Anime review - Kannazuki no Miko (Priestesses of the Godless Month)

In brief: The Priestesses of sun and moon in a never ending cycle of saving mankind from crappy mecha designs and inconsistent writing but by gods, they are pretty hot together..
Should i watch it?: Yes! (but skip through the mech)

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannazuki_no_Miko
http://www.nyaa.eu/?page=torrentinfo&tid=135630

Contains Spoilers below! be warned (seriously)

It's hard to know how to actually feel about Kannazuki no Miko as a whole so i'm going to have to compartmentalise it a little here to give you the big picture.

Himeko and Chikane, 2 young ladies at a prestigious girls high school are, unbeknownst to them, the reincarnations of the Solar and Lunar Miko destined to repeatedly revive the god of swords and defeat an eternal evil known as the Orochi. The Orochi in it's turn, has 8 followers know as the '8 necks' who are (relatively) normal people who have been emotionally or physically damaged enough that their hatred of mankind and the world has brought them under the thrall of the evil god and so do it's bidding.

As a story premise it holds up pretty well. We have a solid, heroic good v's evil standpoint going on and the bad guys are varied and interesting enough that they don't become annoying (especially Sister Miyako who is a wonderful character and wish we saw more of). The lead protagonists for their part are very compelling and despite being given obvious traits of sun and moon (Himeko the solar miko is a bright and bubbly orphan and a bit ditzy though not massively so and Chikane, the lunar miku is cold and aloof and the ojo-sama of a large estate), their interactions and changing characterisations through what is a relatively short series are just gripping. The obvious romantic affection Chikane has for a clueless Himeko is a large part of the main plotline with the other third of the love triangle being played by a boy named Sōma who has been desperately in love with Himeko since they were children. Sōma however is one of the Orochi but turns protector due to his love for Himeko. While i am not a fan of this sort of girl/girl/boy triangle (indeed i wont deny actually shouting at the screen during one scene in frustration) at least it does illicit a response from the viewer for good or bad.
So fights come and go, misunderstandings occur between the girls, some fine yuri drama happens, the girls discover their shared destinies and get some sexy new miku outfits, Himeko endures school bullying after being revealed as the favourite of the school idol Chikane and Chikane herself starts to loose it completely as memories of their previous incarnation come seeping back culminating in one of my favourite scenes in recent times in epp. 6 as she turns to the Orochi, now pitting miku against miku.
All this builds to a fine climax and for my taste, a perfectly satisfying ending.

All sounds fun and sexy and exciting? and it is... except for the elephant in the room..

Putting mecha action and yuri drama together is not something i have a problem with (Maihime is a great example of it working well) but here it just falls flat.
While the general quality of the artwork and animation in the rest of the series is often quite wonderful, it's like there was a completely separate team working on the mecha designs and these they really just phoned in.. and if this team was just winging it with the most generic mecha they could be bothered with, the writing team on the mecha project might as well have just copy and pasted their scenes from an early power rangers script and got the tea boy to photocopy the page 12 times, one for each episode...
It just completely kills the flow of the whole series dead every time the mech show up and that is such, such a pity since the rest of the series is so good. You can't help watching and thinking how much better things could have turned out if they'd just gone another way with that action... hell, even ninjas would have been better and to that end, the series does leave a bit of a bad aftertaste.

Still, despite that, it is good and i would recommend checking it out simply because Himeko and Chikane are fantastic and the final scenes between them are worth the wait.
One day though, i'm going to re-edit this down to 6 episodes so i can really enjoy it ^^

Anime review - Blue Drop: Tenshitachi no Gikyoku

In brief: Decent sci-fi yuri if a little slow to get going, good character designs and clean animation & cgi. Well worth a watch.

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Drop
http://www.nyaa.eu/?page=search&cats=1_37&filter=0&term=Blue+Drop

Contains Spoilers below! be warned

Set well before the manga of the same series, Blue Drop has a solid sci-fi storyline underpinning the slow moving relationship of the main characters, Mari Wakatake & Hagino Senkōji.

The Arume, an alien race consisting only of females, are invading planet earth on the quiet (yep, works for me ^^) with a battle fleet consisting of giant submarine/spaceships.
Now their supposed reason for this action is to revitalise their own race using the men of earth which rather seems out of place in what is entirely a yuri storyline and quite contrary to the actions of everyone involved who's eyes only seem drawn to members of the same sex (indeed, in the manga the default orientation of the Arume is homosexual) but as this polt point is only raised once and for a brief 10 seconds and is then totally forgotten i think it's best to just ignore it as an overlying interest.

So, Mari is transferring to a new and rather upper-class girls school having been gently kicked out by her granny who has been looking after her since the parents died in 'mysterious circumstances'. Mari is pretty headstrong and fairly pissed off by all this not having wanted to leave in the first place and instantly becomes a pain in everyone’s ass with her teenage rebellion antics.
This is brought up short however when meeting the alien commander Hagino who is posing as a schoolgirl (for reasons we never really find out why, maybe she just loved the uniforms?) and who instantly tries blanks out and tries to strangle her.

..and so we begin.

The story as a whole plays on a lot of yuri stereotypes, the tomboy, the quiet yet powerful princess, the nerdy megane-chan, there's even the almost prerequisite school play in there but the dialogue is well above average and on the whole i really enjoyed the series.

The few action sequences tend to seem a little crow bared in at first and generally are of the startrek 'big ship fires, big ship fires back' variety but do get better as the series moves on.
Complaints: the pacing is very hit and miss for the first 6-7 episodes (13 in all) and they have the awful habit of ignoring the imminent threat and having a tea party at the drop of a hat but this anime so you have to take it as it comes..

So, recommended? yes, definitely. I enjoyed it. Stick through the first couple of episodes and you'll find very decent sci-fi love story which builds satisfyingly to what is a very good ending. Though not to completely spoil everything i will say, keep some tissues handy for the end...

MCM London  -  26-28th Oct
Excel Centre, London

Cardiff Comic Expo Showcase  -  4th Nov
Mercure Hotel, Cardiff

Plymouth Anime & Comic Expo  -  9th Dec
Copthorne Hotel, Armada Way, Plymouth