Ugh, Bubblegum Crash. I love Bubblegum Crisis, for every little awkward quirk and lopsided plot beat in it. It's one of my favorite anime. But its so-called "sequel" is such a huge disappointment. It just feels so meager and watered-down. Sometimes it doesn't even feel like it takes place in the same world Crisis did, because it completely ignores a lot of what went on previously. Except that it has Largo in it, whose return is an even bigger disappointment. A giant fucking drill is his best plan? He had an orbital laser last time, and his weapon is a big drill this time? What is this shit? You can taste the bitterness just watching my video here.

I thought it would be nice to do another one of these videos this year, where I take a look and marvel at the talents of three Japanese voice actors and three English dub voice actors involved in anime. I do get a little negative at times, and I want to emphasize positivity now and then. So here's a little on voice talents Norio Wakamoto, Kotono Mitsuishi, Romi Park, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Richard Epcar, and Michael McConnohie. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

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Yeah, yeah, I’m late to the game with my MGEX Unicorn review. Even so I wanted to take some time, since I have an interesting perspective (read: I've built a lot of Unicorns - note, that's three years old at this point), and the MGEX Unicorn is a kit very worthy of discussion. I’m not going to go into all the ins and outs of the build, so if you want a super detailed look pair this with Dalong’s review. I’m sure there are some good YouTube reviews out there by now too. What’s up guys, Rick Dias here…

It's time to talk about my favorite Marvel team, the X-Men! Is it just me, or are there way too many X-Men now? I can't keep up! Who is Dust? Fantomex? Darwin? Goldballs? Pixie? Whatever. It's a good thing this anime features mostly well-known X-Men, like Cyclops and Wolverine. Armor is fairly new, but she's pretty cool. Obviously the writers and animators of this anime must have jumped at the chance to work with an actual comics-canon Japanese schoolgirl X-Man.

Don't forge to read the list of recommended X-Men reading for the viewer in the credits section. Like the Batman list, you might want to pause on each card.

I wanted to take a few minutes to share some photos and some thoughts for a quick build I put together. The fantastic GoodGuyDan is having a Unicorn build off this month and as I have a unquenchable thirst for Unicorn kits I had to participate. Instead of building one of the several RG 'corns that I have waiting for love, or the MGEX that just came in, I figured I'd help an old boy out. Specifically, this one,

How often do I get to talk about my favorite superhero (aside from Jarro, the jar-sized Starro) on my little anime review show? Never, is when. So I leapt at the chance to finally getting to the Batman anime, Gotham Knight, which contains plenty of Vitamin B(atman). Not only that, but I compiled a bit of a list of recommended Batman reading for the viewer in the credits section, so keep an eye on that, and pause on each section to write the list down.

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I don't review a lot of comedy anime, because a lot of anime tries really hard to be funny and truly isn't. Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi is even a bit of a mixed bag itself, in terms of funny, but it does get a few chuckles out of me, and besides which has a classic "coming of age" angle to it, though it takes a back seat to gags. It's kind of a Baby's First FLCL.

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Not a whole lot to say about this one, except that it has this weird "evil feminist conspiracy" angle to it that Chiaki Konaka must've dreamt up while he was in a paranoid state after too much cocaine. Honestly, other than that, Armitage III's a pretty straightforward cyberpunk action OVA with a little bit of a mystery in it. I do really like the character of Armitage, though Ross is a little dull. I don't know, maybe it's the fate of all people named Ross to be dull. It's a very dull name.

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Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (two seasons) is 52 episodes long, making this the most episodes I've ever watched to review for these videos. Not only that, but it's definitely the most I've ever watched to review for a single video. I didn't even break this into two or three parts! I probably could have stretched the material, too. But I felt like one succinct video was enough to give the right impression of this classic anime.

Well, actually, it was a tiny bit longer, originally, but I had to edit it down because it was blocked in some areas. Always a pain in the ass, YouTube and Japanese companies. But you get the drift.

More wrap-around material in this one. This will be the last one for a while, though I have plenty of ideas for that stuff. I wanted to do something with Ambassador Morran and thought I'd throw in the assassin Ravex as well, since I've barely used him. Here they're visiting Golex's people, the Lithos, for some reason. I'll get to that another time. After this, I want to concentrate more on the reviews themselves.

Speaking of the reviews, I'm glad I didn't have to suffer through too many lousy dubs in this half of the year. I didn't plan based on dub studios, just based on what I felt like reviewing or what I had time to review when I scheduled everything. I only have a tenuous schedule for the second half of the year, though I did name drop some of the things I'll be doing at the end of this video.