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Review: EDEN’s Bowy (エデンズボゥイ)

Posted by ranpha on 12th June 2006

Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: EDEN’s Bowy (エデンズボゥイ). Leave a Comment

The review of EDEN’s Bowy will be the one with the most screenshots to date. Screenshots that mostly consists of a particular neko-dictator!!!

Story:-
Another of your common fantasy shounen anime with some mecha/puppet actions; a boy discovers that he is a legendary God Hunter, and with it he gets the prize of having a goddess accompanying him while being chased by 2 competing flying superpowers of the world who wants him dead or wants his powers, respectively. Then he found another God Hunter, whose job in the whole series is to chase the newly-annointed God Hunter boy while preaching about the story of a scorpion and the frog. That boy also wants a new fur coat, which can only be accomplished by killing the sister of the goddess that is accompanying him. And bla bla bla.

Wasn’t really an outstanding anime storywise. But it wasn’t bad either. But there is nothing really to comment about this underwhelming storyline.

Character design:-
Mixed bag. The character design for female characters (inclusive of the prominently-featured neko-dictator in the screenshots) are good. The male character design is not. Sakura’s character design is better than the main protagonist’s. Mecha/puppet design are not that good either, unless you want to count Hairra in.

Voice acting:-
The voice for the boy hero is underwhelming. Must be Kappei Yamaguchi’s not-so-stellar gigs. Overall, the voice acting is also mixed bag like the character design, where the female characters outdoing their male counterparts.

Music:-
The only bright spot for the anime. Both OP and the second ED themes are in my iPod. The OST are not really good though, with the exception of the music tracks playing at scenes at Yulgaha.

Direction/animation:-
Some neat mist special effect are used in this anime, presumably 2D. The animation is quite decent overall. Direction is not well polished, the director failed to manage some of the characters’ reaction after encountering an event or hearing a dialogue. Happens quite plenty of times, making the character’s visual acting plastic at times.

Conclusion:-
Unlike Kaikan Phrase, music here is quite a strong point but not so great in other areas. 6 out of 10 is what I rate this anime.

Review: Kaikan Phrase (快感フレーズ)

Posted by ranpha on 9th June 2006

Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: Kaikan Phrase (快感フレーズ). 2 comments

Pardon me for the small image, but the anime is VHS-quality only.

I have another review of another music-based anime titled Kaikan Phrase (after BECK and Gravitation below there), with no fighting, magical powers, alternate dimensions, sex scenes or fan service. You still got big eyes and big breasts though.

Story:-
Well, basically a bunch of troubled young men forming a J-ROCK (edit: more like visual kei if you ask me now) band and trying to be professional. They did become professional and thus have to deal with a lot of issues, such as corporate wars, rival bands, complacency, love problems, maniacal fans, family opposition etc.

The story is quite simple really, but the good thing about it is that the story is unpredictable unlike quite many anime titles out there. The ending is obvious though. The way the band members deals with the pressure that comes with the issues listed above are portrayed beautifully, and the story flows along very well. With only 1 recap episode, this 44-episode anime title is worth your money to buy (or time and bandwidth to download).

This is an anime that relies more on good story presentation than a substantial plotline as its greatest strength. That’s why I put up with the LQ release of this anime and watched it until the end.

Character design:-
I viewed a LQ release of the anime, thus my judgment may be compromised here. The band members are overtly designed to be extremely handsome/bishounen/kawaii. The female ones, such as the high-school lyricist are your standard Japanese female character with big eyes and big breasts while the more matured/older ones with smaller eyes but still with big breasts. I just want to question whether the lyricist was supposed to be beautiful or not. If yes, then the design is correct but the attached storyline doesn’t seem to indicate so.

Voice acting:-
I wonder whether Masaya Matsukaze really sign those songs or maybe it use a double like Koyuki in BECK. If he does sing them then he is really an outstanding artist. Other band members voice acting are pretty good too. Generally no complains here with the above average overall voice acting.

Music:-
Despite this anime being music-oriented, unfortunately the music depicted here are not really that good. At least the ones that I can review anyway because some of the episodes has their OP and ED themes cut out (sometimes both). I come to understand that most of the themes are songs sung by the band and others too in the series, so I guess I do not miss much as they like to sing those repeatedly. Meanwhile, the OST is really average and doesn’t seem to be there at all. You can say it that the OST is almost unnoticeable.

Direction/Animation:-
The animation is top notch; very fluid and noticeable even when seen with a LQ source. Any aspiring fansub groups out there can become famous if they get a R2 DVD set and sub this anime again. 3D CGI and 2D animation blending are done better even when compared to Galaxy Angel. There are problems with some part of the animation though, as shown below:

Towa’s eyes can be seen through his hair in this scene.

In this scene, it didn’t.

And as mentioned above, the directing is superb and managed to turn a simple story into a good anime.

Conclusion:-
Music being the weak point here despite this anime is really music-oriented. Thus can only get 8 out of 10.

Review: Gravitation (グラビテーション)

Posted by ranpha on 4th June 2006

Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: Gravitation (グラビテーション). Leave a Comment

Before reading this review of the anime Gravitation, please answer 2 questions:-

1. Are you gay?
2. Do you like boy bands?

You have to answer YES to both questions to qualify reading this review. If you do not, please quit this review by clicking here. This is mainly because if you don’t fit the description, you will not like this anime and will pre-judge it with zero rating.

Story:-
This is an anime I watched simply because of the title ‘Gravitation‘. I should have checked the entry at ANN first. At first, I thought I can enjoy some good mecha anime, but instead I have to settle at a story where a male singer of an upcoming boy band ‘gravitates‘ toward a dashing and successful male novelist, sexually and emotionally.

Generally, I don’t dig this yaoi/shounen-ai stuff. As a straight guy, I prefer standard maid/teacher/arranged fiancee hentai OVAs over implied yaoi titles like Gakuen Heaven or Sukisyo. But I stick with this one because it was quite funny. And you know I dig funny anime titles (good ones only).

The story itself is quite thin, basically revolves around how the singer and the novelist’s relationship evolves as the series goes on. The story is quite simple, although applies to yaoi story arc only. The ending is so predictable, it doesn’t really matter to me. I only watched the singer’s hilarious and pointless antics as the thing that keeps me going. Although after 3 consecutive episodes where the singer and novelist kissed each other, I started to consider stopping watching the anime if each episode has those yaoi kissing.

Well, we are spared from the supposed sex scenes. And that’s a good thing. This anime is licensed in U.S.A. but this one will not go to TV in that conservative Western country.

Character design:-
A typical fantasy romance title will always have characters with big eyes. Not really a problem though. Wasn’t as outstanding as Galaxy Angel though. The few women who exists has reasonably-sized breasts muahahaha.

Voice acting:-
It has some famous names doing the voice acting, thus the voice acting quality is excellent. Still not as good as Galaxy Angel. Another plus point for the title.

Music:-
Like most of the anime reviewed here, it has crappy OST and OP/ED themes. And the songs sung by the bands in here sucks too.

Direction/Animation:-
Animation quality is great. Nothing to complain about the direction. But then again, direction quality only shows in anime titles with plots with big impact like Great Teacher Onizuka or Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien.

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. That’s about it. Not too bad unlike Jinki:Extend too.