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All posts for the year 2007

Review: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱)

Posted by ranpha on 3rd July 2007
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: , . Leave a Comment

Haruhi Suzumiya
Is the hype about this anime really worth it or not? Read on for the mini-review.

After sitting on this series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya for quite some time, I watched it in a single stretch and here is my take of one of the most hyped series in 2006. Is this anime really that good, even better than my pick for the best anime in 2006, Kiba The TV Animation? Or will it bombed out just like the overrated Wolf Rain? Everything will be revealed in my review below.

Story:-
Our protagonist Kyon, an ordinary high-school student who wished for a normal school life, faces the terror of his life as he was dragged into the life of the school queer Haruhi Suzumiya and become the co-founder of the SOS Brigade, a club that aims to investigate anything mysterious (to Suzumiya’s standard). The club then was joined by a bumbling time-traveller, a devious esper and a silent alien (muahahaha what is this) whose carry the same mission of  observing Suzumiya for their own reasons.

The story itself is not exactly spectacular and somewhat thin, but the series makes up for it with funny scenes filled with the antics of Suzumiya as she is restrained by the powerless Kyon. As I watched the anime using the correct sequence instead of the TV airing sequence, the story ended up about half-way of the title run, and switching to Galaxy Angel-style storytelling mode in the latter part of the show. IMO, the best parts of this series comes when the show ditches the story and went freestyle. Although unlike Galaxy Angel, you can’t just pick an episode and start watching because you will miss some important parts of the series.

In other words, the series is only great for its  non-story parts. This is shown by the fact that the best episode in this series is where Asahina Mikuru was filmed in a mahou-shoujo episode for the school festival. That episode is so good, on par with the Jigoku Shoujo episode I have mentioned earlier. And it does not feature Suzumiya in it.

Haruhi Suzumiya and Asahina Mikuru
From left to right: the president and the mascot of SOS Brigade

Character design:-
There are times when I feel that the overall character design of this series is more similar to ones seen in H-games and hentai animations than traditional ones such Jigoku Shoujo, Naruto or Tantei Gakuen Q. Of course it is not as blatant as Hani Hani Operation Sanctuary. Anyway, the design is not bad nor spectacular, and no, Suzumiya’s design is not earth-shattering like a lot of people wants you to believe.

Voice acting:-
This is where this series really shines. While Kyon’s voice acting is just about average, the voices of Suzumiya, Asahina and Yuki Nagato are excellent, especially for Asahina. Kyon’s case is regrettable because he is the best character in the series, plot-wise for me. The voice actor simply failed to convince in the numerous monologue parts that Kyon uses extensively in the show.

Haruhi Suzumiya
You have to see this animated to truly realized how comedic this scene is.

Music:-
Only the ED theme is good while the OP is average and the OST is almost non-existent.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation is fluid even in fast-paced scenes, and the magical battles has spectacular special effects on it. Some 3D CGI fails though. As about the directing, there is nothing bad to say about, and I looks quite hard for bad points too.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. While not as bad as Wolf’s Rain, this anime did not really warrant that hype I have heard about this anime last year. Kiba the TV Animation is still my choice for Best Anime in 2006. And this series did not really attained the height of my favourite comedy anime of all time, Azumanga Daioh. The same can be said of Haruhi Suzumiya when compared to Ayumu Kasuga.

Kyon and the baseball ball. 
Best quote from Kyon in the whole series.

Review: Soreyuke! Uchuusenkan Yamamoto Yoko (それゆけ！宇宙戦艦 ヤマモト・ヨーコ)

Posted by ranpha on 8th June 2007
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: . Leave a Comment

snapshot20070604144348
This forehead featured prominently in this series.

This is my first review using Windows Live Writer beta 2. Now with spell-checking too, so should be less mistakes from now on.  

Story:-
A high-school girl travelled 1000 years to the future to become a child soldier fighting in a bloodless universal war. She then irresponsibly recruited 3 other high-school girls to fight alongside her in the completely needless war. Then a third party appeared (led by a carbon copy of the protagonist) and the warring factions unite to face the new threat. And that’s about it.

IMHO the story is ordinary and not that good anyway. Next, the series suffers from pacing problems, where the story flows too slow at the middle portion of the story then becomes too fast when nearing the end of the run. And there’s episode 22, which I simply called a ‘WTF! What happened?’ episode, which is the highlight of the series main problem; not being able to switch between plots seamlessly. The way the main villain revealed himself (or is it a her??) to the heroines leave me speechless on how badly it was executed.

Plot twists in this series also leaves me with bad taste in my mouth.

Quoted For Truth
Quoted For Truth!

Character Design:-
The character design in this series are pretty decent. Not earth-shattering like Enma Ai is, but not that bad. When it comes to spaceship design, they resembles those designs made in those 70-80s anime series. That could be good or bad, depending on your preferences.

Voice acting:-
You can see the best and the worst kind of voice acting here. The bad one is the the voice of the main heroine which did not really suit what she is doing. There are times when she piloted her machine in a mission where I think she could do with a better voice actress that are used to action scenes. At the other end of the spectrum, Megumi Hayashibara is simply awesome. In fact, I personally think this is HER BEST gig ever, even better than Slayers or Ranma 1/2 or many of her recent works. Others are mostly decent at best.

snapshot20070604153019
The bumbling spacepilot Mido Madoka (Megumi Hayashibara). probably the only reason I watched this anime to the end.

Music:-
The OP theme is good, but not so for the ED theme and the OST.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation is good (although not helped by Arienai f**k-up in the encoding process). Unfortunately directing as a whole stinks, causing what I have mentioned in the story section above. Plus the action scenes could do with a vastly better choreographer, so that I don’t have to settle with that mess of hard-to-understand space battles, especially in team missions.

Conclusion:-
5 out of 10. Even with Megumi Hayashibara best gig I have heard, she still cannot save this series from sinking into oblivion.

snapshot20070607150411
God did not listen to you. Sorry.

Review: Detective School Q (探偵学園Q)

Posted by ranpha on 30th May 2007
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


Jack The Ripper above wanted to deflect attention away from himself, but eventually failed, arrested and brought to trial. Unlucky unlike his original counterpart at London.

Nowadays after almost quitting flyff, I returned to watching more anime. Today I presented to you a short review of the first series of the detective genre reviewed by me, Tantei Gakuen Q. Really need to finish that FF12 game later after this, I am almost there already.

Story:-
Kyu, our main protagonist with Naruto-esque voice, enrolled in Dan Detective School (DDS) as a candidate to succeed Morihiko Dan, a legendary detective in Japan and the only one who can carry a pistol. What is so special about being the only detective who can carry a concealed pistol is beyond me. Anyway, Kyu alongside his classmates in the Q class, spend the rest of the series solving homicide mysteries as they compete between themselves to become Morihiko Dan’s successor.

The whole 45-episode series takes only roughly about one-third of the manga storyline, and as the result of that, this series ends with so many questions unanswered and without a real ending. Throw in a couple of original case mysteries, and that’s it for this anime. This series definitely needs a second season (or more) and the ending of the anime really has been set up to accommodate one.

The series start up very different compared to the manga, omitting some details while adding new ones as replacements before settling into the main storyline. Most of the time, these deviations from the manga are done very well, unlike many manga-based anime series such as School Rumble. This is one of the strongest positives for this series.

Storytelling of the original manga homicide cases are done very faithfully, and this is where the series really shines. I watched the anime, already knowing who’s the murderer is every time but that fact does not really stop me from watching the series. The animation of the static pages I have read reminded me how much I like this series. Complete in colour to boot! While original anime homicide cases are not done as well as the manga ones (the city bombing one must have been shoved there to counter critics that DDS students only do homicide cases, like CSI) they are nevertheless still watchable.

Character design:-
Not exactly inspiring, let’s just say it is forgettable. And the amount of characters having black hairs are minuscule, mostly reserved to secondary characters. Green, pink and purple rules the day.

Voice acting:-
Kyu’s voice acting is strongly similar to Naruto, in fact I suspect they have the same voice actress until I checked that this is not the case. If Naruto’s voice actress got sick or something, the producer knows to call on Megumi Ogata. After all, she has piloted EVA Unit 1. Anyway, the voice acting here is pretty good, and probably a little bit better than Jigoku Shoujo.

Music:-
My hope went up when listening to the first OP theme, but it swiftly goes down the drain after a listless OST and other themes.

Animation/Direction:-
Animation is one of the drawbacks of this series. It is easily observable that the animation is way below average, and failed most of the time in fast-paced scenes. There are also problems with lip-sync in this series. Direction otherwise, is quite good although not unlike the best ones like Jigoku Shoujo.

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. Bad animation, unfinished storyline and hopeless music hits this series really hard.


Poor little cutie a.k.a. murderer. If you did not meet Kyu you would have gotten away with it.

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