Spring 2006 Anime

In an Edo conquered by aliens, where swords are banned and samurai are obsolete, Gintoki Sakata runs the Odd Jobs shop with teenager Shinpachi Shimura and Kagura, a super strong alien girl from the Yato clan. They take any job that pays: finding lost cats, bodyguarding, saving the world, roughly in that order of frequency. Gintama is a 367 episode comedy famous for parody, toilet humour and total chaos, and equally famous for the serious action arcs that arrive a few times a year and remind everyone these idiots are war veterans.

Nana adapts Ai Yazawa's hit shojo manga, which ran in Shueisha's Cookie magazine from 2000 until it went on hiatus in 2009, with 21 collected volumes. The anime covers the manga's first half: two 20 year olds named Nana meet on a night train to Tokyo, rent flat 707 together, and pull each other into the orbit of two bands, the punk outfit Blast and the chart topping Trapnest. Music sits at the centre, with Anna Tsuchiya singing as Nana Osaki and Olivia Lufkin singing as Trapnest's Reira Serizawa.