Arte (2020)

Arte is an anime about a girl born into nobility in Florence during the Renaissance era of the 16th century. She doesn't care about anything other than art, to the point that when she was confronted by her mother (who burned her sketches) and told her to stop pursuing art, she decided that she will leave the life of the noble woman and live her life as she sees fit. 

This anime showed a number of cities and places in Italy with beautiful architecture, from Florence... 

Florence Cathedral

To Venice...

St Mark's Basilica and its bell tower.

And Murano islands in Venice.

I was able to learn about the real-life equivalent to some of the characters depicted in this anime, like:

• Lavinia Fontana, named Arte in the anime and is credited to be the first female painter.
• Veronica Franco, who has the same name in the anime.
• Ubertino of Casale, also has the same name in the anime.

I also learnt that one of the styles that emerged in painting during the Renaissance was called a Mannerist Art. Then was replaced by the Baroque style.

The Anime had a lot of emotional, fun and cute scenes too!

Angelo's sisters are too CUTE!

In the end this was a beautiful anime about the struggles of a woman in a male dominant field, which I enjoyed very much.

Cuteness Rating: 7/10.

Overall Rating: 10/10.

Links:

• Anilist - Arte
• Wikipedia - Florence Cathedral
• Wikipedia - St Mark's Basilica
• Wikipedia - St Mark's Campanile
• Wikipedia - Murano
• Wikipedia - Lavinia Fontana
• Wikipedia - Veronica Franco
• Wikipedia - Ubertino of Casale
• Wikipedia - Mannerism
• Wikipedia - Baroque

Gekai Elise (2024)

 Ending the season on a high note.

Adapted from the manhwa, Gekai Elise is such a cute anime about Elise, a surgeon/doctor living and working hard to save lives to atone for her past misdeeds. Bright character who's very knowledgeable about medicine and has an undying love for strawberry shortcakes! A true role model.

Also enjoyed the Childe princess character and her interactions with Elise.

Rays of sunshine and rainbows envelope me whenever they meet, such a good duo.

I'm refraining to mention anything about the medical stuff, which I enjoyed but, would rather you to venture out of your way and watch it. With that I have to add, the cover art for the manhwa is freaking cute!

One more thing, the opening song goes hard. With 2000-2010 anime opening vibes, it's a banger.

As a bonus, the lyrics might have hit me in the feels a little too hard.

Cuteness Rating: 8.5/10.

Overall Rating: 10/10.

Links used:

• Anilist - Gekai Elise
• YouTube - Gekai Elise opening song
• Lyrical Nonsense - Opening song lyrics

Miama's Theme - flutter of birds ~Toritachi no Habataki~ Perfect Arrange Album (2001)

 

My recent cool find is this song from a 2001 Visual Novel titled Flutter of Birds: Toritachi no Habataki. I liked the song and the game cover, they're both beautiful and give me a weird sense of melancholy, while remaining cute.

Miama's Theme - flutter of birds ~Toritachi no Habataki~ Perfect Arrange Album (2001)

I found it from this amazing Twitter account: @melonc0la in this post. Truly thankful for them for sharing beautiful art and music. I have since then uploaded it to YouTube, because I couldn't find it on there.

Links:

• @melonc0la Account.
• Where I found the song Twitter post.
• KHInsider's archive - Where I found the Album.
• The song on YouTube.

The Battle of the River Plate (1956)

 

The Battle of the River Plate or The Pursuit of the Graf Spee, is a film about the first naval battle of WW2. I found this British war film to be surprisingly very respectful of both sides in the battle and didn't go the usual route of dehumanizing the enemy. Also has a melancholic ending, helped by my ignorance of the fate of the Graf Spee. If you don't know the fate of the Pocket-battleship the Graf Spee, I urge you to go and watch this film without clicking any of the links or looking her up. Don't worry about the screenshots, I purposefully didn't upload what became of her.

I only wish that this film could be remade with authentic CG ship models.

Heavy cruiser USS Salem, playing the rule of Graf Spee. 

And now the dumping of screenshots:

 

Foreshadowing...

Further topics of interest and the links I used in this post:

• Letterboxd entry - Battle of the River Plate
  
• Wikipedia - Battle of the River Plate 
• Wikipedia - German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee
  
• Wikipedia - Ships used in the film
  
• Wikipedia - Altmark incident

Yuukoku no Moriarty (2020)

Moriarty the Patriot.

I always liked the character of Professor Moriarty, seeing a whole show with him being the main character made me very happy! In addition, I love the Victorian setting of London; buildings, people and the technology of that era and this anime delivers, in both the first and second season. 

These might be considered spoilers but, they really crammed everything about the UK in this show. From Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Jack the Ripper, to the creation of the MI6.

Anyways, here are my screenshots:

Miss Hudson..

Bond...

Overall Rating: 9.5/10.

Cuteness Rating: 2/10.

Materials I found looking up various stuff about the world of Sherlock Holmes:

• Sherlockian.net
  
• Wikipedia: Sherlock Holmes.
  
• Sherlock Holmes Museum.