Review: The Ultmate Anime Guide by SFX

We were at the Barnes & Noble store in Frederick which I usually try to shop once a month. They usually have one of my fav mags called NEO which is out of the UK. I found the recent one (Issue 85), but also find something else in the magazine displays. "The Ultimate Guide to Anime Special SFX Edition".

It was a sealed folder that had the following inserted:

• The Ultimate Guide to Anime (132 pages)
  
• Magnets of Naruto
• DVD of the first 3 episodes of Sacred Blacksmith
• Double-sided Movie Poster

I got all this for $18.99 plus tax which I thought was a good deal. I wanted to see what this "Ultimate Guide' was all about as I was wondering what it covered. I can't say this is the "Ultimate", but it had some nice articles. It had the some nice write ups of Naruto, Akira and Evangelion 2.22. They also have several reviews of anime and books. Some articles are short, while others are in great detail. It even has a sample of manga called Twelfth Night which was done by Williams Shakespeare. Not too sure about a manga done in Olde English, but the artwork is well done for the series.

I soon discovered that most of the articles were written by the same people. You had Andrew Osmond (who I swear wrote 80% of the articles) and Jonathan Clements . Never seen so much written by one person in a magazine.

If you were a Studio Ghibli fan, I would definitely recommend this. It had no less than 4 articles on the studio, the music and the shows produced I really enjoyed reading about the Cécile Corbel, who is the person that did the music for 'Arrietty'. It was interesting seeing how she got involved in the creating the music for the anime.

My wife loves fridge magnets and has them up already. I have the poster showing 'Summer Wars' (other side was 'The Girl who Leapt through Time') hanging over my computer desk.

The only issue was the DVD of Sacred Blacksmith. Since this was a UK magazine, this was actually in Region 1. After some minor tweaks to some things, I was able to watch this on my computer. This is a pretty cool anime and I may actually get the remainder of the series to watch after seeing this.

Besides that bit of a setback, I still feel this was a worth while purchase.  I am a tad upset by the title since this was not really what you would of thought of reading the cover. I have to say though, even I know it was not really going to be an 'ultimate guide'.

I did get introduced to a new anime called Redline. This may have to be added to my watch list and see if it is worth the hype.