Cencoroll (2009)

Bicycle View

Cencoroll is about strange alien creatures, a boy and a girl, fights, school.. nuff said.

It's a great anime. It's not a great anime by plot or soundtrack or measurable mass of action or anything of the sort, it's the laid back pace, the personalities subtly nurtured and the very swift and simple style of animation, kind of like FLCL if you've watched that. The alien creatures (that look and act more like pets) aren't very charismatic either, if you didn't know better you wouldn't like them at all, and I suppose (along with the contrasts and obvious bonds between the two main characters) it's also part of the charm.

In The Corridor By The Classroom

Backgrounds look like rasterized photos instead of drawn art. Who knows (well I would if I bothered to look it up); regardless of methods in creation, they flow together nicely with the animation, there's no contrast as one would think there would be between animation and photography... unless everything is animated, in which case they have some really great background illustrators. See the preview above and below to see what I mean.

By The Car

Cenco

As for the aliens (see above), they can transform into vehicles and all sorts of things, transformer deja vu eh? Being the lumpy mass they are, these uncharismatic creatures are a breed of their own. Even with such fictional elements, this anime is strangely down to earth while still being fictional. For example, the characters don't jump up in the air and look like they're just hovering or flying around while they fight, they fall to the ground if they jump from somewhere high up and they stay on solid ground most of the town. There aren't too many characters, not too much destruction. Overall it's a very balanced anime, and you get an overview of the situation through interesting angles.

Living On The Edge

A Mouthful

Nice watch, and at the length of a regular episode it's not too long either. Kind of wish they would make a series out of this concept, but at the same time I know it would spoil the specialty of this one clip. If you have 25 minutes to spare, this is a recommended watch!

City Battle