.

Although it look likes as if it is a children's fairy tale like some other animes by Hayao Miyazaki like "Spirited Away" or "Howl's moving castle", I can tell you it is not. In my humble opinion, it is not even suitable for children, let's say below the age of fourteen, due to the graphic violence it contains.