anime review

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

Review: Speed Grapher (スピードグラファー)

Posted by ranpha on 28th March 2009

Posted in: anime review. Tagged: Speed Grapher (スピードグラファー). 1 comment

To all underage girls out there, if you see someone staring at you like this, run to the nearest police station immediately. The main male protagonist may be looking at you!

Speed Grapher is the second straight Gonzo anime being reviewed here after Blassreiter, and boy the former is so much better than the latter. Has Gonzo regressed between the space of 3 years between the productions of these two anime titles? Speed Grapher is a 2005 anime, so there will be no change of guard for the title holders for now.

THIS IS WHAT HE WILL DO TO YOU IF YOU DID NOT HEED MY ADVICE!!!

Story:-
Our main male protagonist Tatsumi ‘Middle-aged Bastard Lolicon’ Saiga who works as a cameraman, infiltrates a rumored secret club that was attended by who’s who in Japan. There, during a ceremony, he meets with Tennouzu ‘Easily Exploitable Underage Girl’ Kagura, who gives him a mysterious power of blowing things up with his camera. Unmasked during the ceremony, Saiga and Kagura has to do a Will Smith (Enemy of the State) and runs across Japan as the Prime Minister himself wants them dead.

If you like fast-paced action-packed story, you will get it here. The story is so much better than the one in Blassreiter, it flows thick and fast, Euphoria battles comes and goes, plot twists appears here and then, all the way to the end. The ending is admittedly predictable, but it is still a decent one. There are a couple of flashback/recap episodes too, but they are much better executed than the ones in Blassreiter. Plus, many of the necessary flashbacks are slipped into normal episodes too, which helped spread the wealth instead of cramming them into specific episodes.

Character developments are done very well too, with the main male protagonist and the main antagonist being the best of the bunch. My only complaint is the minimal developments for the main female protagonist though. Plus there are some holes in the story character-wise, for example, where is the Euphoria priest gone after Saiga snatched Kagura from the wedding ceremony. He didn’t die, but he didn’t appear after that incident either.

The unique method that this anime used for the recap episode.

Character Design:-
Character design in this anime is excellent, with main antagonist, Shinsen Tennouzu and Hibari Ginza being outstanding. For all the attention that the main female protagonist has within the context of the storyline, her design is surprisingly ordinary. Her mother Shinsen Tennouzu is an ex-model and this fact shows in her character design, but you cannot say the same thing for the main female protagonist who is supposed to be a Goddess for a super-secret exclusive club. This is the only flaw on an otherwise excellent overall character design, but still a positive point of this anime.

One the the best-designed Euphoria monster.

Voice Acting:-
The voice acting in this anime are done well too, with the main male protagonist, main antagonist, Shinsen Tennouzu and Hibari Ginza doing well over the others. This is also a positive point of the anime.

A scene very common in a tentacle-rape hentai video.

Music:-
This anime has done much better in this section compared to Blassreiter, although not perfectly. The OST is excellent, but from the themes, only the 1^st ED theme is worth listening to.

A picture that you will see frequently in this anime.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation in this anime is decent, but sometimes suffers from stuttering (I wonder if those are intentional) and get worse sometimes in fast-paced scenes. Choreography is average though despite plenty of action and Euphoria vs. Euphoria duels. The directing is done very well, managing to keep the anime good from start to the end.

In the anime, usually it was the hero's right eye that will be bulging like above, not the left as shown above. An oversight by the director?

Conclusion:-
9 out of 10. This is a very well-done shounen anime with plenty of action. My anime marathon continues with another title that you will not expect me of watching!

There are many perverts in this anime, inclusive of the main male protagonist. Here is another one of them, in a scene that will not be alien in hentai videos.

Review: Blassreiter (ブラスレイター)

Posted by ranpha on 25th March 2009

Posted in: anime review. Tagged: Blassreiter (ブラスレイター). Leave a Comment

Blassreiter Protein 101 explained.

The first review of this month is for the anime Blassreiter as promised in my last Nodame Cantabile S2 review. This year, I have watched very few anime (very busy with real life) than I used to and I have written only 4 reviews so far this year, inclusive of this one. As a consequence of that, I got plenty of titles queuing inside my hard disks waiting to be watched before being burned into archival DVDs. As I should have more free time for now and also April, there should be more reviews then in this blog in the next couple of months. Blassreiter is a 2008 anime, thus it will compete with Wolf and Spice for the Anime Of The Year 2008 title.

Story:-
Somewhere in Germany, the country was plagued by the emergence of zombies with superhuman powers that comes out from nowhere. To combat the zombies, an organization called XAT (forgot what its full name is) is tasked to combat this menace. As expected, XAT has plenty of problems dealing with the superhuman zombies, thus our main male protagonist who has plenty of emo issues has to come out riding his Knight Rider-like bike that he can change at will, to save the day.

This anime is a rough cross between Darker Than Black (without the Pizza Hut sponsorship) and Karas, and initially, this anime started very well until the death of Gerd Frentzen at episode 6. Then the storyline petered out somewhat in quality after that before taking the plunge into a ravine (just like Gerd Frentzen is) starting from the 2 flashback episodes in the middle of the series.

The most defining aspect of this anime is its high character churn rate, with many characters dies left and right. That would have been a good thing for this anime, if not for the fact that this anime also revives dead characters more often than the DragonBall series. The high character churn rate has the biggest impact upon character developments, because naturally, dead characters cannot have improvements upon their characters. Speaking about character developments, this anime has too little of it amongst multiple characters, and this can be fatal for a story-driven anime like Blassreiter is.

In this anime of two halves, when the story is still good in the first half, the story still flows fluidly from scene to scene, from episodes to episodes. When the story went bad in the second half after the two flashback episodes, other problems like scene transitions problems (good example is when the main male protagonist was reunited with her sister in the flashback sequence, then she died, and she was alive again and then reunited again) and erratic pacing (like how the main male protagonist shows up at the Zeppelin air base when 30 seconds earlier, he is shown transforming miles away at Zwolf HQ). These problems did not occur at all in the first half of the anime. What gives?

But most of the damage dealt to this anime was done purely by some of the bizarre turn of events the second half of the anime. The quick death of Beatrice and Victor, killed by characters whose character developments did not commensurate any deserved capability upgrades, is ridiculous enough (Amanda claimed in the latter parts of the series that she has changed, but actually I don’t see any character growth/developments happening to her to justify her claim), but when Snow appeared, the death knell for this anime has been rung. Snow is a definite proof that the anime is just going through its motion toward the ordinary and cliché-laden ending (that has a time-jump too).

The main female protagonist with one of the expendable characters.

Character Design:-
The character design in this anime is good, with the main male protagonist being the best of them all. About the Blassreiter design, the Gerd Frentzen's white Blassreiter that reminded me a lot of the final form of Haseo from the dot Hack GU trilogy is excellent, it put every other Blassreiters on its shade. Definitely a positive point for this anime.

Voice Acting:-
The voice acting in this anime is just average, with no one being vastly better than everyone else.

Music:-
This anime fared very badly in this section, even worse than the storyline itself. The OST is almost non-existent and the OP/ED themes are uninspiring (yeah, all of them).

Animation/Direction:-
The animation quality in this anime is great, even in fast-paced scenes. Integration between 2D and CGI is not fully seamless and this is noticeable in certain action scenes, but it should not be able to distract you from enjoying the anime. The choreography of the action scenes are decent, but can be too fast at times. But the choreography of the dogfights near the end of the series are excellent and very well done (probably only the best thing about the second half of this anime).

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. Wolf and Spice still reigns as the best 2008 anime I have watched to date. Still plenty of anime to watch though. Bounen no Xamdou, Speed Grapher and Cassehern SINS amongst others, which one I will watch? You will have to wait until the next entry of this blog to find out the answer.

One of the CGI battles laden with special effects.

Review: Nodame Cantabile Pari-Hen (のだめカンタービレ巴里編)

Posted by ranpha on 25th February 2009

Posted in: anime review. Tagged: Nodame Cantabile, Nodame Cantabile Pari-Hen (のだめカンタービレ巴里編). 2 comments

Our beloved main protagonists.

Nodame Cantabile Pari-hen, the second season of the outstanding Anime of The Year 2007, Nodame Cantabile, has arrived in this blog. Can this anime repeat the performance of its illustrious predecessor who managed to beat off the challenge of many anime series to keep the Anime of the Year 2007 award? Or can it even unseat the current incumbent for 2008 version, Wolf and Spice? Read on to find out what will happen.

What an excellent stereotyping!

Story:-
Continuing from the end of first season, our main protagonist now has moved to Paris, France as Nodame continued her study at a conservatory while Chiaki is entering a conducting competition. Meanwhile, we will be able to see the whirling relationship between the protagonists taken even further as they juggle between their heavy commitments and relationship.

One of the first things that concern me about this anime is that it only has 11 episodes, and my biggest fear was confirmed 10 minutes into the first episode of Pari-Hen. Unlike the first season, the second season has hurried presentation and pacing that is so fast, you're thinking that you are watching that Evangelion movie. My heart sinks when 3 volumes of manga materials were covered in a mere 2 episodes (if this anime is Naruto, you will see 50 episodes WITHOUT FILLERS just to cover the same material). While the pacing slowed down considerably in the second half of the anime, the damage has been done, and Wolf and Spice will still keep the Anime of the Year 2008 title.

The story by itself is excellent, although it has more alterations compared to the first season's adaptation of the manga. More minor scenes have been omitted, but the major plots are still there and largely untouched. Pity about the pacing though, and maybe the omissions and alterations (mostly the former) is what made the flow of the story being paced so fast? The ending is very well done too, probably done even better than the first season and managed to prepare the series for the next season.

Excellent character development is another thing that the second season has managed to retain from the first, although the horrid pacing tried to ruin this for the new characters. The new characters are interesting in their own right, especially with some of the dwellers in the apartment that Nodame and Chiaki shared.

I will still look forward to the new season, and I hope it will have more episodes so that the mistakes with pacing can be eliminated.

Some of the funny scenes in the anime.

Character Design:-
Basically, there are no changes from the first season. Change is not always good, despite what a certain black president wants you to believe, and this is definitely a positive point for this anime. New characters (and old too) are created wonderfully.

Nodame and on her the faces she made in the course of the anime.

Voice Acting:-
There are also no changes from the first excellent season. In fact, I think Nodame has improved, especially with her attempts to learn French and also when she does her 'Chiaki's wife' impersonations. Ayako Kawasumi is truly brilliant in this anime, just like she does in the first season. Of course, Chiaki is still his usual self while Tanya also has done very well.

The flowery scene that are used to describe classical music performances are still here, and are very helpful to explain the context and mood of any given performance.

Music:-
The second season has regressed a little from the first in this aspect. While this anime has good OST and ED theme, the same thing cannot be said about the OP theme. As usual, the classical pieces are pleasant to listen to, adapting perfectly to the storyline instead of being the storyline (looking at you Macross 7).

The fluid animations is still there…

Animation/Direction:-
Watching this anime in HD is truly a pleasant experience; the animation is fluid and smooth. There are no fast-paced scenes (ironic considering that the story is fast-paced) and choreography for this slice-of-life romantic comedy is non-existant. The directing failed for the aforementioned pacing problems above, but has done everything else well.

…although playing violin without the bow touching the string is somewhat not very logical do you think?

Conclusion:-
8 out of 10. The pacing problem kills this anime's chances of reaching the same height that was attained by its predecessor. I hope this series don't pull a Macross (remember, the first installment get a perfect score, then the second one has slightly lower score before tanking in the third installment) and hope that the third season improves with more episode count and more Nodame! Blassreiter will come next!

My car has the same surname as our main protagonist is.