Tokyo Marble Chocolate - Zenryoku Shounen & Mata Aimashou

Production I.G., along with GAINAX, are bastions of my anime fandom. Without them the deep-seated passion I have for anime, the faith that it is capable of producing entertainment unlike any other medium, would be diminished to the point of nonchalance. I would be one of those irritating casual types that evangelises about how cool that ‘manga’ bit in Kill Bill part one was and presume everything else is either tentacle sex or animated for paedophiles (a phrase coined by Bateszi long ago and something still despairingly appropriate when shifting through AnimeSuki today). Luckily, Evangelion happened. Then Cowboy Bebop happened. Then Studio Ghibli happened. And then, most importantly, FLCL happened. The rest is easy to surmise; my journey of appreciation is nothing unconventional, even if it resulted in a preference for the darker, weirder avenues that I write about here.

So, I tend to associate quality with these two particular companies. Even though they’ve frequently, time and again, upset and shaken that faith, I’ve never wholly dismissed their ability to completely ruin the competition. Enter Tokyo Marble Chocolate and again I am astounded.