STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!

Anime titles within this category used a nausea-inducing blurry animation techniques that pisses me off. It look like motion interpolation algorithm going SERIOUSLY BAD.

Review: C – The Money of Soul and Possibility – Control

Posted by ranpha on 6th May 2012
Posted in: anime review, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!. Tagged: . 2 comments


The main male protagonist, holding the fort for Milton Friedman on behalf of International Monetary Fund. IMF in this anime sure is different than the one in real-life.

Tiger and Bunny has just managed to win the ‘Anime of the Year 2011’ title in the last post, and today it has to defend the title against yet another 2011 anime series that I have decided to watch, titled C – The Money of Soul and Possibility – Control. This anime features a never-seen-before concept as the core of its plot, and this results in this anime's failure to unseat Tiger and Bunny’s reign after only one post.

Story:-
Set up in Japan that is under economic and social disarray, our equally struggling main protagonist was randomly selected by a mysterious clown-like person to participate in a series of battles taking place in an alternate dimension. The prize for winning (or not losing too heavily) is money, with his ‘future’ being put up as the collateral for participating in those battles. After winning his first battle completely by pure luck, the main protagonist met with one of veterans of the said game, who seems to be oddly interested in him (not THAT way though).

Take a few characters from the .hack//G.U series (plus significant amount of its plotline), transplant them in a Gantz-like world (use many of its technical structures), then add a couple of plot devices from the Cardfight!! Vanguard anime (the card and the avatar for example), and you will get an anime series that has plenty of battles. But instead of having a ‘save the world’ or ‘good vs. evil’ plots, this anime features prominently a thinly-veiled war between Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes macroeconomic principles, where the stake is the existence of Japan itself.

This is where the first weakness of this anime will become more apparent. Unless you are well-versed with both of those two luminaries’ economic principles, there are chances you won’t get to fully understand this anime’s storyline. It can be argued that having the clash between two important economic principles in the plot  can make a great storyline, but the risk of making the storyline itself inaccessible because of that is also high. I vastly prefer the way Wolf and Spice does its business, where its microeconomic principles are explained and integrated in its storyline in a way that even a dumb-ass can understand and enjoy. There are reasons why the two seasons of Wolf and Spice do get the perfect score designation after all.

Considering that I do know how the two macroeconomic principles works in general, I do thoroughfully enjoys this series. The usage of plotlines lifted straight from .hack/G.U. (the little sister sub-plot pretty much confirms it) and combined with the aforementioned clash between economic principles, this results in a pretty solid anime title. The pacing of the storyline is excellent, but  there are some problems with flow of the story due to repeated use of Katanagatari-esque off-screen battles. What I don’t really like in this anime is that sometimes it shows the main protagonist preparing to battle a foe at the end of an episode, then when the next episode plays, no results from the said battle is being conveyed to the audience at all.

The other weakness of this anime is the ending. Just to make it clear here, this anime’s ending by itself, is quite good, despite being inherently predictable. But some minor plotholes remains after the final episode stopped playing, an example being the like the outcome of the battle between the IMF mole in the guild and one of main antagonist’s lieutenants. This anime is the kind that need the kind of ending that Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? has the most; a complete episode dedicated solely for the aftermath. I think there is a series that does exactly just that, but I cannot remember which one. The paltry 2 minutes airtime dedicated in this anime to show what happened after the main protagonist saves Japan is simply not good enough.

This anime has low amount of recurring characters. Unlike Tiger and Bunny, characters in this anime doesn’t really stand out to help drive this series forward, with this anime being more story-driven instead of being backed up by powerful and interesting characters. The two main characters depicted in the screenshots in this blog post are not exactly inspirational, and this would have helped this anime more if they are.


The main antagonist of this anime. While not hoisting the Keynesian flag behind the scenes of Japan's executive branch, he can be seen loitering at the local park staring at little kids.

Character Design:-
Character designs in this anime reminds me of Ookiku Furikabutte a lot, especially for the design of main protagonist. This is not a bad thing though. Anyway, the designs in this anime is good, although just like Ookiku Furikabutte, lack of black hairs (and the abundance of brown hairs) in this anime set up in modern Japan is quite unbelievable really. Then  again, the parallel dimension thingy is unbelievable in the first place…

Voice Acting:-
Voice acting in this anime is good in general, with some excellent gigs can be heard from the main protagonist’s avatar, the moderator of the Financial District and also the main antagonist. At least there are no bad ones though.

Music:-
The OST of this anime is very good, but not so for the OP and ED themes.

Animation/Direction:-
This anime uses the blurry animation technique extensively in many slow-paced scenes throughout the series, therefore one point will be docked from the final evaluation. Apart from that, the animation quality is decent, even in fast-paced scenes. CGI and 2D integration is poorly done most of the time though. Choreography isn’t exactly good, Tiger and Bunny has done better in this aspect. The directing is mostly good most of the time, except for the handling of the ending’s presentation.

Conclusion:-
8 out of 10. A decent card-based battle if you ask me. Can be inaccessible though for those who doesn’t have a degree in economics. Tiger & Bunny passed its first challenge with flying colors.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-x8

Review: Sacred Seven (セイクリッドセブン)

Posted by ranpha on 18th April 2012
Posted in: anime review, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!. Tagged: . 3 comments


The main male protagonist with his awesome ride.

The second review of this year is for the first challenger of last year’s Anime of the Year title holder, the unconventional beach episode Highschool of the Dead OVA, for Sacred Seven. This anime has its own beach episode on its own too (a given considering that this anime is a shounen title) but this anime is more (in)famous because of its main male protagonist’s similarity with a certain video game’s main protagonist. After watching this series, I do see why comparisons are made, but not in the way you think it is.

Story:-
Our aloof, anti-social and greatly misunderstood high schooler main male protagonist prefers to suppress the pain in his heart by collecting rocks at the creek behind his hut. But the sudden appearance of two mysterious people into his life gives him headaches, and he screamed in anguish as the painful memories of his disturbed past comes back to haunt him. He doesn’t have any choice but to break through his shell though when he realized that someone important to him is being drawn towards danger…

For the purpose of this review, I’ll divide this 12-episode series into three parts. The first part consists of the first three episodes, the second part consists of the next 5 episodes and the final four episodes will make up the final part. This division is made based on the varying quality of the plots throughout the series. In the first part, this anime started so well with plenty of action and a plot that is actually interesting; I started to wonder what is with all those negative impressions for this anime. Then the second part comes and I started to see the reason for all those negative impressions; examples includes the bland beach episode (when compared to the HotD OVA), that awful episode 8 and the Naruto-esque retconning of the crystals’ origins. Equally damaging, if not more, is the characters in this anime too, and I will touch on that issue below.

This anime recovers somewhat during the final part, but it is unable to reach the heights achieved during the early parts in the series. Looking at the ending, it is obvious that the writer tried to ‘think different’ when writing the ending when he/she makes a certain useless character the final boss instead of the main antagonist, but the attempt fails flat on its face.  Plus, I think it is contradictory to do such a thing because the earlier parts of the series the writer subscribed to Sunrise’s ‘play-it-safe’ strategy that sink Gundam SEED Destiny to oblivion back then. There is another factor that makes the ending looks bad, literally, and I will also comment on that later below.

As for the presentation, the series sure has a thing for scene transition problems, especially in the first and final parts of the anime. In the early parts of the anime, this problem happens within episodes as those episodes have faster pacing pacing than latter ones, causing some details to be skimped when going between events. An example of this can be seen in the second episode in event that lead up to the battle over the ocean. In the final part of the anime, the problem manifested itself differently, where there is clear disconnect between episodes. An example of this can be seen between episode 10 and 11, where the tax-evasion investigation springs itself out from nowhere at the start of episode 11. A competent writer would have written that one into the end of episode 10, essentially building out the suspense before the next week’s episode was aired. Amazingly, the bad second part of this anime doesn’t have this scene transition problem at all. And as I have implied above, the pacing in this anime is uneven; the pacing of the first part of the anime is faster than it is in the latter two parts.


The quiet and aloof main male protagonist is slowly changing his ways because of love…

Now we arrive at the character development parts of this anime, which is incidentally the main part of this review. As I mentioned before, this anime is (in)famous because allegedly the main male protagonist is similar to his counterpart in the Square Enix JRPG title Final Fantasy VIII, Squall Leonhart. Apparently, people thinks that is a bad thing, but I disagree. Now look at how I divide the storyline in the first place; part one being the first 3 episodes of the series, part two being the next five episodes and the remaining episodes making up the final part of the series.

During the first part of the storyline, which definitely is the best part of this anime, the comparisons between this anime’s aloof and unsociable main protagonist and the aloof and unsociable Squall Leonhart is truly merited. The only difference between them, apart from looks of course, is that the latter has no qualms whatsoever when it comes to rejecting hot women. As this anime’s quality problems emerged during the start of the second part, it can be said that the regressions in character development for the main male protagonist also contribute to the cause.

When I say regressions, I meant that this anime’s main male protagonist has stopped being a Squal Leonhart-lookalike and instead the writer developed his character to become more like Orimura Ichika of Infinite Stratos. The second part of this anime would have been more palatable if the main protagonist stay in Squall mode during that period. When gg fansub group substituted the main male protagonist’s name with Squall’s, I exclaimed to myself that they are already 4 episodes too late when doing so. Unlike the anime that somewhat recovered in the final part of the series, the main male protagonist stuck firmly in Ichika mode until the end and never recovers from that. That reason is also one of the factors why the final part never become as good as the first part is.


The main female protagonist sure is similar with a certain FF8 character that has equally weird hair that can send you into raptures!

Some of the other characters in this anime did not escape comparison with other Final Fantasy VIII characters. For example, the main female protagonist has been compared to her counterpart in the game, Rinoa Heartilly. Personally, I think that comparison is wrong because for me, she is more similar to Selphie Tilmitt than to Rinoa. The character in this anime that is most similar to Rinoa is actually the president of the rock collector club instead, and she is definitely the best character in this series despite her low airtime. And when I say ‘someone important to him’ in the first paragraph above, I really talking about her instead of the main female protagonist.  The only good thing about this anime-Final Fantasy VIII comparisons here is that the romance in this anime isn’t really overt, if it exists at all.

Character Design:-
Character designs in this anime is not that different really from the previous anime reviewed here before; this anime being your standard shounen mecha power suit title.  Rare black hairs, big eyes et. al. But one factor that makes the ending even less appealing is the designs of the last boss and also the final form for the main male protagonist. The latter for example, the final form’s design is worse than his previous white form and the original rampaging penis-like red armor suit. And the less said about the facepalm.jpg-like form for the final boss, the better. Only the final form of the other Seifer-like character is better than his previous design.

Voice Acting:-
Just like Sora no Otoshimono, this anime did not perform anything above the average in this department. There is no outstanding voice actors at work in this series.


At this point of the series, the main male protagonist's transformation into Orimura Ichika has been completed.

Music:-
The OST for this anime is decent, but not so for the OP and ED themes. Even the troll OP track inserted by gg fansub group is better than the original theme.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation quality in this series is good, even in fast-paced scenes. One point is docked from this anime final evaluation for using the blurry animation technique that blighted many new action anime titles nowadays. Choreography in this anime is quite good actually, with some decent battle scenes like the one between Seifer and the SP girl. While the director may not be able to do anything about the storyline, and maybe the final mecha suit designs, he/she should at least be blamed for the presentation problems.

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. A 15-minute beach episode OVA still reigns as the best 2011 anime title I have watched to date. Need to watch more anime then, if I have the time…


During this cliche-laden scene, I'm actually wondering WTF is the main antagonist doing behind their backs. The main antagonist sure need to read this website.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-wV

Review: Reideen (らいでぃーん)

Posted by ranpha on 5th August 2011
Posted in: anime review, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


The main male protagonist doesn’t have to operate his mecha to defend Earth from zombies.

After wading through 11 2011 anime titles that can be summarily described as ‘decent at best’, today I will review a 2007 anime series titled Reideen. This is probably the best mecha anime I have watched for quite some time, definitely better than Kurogane no Linebarrels and Giniro no Olynssis. Arguably, this anime is even better than the Evangelion Rebuild second movie too. But this anime won’t be able to dethrone the current holder of the ‘Anime of the Year 2007’ title, Bokurano, which is a part-time mecha anime too.


In fact, he and his sidekick here has to fend off attacks from alien invaders instead.

Story:-
In one sunny day, the main male protagonist received a depressing news about the death of his archeologist father that has gone missing for 10 years. He and his family then has to go to the excavation site where his father’s remains was found for corpse verification. At the site, he inadvertently fell down the rabbit hole, and obtained a strange gold bracelet. Then the aliens attacks the excavation site…

While this anime is technically a mecha anime, actually I think it is more comparable to the likes of classic Ultraman series than to Gundam or Evangelion. This may have to do with the largely slow-mo battle scenes that you can see in Ultraman and similar series from Japan in the 80s. This can be off-putting for some people but I do really like them for nostalgia reasons. Some scenes that involves certain Reideen configurations, and also most of the scenes in the final battle has normal fast-paced choreography though.

The story by itself is your common ‘aliens attacks Earth, so defend it with a conveniently-found robot’ plot with the ‘piloted by a reluctant main protagonist’ addition tacked on top of it. While it takes quite some time before the prevailing plot appears, one of the best this anime has done is the usage of at least two episodes to deal with any given monster that invades Earth Japan. Just like what you can see in Black Jack OVA, the usage of 2 episodes per monster allows a more detailed back story to be foretold, plus this format also enable tremendous character development to happen for our main male protagonist.


A very valid question if you ask me.

Romance are kept to the minimum in this anime, which is a plus considering the undeniable fact that going to a date is far less important than saving the world from devastation. Another good aspect that this anime has is that the main male protagonist is more bearable than the one in Kurogane no Linebarrels, plus he is not someone beholden to things like justice or something like that. What I didn’t like about this anime is that it takes very long for the prevailing plot to surface, even longer than Gosick. You will not know who the aliens are and why they attacks Earth until way into the second half of the anime.

The pacing in this anime is variable, in a bad way. This anime is way too slow than it should be for the first half of the series, mainly because of the two-episode storytelling technique. The pacing increased slightly in the second half of the anime before the anime suddenly goes full throttle than it should be during the ending arc. The difference in pacing speed between the ending arc and almost all the episodes before it are staggering. This variable pacing consequently affects the flow of the prevailing plot too, causing it to come out to the open too late and too raw and then finished in a hurry. That’s too bad because the ending arc is excellent, apart from some cheesy moment in the second half of the final episode. I’ll say the ending is just as good as the one in Gosick too, and with some conveniently loose end that is left unresolved, there should be a gateway for a second season.

As mentioned above, the two-episode per monster format helps the character development for the main male protagonist tremendously. In fact, I will even overlook the various deus ex machina moments this anime has, chalking it up as part of the main male protagonist’s character development strategies. Now the problem about this anime’s general character developments is that only the main male protagonist benefits from those arrangements. The childhood friend has minimal character development and the main female protagonist has it even worse, putting her almost on the same level as a side character just like the main male protagonist’s classmates and families. Only the main male protagonist’s colleague at the amp shop that has psychic powers has anything that resembles significant character developments, and even hers pales in magnitude when compared to the main male protagonist.


The antagonists do have some clever ideas about how to defeat Reideen, but the execution needs a lot of polish.

Character Design:-
Character designs in this anime is not far detached than what you can see in Bokurano; at least it wasn’t based on the standard shounen templates unlike Kurogane no Linebarrels is. Black hairs are common, which is another good thing for a anime that takes place in modern Japan. The main male protagonist looks older than his indicated age though. Mecha designs is excellent too, especially for the silver mecha. A positive aspect for this anime.

Voice Acting:-
Unfortunately, I think voice acting in this anime is just average overall. This includes the main male protagonist, which is probably the only chink on his armor. The childhood friend’s voice acting gig is quite unique though,you have to listen to it to understand what I am talking about. She definitely has the best voice acting gig in this anime, although not by a big margin compared to other characters.

Music:-
The OST of this anime is quite decent and old-fashioned, and actually is another reason why I compared this anime more to Ultraman than Gundam. The ED theme is good too, but not so for the OP theme, which seems to be out of place.


Label the folder ‘guro loli hentai’ and the bad guys won’t be able to find Reideen’s data! Security through obscurity!

Animation/Direction:-
This anime employs the blurry animation technique in fast-paced CGI scenes, therefore one point will be docked from its final evaluation.

Apart from that, animation quality in this anime is decent, even in fast-paced scenes. Integration between CGI and traditional animation is very poor; transitions between full CGI scenes and traditional 2D animation can be very jarring. Choreography in battle scene early in the anime is just average (being slow-mo and stuff) but the one in the final battle is quite decent. The director could have done something about the prevailing plot coming up too late in the series and also the pacing, but apart of that there is nothing else to complain about.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. Would have been 8 if not for the blurry animation technique.


How does it feels spending the last few seconds of your life staring at the missile that will incinerate you?

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-qQ

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