Now that I’m retired, we’ve had to cut back on some luxuries. Unfortunately, I’ve cancelled our Netflix subscription 
Fortunately, one of my retirement presents was $50 worth of gift cards to Blockbuster 
Unfortunately, our local Blockbuster has almost no anime selection Fortunately, it has Now and Then, Here and There.
Now, I didn’t read the box or even look at the cover art. I was just too thrilled to find something we hadn’t seen yet. So I was pleasantly surprised when it appeared we had a peaceful little slice of life drama on our hands. “Good, I’m glad, for once no giant robots,” I chortled. (All right, so the subtitle of the disc is “Discord and Doom”; I thought maybe they were just being overly dramatic)
We’re introduced to Shu, an average school boy with an above average outlook on life. The child is so upbeat, so positive, it’s almost sickening. I mean, it’s refreshing 
The program opens with Shu planning to ask out a girl he has a crush on after winning a Kendo match. The fact that he’s terrible at Kendo and is utterly humiliated in front of the girl doesn’t diminish his enthusiasm a bit. He’s one chipper little guy.
On his way home, he stops at one of his favorite play sites: a condemned factory with giant smokestacks. He breaks in and climbs one of the stacks. To his amazement, he finds a strange girl at the top of a neighboring stack–one that he couldn’t climb because the ladder is torn down. HE does his best to chat her up, but she’s uncommunicative, preferring to watch the sunset. Eventually, she offers her name: Lala Ru.
And then the giant robots come.
AFter a valiant fight, Shu and Lala Ru find themselves transported 10 billion years into Earth’s future, prisoners in the bowels of an inescapable citadel called Hellywood, ruled by the mad King Hamdo. In this cruel, desolate version of Earth, water is the most valuable commodity, and it turns out Lala Ru controls the secret to a limitless resevoir. If Hamdo can control the water, he can rule the planet. But Lala Ru, Shu, and a desperate group of freedom fighters who escaped Hamdo’s cruel recruitment drives are determined to keep that from happening, even if it costs them their lives.
Wow. This series is intense. It starts out so sweet and sunny. Shu is cute. He’s such a happy little goof, you can’t help but like him. And then, BAM, you spend the next hour watching him be whipped, beaten, strung up, and otherwise tortured within an inch of his life. It’s brutal. This series gets very brutal very fast, and I wouldn’t recommend it for the faint of heart. Torture, murder, and rape are all common, everyday occurences in the nightmare world of Hellywood.
But you have to keep watching. You have to find out what happens next to Shu, and you can’t help but root for the little guy. The series really makes you care for Shu, and for the characters he encounters. King Hamdo’s army is mostly made up of children doing the despicable in the desperate hope that, if they win the war, they’ll be allowed to return home to their villages and families. In other words, the lines between good and evil are, as they often are in real life, fuzzy. The only clearly defined evil is Hamdo, and I admit I started to wonder after a while why none of his people were able to see that and put a bullet in the back of his head, but they have their reasons. Again, nothing here is black and white, everyone’s motivations are complicated, which makes this series very challenging.
So far I’ve only seen the first 2 DVDs: Disc One Discord and Doom features episodes 1-5; Disc Two Flight and Fall features episodes 6-9. I don’t know how many episodes there are altogether, but what I’ve seen I recommend. However, it may be too brutal for younger children and anyone with a weak constitution. I wouldn’t say it’s terribly graphic, but it’s hard watching characters you like so much be hurt so badly, even if in the end it is “just a cartoon.”