Review: Nabari no Ou (隠の王)

Posted by ranpha on 17th September 2009
Posted in: anime review, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


The main male protagonist. So sweet he will never ever kill a ladybug.

This review in numbers; this is the third post for this month and fifth in the last 30 days (nice considering that there are no posts in the preceding 4 months before them), this is the 7th straight challenger for ‘Anime of the Year 2008’ holder Wolf and Spice, and the score is 7 out of 10 (read: another failure to challenge the incumbent). Read on to see my review of Nabari no Ou, yet another title in my huge backlog.

Story:-

Miharu Rokujou is a quiet middle-schooler who is good at cooking okonomiyaki and acting as jail-baits to get whatever he wants from older people. When attacked by a group of mysterious ninjas, he found out that he actually possessed the most powerful ninja technique ever created, called Shinra Banshou. From there on he went on an adventure as he strived to become the Nabari no Ou (King of Nabari).

Essentially, Nabari no Ou’s story structure is quite similar to Bounen no Xamdou I have reviewed not too long ago (therefore comparisons will be inevitable). The main protagonists in these two anime obtains a great power but in the end rarely used them (you can count how many times the main protagonists in those two anime used their power with only one hand). Unlike Bounen no Xamdou though, there are far more action in this anime but usually the protagonist only watches them from the sidelines (if he isn’t running away or being kidnapped etc). I wonder whether this is the new trend in Japan right now, not letting the protagonist use their newly acquired power the way the protagonist in Speed Grapher did.

While Nabari no Ou and Bounen no Xamdou are similar in structure, the quality of the storyline is vastly different, in favor of the latter. Still, Nabari no Ou’s story is still very decent, plus it has more intricate plots compared to Bounen no Xamdou. For the first couple of episodes, this anime has some pacing problems (too fast) and the story develops erratically but those problems goes away after that. Nabari no Ou doesn’t have the slow pacing problem Bounen no Xamdou has.

Character development in Nabari no Ou is more conventional compared to Bounen no Xamdou, with the exception of Miharu Rokujou (the best character) whose character also used the same strategy as the main protagonist of Bounen no Xamdou used. This anime is also dialogue-heavy, but not as much as Bounen no Xamdou is. Plus romance is kept to a minimum, almost as an afterthought.

The ending, while is more unpredictable in details compared to other shounen anime titles, ends up being ordinary and unfulfilling. This is definitely one of the negative points of this anime.


A shounen hero must have a pet too. As added bonus, the cat is pink, can transform into a girl with white hair, and immortal too.

Character Design:-
Nabari no Ou used character designs that comes out straight from shounen-ai titles like Loveless or Gravitation (or some random CLAMP anime). Thinking about that, considering the relationship between Miharu Rokujou and the other main male protagonist (did you notice that there are no main female protagonist here – all females in this anime are supporting characters only), this probably is inevitable. Well, at least the designs are not out of place unlike Tytania. Black hairs are common, and that is a good thing. Definitely a positive point for this anime.

Voice Acting:-
Voice acting in this anime is quite good, with the main male protagonist and his sickly effeminate boyfriend being the best of the bunch (the latter only speaks more during the second half of the anime though). Better than Bounen no Xamdou for sure.

Music:-
The OST for this anime is good, but you cannot say the same about the OP and ED themes.

Animation/Direction:-
My biggest complaint for this anime. The animation quality in this 2008 anime is subpar (jerky movements with flawed fluidity) compared to the standard set by other anime titles shown in the same year. This applies also for fast-paced scenes that are not part of ninja battles (like moving vehicles). When it comes to those fast-paced ninja battle animations, those blurry vertigo-inducing animation techniques really pissed me off because it makes following the action harder than it should have been. The fact that the two fansub groups that translated this anime introduced many combing artifacts during encoding doesn’t really help either. I docked one point off the final rating for this anime, it was really that bad.

The director has done his/her job neatly, with the exception of the pacing and story flow problems in the early episodes.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. The problems with the animation, the less than stellar story (compared to the perfect Bounen no Xamdou anyway) and the ending caused Nabari no Ou to fail to even challenge Wolf and Spice.


Are you a handsome guy with white hair, good with taijutsu and ninjutsu skills and is immortal to boot? If yes, then you will be popular with women, and some of them may want to follow you home and peek at you in the bathroom.

Review: Allison & Lillia (アリソンとリリア)

Posted by ranpha on 13th September 2009
Posted in: anime review. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


After impregnating Allison, our main male protagonist takes the easy way out and decided to become a spy instead. A nice excuse of not paying alimony.

For the sixth consecutive time, Wolf and Spice reign as the ‘Anime of the Year 2008’ title holder is being threatened by a series that do things half-heartedly, Allison and Lillia. My review below will somehow tells you how our challenger failed to dethrone the excellent Wolf and Spice that has started to exhibit a resilience shown by Nodame Cantabile.

 

Story:-
In a fictional world that looks like Europe during the first half of 20th century, a war has been raging for at least 100 years between two continents separated by a river and a mountain range. Our main female protagonist Allison and three other unimportant characters (well, if they are important, why is their name are not in the title?) managed to stop the huge war in a jiffy, but their stories has just started as peace returned to the world.

This anime is yet another first-part-good/second-part-bad anime titles that have almost always piss me off (I’m looking at you Blood+ and Dragonaut – The Resonance as recent examples that I have remembered here). This anime can be divided into two arcs; the first arc starring Allison while the second arc starring her daughter Lillia, divided of course by your customary time-jump plot device. Within each arc, there are several short stories that revolve around the title characters.

The stories within each halves of the anime are basically slice-of-life plots with some romance and a little bit of action here and there. The ones in Allison’s arc are ordinary at best; starts very slowly especially for the first 8 episodes before accelerating up to task until the arc’s end but generally flows very nicely. The major positive point this arc has is Allison herself who carries the first arc with her considerable character strength. Allison is a similar character that is comparable to Sanzenin Nagi of Hayate no Gotoku or Louise of Zero no Tsukaima, but much better. She is actually very interesting and far more decisive at key moments than the two examples mentioned above, which prevents the first arc from plunging into mediocrity ala Hatenkou Yuugi.

If the first arc of this anime owes its success (barely qualified as such) to Allison, the reverse happened in the second arc. The stories in the second arc are just more of the same of the first one (read: ordinary) but instead of having Lillia propping up the arc the way Allison did to hers, she instead blows it apart. It is obvious that the writers tried to portray Lillia to be the opposite of her mother Allison is, but that makes her looks retarded in the process. Allison and Treize tried to salvage the arc but their efforts have minimal impact at best. To make things worse, the ending of this anime is crap. It would have been just an ordinary ending if not for the lousy and completely needless 'revelation' by 'Ann' in episode 25 and the predictable cliché-laden ending in the last episode. Well, it doesn’t seem that there will be any new season and that’s a good thing.

Character developments in this anime are very well done, with the exception of Lillia of course. Allison is definitely the best character in this anime, with Treize not far behind. This anime is also a very good example of how to use time-jump plot device correctly (I’m looking at you Blood+, which is an example of how to do time-jump wrong).

 


Frankly speaking, I have never seen a concealed weapon like this one before.

Character Design:-
Character design in this anime is decent, with Allison, Treize and Fiona/Francesca (scratch where applicable) being outstanding. Lack of black hair in this fictional early 20th century setting is forgivable. Definitely a positive point of this anime.

Voice Acting:-
This anime is a fine example where voice acting has checkered qualities. Just look at Nana Mizuki who voiced both Allison (first arc, Allison in second arc has different voice actress) and Lillia; with the former being excellent while the second, not so much. You can usually see one voice actor/actress excels in one anime but tanked in another (like Mamoru Miyano who is good in Dragonaut – The Resonance but far less so in Gundam 00), but Nana Mizuki managed to pull both feats in the same title. Brilliant!

In general, the same can also be said of the rest of the characters; some are good, but quite a number of others are uninspiring.

 


The second half of the series sinks very quickly to the bottom of the sea, just like him.

Music:-
This anime has not delivered great musical experience for the viewers. Below average OP and ED themes, and OST that is simply isn’t there.

Animation/Direction:-
This 2008 anime has bog-standard animation qualities for its time, and did not suffer in fast-paced scenes. Choreography in the small amount of action scenes this anime has is good (maybe). The director has done well, especially with the presentation of the time-jump plot device at the middle of the series, but he/she probably cannot do anything about the stories in the second half of the anime (or Lillia for the matter).

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. Wolf and Spice still reigns as the Anime of the Year 2008. One less anime has been removed from my huge backlog.


The villain here dies in one of the lamest method possible, in Allison's arc. But she is awesome and can pepper over the cracks easily.

Review: Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (俗・さよなら絶望先生) & Goku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (獄・さよなら絶望先生)

Posted by ranpha on 4th September 2009
Posted in: anime review. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment


Our main male protagonist.

The first review this month (my ISP connectivity still suffer from APCN2 troubles, cannot play Left 4 Dead reliably) will be the sequel of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei that I have reviewed previously. They are titled Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (a fully-featured TV series) and Goku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (a straight-to-DVD feature short), both released in 2008. This means that they will combine their forces to challenge Wolf and Spice’s position as the best anime in 2008. Now let’s see whether they can do it or not.


Surely this isn't true. Only stories in episode 5 can be considered to have all their plots in order.

Story:-
Our main male protagonist is now thinking less about taking his own life before being stopped by his own students, and has resorted to wallowing in despair over many issues instead (and not doing anything about it); many of them trivial, but some of them are brilliant.

Actually, there are no difference in the stories between the first season and the 2 sequels reviewed here today. The only change visible is in presentation where the stories are shorter, therefore there are more of them in a single episode. Frankly speaking though, I feel that the plots in the second season and the DVD feature short (OAD as they call it) is inferior to what you can watch in the first season. In the first season, the ratio of good:bad plots are basically even, but in the second season and OAD, the bad ones outnumber the good ones. Nevertheless, there are some factors that will help mitigate this problem, and they will be discussed further down.

As usual, the newest installments in this series also has the terrifying pacing that makes this series very unique. I have noticed that in one of the episodes in Zoku deals with how this anime can be inaccessible to new viewers. My counterpoint to the writer/director of this anime (if they somehow can read English and read this blog’s entry) is that they can and should slow down the pacing considerably, because in its current form, this anime is unwatchable live. Even if you know Japanese, and understands all the subtle (or many of the blatant ones) references or parodies of  anime/games/people/issues etc. this anime has to be time-shifted so that the viewer won’t miss anything. Even then, I think I paused any given episode and rewinding it as often as I do for an entire anime series with 26 episodes at least.

Character development is one aspect of the sequels that has regressed really badly compared to the first season. Basically, there is none of them in the second season and the OAD, with too few exceptions. The second season/OAD actually just takes the state of the characters that they are in at the end of the first season and kept them that way all the way throughout the sequels. In other words, the characters in this anime has become stale, but at least none of them has reverted backwards.


One of the better jokes in this anime. Too many of them requires understanding about issues/anime/manga/person/corporation/movies etc. though.

The humor is one of the major positive point in this anime. This is the factor that really helps to make the stories with bad plots more palatable. Lightning-quick one-liners, many of those ‘tsukkomi’  banters plus some more slapstick humor. They are not as good as the ones in the excellent Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu, but should still elicits some good laugh, if you understand it. And then there is another signature feature of this series, which is the parodies/references of other anime/games/manga/people/corporation etc. From the rock band group Spitz to the space soap opera Legend of Galactic Heroes, I think there are more than 100 of them in total (this anime is the only second title that has references to Evangelion, first being Hayate no Gotoku). Unlike the first season though, those references and parodies are more integrated to the plots of this series, making them (the plot) less crappier than it should have been.


The often-referenced Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and also the North Korea 6-party talks issue are the two parodies I like the most in this series.

There are no apparent ending to this anime, because the second season and the OAD ends up just like that. There are no warning whatsoever. It is kinda like Hayate no Gotoku’s ending, but without the fanfare. Did the director already know that a third season is coming?


Still the best character in the series, and still has ridiculously low airtime. For god sake, cut down the airtime for Sonozaki Shion that uptight girl a.k.a. the supplementary class monitor and give them to her. She would have agreed too with my proposal.

Character Design:-
My comment in the first season review still applies. The best design belongs to the main  male protagonist.


Conversations in this anime can flow very fast, and may have inane contents, which will lead you to have the same questions like the one our main male protagonist has. Therefore, excellent voice acting are needed. And this anime does deliver in this aspect.

Voice acting:-
My comment in the first season review still applies. This anime has great voice acting gigs throughout the character roster.


The Precure-esque OP theme at the start of episode 7 is actually very good.

Music:-
Unlike the first season, the OST has improved quite a bit and I actually like the OP theme (and also the Precure-esque one in episode 7). The 1st ED theme is also good but not the second one.


The only one time where our best character actually use her voice actress.

Animation/Direction:-
This section has also improved compared to the first season. The animation  now sucks less badly and are decent even in worst-case scenario. Choreography doesn’t apply here because this anime is a dialogue-heavy title with nearly zero violence. The directing is still as good as ever, but I think the pacing should be slowed down.


Initial D parody is a must in a series that makes its living parodying other anime/manga.

Conclusion:-
8 out of 10, just like the first season. Regressions in storyline, the ending and character developments has been mitigated by improvements in music, animation and of course, the humor. Wolf and Spice is still the holder of Anime of the Year 2008 title.


I actually only get to know the name of the best character in this series in this season.

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