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.

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Review: Sora no Otoshimono (そらのおとしもの) & Sora no Otoshimono Forte (そらのおとしもの f （フォルテ）)

Posted by ranpha on 19th March 2012
Posted in: anime review. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment


The main male protagonist who have access to many pervy superpowers, and is one of the best characters in the series.

After about 6-month break from watching a single episode of Japanese animation titles, I grabbed a random title from my 2TB+ queue storage, in the form of the two seasons of Sora no Otoshimono series, for my first blog post in 2012. For clarification, I only watched the TV series, mainly because I missed the existence of the OVA between the two seasons and I don’t feel like watching the movie for now, for some reasons that I will explain below. The first season is a 2009 title, while the second season comes out a year later, which means Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Katanagatari will have some busty competitions at last…


And this is one of his super powers in action.

Story:-
Our main male protagonist that has contrasting personalities (like quiet and peace yet is a pervert of the highest order) hit the jackpot when a beautiful big-breasted angeloid literally fell from the sky onto his lap. He then made a contract with her (yay to originality) and aided with her ability to do anything he wants (world destruction included), his pervy rule of terror on his hometown has just started…

Let start with this series’ most obvious flaw first. My first major complaint I have here is about the awful presentation of the series’ storyline. Specifically, in this anime you will find out that the flow of the storyline isn’t really smooth, and contributes as the primary reason why the pacing of the storyline is way too slow for my liking. What really happened here is that right after the main male protagonist made his contract, this anime repeats what the likes of  PowerPuff Girls Z and Koukaku no Regios has done: this anime try very hard not to advance its storyline at all.

For reference, the first season has 13 episodes, while the second one has 12. The actual plot actually only appears at around episode 8, about 5 episode from the end. I probably would not have been pissed if the writer or director spent the next five episodes concentrating solely on the main plot but no, that’s not what has been done here. Instead of having the story being moved forward as the ending (of season 1) looms, I instead have to settle with rage-inducing episodes like the gender-bender episode 11. This trend continues in season 2 too, especially with the two appearances of that guy that totes toy guns around in summer festivals. When he appears, I know that the said episode is going to be crap. The same thing can also be said for the final episode (the anime has already ended before that), which mirrors what you can see in Kore wa Zombie desu ka?.

So what this anime is doing in the first 7 episodes of the first season? At best, those episodes only deals with character introductions and developments, with a couple of them being not too far behind of episode 11 in terms of lameness. Personally I think with the low amount of characters in this anime, their character developments should have been more integrated into the storyline. Just like Monochrome Factor, this series would have fared much better if all the useless episodes are removed, the pacing of the storyline is increased a few notch, introduce the blue-haired loli angeloid at episode 3, end first season’s material at episode 6, introduce the blond angeloid in episode 7 and then end the whole series at episode 12 or 13. The scenario I described is very possible, that’s how bad the messy flow of the storyline is.


She is more integral to the storyline than the main female protagonist…

The bad presentation really held back this series’ storyline, which is one of the two positives that this series has. If you can just ignore the presentation aspect of this anime, the storyline is actually above average in quality, and one of the better ‘make a contract’ titles out there. The only drawback I have seen in the story is that the main female protagonist doesn’t really play a major part in the core storyline, with the loli angeloid having more role on the story than her and the other angeloid. This anime would have scored at least 2 points higher if the presentation can be somewhat decent.

Another positive aspect in this anime is the character strength of the main male protagonist. While the ‘make a contract’ premise of the storyline is just a cliché-laden plot that has been used in countless anime titles in the past, the perverseness of the main male protagonist is truly something original. Almost all of the time, all of his perverse plans actually succeeded, and there are couple of occasions where he actually gets away with it. The one early in the series really shows how it was done; he asked the main female protagonist to make him invisible, then he goes to his childhood friend’s house to sexually assault her (no rape though) as a revenge for her constant violent treatment of him. And he gets away from it. Similarly perverse main male protagonists from other anime titles such as Inukami and Urusei Yatsura never have even a quarter of the luck his counterpart in this anime has.

Surprisingly, the fan-service in the Blu-ray version of the series is not really something to crow about, they are mostly average.

But not surprisingly, the main male protagonist is one of the two best characters in this series, alongside the loli angeloid who has more impact on the storyline than even him. Sometimes, less is more, because after all you do not have to put up with an overbearing moralizing main protagonist unlike a certain main protagonist from a certain anime series that isn’t named after him. The ending naturally doesn’t end the series, and I wonder if the movie will do exactly that. There will be a third season for this series too, so I will watch it anyway some time in the future…


…or the other mostly peripheral angeloid.

Character Design:-
Character designs in this series is decent, although typical for the genre. Black hair is rare, as only the main male protagonist has it. Therefore, not only you will see multiple non-black hair colors, impossible body shapes also rules the day especially for the angeloids that isn’t underage. That guy with white hair is almost out of place in the series…

Voice Acting:-
In general, voice acting in this anime is just about decent, and not more than that. There are no outstanding performers amongst the voice actors at all. At least, there are no bad ones either though.

Music:-
If there is any soundtracks in this series, then I really doesn’t notice it at all. This series has a unique ED theme for each episode, with significant influences from the 70s and 80s era in Japan, but only 2 of them are good; the first season’s 2nd episode ED theme (that has flying panties in the sequence) and the second season’s 5th episode ED theme. As for the OP themes, they are all forgettable.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation quality in this series is good, even in fast-paced scenes. Choreography of action scenes is actually quite decent too. As mentioned above, the director really messed up the flow (and by extension, the pacing too) of the storyline which is detrimental to the series as a whole.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. It could have been so much better. The incumbents of the 2009 and 2010 Anime of the Years holders can rest easy now.


Quoted for Truth!

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Review: Seitokai Yakuindomo (生徒会役員共) TV + OVA

Posted by ranpha on 9th September 2011
Posted in: anime review. Tagged: , , . 1 comment


The one-winged fallen angel a.k.a. the main male protagonist and one of the best characters in this anime.

The second review for this month is yet another of last year’s series titled Seitokai Yakuindomo. Unlike the previous anime reviewed here that also comes out last year, this anime sure has much saner (and blander) given title. Both of them has the same distinction of not being able to dethrone the current ‘Anime of the Year 2010’ holder Katanagatari though. This anime is surprisingly decent for reasons that can be counterintuitive for a title in the genre. Read on to see what those reasons are.


The main male protagonist’s classmate-cum-student council member, also one of the best characters in this anime.

Story:-
The nonchalant main MALE protagonist is just starting his first day at his new high-school that has just turned co-ed from being an all-GIRLS school, and he was suddenly drafted into the all-girls only student council, as a vice-president to boot. Handling the administrative chores is actually the easy part for the inexperienced him, because dealing with his new comrades in the student council is proving to be a substantially more awkward experience.

This anime really shows its 4-koma origins in its method of storytelling presentation, and that is definitely this title’s first weakness I have noticed. Using the 4-koma presentation techniques on the small screen is definitely not a good idea mainly because it caused the pacing to be terrifyingly fast (not as fast as a typical Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei season though) and the transitions between scenes is pretty much incoherent. Let just say that this anime’s plot progression is the worst when compared to the last 50 titles reviewed here before, and that’s saying something considering that we have ‘gems‘ like Infinite Stratos and Dragon Crisis within those 50 titles.

What this anime should have done is to learn how other 4-koma-based titles like the two excellent 2010 titles like Working!! and K-On!! were adapted to their anime forms while leaving their 4-koma roots behind. This anime can actually do this in episode 3, 7, 9 and 11 where panels that has the same themes are bunched together. If only this anime could have been more consistent with this for the whole series, this anime would have done better in the presentation aspects.


This ‘airhead’ scene is funny the first time it appears, but not sure if it works after three times or so.

It takes me about three episodes or so to get used with all those crass toilet humor dialogues, and you know what, they are mostly average. A damning verdict for a so-called comedy title. Dependence of the sexually-themed jokes (could do more with slapstick humor for example, or more ‘vertically-challenged’ jokes) and usage of quickly expiring elements multiple times (see above) is a negative, and there are times when I feel like some of the jokes was simply shoe-horned into the episode for the sake of they being there. There are some good exceptions, and also bad ones, that deviates from the average though. Just see the image below.


The recurring ‘Suzu’s Head’ joke never gets old though.

This anime is still watchable though for a couple of reasons. The first one is the character strengths of the main male protagonist and also his blonde classmate shorty who also happened to be in the student council. Watching him suffering sexual harassments by his seniors in the student council (and his sister and his teacher and more) while still standing his ground (his counterpart in OreImo could learn a lot from him when it comes to not being a doormat) is one of the attractions of this anime. He could do well to be more proactive when it comes to generating jokes though, instead of always having to react to them. And this is where Suzu the Shorty has done very well indeed, while still being able to hold off her seniors just as well as the main male protagonist is. These two characters really helps shoring up character developments in this series, offsetting the one-dimensional airhead rich girl and also the main female protagonist that can be creepier than Kirino herself. Thinking about that, when it comes to this, even the androphobia girl and the newspaper reporter are better than them.


I have mixed emotions about her character perverseness here, but one thing for sure is that she is still better than half of the members of the student council. You know who am I referring to right?

The other reason why you should still watch this anime is the solid slice-of-life high school life plots it has. Despite being held back by the piss-poor presentation and the generally average accompanying humor, you will be able to see the main male protagonist doing his thing as he sailed through the first year of his high school life dealing with his seniors, Suzu, the judo girl and his little sister (she is proof that this series is nearly one-dimensional in nature). The ending is non-existent and allows for a continuation. The OVA actually do just that, but I actually hoped that a proper second season will come out for this series. This series should have at least one year-worth (in the series timeline) of story material left, which will be left to waste if this anime was extended only with OVAs.


Quoted For Truth.

Character Design:-
Character designs in this anime is good, and has plenty of black hairs to go around. This is one example where character designs between the manga and anime has very little difference, if any at all. A positive aspect for this anime.


For someone who claims that she can speak native English, this scene totally demolished that claim.

Voice Acting:-
Being another title with huge amount of dialogues (despite the fast pacing), voice acting in this anime is great, even better than what you can hear in OreImo. The two main protagonists, Suzu (except for the scene above), their supervising teacher and the newspaper reporter are outstanding characters in the regard. The rest of the characters’ roster has done well too and I don’t see any bad gigs here. A positive aspect for this anime.


One of the genuinely good sexually-connoted humor scene in this anime…

Music:-
The OST in this anime is excellent, probably the best I have heard for a while. Too bad that the OP/ED themes is nowhere as good as it though.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation quality in this anime is good, even in the very few fast-paced scenes it has. Just like OreImo, choreography didn’t apply here. The director really screw-up by using the manga storytelling techniques instead of adapting a more measured approach (that may kill the manga timeline I suppose) seen in other similar adaptations.


…while this one isn’t one of them.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. Not as good as the referenced Hakuouki Hekketsu-roku that is mentioned at the end of the anime. Hey did I forgot to mention that this anime also make references? And did I also say that its beach episode is nowhere as exciting as Highschool of the Dead OVA is?

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