Completing the awesome Toradora! airing series experience, its follow-up OVA, Toradora! SOS fills in with more gut-busting comedy as the Toradora! bunch, this time with their crazy antics - Ryuuji, Taiga, Minori, and Ami pig out (despite the girls' self-proclaimed status as 'diet warriors') on challenges to find out the best on Jonny's (their friendly neighborhood famiresu) menu, and the three stalk Ami on her eating habits. And Kitamura? Well he's got a lot to say but so much for that. LOL








Though, most viewers I believe would rate this short quite low for the lack of relation to the series' story (might have given some viewers who were expecting it to be a side-story arc a bit of disappointment) or a lack of a proper story in itself, I'd think otherwise. I think the OVA served its purpose of giving audiences a good laugh or enough breather to balance things out with the dramatic and touching series with the characters just fooling around. As for me, it was very satisfying, definitely a great follow-up extra to the awesome TV series.

      
 Interestingly different, Hyakko OVA doesn't seem much of an OVA, in my opinion, as much as I would expect an OVA to be some sort of a short movie. Running for about 10 minutes, this OVA could only pass as a short special or as one of its regular series episodes showing a very different side of Kazamatsuri Touma since in this one she hangs out and gets infected with her wild opposite, Torako's antics.
  

What makes Hyakko OVA seem more like a regular episode is that it chronicles another crazy day in the lives of Kamizono Gakuen students, much like how a regular fun-filled episode of the Hyakko series would go, only in this one, It's just Touma and Torako trying out a bunch of different sweets.
  

Touma's favorite café has closed down and apparently she is looking for another quiet spot where she and her reading fetish could hang out. Torako happened to overhear the situation and impulsively pounced on the chance to catch Touma's friendly side. With Torako's legendary persistence, Touma unwittingly, and just as to shut Torako up, accepted the offer. But it isn't just the quiet café, the weirdness of its "master", or the mounds of pastries and sweets. It's more of Torako's crazy and infectious antics.



I have read some reviews about the OVA mainly showing the disappointment of some fans, perhaps due to its length or the lack of a better and proper story, yet in my opinion, its not that bad or perhaps it could have been released with other, maybe similar, story shorts although I would say, this is better than nothing. Still, I had a good laugh.

     
Read or Die is one of those anime which i could say, any action anime fanatic shouldn't dare miss. Just by watching the anime's cool opening theme and listening to its soundtrack's "secret agent" kind of vibe really gives you the feeling you're in for some real good action.


The story revolves around Yomiko Readman, an agent of the British Library - a seemingly perfect front - in which Britain's top secret Special Operations Division, yep, you guessed it right, a spy/secret agent network that works on classified cases of terrorism and the unnatural (e.g. books that yield the power to world domination. what?!?) lies hidden. Yomiko is not your regular "James Bond" kind of secret agent though. She is practically the opposite. A childish, rather clumsy, stroller-toting, four-eyes bibliomaniac who works as a substitute teacher by day. But just like a secret agent, they all have that everyday "regular person" facade.  Yomiko is a half-English, half- Japanese paper master and is one of the Empire's best agents. Being a paper master she has the power to control and influence paper and use it as weapons and tools of sorts. With that power she was given the codename "The Paper". 


In this particular OVA (Original Video Animation) Yomiko and other British Library agents were tasked to protect a certain book and destroy a bunch of insurgents who call themselves, I-Jin and are after the book which apparently holds the power to mankind's destruction. The I-jin are technically clones of certain historical figures who have acquired super powers and technology based on their occupations in history.



Although story-wise the OVA might leave you hanging on some details especially if you haven't read its manga yet. Its because the stories on each media (OVA, manga and TV series) the Read or Die series is published upon are loosely based on each other. That is, the characters and their connections on each other and the original plot of the British Library as a world superpower hiring super-spies against book-related terrorism are mostly the constant stuff in the entire series. But all-in-all, this is one really action-packed, three-episode OVA you wouldn't want to miss.