Kimi ni Todoke

Kimi ni Todoke is one of the cutest romances out there. I looked for the anime after falling head over heels in love with the manga and I'm glad to say, the anime does not disappoint and it follows the exact same plot (for now at least). The story is based around Sawako and Kazehaya. Sawako has no friends, she terrifies  every one with her resemblance to a character in a horror movie and every one believes she is cursed and can see ghosts. Kazehaya is complete opposite, boys want to be his friend and all the girls love him, he's a natural people person. But when these two are put in the same class Kazehaya finds it impossible to leave Sadako alone and begins to help her become part of the class. Sawako makes friends with Yano, Yoshida and Ryo and before she knows it, her feelings for Kazehaya become greater than admiration and respect and Kazehaya finds himself much too embarrassed in front of Sawako. But they are both too innocent! It's not all good though! Because of Kazehaya's popularity, Sawako quickly makes enemies, a concept that she can't quite grasp. With the rumours and the misunderstandings Sawako slowly becomes more open to other people. It's a super cute tale of acceptance, friendship and love. It develops really slowly, but that's what makes it special! I just love this plot line so much!

Deadman Wonderland

Deadman Wonderland, the only privately owned prison which doubles up as a theme park to earn a profit. After being framed for the violent murder of all his classmate Igarashi Ganta is sent to Deadman Wonderland with the death sentence. For the inmates everything is controlled by cast points. Cast points are used to buy food, drink and with enough of them, years of your sentence or candies to delay your execution. They are earned by performing life threatening shows for an audience. But Ganta isn't a normal inmate. He has a special power of blood manipulation; the same power that was used to kill all his classmates. People with this power must battle each other in a last man standing style fight. The winner gets cast points and candy to prolong their life. The loser (if they are left alive) must face a gruesome penalty game where a piece of their anatomy is removed. It gets VERY gory. As Ganta seeks revenge on the 'red man' who killed his classmates he meets Shiro, an unbelievably strong girl but soon remembers her from his childhood. Although she's obviously not human, it's not yet clear what she is! I have said in numerous reviews that I don't like gore and this anime has me constantly squirming; but in general, the supernatural aspect to it means that's it all cool. I just really dislike the penalty games...

Akumu Chan

Guess what I found, a drama that's NOT a romance!! I can finally stop my run of similar sounding drama reviews with this Jdrama; Akumu Chan. The drama is about dreams and premonitions and here's some fun trivia: akumu is Japanese for night mare! And this is hot off the press guys! Only 7 episodes and counting!

So anyway, the plot is about Yuiko a transfer student at elementary school. Her home room teacher Ayami pretends she is the perfect teacher, always smiling and being friendly to every one. But really, she's a bit of a psychopath so to her Yuiko is just a bother. But it really becomes a bother to her when Yuiko starts telling Ayami about her nightmares. More than just nightmares, Yuiko has prophetic dreams and with her grandfather's research her dreams can be recorded and watched. After convincing Ayami to help, the trio try to understand Yuiko's symbolic dreams and prevent misfortune. Every week there is a different person to save, but they don't feel like stand-alone episodes because of the underlying plot (e.g. Ayami's lucid dreams and sleep walking and Yuiko's grand father's assistance). In fact, so much more gets added per episode I struggled to slim it down for you! I like the mix of having one problem resolved every episode while still having an ongoing plot. It stops me getting dangerously addicted to the series and keeps it quite fun because with out something going right the whole drama could get really depressing. Most of the prophecies are about Yuiko's class mates but the dreams are really rather frightening with murder and kidnapping and the such! It's almost disturbing!