Celestial Method: Complete Collection

This 2014 anime series serves up typical Japanese fantasy soap opera anime about a teenage girl, her group of friends, a mythical playmate, and a flying saucer. The vaguely sci-fi story unfolds in a small town where junior high-schooler Nonoka returns after having spent time there as a child. Here, she finds a ghost-like younger girl named Noel who somehow has ties to the giant floating spaceship that arrived over the town when Nonoka left—apparently without causing much fuss. Nonoka, Noel, and a few other school kids renew a special bond that holds them together in order to make their wishes come true. Celestial Method was created by Naoki Hisaya, a well-known figure in the anime genre, and fans are likely to enjoy the vivid hues, rich atmosphere, spiritual whimsy, and insanely catchy theme song. But the melodramatic fantasy story is only intermittently engaging. Compiling all 13 episodes from 2014 in separate DVD and Blu-ray editions, rated TV-PG, and presented in Japanese with English subtitles, this is a strong optional purchase. (T. Fry)