Yes, it's time for the psuedo-regular feature that's the intellectual equivalent of a circus peanut...
Guardian of Darkness: Okay, Japan, we know the Izumo myth cycle by now, rehasheded as it is once again for Guardian of Darkness. Between Dark Myth and Eight Clouds Rising - reviewed previously - we don't need the scene anymore where the person goes and looks up the myth like it's some obscure legend lost to modern Japan. I think people notice when Susanoo-wo and Orochi are popping up again what the deal is with this swiss-army knife of Japanese mythology. We've seen Susanoo-wo as a cosmic horror, a crazy evil psychic, an alien invader, so what now? The deal this time is that Susanoo-wo is a suit of um... spiritual power armor, more or less, or a kaiju-sized warrior, depending on what the plot needs. And Orochi is an evil dragon. And all of it involves two protagonists that are essentially whines given bodies. From the reluctant protagonist to the childhood friend who's really in love with the protagonist to the self-sacrificing Buddhist nun... we've seen this all before. If you really want the Izumo cycle recycled again, read Orion or at least watch Blue Seed. Yes, it's a rare day when Blue Seed is the high-water mark for anything at all. Some of the kaiju-sized battles in this are pretty fun, but overall it's a fair anime otherwise, and my growing distaste for "yesterday's Izumo myths, today!" doesn't much help.
The Humanoid: Before you watch this movie, have you had a good pot of coffee? Did you know coffee is the most widely consumed beverage in the world? Did you know coffee is a metaphor for the human spirit? So The Humanoid tells us, anyway! Though the cover for seems to try and sell this anime as a dull skin(less) flick about a robot, it's a dull sci-fi piece with cookie-cutter characters and a rather modestly-clad robot who learns to love and... an odd amount of focus on the aforementioned coffee. So I'll say it: The Humanoid hints at hot coffee, but instead provides that disgusting Japanese canned coffee. Yeck.
Time Stranger: This is an oddity - it's a movie follow0up for the GoShogun anime, despite the fact GoShogun has never come to the states in any commerical form. I imagine if I had seen GoShogun, I would feel rather differently about the whole thing, but it comes off as trying to get a bunch of in-jokes amongst people you've never hung out with before. Add in that it's a surrealist "forty years later" piece for what seems to have been a relatively straight mecha show, and it's a tough one to watch and understand. Most of the movie is told as a dream sequence, but I didn't get that in my first watch-through... I figured it must be a flashback at the time, being unfamiliar with the series. Knowing that now makes the whole thing make considerably more sense, and probably would be more enjoyable now that I know that. The characters certainly seem cool, and there are some neat action sequences, but overall this seems to depend a lot on the viewer having a love of the preceding anime. Throughly okay for its time, though perhaps a bit overly sentimental for my taste.
Legend of the Last Labyrinth: With only two episodes, we never get to find out what the legend is, much less about any labyrinth. What we do get is a charming story where a boy is walking in the woods and a magical girl falls on him and... well, it's pretty much Ah! My Goddess with a bit more conventional magical girl show mixed in. If you've seen one harem anime, you've pretty much seen them all, and such is doubly so here, particularly when the girl's sisters show up and it descends into villain-of-the-week a la Sailor Moon. It's all been done elsewhere and better many, many times over. I can only see this being really entertaining if you haven't seen a harem anime before, but there are better ones if you haven't - try Ah! My Goddess, the Tenchi Muyo or El Hazard OVAs, Saber Marionette J, Mamotte Shugogetten, Dual, Love Hina, Urusei Yatsura or anything like that before you bother with this one. It's just mind-bloggingly derivative in a genre of anime that's already very, very worn out.
Hyper Dolls: Probably the best of the night, this comedy two-part OVA - yes, once again, two seems to be the magic cancellation number - features a pair of alien superheroines and, of course, their ordinary teenage sidekick. Or is that male sidekick the main character? Anyway, it's obviously inspired by Dirty Pair, with two heroines that could care less about the troubles they're assigned to fix. In any case, the absurd gags are funny enough to hang in for two episodes, and it made a nice capper to the night. Coming from Pioneer, it reminds me why there was a time I liked just about everything they released, but that was before the company started milking its cash cows (particularly Tenchi Muyo) to death. Not exceptional in any way, but entertaining. Once again, I wish there was rather more than we get.
Don't know when the next'll be; we'll see.
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