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All posts for the year 2011

Review: World Destruction (ワールド・デストラクション ～世界撲滅の六人～)

Posted by ranpha on 21st March 2011
Posted in: anime review, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!, The Scream Painting spoof in anime. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


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.

Click here for the goodies!

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

Review: Ga Rei -Zero- (喰霊-零-)

Posted by ranpha on 11th March 2011
Posted in: anime review. Tagged: . 2 comments


A scene that will not be out of place in Highschool of the Dead. There are no zombies here though.

Today’s review is going to be for a typical shounen anime titled Ga-Rei –Zero-, a 2008 title that has no hope whatsoever to dethrone the current ‘Anime of the Year 2008’ title holder One Outs. But what isn’t typical for this anime is that this anime is a prequel for the manga with almost the same name, Ga-Rei. Usually, a manga-based anime mostly followed the plots laid out in the manga, with various degrees of creative licenses being applied, kinda like what you can see in Giant Killing and The World God Only Knows. But here, this manga-based anime will tell you what happened before the events in the manga takes place.

The manga this anime is based upon is not a title in my reading list before watching this anime, therefore I also helped myself to read a few volumes of the manga after I finished watching this anime. This is because I want to know why a prequel anime was made instead of a typical manga-adapted anime series. That’s the reason why this review comes up later than it could have been. A few interesting things reveals themselves after watching the anime and reading the manga, read on to see what they are.

Story:-
The modern-day Japan is infested with ghosts, demons and things like that, therefore the government uses tax-payer money and created a covert exorcism squad under, of all ministries, the Ministry of Environment (the other exorcism squad under the Ministry of Defense made more sense). The two main protagonists are part of the setup, but one of them was lured to the dark side by the promise of limitless power. This prequel anime shows you how the conversion process unfolds, you know, like what you can see in the Star Wars prequel trilogy?

The story in this anime itself is quite decent. It begins with plenty of fast-paced action scenes before the main storyline started. The flow of the story is smooth but the pacing is slow for a shounen genre title. I have to mention that the plots are predictable though. This also applies to the ending, which is set up to be continued by reading the manga. The main male protagonist in the manga doesn’t appear at all, except in a single scene in the final episode. FWIW, despite the slow pacing and predictable plots, this anime by itself isn’t really a bad one to watch.

Then I went ahead and read the manga. For clarification, I read the manga all the way until the part where the main female protagonist of this anime that turned to the dark side (let’s call her ‘Miss Anakin’ for convenience sake) finally meets her end. Surprisingly, it doesn’t really take much reading to reach that part, and I will elaborate on this later. And this is where my beefs for this anime originates.

My first problem with this anime is that the writer of this prequel anime doesn’t keep enough consistency between the elements in the manga and events in the prequel anime version. When the manga made references to the events in this anime (with the flashbacks thingy of course), there are times I exclaimed to myself ‘Hey, that isn’t what the anime has actually shown to me!’. For example, when the manga/anime other main female protagonist explains who Miss Anakin is to our clueless main male protagonist, she describes Miss Anakin in very flattering terms (e.g. she likened Miss Anakin as her father’s equal when in the anime Miss Anakin wasn’t portrayed to be so). Plus, some flashbacks in the manga are depicted differently in prequel anime too, like the battle between Miss Anakin and the main female protagonist’s mentor father. Considering that the manga comes out first before the prequel, any discrepancies between these two will be squarely blamed on the anime.

My second problem with this anime would be the disproportionate amount of importance placed on Miss Anakin, and as a whole, in the storyline itself. This by itself is fine, IF YOU DON’T READ THE MANGA. The storyline in this anime focused more upon Miss Anakin than the other main protagonist, and this will highly likely make you think that she will become a prominent character in the manga. But after I read the manga, it dawns to me that her role in this series (prequel anime + manga) is actually less important than the prequel anime made her to be.

This may be caused by the combination of the facts that the manga itself isn’t really a great piece of storytelling (I’ll put my neck on the open and says that this manga isn’t even Naruto’s level), plus the Tengu resurrection arc, which seen the demise of Miss Anakin, is underwhelming at best (not on par for example with Bleach’s Soul Society arc). For me, she dies too early for my liking, before the potential of her character has been fully explored. Here, you have a 12-episode anime series that focused on her more than any other character, yet in about 3 manga tankoubons, she died. If the Star Wars comparison is used, it is like Darth Vader dying in ‘A New Hope’ instead of ‘Return of the Jedi’.

But then again, I have not read the manga past the Tengu resurrection arc, and I have no plan to in the near future. Who knows if the writer of this anime suddenly channels Akira Toriyama and plays the resurrection card further down the manga storyline. Despite me not liking what happening to Miss Anakin, I don’t want her to come back to life either.

Character development is actually the biggest positive aspect this anime has. After all, the plots in this prequel are supposed to prepare the two main protagonists for the real story that would be told in the manga. In this regard, this anime has done really well here, and continuation from the ending by the manga are done largely seamlessly. Not only that the two main protagonists (these two characters are also the best in this anime, at least) benefits from this prequel good character development strategies, but so are some of the other side characters like that guy who used to be Miss Anakin fiancée.


What he says is correct in so many levels. These two girls should have learned their true place.

Character Design:-
The character designs in this anime is quite decent, although they are not exactly original. Black hairs are surprisingly common too, which can only be good considering the settings of this series. The anime’s character designs looks better too than the corresponding designs in the manga.

Voice Acting:-
Voice acting gigs in this anime is just average in general. The only good voice acting gig in this anime is the blue butterflies kid, but he has too little airtime for him to ever make voice acting gigs in this anime sounds better.

Music:-
The OST and the ED theme are not worth talking about, only the OP theme is something worth listening to.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation quality in this anime is good, even in fast-paced scenes. This anime also has better integration of CGI and traditional animation, unlike the previous title reviewed here in this blog. Choreography in action scenes is very impressive too, even eclipsing what you can see in Katanagatari. The director has done very good job on this anime’s presentation aspects, but he/she should have ensured that this prequel anime is consistent with the manga.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. One Outs is still the best 2008 anime reviewed in this blog. If you have read the manga, you should avoid watching this anime though.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-mo

Review: Giant Killing (ジャイアントキリング)

Posted by ranpha on 28th February 2011
Posted in: anime review, sport genre standard, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!. Tagged: . 2 comments


The Mourinho-like main protagonist, also one of the best characters in this anime.

It has been quite some time since I reviewed a sport genre title in this blog (the last one is for Ookiku Furikabutte S2 in August last year), therefore today I will review one of them in the form of the deceptively-titled Giant Killing, an anime about soccer football management. And because this is a sport anime title, the sport genre handicap will also be applied here, as usual. This is a surprisingly solid 2010 title, therefore will we see a new successor to Katanagatari as the new ‘Anime of the Year 2010’ holder? You will know the answer after reading the whole review.


And this is him with the club’s mascot.

Story:-
After scaring Portsmouth FC shitless during the round of 32 of the FA Cup, our main protagonist returns to Japan and take the reins of the fictional J-League team East Tokyo United (ETU), a small team where he has a spell as a player in the past. He then used his somewhat unorthodox managerial abilities to push the underachieving football team up the ladder against the established teams of Japanese footballing world. 

Actually, when I first downloaded this anime, I literally thought that the title explained itself story-wise, where a bunch of adventurers are trying to kill giants to protect the local village/township/kingdom/continent/world, in a setting like the one in The Sacred Blacksmith. Instead, what we got here are ‘giant killings’ that can be epitomized in last night’s Birmingham’s win against Arsenal in the 2011 Carling Cup Final (I finished watching this anime mere hours before that game started) or to a lesser extent (and probably more relevant), when Wolverhampton Wanderers defeated Manchester United earlier in the 2010 –2011 league season. If there is an award for misleading titles, this anime is certainly a shoo-in candidate for it. But this is not a negative point aspect for this anime at all.



Some people in the club structure has their own misgivings about the brand-new manager…

The story itself is quite unique for its genre, mainly because the main character doesn’t play the game portrayed in this anime, instead he is only the coach/manager of the team. Maybe there are other sports manga/anime titles that is alike to this one, but this anime is the first ever title I watched that uses such a premise. Plus, while the main character himself is the schemer of the tactics and strategies and not the executor of those plans, you must have thought that he is a scheming genius in the mould of main protagonists of One Outs and Akagi. But that isn’t true either, which not only made this anime more believable and accessible, but also less predictable than most of its peers. In addition to that, this football anime doesn’t involve the usual middle/high school football team trying to qualify to the nationals, but this anime can still be qualified as a shounen, unlike One Outs is.

In short, this anime has a very solid plot. You can see the main protagonist handle the dysfunctional team members, the media, the board room and also the club’s Ultras too. There is also some influence from that 'Dream Team' drama series too here. Another plus point for this anime is there are no romance at all in the storyline. No distractions at all for the main protagonist as he worked his magic on the hapless relegation-threatened East Tokyo United.


…but only this bald center-back, also one of the best characters in this anime, dares to publicly air his justified grievances about the new manager.

For presentation, the pacing of the story of this anime is slow, mainly because of the nature of the story. The flow of the story is flawless though, with absolutely no transitions problems unlike the previous anime reviewed here before this one. Also unlike many sports manga/anime out there, there are no over-the-top over-exaggerated techniques either, which also makes this anime more realistic. Spoken foreign languages are common in this anime, and this anime performed much better in this regard when compared to the ‘poster boy of bad spoken Engrish’ in the form of Koukaku no Regios. But the way Portuguese Brazilian was spoken in this anime has some Korean-dialect twang in it, which is quite funny.


Foreign languages in this anime are spoken with reasonable quality.

Excellent character developments is almost always one of the best traits that a sport anime title has, and this anime is not an exception. But actually, the main protagonist has static character development strategies, which means he is the same person from the first episode to the end. Despite of that, he is definitely one of this anime’s best characters, mainly because of his methods of coaxing the players in his football club to do things he wants without telling them his intentions in full. Some players benefits greatly because of this, causing them to have excellent character developments, such the no.7 midfielder and the bald center-back. These two characters are also the best characters in this anime.


Holy crap, is he channeling the current Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool side?

Still, you can plainly see that this anime is still unfinished in that aspect, therefore THIS ANIME NEEDS A SECOND SEASON. There are still huge amount of room for characters developments in this anime (especially for the no.11), and so are for the storyline. The football season in the anime is barely halfway anyway, and the club is still in the running in the cup competition. The ending is written to accommodate one anyway.


If Sir Red Nose is the one who managed this East Tokyo United, and he sees his players dawdling on the field of play just like above, these two players will be substituted pronto, in advance of some hair-dryer treatments.

Character Design:-
Character designs in this anime is decent and most of the time, fits the characters that are portrayed. This really applies to the three best characters in this anime (the main protagonist, the no.7 midfielder and also the bald center-back). Black hairs are quite common in this modern Japan though. A positive aspect for this anime.


Somebody has to clue me in on how to spell his romanized name correctly. Is it Natsuki, or Natuki? Somehow, I gravitate to the latter…

Voice Acting:-
The voice acting in this anime is decent, and not more. Only the bald center-back voice actor has something you can call a reasonable good gig. Nevertheless, there are no major weaknesses though, and as mentioned before, the foreign languages are spoken without those bastardization heard in Koukaku no Regios.


And that guy with a questionable name also perform some act of gayness ON THE PITCH!

Music:-
The OST is average, but the OP and ED themes (only one of each throughout the series) are excellent. The OP theme in particular is very catchy. A positive aspect of this anime.


The blurry animation technique in action, resulting in one point deduction from this anime’s final score. Really unhelpful considering that the sport genre handicap has also been applied to this anime.

Animation/Direction:-
Unfortunately for this anime, in some action scenes especially in matches, the abhorrent blurry animation technique are used in this title. Therefore, in addition of the sport genre handicap, one point will also be docked from this anime final evaluation.

Apart from that, the animation quality is decent enough, but it doesn’t integrate well with super smooth CGI animation quality, causing some awkward scenes where the mismatch of frame rates is easily apparent. Choreography is decent for a sport anime, thanks to the lack of over-exaggerated techniques. The directing is superb, being able to work well even in the slow pace of this anime.


The frame rate mismatch is really apparent in scenes like the one above. The ball is computer-generated, while the player is animated traditionally.

Conclusion:-
8 out of 10. If only this anime doesn’t  use the aforementioned blurry animation technique, the ‘Anime of the Year 2010’ would have had a new winner. I haven’t decided what title I will watch next, you will have to wait and see in the next review (hopefully will come in the near future).


I’m pleasantly surprised to see that handbags swinging exists in J-League too, although I am concerned that J-League referees is too lenient for giving only a yellow for a straight red card offence in the Premier League.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-m8

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