anime review

All reviews written since I moved the blog to the wordpress platform. Default category.

Review: Tears to Tiara (ティアーズ・トゥ・ティアラ)

Posted by ranpha on 19th October 2009

Posted in: anime review. Tagged: Tears to Tiara (ティアーズ・トゥ・ティアラ). Leave a Comment

The main male protagonist, Demon King Arawn whose atrocities makes Japanese World War 2 soldiers looks like Dora the Explorer in comparison.

The anime backlog I have on my hard drive doesn’t seem to be thinning, mainly because I downloaded just as much completed series at the same rate as the amount of what I have watched in the past two months. Even now I have Shangri-la in my Azureus queue (alongside some hentai titles). If not for the big hard drive crash I’ve encountered a couple of months ago, the queue is going to be bigger. This post then is for my review of Tears to Tiara, a 2009 anime that will challenge Wolf and Spice 2 for the ‘Anime of the Year 2009’ title. This anime is actually simulcast live in Animax Asia (which is available in my ASTRO subscription) but I don’t really view that channel nowadays (I mostly just watch the sport channels or History/Discovery Channel). Plus, the version I watched is in HD and highly likely not censored too.

One of his hobbies is to sink his lusty claws upon innocent young and helpless girls, like the one above.

Story:-
Rumors abounds in Divine Empire that the evil Demon King is about to be resurrected from his long slumber and destroy the world. The senators ordered the priests to do their thing and seal the Demon King permanently. But the head priest has other ideas and wants to revive the Demon King instead so that he can destroy the world. The priests then kidnapped a young naive maiden to be offered as a sacrifice for the revival of the malicious Demon King, while the maiden’s brother and his fellow clan members raced against time to prevent her slaughter and stop the revival of the Demon King. Alas, for once, evil prevailed and the Demon King is reborn anew. He then destroyed the Divine Empire and the world. The End!

This anime, set up in a medieval world where horses are the main means of transportation, has good promise early on as it starts pretty well for 6 to 7 episode or so. But after that great start, the anime’s ordinary story was eventually exposed, and that’s a shame because the story has a unique premise rarely seen in an anime, which I last see in Gokudo-kun Manyuki. In addition of the average story, this anime also suffered the same bad storytelling problems that Gosyusho-sama Ninomiya-kun has. While the problem is not as worse as the ones in Ninomiya-kun, this anime still have problems in scene transitions (a good example is the priestess’ kidnapping at the start of episode 12, which is completely disconnected from the preceding plot) and the pacing of the story (they become slower and slower as the anime went on). Bad storytelling means that some scenes that could have an impact upon the viewers if correctly presented lost their potential; an example is the first long flashback that spanned episode 20 and 21.

Character developments in this anime is surprisingly bad, with the exception of the priestess’s brother who is a slightly emo person. The main male protagonist is basically the same person from episode 1 all the way to episode 26 with minimum emotional and physiological changes, and virtually all other characters is not that different really. Only the aforementioned brother of the priestess (he being emo actually helps him a lot – making him the best character in this anime) and to a lesser extent, the blonde swordswoman too (thankfully she is not an emo character). The ending is lame, predictable and unoriginal; the less said about the coronation ceremony that resembles the ending of a certain famous movie trilogy which plot involves a couple of midgets throwing a ring inside a volcano, the better.

Expect plenty of violence in this anime, with blood being cheaper than water in some scenes.

Character Design:-
The character designs in this anime is excellent all around, there is nothing else I can say here. Black-hairs are rare though. Definitely a positive point for this anime.

Voice Acting:-
Unlike the character design, voice acting in this anime is simply average. There’s no one I think of that has good voice acting gigs.

Music:-
The OST is good but not so for any of the OP/ED themes or the insert song.

This anime is one of the most beautiful titles I have seen recently.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation in this anime is excellent, even in fast paced scenes. Choreography is just like the storytelling; could have been much better. Significant duels during the climax of certain plots, like the duel between the blonde swordswoman and her childhood friend on that windy cliff of the sea could benefit from a much better swordplay duel. The directing fails at thing I mentioned in the story section above, but he/she has provided some good fan-service moments with nifty usage of camera angles like the one in screenshot below.

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. Wolf and Spice 2 easily beats the feeble challenge presented by this anime. I wonder whether the other anime that was simulcast on Animax Asia alongside this anime, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood will fare better. You will have to wait until that anime concludes though, to know the result. That may only happen next year though.

During this scene, where will you look at; the far more important children or that blurry 'valley'?

Review: Starship Operators (スターシップ・オペレーターズ)

Posted by ranpha on 15th October 2009

Posted in: anime review, no screenshot. Tagged: Starship Operators (スターシップ・オペレーターズ). 1 comment

If the disappointing Monochrome Factor should be used as a poster boy as an exhibit about how filler episodes can ruin a series, the shorter anime titled Starship Operators shows why a filler-free title makes it much more pleasant to watch. This is a 2005 anime, therefore none of the ‘Anime of the Year’ title holders will be challenged.

Story:-
Sometime in a distant future where interplanetary travels are common, a bunch of university students are having their internship aboard their planet’s state of the art starship en route of their graduation. Just as their test flight is about to end, their home planet was invaded by a vastly superior foreign force. With their planet’s government quickly raising the white flag faster than the French, the students takes the matter into their own hands and started to rebel against the conquerors, while being filmed by a galactic TV network.

The story itself is quite good although not on the same level as the one in Tytania or Legend of Galactic Heroes. But what this anime has (and so are Legend of Galactic Heroes) that Tytania lacks is intense space fleet warfare with good tactics and strategies. The main female protagonist of this anime is definitely better than Fan Hyulick or any of the Tytania Dukes, and she probably can easily become one of Kaiser Reinhard’s generals. Without any useless filler episodes, the director make full use of all 13 episodes to show us a high-paced storyline and almost perfect scene transitions and plot developments. The story has some nice plot twists (what else do you expect from a space opera) but the romance elements here are crap.

Character developments is probably an aspect where this anime has not done very well, mainly because this anime has a huge cast. Many characters simply doesn’t have enough airtime for their development inside that starship filled with women. The main female protagonist is definitely the best character in this anime, considering her role in the starship and the amount of screen time she has. The ending is actually very good too, and provides a great closure to a decent anime. No hurried endings because of the lack of episodes, because the director has given the ending all the air time it needs.

Character Design:-
Character design in this anime is plain average overall with your usual shounen genre designs. I do not remember any black hairs, but then again this anime is set up in a futuristic future where hair dye usage should be common.

Voice Acting:-
Voice acting in this anime is excellent, with the main female protagonist and the captain of the starship being the best of them all. Definitely a positive point overall.

Music:-
The OST is good, but not so for the OP/ED themes.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation in this anime is very well done, but it can be jerky sometimes in fast-paced scenes. 3D CGI animations are even better, but integration with main 2D animation is not seamless. Choreography is non-existent in this anime. The directing is excellent as mentioned before above.

Conclusion:-
9 out of 10. A very good watch for any anime junkies who like space wars. This is the first post in this blog that will not have any screenshots.

Review: Monochrome Factor (モノクローム・ファクター)

Posted by ranpha on 14th October 2009

Posted in: anime review, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!. Tagged: Monochrome Factor (モノクローム・ファクター). Leave a Comment

The main male protagonist frolicking with his willing and submissive boyfriend as the foreplay for…

The next random anime I picked from my backlog is Monochrome Factor. This is a 2008 anime, so I suppose that it will compete with Wolf and Spice for the ‘Anime of the Year 2008’ title. Whether this anime really have the credentials to do so is high questionable though, so to find out if this anime can do it, please read this blog’s entry all the way to the end.

…the hot stimulating yaoi scenes that comes afterwards. This is the most SFW screenshot of that particular scene as the main protagonist started to have his way with him.

Story:-
The world is under siege from fiendish being from the Shadow World, thus our main male protagonist was recruited by a fishy white-haired bishounen character to stop them on their tracks. Together, alongside with some other unimportant characters, they went ahead and try to save the world from devastation.

This 24-episode anime is your typical shounen anime where the hero has to defend the world from being conquered by some evil forces etc. In other words, originality is not a strong point of this anime, and the unoriginal storyline here is not exactly a great one either. A weakness that this anime has that I want to highlight in this review is that there are too many ‘monster of the week’ episodes, which does have multiple consequences upon the rating of this anime.

Those ‘monster of the week’ episodes rarely helps at advancing the storyline, and just like what the white-haired bishounen character says in one of those episodes, it doesn’t help advancing character developments either. And with the fact that these useless filler episodes are usually bunched together consecutively, they become a big hindrance for the pacing of this anime’s main storyline. There are 24 episodes in this anime, and I estimate that at least 10 episodes can be eliminated just like that, maybe even half of the series if the director can manage the story’s flow and pacing efficiently. Character developments was also slowed down by the filler episodes, although I suspect that this anime is unique with the fact that the throttling of character developments are intentionally done as required by the needs of the storyline. The best character here is probably the main protagonist himself, although he is the one affected most by the throttling phenomenon.

The presentation of the ending (the last three episodes) was also affected negatively by the abundance of filler episodes here, because those fillers caused a semblance of discontinuation between the penultimate developments of the main storyline (happened maybe about 5 or 6 episodes before) and the ending itself. Having those episodes before the ending really screw up the flow of the storyline, after all, when the anime reaches its (crappy) climax, you have to see more fillers before you see the conclusion. This event is common in One Piece anime, where fillers are arbitrarily inserted in the middle of a canon arc in effort not to let the anime catch up to the manga too fast. The ending incidentally prepares the anime for a second season, but I think if the director cuts out all the ‘monster of the week’ episodes, then let the current ending happened in the middle of the series and fill the second half of the series with materials for second season, this anime would have scored higher in this review.

He is another object of the main male protagonist's sexual desires. He resented that incident so much, he is involved in that lame 'plot twist' at the end of the series.

Character Design:-
Just like Tytania and Nabari no Ou amongst others, this anime has plenty of pretty male characters (and has the minimum amount of female characters it can get away with). There are not many black-haired Japanese in here, although to be fair there are hints that there are extensive hair dyes usage in this anime. Definitely a positive point for this anime.

The fact that his servants are also sex-starved maniacs who will fulfill their desires with him doesn't help either.

Voice Acting:-
Voice acting in this anime is decent overall, with the white-haired creepy bishounen’s voice actor having the best gigs behind that microphone.

Music:-
Here is where this anime falls flat on its face, neither the OST or any of the OP/ED themes are any good.

These people are some examples of the monsters in the filler episodes.

Animation/Direction:-
The blurry animation techniques in action scenes I have mentioned in the same section in my Nabari no Ou review is also present here. Now I know that this annoying technique is not an aberration; this may herald a new age of headache-inducing action scenes in Japan’s shounen anime titles in the future. One point deducted from this anime’s evaluation just because of this. Animation quality in normal scenes, even fast-paced ones, are good though. Choreography in this anime is average, leading to many uninspiring battles. The directing is average, but for all the faults mentioned in the story section above, he/she has done well in camera works etc.

This is the annoying blurry animation techniques that caused this anime to lose a point off the final evaluation.

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. Wolf and Spice will retain the ‘Anime of the Year 2008’ title. If there is a new season of this anime planned, I may watch it too.

Every shounen anime always have their own share of idiots in it, like the sibling characters above.