Gantz

With nudity and gruesome deaths this anime is really not for the light-hearted. It's very hard-hitting in many ways. It's all about death aliens and boobs, in fact, it starts with two teens getting hit by a train while trying to save a drunk who had fallen into the track. Despite the fact that we clearly see their heads rolling, they didn't die. Instead they got whisked away by some creepy black blob into a room full of people who should have died. Next thing you know said creepy black blob (named Gantz) whisks every one away with the mission of blasting some kid aliens into pieces. Not too mention how messed the aliens are! That's your basic plot line. Just add boobs! Completely unnecessary boobs and perverted scenes that totally kill the anime for me. I swear, the girl (Kei Kishimoto) is just how Gantz makes money and I don't like that. But in the end, this show really isn't aimed at me.
The show should be renamed Kei Kishimoto and aliens, as that's all there is. The art is quite poor really. All the characters have such simple designs and the aliens just look stupid. The spring onion alien? Really? Have the producers really no better ideas than that? Since this is a violent anime though, there is lots of fight scenes of varying levels, the animation is quite sharp. The animation used for Gantz's transportation device is quite nifty, a bit like knitting a person.

Nodame Cantabile

I haven't really ventured much into Japanese dramas much, but I have heard a lot about the general idea of them. Instead of tear-jerking love stories and soap opera tragedies j-dramas are full of slapstick comedy and silliness. This particular drama is based in a music college that Chiaki attends. Originally bought up in Europe, he had to move back to Japan when his parents split up. Somewhere on the way though, his plane had an emergency landing and he feel out of a boat, so with those haunting memories he is now stuck in Japan (easily the worst bit of the plot, a plane crash AND drowning!). He's from the piano division and his known through out the school for his brilliant piano but also his astounding good-looks. Nodame is also plays piano at college but she's a freshman and labelled under-achiever. The two are set the task of playing a duet together and as they are neighbours begin to spend a lot of time together. Thus the two obviously, and quite suddenly, fall in love (really, it was like they blinked and suddenly appreciated one another!). But Chiaki doesn't want to be a pianist, he wants to conduct, so when a famous conductor comes to school Chiaki immediately wants to be his pupil. The madness that follows would have to be seen to be believed. The plot has innumerable flaws and the romance doesn't have enough drama in it but it is unbelievable funny. I just sometimes wonder if I'm laughing at bits that are supposed to be funny....

Steins;Gate

I contemplated not doing a review for this anime because it's so hard to form a review of this, but I'll try! The plot is all based around Rintaro Okabe, who dubs himself as Hououin Kyouma, the mad scientist. He has his own little imaginary world where 'the organisation' rules society and is constantly sending agents after him. He has a 'secret lab' where him and his few friends play along with his conspiracies and play about with their 'phone microwave (name subject to change)'. But convinced that they just sent a banana into the past the whole gang are whisked to the border of imaginary and reality. It's difficult to trust anything that's going on since the main character likes to play pretend. I think that this is a brilliant idea as it means your constantly thinking and questioning what you're watching. But it makes it kind of complicated as well, especially the first episode, I almost didn't want to continue to episode 2 because there was no sense at all in episode 1!! However, I'm happy to report that things pick up a lot from episode 2 onwards. It is still very illogical and confounding, but in a more entertaining way.