Ayashi No Ceres

There is a myth about a maiden from heaven taking a stroll on earth. She hangs her robe on a tree to take a bath, and she is found out by a human. The human takes her robe, refuses to return it, preventing the girl from returning home, and makes her marry him. The theme seems to be part of myths across most cultures, taking on different shades but basically the same idea.

This anime is about the descendants of one of these maidens, and her quest to find her robe again through the female offsprings. It evolves around love and relationships, caring for others, how much humanity sucks, the quest of mad scientists to create the perfect race (from all the descendants) and sacrifice for others.

I admit I fast forwarded through some spots, the beginning didn't grab me too much... but once it got to all the love triangles I paid a bit more attention ;) The ending is a good close on creating a future for our children.

XXXHolic

No, it's nothing to do with porn. It's a supernatural story, beautifully rendered, mega-stylized characters that remind you of Jack's figure from The Nightmare B4 Xmas...

A high school student with the power to see ghosts is roped in by a cheeky but powerful and gorgeous mystic, turns him into her maid, and so he becomes the observer of several tales of the paranormal and mystery.

People come to her shop to ask for wishes. She grants them, but asks for peculiar things as payment. Each episode is a fairly stand-alone story. Character development of the high school kid is small but involves two other students, a girl and another guy. The mystic is just a cool and smart character, into drinking, good food, and odd creatures. Love the soundtrack, too. Another cool opening. Totally worth the watch :)

PS) I did the coloring myself on the image above, which was a black and white scan ^_^

Avenger

Two animes in a row about lost children... soo not on purpose! I was roped in by the gothic/renaissance opening song (it's edging a bit too close on the verge of that annoying japanese opera-style, but I've learned to just hear the beautiful part of it and ignore the at-times-too-strident voice and not-quite-harmonious bits it seems to have... Other songs by Ali Project seem to have a similar problem).

This one deals with a quiet, angry, powerful teenage girl who's the baddest ass on the whole planet, capable of taking down Greek-gods-like warriors; the few resources left on the dying planet Mars are controlled by official fights between cities through these warriors. The theme of impending doom hangs over everyone, literally, in the form of a huge, red moon, which is about to collide with Mars. Earth is gone, by the way. Some big mess men made a while back involving the same moon of doom...

Layla, the teenager in question, rebels from being a prized warrior and decides to finally accomplish the revenge she's been groomed to carry out since she was little. Along the way she finds a strange doll whom she takes under her wing, and becomes her protector. There are no children anymore, by the way. People haven't been able to have any in over a decade and the race is dying out. To replace children humans have created robot dolls, used as servants... not sure how that makes things better... but that's what they did.

It's a poignant tale of survival, revenge (big theme here), children and their love, and the future of humanity. Sometimes it has those annoying, long, slow, silent shots that were so characteristic of Dragonball, where it sloooooowly pans from eye to eye, doing nothing much... just filling in video space with minimal effort. That and a couple of shoddy fight scenes kinda let me down, but overall I was happy to watch it. It has that strong doom and gloom pessimistic future outlook that kinda gets to me.

Aishiteruze Baby

Not quite the kind of anime I'd usually watch, but after sampling the first episode I was curious to see how they'd get the characters to fit... in the end it turned out to be a very cute child psychology kinda tale. A young mother gets too depressed after her husband dies and abandons her 5-yrs-old girl, who is taken in by family members. The older brother, a popular high-school gigolo, is stuck with taking care of her, walking her to school, cooking her lunch, sleeping with her... a bit unrealistic perhaps (who'd entrust a teenager with the proper nutrition for a growing body when he can't even boil white rice, offering no help and not even checking what he does?? and there *is* a mother that makes lunch for everyone?!) but it does touch on some important and tender points in everyone's childhood. Well, at least in the one of those like us that endured the joys of a dysfunctional family...