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: 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.

Review: Jinki:Extend (ジンキ・エクステンド)

Posted by ranpha on 30th May 2006

Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: Jinki:Extend (ジンキ・エクステンド). Leave a Comment

This anime, in my opinion is one of the most confusing anime series I have seen, Jinki:Extend. Actually, after about halfway through the series, I started to think to just dump this one, but then again I watched to the end just to have the bragging right to write about how confusing (and bad) this anime is.

Story:-
From ANN encyclopedia entry:-

Aoba is a young girl who loves to build models of robots. She lived alone with her grandmother until her grandmother passes away. Shortly after she is kidnapped and brought to a secret base where she discovers a huge robot. The piloted robots fight against Ancient-Jinki in The Grand Savanna, but the true meaning behind the fights is hidden. Aoba works hard at the base so one day she can pilot one of the robots and discover these secrets.

For the first couple of episodes or something, the entry above holds true. Then as Aoba started to train so that she can become a robot pilot (at Grand Savanna in South America), the series started to shift focus towards another potential Jinki (the robots are called Jinki here) pilot named Akao who was based in Japan and have the same powers as Aoba has. Only that Akao is just a jackass. Then some incomprehensible plot line reveals itself out and Akao and Aoba has to slug it out at the end of the series……

OK, my biggest pet-peeve about this anime is that they start with about 2 or 3 full episodes filled with FLASHBACKS!! And you didn’t even know you are watching flashback episodes, until near the end.

I started to become suspicious of the anime when the series started to focus on Akao, complete with the same set of supporting characters that supports Aoba at South America such as Ryouhei, Rui and Minami. At first, I thought the arc involving Akao is a flashback story arc that happened before Aoba comes to South America, because Ryouhei, Rui and Minami also helps Akao to train and become Jinki pilot just like they did with Aoba at South America. And the fadeaway special effects used mainly for flashback scenes in saner anime titles are used to depict the start and the end of Akao’s arc within any episodes. I think there is only one very short scene/dialogue that implies that Akao arc happened after Aoba arc. It is just around episode 9 or so that I realized that the first few episodes of this series are flashback episodes, and at that time I know this anime will score low in my rating.

People at Japan who makes this anime; you don’t just start your anime with first few episodes dedicated almost exclusively for a non-current story arc. Parallel story arcs, like the one in the excellent Kiba, are beautifully executed, even with timeline discrepancies. That’s what you should strive to emulate.

I think the absence of Shiba in Aoba’s arc that really kills the anime and make it confusing.

No wonder ADV doesn’t license the anime, while they does for the manga.

Character design:-
Generally no complaints here. Nothing really to shout about. About mecha design, it will not sell many toy merchandise, enough said.

Voice acting:-
Maybe the best aspect that this anime has to offer. Akao and Aoba voice actresses are good, although not exactly Fumiko Orikasa best performance.

Music:-
Below average for all OP, ED and OSTs.

Direction/Animation:-
As I did not read the manga (and did not plan to), I wonder if the director is just following the manga storyline or if he does it himself. Anyway, the strategy to start the anime with flashbacks backfired badly for me. Animation is decent though.

Conclusion:-
4 out of 10. No additional comments.

Review: Galaxy Angel (ギャラクシーエンジェル)

Posted by ranpha on 27th May 2006

Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: Galaxy Angel (ギャラクシーエンジェル). Leave a Comment

The review for all 4 seasons of Galaxy Angel is overdue, but here it is.

Story:-
From the excellent description at a Galaxy Angel boxtorrent entry:-

Milfeulle, Forte, Mint, Ranpha, and Vanilla are the beautiful female pilots of the elite Angel Brigade. The pride of the Transvaal Empire military, the crème de la crème, they are entrusted with the important task of seeking out an ancient relic known as ‘Lost Technology’.

Unfortunately, no one knows what this ‘Lost Technology’ is. Until this mystery is solved, the girls have to be contented with performing menial tasks of the highest order- anything from searching for a lost kitty, defusing a suicidal missile, nabbing child kidnappers, taming a 30-feet tall hamster and generally getting stuck in all sorts of hilarious situations.

There’s nothing the Angel Brigade can’t handle – or so we hope.

This description can be used to sum up all 4 seasons of Galaxy Angel. If you want to find a plot story in here, then you will be disappointed. Go play the game or something (which I have not done either). Each episodes has 2 stories, which most of the time are not related to each other. But if you want to laugh at crazy jokes, puns, one-liners etc. while they are doing those ‘menial tasks’, this one is for you.

If I were to rank the seasons in term of entertainment, season 3 is the best followed by season 2, season 4 and season 1 respectively. Thus, anyone who tried to rate Galaxy Angel solely based on the season 1 will miss out greatly. As you can start watching Galaxy Angel at any point of the whole series without missing anything, I will suggest you to try watching episodes from later seasons to grasp what Galaxy Angel is all about.

As mentioned above, the series does not have a visible storyline apart from finding Lost Technologies, and mostly those missions are swept aside as we watched the funny antics of the Angel-tai instead. The stories were written primarily to make the audience laugh, and mostly of the time, it works successfully. This is a series that has high value of replayability, a series where it never get boring to watch again and again. None of the anime reviewed before this has such values.

Character design:-
Galaxy Angel character designs, especially for Angel-tai members, are excellent. Well, it is your typical large-eyes, pretty face, non-black hair colours and impossibly voluptuous body shapes with big breasts. One also has bunny ears as accessories. This is one of those anime titles that rely of their character designs as their strong points like Shuffle or Air, but Galaxy Angel reached an entirely new level of awesomeness reserved to the likes of GetBackers.

Voice acting:-
Again, especially for Angel-tai members, the voice acting is exceptionally great. Each seiyuu really play their role very well. The 2 outstanding voice actress here, which actually outshines the other 3 are Ryoko Shintani (Milfeulle Sakuraba) and Miyuki Sawashiro (Mint Blamanche). Not to say the other 3 are not good but these 2 are simply awesome and pleasing to watch as they stroll around in different situations.

Music:-
All the OP/ED themes are on my iPod. That’s how great the OP/ED themes are. Almost all of them are catchy and I sometimes whistles their tunes. Although the OST is pretty much average though.

Direction/Animation:-
The animation is fluid, with some great CGI videos for their emblem ships thrown in. Although I do think the integration for animated and CGI is not done very well. But such moments are few and far between.

Conclusion:-
An almost perfect series, if not the weak first season (compared to the other 3). Also not for plot-loving watchers, as there is none of value here. For me, definitely 10 out of 10. Currently it is no.4 in my top 5 anime list.