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: fate/stay night (フェイト／ステイナイト)

Posted by ranpha on 28th August 2006

Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: fate/stay night (フェイト／ステイナイト). Leave a Comment

A slow month in reviews compared to the last one, here is the 2nd entry for this month for a game-based anime titled fate/stay night.

Story:-
As a disclaimer, I have never played the games this anime is based on. Well, for a game-based title, the story is quite good actually. We got an idealist wannabe-hero, who got involved in a highly-secretive war called the Holy Grail War. Participants got to fight each other assisted with their Servant with the grail itself as a prize.

Personally I think it can be even better if the storyline can become, well, more extreme if they killed a couple of the main characters in well-placed intervals. I generally don’t like idealist heroes like the jack-asses in Tokyo Underground or Jinki:Extend but the protagonist here managed to control himself from causing me to dock precious rating points from this series. This anime fall a little bit-short from being recognized as having a great storyline. And yeah, this anime is better than Wolf’s Rain or Jyu Oh Sei and also Tokyo Underground in this aspect. One weakness of the storyline for this anime is that it can be predictable at times.

This one also has no filler/flashback episodes, and the pacing is good especially after the first 3 or 4 episodes. The ending is one of the better ones from the anime reviewed here recently. Generally, if you like action shounen anime titles, this one will not disappoint you.

Just a question though, since when King Arthur become a female?

Character design:-
Not exactly great, but pretty decent. Actually, way before seeing this anime, I have already seen some great “artworks” for this fate/stay night game thingy, especially Saber in very “exciting” positions/postures. Would have posted some of them here but this blog will be shut down by Microsoft then, a risk I would not take. Anyway, only Saber and the other Servant called Rider can be considered to be good IMO, while others are not worth mentioning. And yeah, Wolf’s Rain and Princess Princess are better than fate/stay night in this aspect. Maybe because this is the kind of design only found mostly in hentai games.

Voice acting:-
Another questions for the production studio, why this anime has great voice acting line up but almost no synergy between them? It is just a waste of talents. For example, Noriyaki “Sugiyama, the voice actor for the hero here performs poorly compared to his roles of Uchiha Sasuke and Uryu Ishida in Naruto or Bleach respectively. It seems that this anime make great voice actors/actresses looks like amateurs here.

OK, I can make an exception for Tomokazu Seki, but with limited screen time, even a god like him cannot save this anime.

Music:-
The OST and the 2nd OP theme are good. Others are not. Hey, this is the 3rd straight anime reviewed here that has good OST isn’t it?

Animation/Direction:-
Great animation overall whether it was traditional animation or computer generation ones, and also good directing for non-action scenes. About fight scenes, some of them are simply great it even manages to overshadow the storyline. Battles between Saber-Rider and also Saber-Assassin are my favourites. Maybe because I dig sword battles?

Conclusion:-
This anime has some flaws, but good enough to get an 8 out of 10.

Review: Wolf’s Rain (ウルフズ・レイン) TV + OVA

Posted by ranpha on 17th August 2006

Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: Wolf’s Rain (ウルフズ・レイン). Leave a Comment

Jyu Oh Sei made me lost my trust in Japanese anime for quite some time, but after watching few episodes of Princess Princess D (it is decent, but nowhere near the anime version), I decided that I should try watching more titles in this entertainment medium again. So, I play it safe and tried to watch this anime titled Wolf’s Rain that was recommended in many anime discussion forums out there in the Interweb as a masterpiece. Now let’s see whether those self-styled hacks are right or not…..

Story:-
This anime is pretty similiar to Fantastic Children, without the snail-paced introduction. This is all about wolves who can take shape like humans in an adventure to find a flower that looks like a human woman so that they can go to paradise. And of course there are plenty of people (real humans BTW) who want to stop those wolves from ~~taking over the world~~ finding paradise.

Basically, the story is mundane, just like it is in Fantastic Children. And it has about 3-4 consecutive filler episodes about halfway of the series that I have skipped without remorse, and I know I do not miss anything storywise at all. I wonder what makes many people saying that this series is a masterpiece. It is nowhere near as good as Princess² or Galaxy Angel. Better than Jyu Oh Sei though. Almost everything is better than Jyu Oh Sei.

Character Design:-
Unlike the storyline, character design in this series is anything but mundane. Three characters spring to mind, which is Kiba, Cher and Blue, in which designs are simply awesome. Blue in human mode for instance, waltzs into my very very exclusive list of my top 5 most beautiful and attractive female anime characters in anime history. Other characters such as Cheza, Harmona/Jagara and Darcia The Third are also great. Probably the only good point in this series.

Voice acting:-
Unfortunately, this anime has average voice acting for vast majority of the characters. Maybe only Cheza has somewhat decent voice acting here.

Music:-
The OST is pretty good, but the OP/ED themes are not worth mentioning here. Somewhat like Jyu Oh Sei right?

Animation/Direction:-
While the animation is great, some f**k-up in the directing really stands out like a sore thumb. Like the scene in Jagara’s castle where a wall suddenly appears out of nowhere to split Kiba and Tsume without warning. Thank god for the rewind button. Pretty bad, considering the fact that most of the other time, the directing is decent.

Conclusion:-
Definitely not a masterpice IMO unlike those at the anime discussion boards in the Interweb claims. 6 out of 10.

Review: Jyu Oh Sei (獣王星)

Posted by ranpha on 11th July 2006

Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: Jyu Oh Sei (獣王星). Leave a Comment

Actually I have finished off watching Jyu Oh Sei before Princess Princess, but only now I want to put this one up mainly because this anime is so bad. So bad, I will not put any screenshots so that there will be no incentive for you to download and watch this anime.

Story:-
The twin brothers which scientist parents died mysteriously were exiled down onto a forsaken planet that acts up as a high-security prison, presumably for murder of their own parents. One of the twins die immediately after an argument, and the one that left (named Thor) went ahead and become the main protagonist, conquering one of the Rings on the planet and then become the Jyu Oh, or King of the planet.

Don’t be fooled by the synopsis above (which was infinitely better than the one at ANN). The storyline played out better first, especially when Thor is still a snot-nosed child. But when he becomes the adult, the storyline sinks much faster than Titanic. Or any other anime reviewed in this blog to date. There are too many unanswered questions and the ending stinks just like Evangelion.

The main problem that greatly reduced the quality of this anime is the number of the episodes. 11 30-minute episodes simply does not do justice for a story with plenty of potential like this anime has. The construction of the ending is crap and rushed and hits you at the face out from nowhere. In fact, at the end of the last episode, I still expect that a new episode will come out next week with Mao bearing Thor’s child in place of Tiz (joking). Only after reading various news at the Internet did I found out episode 11 is LAST EPISODE. And that explains the huge number of deaths from amongst the main characters in that episode. Frankly, the series can do with an extra episode to tie up the loose end in the storyline.

Character Design:-
Oh well, you can’t really complain about the decent character design for the characters in this anime.

Voice acting:-
The switch from child Thor to adult Thor are not smooth in terms of voice acting. Just 3 years in gap and his voice changed a lot, as if the voices does not belong to the same person. Great job though for differentiating between the voices of Thor and his twin Rai. Same seiyuu but two characters. Other characters’ voice acting are decent too.

Music:-
The OST is excellent, but sadly, the OP/ED themes are not. Quite a rare anime to have an appraisal like this.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation is excellent with little (if at all) dropped framerate and luscious Coors. And the director does not manage to f**k-up the directing either, despite the unfulfilled story’s potential.

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. That’s the best I can give considering the storyline here.