The main male protagonist and his future kidnapper a.k.a. the main female protagonist.
Another effort to reduce my anime backlogs sees me watching yet another 2008 anime title titled World Destruction. Just like Ga Rei Zero reviewed in this blog before this one, this series has been rotting on my hard disk drive for years already. These two anime titles are similar in their incapability to even threaten One Outs’ position as this blog’s ‘Anime of the Year 2008’ though. And I don’t really see any 2008 titles doing so in the future, that’s how strong its position here.
But this beastly member of the WDC is the actual hero of the bunch.
Story:-
In a fantasy world where humans are beastmen’ bitches (think of all the hentai materials that can be concocted in such a setting), our main male protagonist is offering his ‘services’ at a beastmen-only restaurant. Unknown to him, one of the customers that comes to the said restaurant is a member of the feared World Destruction Committee or WDC. Out of the blue, a squad from the World Salvation Committee or WSC raided the restaurant to arrest the wanted criminal, but the criminal took our hero hostage and escapes with him. Towed around the world by the genocidal criminal, our hero then contracted the Stockholm Syndrome and started to help his kidnapper to achieve the WDC’s plan to destroy the world.
Here, the main male protagonist completely bypassed the main female protagonist to have a hot dinner date with his beastly lover.
The main attraction of this anime is definitely the main male protagonist, and to a lesser extent, his two comrades-in-crime in the WDC. Because of them (they are also the best characters in this anime), this anime turns out to become a character-driven series (more like Urusei Yatsura – but of course, not as good) than a story-driven series such as The Sacred Blacksmith. Their character strength helps balanced out the underwhelming storyline this anime has.
The storyline itself is similar to what you can see in Square Enix’s The Last Remnant. Oh BTW, this anime itself is based on an adventure RPG available on Nintendo DS. The similarity between the main protagonists of these two titles are almost uncanny (the plot twist is pretty much identical in both titles). This also mean that this anime storyline is pretty much predictable, but at least it has less plot holes than The Last Remnant’s. The WDC bunch has this bad tendency of being jailed numerous times though, and the pursuing WSC antagonists has this creepy tendency to do their hunting half-heartedly. Even Team Rocket has more motivation at doing their jobs than the WSC guys are here.
The WDC team members has great tendencies of being kidnapped/enslaved/jailed et al. numerous of times.
As for the storyline presentation, the pacing of this anime is quite slow, mainly because this anime focused more on the WDC characters rather than on this anime main plot device (the Destruct Code), or the group main goal (annihilating the planet). Many parts of their journey around the fantasy world this anime was set in is basically purposeless story-wise, but contributes greatly to character developments. This is why I said earlier that this anime is character-driven, and this is a rare thing for a fantasy anime. As a comparison, the previous two fantasy titles reviewed here before, The Sacred Blacksmith and Legends of Legendary Heroes are both story-driven titles. Meanwhile the flow of the plot is good, regardless of the uselessness of the storyline.
It took only 7 episodes (out of 13) for the WSC members to realize their mistakes when chasing the super-villain group the WSC. Only 7 episodes.
The ending is also predictable, just like what you can see in The Last Remnant, but at least there are no ambiguity within it. Perfectly executed, there are no plot holes left as the ending credits rolls in and it was made perfectly clear that there will be no second season or something like that, and I don’t think this anime served as a prequel to the game this anime is based on like .hack//ROOTS is.
Quoted For Truth!
Character Design:-
Character design in this anime is excellent (especially human female designs – thus the hentai comments above), but is pretty much similar to what you can see from The Sacred Blacksmith or Legend of Legendary Heroes. Lack of black hairs are common and forgiven considering the setting this anime is in. A positive aspect for this anime.
After being taken prisoner for the umpteenth time by the beastmen, our hero wondered whether their life is going to be hell or not…
…but it seems they do not have anything to worry about.
Voice Acting:-
Despite being quite heavy in the dialogue section, voice acting in this anime isn’t exactly outstanding. In other words, while there are no bad performances here, there is also no outstanding voice acting gigs here. This anime could have benefited from a better voice acting gig here.
If there is one thing the writer has got it right in this anime, that would be the naming conventions used for many of the beastmen characters.
Music:-
The OST is good, and so are the ED theme. Not so for the OP theme though.
Cookies will be given to anyone who can spot something seriously wrong in this scene.
Animation/Direction:-
Unfortunately, this anime copied one negative aspect that both The Sacred Blacksmith and Legend of Legendary Heroes has, and that would be the usage of the blurry animation technique that I always hated. Therefore, 1 point will be docked from this anime final evaluation.
Apart from that, the animation quality in this anime is good, even in fast-paced scenes. There are no problems with character animations. Choreography is quite decent too, that teddy bear has some good techniques up its sleeve. The director is notable for being able to close all loose ends in the storyline (I actually expect that he doesn’t by the time I watched this anime halfway – there are some surprising scenes happening in the anime that makes me thinks so) and also for the great character developments.
But if there is one thing this anime has that The Sacred Blacksmith and Legend of Legendary Heroes doesn’t, that would be yet another The Scream painting spoof in an anime title.
Conclusion:-
6 out of 10, the same score that The Sacred Blacksmith managed to get. One Outs will still keep its title for the time being.
The next anime that I will watch next is the biggest anime series reviewed in this blog, titled Gintama. At 4 seasons with 201 episodes, the next review will take quite a long time to come. It took me around two months to watch Urusei Yatsura TV series that has 195 episodes, so expect the same for my next review. Maybe the time needed can be cut if I can find more free time to watch it though.
Will this super-villain group finally managed to destroy the world? Watch this anime and find out!
Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-mt
