anime review – reposted

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


A new day, a new review! For horny anime-otaku everywhere, here is my take for Gantz, a violent anime with lots of dismembered body parts and also gratuitous nudity. And sex scenes, real and imaginary.

This one definitely not for everyone. And don’t even think of finding juicy screenshots here, a MSN Space for all ages.



Story:-
Our porn-loving horny hero Kei Kurono and his childhood friend Masaru Kato died after being run over by an express train. Instead of going to Hell as all porn lovers do, Kurono and Kato has to settle instead at gawking at a black ball called GANTZ in a typical Japan flat, joining few other people who are already there. As Kuruno does that, a nude woman named Kei Kishimoto (not related) suddenly appears on his lap. And Kurono started to have what every normal man will do…….

After a few near-rape scene where Kishimoto gets to demonstrate her ‘assets’, the black ball commanded everyone in the room to find and destroy onion-eating aliens. From there on, Kurono and co. embarks on missions to destroy aliens, with plenty of body parts and some sexual action.

Unlike E’s Otherwise, this one only started to become interesting at the start of the second alien hunting mission. In the anime (I read the manga too), there are 4 missions and only the 2nd and 3rd ones are truly enjoyable. It deviates of course from the still-running manga, but it still can stand on its own. It also almost has no episodes that can be called fillers.

There are plenty of interesting characters in the anime, from the hero himself up to the horny dog and Sadako from The Ring, but my favoruite is definitely Kurono. He is just a selfish high school ichinensei, but is awesome in SEED^H^H^H^H berserk mode while fighting the aliens, almost like acting under the direction of John Woo. If you like action, you will like him. And he is good too at pleasing older women.

The story overall is not that great, but characters like Kurono and also some well-placed (not always) nudity and sex scenes somewhat compensates for that. You will wonder whether Kurono and <insert any given bouncy woman’s name> will survive a mission and get to make up at his room later. Somehow, I wonder whether I am sick or what. I highly suggest that you read the manga though, it is much better.

Character design:-
Well, nothing really to shout about. Although the size of the breasts of some of the women are DISTURBING! You are not supposed to complain about that right? The faces fits with the scenery of a modern Tokyo, with no big eyes that can be seen from the moon. Generally realistic with the exceptions of breasts sizes.

Sadako is probably the only one with normal breasts. Sadako FTW.

Voice acting:-
Why Kurono is my favorite character? Not only he is a lusty horny bastard, he is also great on bed, powerful in battles and has great voice acting where it matters most (for example, when screwing a woman)! The production studio can do more though at distinguishing between speaking voices and monologues. There are times where I thought Kurono is speaking when in actuality he is lost in thought. Unfortunately other characters voice acting is not as good as him, maybe because of limited speaking time? Especially the dog and Sadako.

Animation & Direction:-
There are not enough sex scenes. But then again this should be a shounen anime, not hentai. The animation is fluid and action-scene directing is superb.

Music:-
Arghhhh…. one of the low points of this anime. OP, ED and OST are all crap. Or maybe I just don’t notice them as I wonder whether Kurono will just rape^H^H^H^H managed to have consensual sex with Kishimoto.

Conclusion:-
With sex scenes, who needs fan service? 7 out of 10.

The entry for E’s Otherwise at Anime News Network encyclopedia cannot be more misleading than it can be. Surely someone can fix that one up……

Anyway, here comes another review, quite a lot of anime I watched recently.

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Story:-
Well, the anime is about Kai Kudou, an ASHURUM psychic who at first glance, looks like Kira Yamato with the souls of Athrun Zala and Shin Asuka combined. He has a sister Hikaru who is treated at ASHURUM’s hospital, a fact that’s almost irrelevant for about 2/3 of the series. At a mission, he screwed up and caused the death of his partner, and then went berserk and wiped out a part of Gald (think of Shin Asuka in SEED mode with the power of a Super Saiyan) where the mission is done. ASHURUM declared Kai to be MIA, and he was saved by some girl that looks and sound so much like Sakura in Tsubasa Chronicle. Ironically, her name is Asuka muahahaha.

He doesn’t even run away, or decided to do so.

The first few episodes up to the part where parts of Gald was vaporized are great, and they captivates me greatly. All good things have an ending though, as the story went downhill from there with episodes that doesn’t really advance the storyline while exposing the stupidity of the Shin Asuka/Athrun Zala soul amalgam inside Kai.

Well, when you are rock bottom, you can only go up right? That’s what happened as the series lumbers on towards the end. And the ending has no real closure whatsoever. Kai and the evil villain who wants to destroy the world collides, a huge explosion happened, and almost immediately the ending credits started to roll. I don’t hear news/rumours about any second season/OVA/OAV/movie so that ending can be considered to suck big time.

Character design:-
No complaints whatsoever. Is that good enough for you? See the pictures below to get what I mean.

Voice acting:-
Well, nothing really distracting. Not as good as Samurai 7 though. 

Animation/Direction:-
Hmmm… after being spoiled by Samurai 7, this one is a step (or two) down. Not very shabby unlike BECK. And this is the DVD-rip I watched.

Music:-
Fact: I skipped the OP/ED theme after listening to them the first time.

Fact: The OST is actually decent.

Conclusion:-
Extra point for fan-service, thus it get 6 out of 10.

 


Today, I just finished watching Samurai 7, and here we are again.

Based on Akira Kurosawa movie titled Seven Samurai, this one takes place on the future where mecha is aplenty. A village is harassed by mecha bandits who wants to rob all their rice (yes, rice), and send their water maiden to get some samurais from the city to help defend from them.

Not your usual mecha anime, with the description above you would have think those bandit mechas ate rice

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Story:-
I have not watched the original movie to compare with this anime, but even as a stand alone anime, the story itself is just your standard shounen samurai story. We got a pretty water maiden who comes to a hostile city try to bribe/recruit samurais (is that a correct plural form – can’t be arsed to check) to help defend her village with rice. Maybe if she use other methods that make full use of her assets, she will be more successful. Unsurprisingly (since this is anime after all), she managed to do just that and managed to get seven samurai to help defend her village.

Up to this point, I have mentioned 2 facts:-

1. This is a mecha anime.

2. The story is just a standard shounen samurai story.

This is because, despite this anime containing plenty of mecha, none of them samurais pilots one (and no, the water maiden is not an elite Coordinator Gundam Pilot even if she has some ESP powers). A big chance to make the story more interesting has just gone up in smoke, a pity considering one of the samurai is an emo kid (see what you got if you use rice only to hire samurais), and the captain of the bunch is also some emo indecisive wreck. Well, one of them is a mini-mecha muahahahaha.

Character design:-
Mecha design is great, a shame none of the samurais pilot one. Human character design is also the same, except maybe for the water maiden who deserve more efforts at the designer side to be more beautiful. Generally no complaints from me here.

Voice acting:-
From all entries in this blog, Samurai 7 has the best voice acting overall (so far). Ukyo and Rikichi has that quirky but great acting quality that will make their characters to be permanently etched in my mind. Others does not disappoint me either.

Animation/direction:-
One of the more expensive anime ever made, the quality of the animation does not disappoint. The CGI and traditional animations are all top-notch. The direction is also great, especially in the action scenes in the latter part of the series.

Music:-
The only thing that disappoint me. The OST itself is not that good (read: average), and the OP/ED themes are disappointing.

Conclusion:-
Great character design, voice acting, animation and directing, but not so good music and story. 7 out of 10 is what this one get.