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Review: Oh! Edo Rocket (大江戸ロケット)

Posted by ranpha on 23rd September 2010

Posted in: anime review, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!. Tagged: Oh! Edo Rocket (大江戸ロケット). Leave a Comment

The main male protagonist, given some man-love by the best character in this anime.

The random anime picked out for a review from my very large queue that spanned 2 terabytes worth of hard disk space is a 26-episode 2007 anime titled Oh! Edo Rocket. Naturally, this anime then will have the right to challenge the reigning ‘Anime of the Year 2007’ title holder Bokurano. Also, well, naturally, Bokurano makes short work out of this anime, for reasons that will be outlined in the review below.

The best character of this anime sure has a thing for the male populations of Edo.

Story:-
Taking place in ancient Tokyo (or Edo as they called it at that time) during roughly the same era as Hakuouki is, the supposedly-famous firework maker Tamaya Seikichi a.k.a. the main male protagonist received a strange request from a strange customer with starry eyes to make a strange firework called ‘rocket’ that can reach the moon. Meanwhile, the young maidens of Edo were terrorized by a strange blood-sucking monster that is rumored to have come from the moon! Is the main protagonist’s strange customer is involved with all those gruesome murders?

This anime is a dialogue-heavy slice-of-life title, although you can also expect plenty of humor and a reasonable amount of action scenes. The quality of the storyline is decent, but the romance elements in this anime is actually found in an unexpected place (read: not involving the main male protagonist). The aforementioned humor in this anime is pretty much generic most of the time, with the exception of some toilet-type humor scenes. While the pacing of this anime is a little bit on the slow side, the storyline is moving along just nicely without any notable hiccups up until episode 20, where a major story arc ends.

Some witty lines there by the best character of this anime.

This is where my major complaint about this anime will come in, which is about the three filler episodes that comes after the end of the major arc mentioned above, and before the ending arc started. No matter how I looked at those three episodes, they doesn’t explain anything useful to the storyline prior to that point, or contribute anything new that the ending arc can use. This is similar to the filler episodes that you can see in Ergo Proxy, but with worse results. And of course, just like the vast majority of filler episodes out there in any given Japanese anime, the filler episodes in here doesn’t contribute to character developments either. The director should have re-appropriated the three filler episodes and replaced it with a simple time-jump plot device. That way, the continuation of the storyline would not have been interrupted and the ending arc should have come immediately after the episode 20 finished playing.

To Mr. Director, if you get rid of the 3 filler episodes, maybe then you can close many of the plot-holes left in this anime after the end credit finished playing?

The ending arc is pretty much underwhelming, no thanks for the three filler episodes that took out the momentum built up to the end of episode 20. The fact that the ending is full with clichés and very predictable, not to mention somewhat outrageous, doesn’t help either. Apart from the ending, this anime has made quite a lot of references to other TV shows, anime, manga and other printed materials, like Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and, purposely multiple times, Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi. Unlike Hakuouki, this anime is only barely historically accurate, with plenty of unabashed tinge of modernity abound throughout this anime. Those hints of modernity (like mobile phones, Internet, AV products etc) are what makes the storyline went off the railways of true history (not that the Japanese is alien of doing this in real life) but also allows this anime to have some out-of-this-world (literally) plot developments that tests the limits of suspension of disbelief.

The best character in this anime is truly a refined gentleman.

Character development in this anime is uneven, but yet easily the best thing this anime have. While the two main protagonists are just your bog-standard anime characters you can see in similar titles in slice-of-life/shounen genres, the main antagonist of this anime is really someone else. Easily the best character in this anime by a million miles, the main antagonist of this anime is what you called a realistic character, which gone against this anime’s outrageous fabric if you ask me. Comedic but cruel, indecisive yet impulsive, insensitive yet cowardly, this anime is worth watching just to look at him doing his thing throughout this anime. His character development is superb, using the strategy that you usually can only see in a main protagonist of a shounen anime. His growth from a weak coward that only knows how to bully helpless poor residents of Edo to a highly-dogmatic, very skilled swordsman antagonist is spectacular to say the least. His end in the underwhelming ending arc is underwhelming, but kudos at the writers for creating an antagonist like him. The shounen genre would benefit with more characters like him.

Pay your homage to the best character in this anime above!

Character Design:-
The character design in this anime is excellent, and if you ignore the characters that comes from the moon, almost seinen-like. I actually want to complain about the overabundance of hair dyes in this anime, then I remembered that they have the Internet in this anime (yet they doesn’t have ICBMs), therefore I think I should just shut up. Definitely a positive aspect for this anime.

The best character of this anime is not the only problem that our main protagonist has to deal with.

Voice Acting:-
Voice acting in this anime is just average overall. Still, there are some good voice acting gigs in this title that has huge character cast, such as the main male protagonist and the main antagonist.

Music:-
The OST of this anime is excellent, and so are the catchy OP theme. The two ED themes doesn’t fare so well though.

For a slice-of-life anime, the violence in this anime can be so spontaneous and so raw. In other words: IT'S AWESOME!!

Animation/Direction:-
This anime uses the abhorrent blurry animation technique detailed very much in this category of posts, usually in fast-paced scenes that does not involves battles. Surprisingly, the usage of this technique in battle scenes is quite low, but can still be seen as the anime nears its end. Considering that this anime predates Nabari no Ou, the first anime where I observed this phenomena happening, this only shows that this plague that is infesting Japan’s animation industry do have deep roots that spanned years.

One point docked off this anime final evaluation.

Overall, the animation quality in this anime is good, even in fast-paced scenes. Choreography in action scenes is average though. The directing really screwed-up with the filler episodes, but the main antagonist development somewhat balanced things out.

Some of the modern amenities that is suspiciously available during the Bakufu era in Edo.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. Bokurano still reigns as the ‘Anime of the Year 2007’ holder, and highly likely, will be for a very long time, just like One Outs is. Only the positions for Chocotto Sister, Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and Working!! are less tenable. Currently I’m torn between a 12-episode series and another one with 50-episode series, therefore, if I decided to watch the latter next, the next review will not come for quite some time.

A parody of basically a lot of toku-sentai titles in real-life Japan.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-hO

Review: Kurogane no Linebarrels (鉄のラインバレル)

Posted by ranpha on 9th September 2010

Posted in: anime review. Tagged: Kurogane no Linebarrels (鉄のラインバレル). Leave a Comment

The aptly named main male protagonist, and also the best character of this anime.

Today’s post is for a mecha anime I have never heard before watching its first episode, titled Kurogane no Linebarrels. Considering that I have a thing for mecha anime titles (although will not necessarily rate them highly), me not knowing about this particular anime with plenty of mechas in it is borderline blasphemous. Then I watched all 24 episodes of it and realized why this anime, with Gundam Seed-like character designs, wasn’t really well-known. This anime is a 2008 anime, but it has no chance at all to dethrone the current holder of the ‘Anime of the Year 2008’ title, One Outs – Nobody Wins, but I. And IMO that anime will hold the said title for a long time to come.

And he is truly proud of his given name.

Story:-
The biggest loser at a local Japan’s middle school was forced by the school bullies to go buy some junk foods from outside the school. With the time limit of 10 minutes, he tried to save time and take a shortcut through a forested spot in the middle of the city. Suddenly a stray mecha appears out from nowhere and fall onto him. As we all know, mechas are usually big, hard and heavy, therefore the falling mecha kills our main male protagonist instantly. THE END!

No wonder why this anime was unknown to me before I started watching it; the storyline is overwhelmingly ordinary. There are no angsty emo main character that you can make fun of; just your bog-standard shounen main protagonist like the one you can see in Märchen Awakens Romance, amongst others. While the save-the-world-from-evil plot cannot be hailed for its originality, at least it still make this anime pretty much watchable even if other factors tried to drag it down.

This anime starts well, with decent pacing and storyline progression, for at least in the first half of this 24-episode series. As this anime enters the second half, fluffy events (that welcoming party, Christmas events etc.) and the lame-ass romance subplot (someone should watch the first Macross and make it a definitive guide on how to wrote a romance subplot for any future mecha anime titles) started to make their appearance, making the central portion of this anime less palatable. The flow of the storyline, which is smooth at that point, was also interrupted by scene transition problems that you can see between episode 15 and 16, between episode 16 and 17, and the most glaring of them all, in the middle of episode 23. The latter in particular is pretty much retarded, and will be explained later.

The ending suffers from bad presentation, which is a pity because despite being cliché-laden and predictable, the plot of the ending is actually decent. Being crammed into 2 episodes (or is it 3?) caused the pacing to be notably faster than what you can see in the preceding episodes, but the aforementioned scene transition problem in the middle of the penultimate episode is just as bad as the same scene transition problem documented extensively in my Asura Cryin’ review. Doing an important story progression off-screen will always be bad for storytelling, and this anime is not exempted from this rule. I personally doesn’t see a new season, but then again there are some unanswered questions and few unpursued potential story arcs left hanging when the final credits stopped rolling. The ending would have done well with a couple of extra episodes, that’s for sure.

Character developments is uneven overall, with the badly-timed usage of ‘false antagonist’ plot device really not helping this anime in this aspect. By using that plot device too close to the ending arc, the main male protagonist (the best character in this anime even if his character development is pretty much by the book) would then have to focus upon a new antagonist which character is not clearly defined and has low airtime at that point. The same plot device also caused the character development of the original antagonist to be wasted, and exposed the severe lack of character developments for other characters such as the main female protagonist a.k.a. the antagonist younger sister (their relationship is almost worthless in the context of the storyline – not explored at all) and also for the JUDA’s president (his relationship with the main antagonist seems to be deep, but never explained – the grave at that island with giant squid is proof of that).

Unfortunately, the writers of this anime used this plot device once too many times.

Character Design:-
Character designs in this anime is very good, no complaints about this one. There are some black hair owners in this anime too, which is a very good thing. Mecha designs is just average though. Still definitely a positive aspect for this anime.

Voice Acting:-
In general, voice acting in this anime is decent, but there are no outstanding performer(s) that I can spot (or hear).

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

Animation/Direction:-
The animation quality in this anime is great, even in fast-paced scenes. But choreography in action scenes is just average, and you will not see any good battles or fights in here. The director who has screwed up the presentation of the ending arc, has done a neat job in other earlier parts of the anime.

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. One Outs will still keep its title for the time being, and highly likely, for a very long time too.

This picture pretty much sums up this anime's main storyline.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-h6

Review: Summer Wars (サマーウォーズ)

Posted by ranpha on 31st August 2010

Posted in: anime movies, anime review. Tagged: Summer Wars (サマーウォーズ). Leave a Comment

The main male protagonist, refusing to become the main female protagonist's boyfriend.

When writing my previous post in this blog (the review of Black Jack 21), I discovered a teeny weeny relationship between the Black Jack series and the anime movie I will review today, the highly-rated (by others) anime movie titled Summer Wars. I have read somewhere in the internet that this movie has won many awards (alongside K-On! to be exact), and considering that I have it in my extremely long queue, I decided to take the movie for a spin. Not only I can scare the current ‘Anime of the Year 2009’ title holder for a little, I can also confirm one of my suspicions that I have after watching the two season of Black Jack anime series.

And this is his avatar in the said MMORPG. The avatar that has gone bad!

Story:-
Our nerdy main male protagonist was offered a part-time job by the his high-school idol to………………………………………………………………… become her boyfriend during her grandmother’s birthday bash. Disgruntled at being forced to do unexpected things, his problems vastly multiplied when, literally, the world and its dog starts baying for his head for hacking and vandalizing the biggest casual MMORPG in the world. His cover blown away, he has to work hard against time to save the world from a renegade AI that wants to destroy it, hmmmm…… where did I heard about this before?

Yeah right, the .Hack//G.U. multiplatform series, which prelude anime was reviewed by me here and the video-game-trilogy-condensed-into-a-movie reviewed here. I have also played the Playstation 2 trilogy for at least 200 hours or something. This movie shared so many similarities with the game series when it come to the storyline, but then again there are major differences as well.

While the game series is pretty much shounen, this movie’s storyline has a heavy dose of slice-of-life elements infused into it. Unlike the game which focused almost exclusively on the in-game storyline, this movie divides its focus upon the online world and the world outside it pretty much evenly. That’s why while the renegade AIs of each respective series do wreak major destruction upon their real world, you can actually see it (the actual disasters) happens in this movie while the destructions in .Hack//G.U. trilogy are only implied in bulletin boards and private messages. The game trilogy also has better romance story arc than this movie too, which will be explained below.

For what its worth, this movie’s storyline is quite good. But what makes the movie stands up to its hype is its presentation. The flow of the story is excellent and the pacing is just perfect. For a movie to has this kind of perfect pacing is truly a rarity. It is even better than the likes of The Sky Crawlers and the venerable Spirited Away. The awesome presentation more than covered the unavoidable lack of nuances seen in this movie’s story.

Character developments. the bane of all things movies without a sequel, is predictably patchy. Only two characters has done anything remotely well in the regard: the main male protagonist (also the best character in this movie) and the main female protagonist's grandmother. The huge cast of characters really didn’t help. And the main reason why this movie’s romance subplot is inferior compared to the .Hack//G.U. trilogy’s is because of the main female protagonist’s weird character development strategies. Someone care to explain to me how on earth she fall in love with the main male protagonist?

And this is him in deep trouble after being framed by the scheming main female protagonist.

Character Design:-
This movie’s seinen-like character designs are excellent overall. Lack of black hairs is forgiven; I’m convinced that those who doesn’t have black hair dyed theirs. A positive aspect for this movie.

Voice Acting:-
Unlike character design, voice acting in this anime is just average. And unfortunately for this anime, no one stands out from the rest in this aspect. The grandma comes close, but not close enough.

Music:-
The main reason why this movie is related to the Black Jack series is because they shared the same composer for the soundtrack of both titles. The composer hasn’t done the work of Osamu Tezuka any justice it deserves, and 3 years later, nothing changed for this anime either. Therefore, it is safe to say, the OST of this movie is just mediocre. I don’t know if he composed the ED theme, but the theme is not very good either.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation in this movie is superb, with no decrease in quality in fast-paced scenes too. Beauty is everywhere, whether in online world or outside it, comparable to what Makoto Shinkai’s works. Choreography is also awesome, comparable to what you can see in the .Hack//G.U. OAV and not too far behind what you can see in Avatar – The Last AirBender. The director also has done a very good job presenting the movie to the audience with the aforementioned excellent presentation. A positive aspect for this movie.

Conclusion:-
9 out of 10. This movie lives up to its hype, but not good enough to dethrone Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei as the best anime of 2009. How on earth K-On! managed to get toe-to-toe with this movie anyway?

Quoted for Truth!