anime review – reposted

All reviews written when the blog is still at Windows Live Spaces. Usually shorter and inferior in quality. Not used anymore.

Review: Sakigake!! Cromartie Koukou (魁!! クロマティ高校)

Posted by ranpha on 28th December 2007
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


Takashi Kamiyama with his mecha mount.

Nagasarete Airantou should be the last 2007 anime reviewed this year, and the last review for this year should be Cromartie High School. The next anime in the pipeline are Karas (now fully subbed), Angelic Layer and also Myself Yourself (a 2007 anime but will be reviewed next year). Read on to see how this Lucky Star-esque anime fared in my last post this year.

 
One of the parodies in the anime. DiGi Charat is quite a popular anime isn’t it?

Story:-
Takashi Kamiyama, a do-goody high school student enrolled at Cromartie High School which is famous for its delinquent populations. He encountered plenty of interesting characters, inclusive your bog-standard Japanese delinquents, a gorilla, a sentient mecha and also Freddie Mercury. The delinquents of the other schools also tried to challenge the infamous Cromartie with varying degree of success. Despite how it looks, the anime involves very little violence, which in this context is a very good thing.

This anime is really similar to Lucky Star in many ways. To a certain extent, Cromartie High School is also a dialog-heavy comedy anime, but not as intense and also not as fast as Lucky Star (the fact that each episode is just about 10 minutes long helps greatly). It also contains references/parodies to other anime/manga/musician/actors etc but not as often as Lucky Star. But unlike Lucky Star, jokes in this anime are delivered in variety of ways, unlike the near-monotonous method Lucky Star employed. The jokes used in this anime are generally just as good as Lucky Star, but with some exceptions (some jokes are downright lame) and a few others need intricate understanding of Japanese culture.

Generally, the anime has a very loose plot but supported by the character strength of surprisingly very many of the characters. There are a lot of outstanding characters in this series, such as the main protagonist himself, the delinquent with the false Mohawk, another one with blond hair, the heir of the financial group and many more. The stories and secret behind all of those characters ensures that Takashi Kamiyama did not steal all the limelight for himself. In this aspect, this anime is vastly superior to Lucky Star. This anime does not really have an ending just like Lucky Star, but it is more open-ended.

The anime does not have a weakness actually, and if you ask me, this anime is better than Lucky Star.

 
The main protagonist trying to act tough.

Character Design:-
This is a positive point for this anime. The characters are designed perfectly for their roles, whether the pacifist main protagonist or the whole group of delinquents who seems ready to went off whenever possible. Plus the mecha, the gorilla, Freddie Mercury and others, how can you complain? It may not have the usual design that a shounen title has, but you will be satisfied with designs that are usually reserved to side-characters a.k.a. small villains that will be beaten in every other series.

 
Even without dialogues, Freddie Mercury and the gorilla is still cooler than 99% of the anime characters out there.

Voice acting:-
Another positive point for this anime. The voice acting here are excellent, with everyone doing their best sounding like hot-blooded delinquents. I like the delinquent mecha the most.

 
A typical delinquent meeting.

Music:-
Unfortunately, only the OST is any good, with plenty of over elaborate rock tracks. The OP/ED themes cannot match the quality of the sections above at all.

 
Things that only a delinquent can do.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation is decent, even for fast-paced scenes. For a series like this, it is very surprising that there are virtually no action scenes such as fighting scenes. Directing is generally good, not really outstanding.

Conclusion:-
9 out of 10. A very good score to end up the reviews of all anime I watched this year.

 
He has the best voice acting in this series.

Review: Nagasarete Airantou (ながされて藍蘭島)

Posted by ranpha on 24th December 2007
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


What I will do if I were the protagonist.

The review of Nagasarete Airantou is now here, and it should be the last 2007 anime that will challenge Nodame Cantabile as the best anime for this year. Well, enjoy whatever lack of content this review has, and I will take this opportunity to say ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Happy New Year’ to everyone.


Lotsa nosebleed here. This one looks much better than the vast majority.

Story:-
Some lucky bastard fell off a ship and he drifted to heaven an island filled with beautiful women with no other competitors in sight. Instead of having his way with all those gorgeous women who wants to get into his pants, he chose instead to live with only one of them, spurning plenty of opportunities that I will grab if I were in the protagonist’s shoes.

If you think the storyline in Ai Yori Aoshi is thin, this anime basically has none. Except for the couple of episode both at the start and the end of the series, this anime has nothing that people usually called ‘storyline and plots’. Each episode shows the main protagonist and the rest fooling around doing things like taking a bath at hot-springs or investigating a crime. At best, the only thing these episodes do is to do character development. And I personally think that can be done in half the time actually.

The ending is so typical and a cliché of the genre, and not even worth mentioning here.

This anime doesn’t even have fan-service like Umisho does. Thinking about that, Umisho’s protagonist would have made a better protagonist here than the original one.


The best character in the series.

Character Design:-
A positive point of the anime, character designs for the female characters are good. Outstanding are those two shrine maidens, the lately-introduced Chinese female drifter and the lesbian ninja.

Voice acting:-
Mixed bag. I like the voices of Ayane and also Mikoto (she need a lot more airtime). The two main protagonist voices are average (yeah, Yui Horie did not do well here) while the others echoes the sentiment of my general judgment for the voice acting for this series.


The one at the left is also good, but not many screen time unfortunately.

Music:-
The music in this series stinks in general. Nothing to be said here.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation is decent as all the 2007 anime I have watched also did. Fast-paced scenes are fluid, but choreography for them especially for action/fighting scenes is not that good. Directing is decent, but nothing to write home about.

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. Basically just like Ai Yori Aoshi, but a little bit worse. Still looking for a harem anime with substance here. Oh, BTW, Nodame Cantabile is still Anime Of The Year 2007.


12 years of sex-depravation makes you do crazy things.

Review: Ai Yori Aoshi (藍より青し) + Enishi (藍より青し ～縁～)

Posted by ranpha on 21st December 2007
Posted in: anime review - reposted, romance genre standard. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment


The main female character Aoi Sakuraba.

For today, I will make a mini-review of another anime I have always wanted to watch, Ai Yori Aoshi (all 2 seasons of them). Romance anime series are usually reviewed by me with a higher standard compared to other genres, so let’s see if this anime can extract points from me at the end.

Story:-
Kaoru Hanabishi is a piss-poor university student who stumbled upon a beautiful damsel-in-distress at the local train station. He eventually finds out that she is his long-lost fiancée and after a set of events, he finds himself living in a mansion filled to the brim with all kind of beauties commonly seen in a typical harem anime. He has to keep his engagement secret while keeping out the other women who are interested only in getting into his pants.

Frankly speaking, the story is so thin there is nothing I can really write about here. And I prefer not wanting to comment about the second season’s story which is almost entirely composed with filler episodes with little character developments. The only shining star in the series is the damsel-in-distress Aoi Sakuraba, whose character strength barely able to carry the series forward.

Speaking about character strength, I want to question why the male protagonist’s character is not developed as well as Aoi Sakuraba is. This also applies to that manager character too, but throughout the 2 seasons of the anime, character development for Kaoru Hanabishi can be described as minimal at best. This robs the massive potential this anime may have. This anime as a whole also has pacing problems. Between some characters, time seems to flow differently. For example, how is that Tina Foster managed to graduate before Kaoru Hanabishi did, despite her taking a year off her studies?


If Kaoru Hanabishi has half of the character development she has, the anime would have more substance.

Character Design:-
A positive aspect of the anime if you can ignore the hair colours. They are pretty decent, especially for female characters. Aoi Sakuraba really stands out in this anime, and other females are not bad too. Still, brown is the new black huh.

Voice acting:-
Voice acting in this anime is decent in general, with the voice of Tina Foster being outstanding. Aoi Sakuraba, who has the same voice actress with Noda Megumi, did not perform as well as she is in Nodame Cantabile. Overall, they are still good though, should be no problem there.

Music:-
The OST is great, but only the OP in second season and the ED in episode 15 of first season are good.


Chasing another woman is not character development, mind you.

Animation/Direction:-
Despite watching DVD rips, some of the fast-paced scenes exhibits obvious low frame rates. And I think this happened in some normal scenes too. No action scenes that I can comment on though. The directing is good, my complaint will be only about the time sync problem I mentioned above.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. Non-existent story, almost zero character development for the main character (Kaoru at the start of the anime is basically the same as the one at the end of second season, except older), disappointing themes are the factors that caused the anime to lose points. The next anime that will be reviewed is Nagasarete Airantou, a hopeful 2007 anime that may have a chance to dethrone Nodame Cantabile. Maybe.


A pic that simply has to be here.

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