My brother decided that it was a good idea to purchase a box filled with 30 random DvDs...of anime. We, along with a friend, then decided that it was a good idea to watch them all in a random order. Here, I will be chronicling this journey(or descent). This first entry is going to have a lot, so I'll try to keep what I have to say on them brief. Thoughts may feel disjointed, but I'm just going by what comes to mind. These aren't supposed to be hardcore reviews.

Disclaimer: These are random volumes of random anime. We are going in with no context and purely for fun. This may be unfair to some, but we are going entirely on what we were given.

Saiyuki Gunlock Reload Vol 7. (Episodes 24-26)

Talk about starting with a showstopper. Not the good kind. The kind that makes you want to stop because you had such a bad time. I think I got roughly what was going on, granted it was the last 3 episodes, but man was it nonsense and generic. This show was just boring, horribly animated, and the antagonist couldn't decide if he was Italian, Spanish, or a Vampire. Most of the time he was a mix between the three. The three episodes were largely fighting, but the fights were just nonsense. They kept counting Gato's(a large native american zombie(???)) bullets for what seemed to be no reason because getting shot didn't do anything to them and they weren't doing anything to him either. It was all pretty pointless. Then of course they want you to sympathize with the villain, turns out he was corrupted by a monster because he killed monsters. I guess monsters are pretty ok in this world? Then there were other characters that came to watch the fight for seemingly no reason. There was a scientist with a bunny who seemed like he may have redeemed the show, but he also did literally nothing. It felt like there were a lot of unresolved plot threads and character arcs. Sure enough though, to my knowledge, this is the end of the series.

Robotech New Generation Vol. 14 (episodes 80-85)

Another end of a series, but my understanding was this one had some fanbase around it. Coming off Saiyuki Gunlock, Robotech was definitely a step up. That said, I feel like Robotech just sort of happened to me. I was there, but I don't entirely remember being there. It had some one off episodes followed by suddenly being thrust into the end of a war, which was a little weird. Also, everyone was apparently in love? I guess I see how they were building Scott and Invid(alien) lady, and maybe Lancer and other Invid lady. But Rand and Rook came out of literally nowhere as far as I could tell. They're robot fighting and are essentially like "oh, I love you by the way". And Rook was just in love with cowboy man like, 2 episodes ago! Oh, and Lancer is a crossdressing singer known as Yellow Dancer. The more I think about Robotech the less sense it makes to me. It was at least watchable though.

Gad Guard Vol.2 (episodes 5-8)

Gad Guard might be ok. We have volume 4 as well, so that remains to be seen. But out of them all so far I think it has the most potential. It depends whether it leans toward Digimon, or Madoka. If it goes digimon, I'm out. If it goes Madoka, I might be in. What we've seen so far was ok though. People find Gads and wake up robots or something but some of them are special and can be controlled and are called techoids. That's my understanding anyway. Watching Katana punch a dude in the face while giving literally zero fucks was among the most enjoyable things so far on this anime quest. Also, sick jazzy intros, always good.

Girls Bravo Vol 3. (episodes 9-12)

Liam O'Brien you asshole. I was dreading this show. With good reason. We pulled not only a hot springs episode, but a pool episode. Luckily(though each episode was worse than the last), the creators seemed to try to load the majority of the boners into the first five minutes, and became a somewhat legitimate show from there. HOWEVER. This show is extremely gratuitous, and there are children involved. Many things about this show are not ok. So why am I calling out Liam O'Brien specifically? Well, he might be the best character in the six anime we've watched thus far. He plays a horrible man who sees molestation as totally ok. But he sells it so well there was some legitimate entertainment from him. Does this make me a bad person? As tolerable as some aspects of this show became, the octopus in the pool episode was too much. Not cool Anime, not cool. Also, as you will see in the rankings later...this is sadly not the worst show.

Ex-Driver: The Movie(movie)

I'm sure this movie would have made more sense had we seen the series(I'm assuming there's a series considering it seemed like we should have known who these characters were). I thought we were gonna get Tokyo Drift the anime(except in L.A.). Instead, we got a bunch of nonsense. There was a race that was wholly unimportant, and some sort of criminal organization gambling but actually it was a trap for this guy who was stealing money or something and these guys weren't bad guys they were just funding the races and the cops were involved and I'm still not sure what the problem was. The plot kind of lost me. Granted, when they started pushing the "I hate you but I love you" story line with 12 year olds I was already on my way out. And man did this movie go quick. Not in a good way. Nothing felt like it had any real development. Then there was Detective ButtToucher(I forget his real name if he even had one), a guy who touched people and then smelled his hand for what I'm gonna call no good reason. This was really bad.

Vandread Vol 3 (episodes 8-10)

What a misleading volume title. My expectations were low, and somehow they managed to be too high. Men and Women are segregated so there's very few men on a ship full of women...yep. There's the one young dude that all the girls are into but of course there's one that sticks out and she's SUPER ANNOYING...yep. Hyper sexualized older woman...yep. Robots...yep. Vandread sure is an anime. Ex-Driver and Saiyuki had something going for them, we could at least goof on them. Vandread was just aggressively boring. The sad part is, the idea of robots that combine to become totally different robots is a semi interesting concept. Also, I'm pretty sure this show is sexist. I'm just not sure which gender it's sexist against. I'm inclined to say women, considering everything feels like a metaphor for dicks and putting dicks in things. And it took a grand total of about 8 seconds to figure out exactly everything that was going on in this show and where it was going. Yet somehow, the predictability, boringness, and just downright shameful quality of this anime doesn't land it in the bottom slot...

Rankings!

I decided after four or five that we should rank them as we watch them. Again, these rankings are based purely off of what we have. Not what we've heard, not potential, not things we look up. We also are not taking into account our ability to goof on it, otherwise, Vandread would probably be the bottom. I just hope by the end of this that Girls Bravo is in the double digits.

1. Gad Guard

2. Robotech New Generation

3. Girls Bravo

4. Vandread

5. Ex-Driver: The Movie

6. Saiyuki Gunlock Reload

What's Left?

Here's what we haven't watched in alphabetical order. We're choosing them randomly though.

-Appleseed(movie)

-Armitage Dual Matrix(movie)

-Bast of Syndrome Vol.2 (episodes 6-10)

-Chobits Vol.2 (episodes 5-8)

-Fafner Vol.2 (episodes 5-8)

-Gad Guard Vol.4 (episodes 13-16)

-GetBackers Vol.5 (episodes 21-25)

-GetBackers Vol.6 (episodes 26-30)

-GunXSword Vol.4 (episodes 13-16)

-Heat Guy J Vol.1 (episodes 1-4)ol

-Heat Guy J Vol.2 (episodes 5-8)

-His and Her Circumstances Vol.4 (episodes 17-21)

-Pani Poni Dash Vol.3 (episodes 11-14)

-Phantom Memory Kurau Vol.2 (episodes 5-8)

-Saiyuki Vol.7 (episodes 27-30)

-Starship Operators Vol.3 (episodes 9-13)

-Stellvia Vol.4 (episodes 11-13)

-Submarine 707 Revolution The Movie (movie)

-Texhnolyze Vol.1 (episodes 1-4)

-Tokyo Majin Vol.1 (episodes 1-5)

-Utawarerumeno Vol.6 (episodes 23-26)

-Viewtiful Joe Vol.2 (episodes 4-6)

-Welcome to the NHK Vol.2 (episodes 5-8)

-Zipang Vol.1 (episodes 1-4)

That's all for Now!

Are we way off about anything? Is there anything we should look forward to or dread? To be honest, I'm kinda dreading all of it. I thought Saiyuki Gunlock might have been good based on the cover, and it was the worst one. I'm afraid to get my hopes up again.