My collection of short anime reviews

Review: el cazador de la bruja (エル・カザド)

Posted by ranpha on 22nd March 2008

Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: el cazador de la bruja (エル・カザド). Leave a Comment

This anime has pretty good English here. Good to see Japan taking care of English seriously here.

After 3 beautiful reviews of titles in hi-definition, I return to the real world as I write this mini-review of El Cazador de la Bruja in SD (upscaled to higher resolution with ffdshow to give my LCD justice). It means that there are no albums for you. This is also a 2007 anime, so can Nodame Cantabile fends off a trigger-happy gunslinger girl with a witch sidekick?

Quoted for Truth

Story:-
A bounty hunter who occasionally posed as waitress in fast-food restaurants is given a job to protect a witch that has to do a journey to the south (thank god it wasn’t east or else there will be plenty of jokes there). Both of them have to dodge other bounty hunters, a mysterious organization, the CIA and also an insane superhuman maniac.

The story started very slowly and it takes 10 episodes (which took me 4 days to watch, that how awfully slow this story gets off the ground) for the story to get started. I watched the rest in the single day, mainly because it gets interesting from there. Looking back to those days, this anime did not really compare to its spiritual predecessor Madlax (watched before this blog started – and the reason why I look forward to this anime) which has much better pacing than this one.

This caused the flow of the story to suffer because it failed to attract the attention of the audience early, and I have actually considered dropping this series. But after the 10 largely pointless episodes the anime gets into gear storywise, and it moves along more smoothly towards the end. It wasn’t exactly a good story compared to Madlax (I have not watched Noir yet) but still watchable for an action series.

Unfortunately, the ending really stinks. What’s with the DragonBall-esque dead people being resurrected in quick successions? The ending is really ordinary, and the last episode is lame. This anime is really screwing up badly here. Madlax fare vastly better in this aspect.

Mobile phones in this anime has this extraordinary ability of being connected even out of nowhere.

Character Design:-
Very well done, a positive point for this anime (which really needs as much as it can get). There are plenty of beautiful characters in here, and each fit their roles perfectly.

Voice acting:-
Voice acting in this anime is good overall, with L.A. (yeah, this is the real character name, and no, it did not stand for Los Angeles) being outstanding.

I think I have seen this place before. Hmm… where is that?

Music:-
Another positive point of this anime, the OST is excellent and so are the OP theme but not for the ED theme. I would have like a couple of good insert songs like the ones in Madlax though. That would have been awesome.

If you work for a shadowy organization and need to operate in secrecy, it is best that you did not wear your organization signature uniform while on it. And definitely no masks while driving, it just make you prone to more suspicion.

Animation/Direction:-
This anime has great animation quality, even in fast-paced scenes (there is a lot of them here). Choreography is decent if somewhat ordinary (the awesome moves of the Madlax heroine would have been appreciated). The directing is good too, although it can do away with the inopportune usage of upside-down camera shots.

This upside-down shots was used too many times for my liking and in scenes that did not need it. Like the one above.

Conclusion:-
7 out 10. Nodame Cantabile successfully fends off the unlikely all-girls duo. And thanks’ god Myself, Yourself is still in limbo and does not need to be watched, yet.

It’s all in the day’s work.

Review: Initial D Live Action Hong Kong Movie

Posted by ranpha on 17th March 2008

Posted in: anime review - reposted, miscellaneous. Tagged: Initial D (series), Initial D Live Action Hong Kong movie. Leave a Comment

Will we get to see him in the future?

Today’s mini-review is a change from previous usual ones because this is a review of the live-action version of Initial D, featuring Jay Chou and also one of the last movies that feature Edison Chen. This is another hi-def movie, and the album for this can be found here.

Hi-def marvels allows you to see more details than ever before. Even skin pores can be easily visible.

Story:-
What applies in my previous Initial D review also applies here, although it covers only the parts up to second season. Two whole seasons condensed into one and a half-hour movie, resulting in removal of some elements of the original storyline that can be mind-numbing. For example, Keisuke did not exist, Itsuki is a fat-ass drop-out, the gas station has a hot attendant and more.

Despite the alterations, the movie is still awesome. Jay Chou managed to carry the shy Takumi character very well, and I think there are times where he is overdoing it to the extent where I think Takumi has some mental disease or something. That isn’t a bad thing, just so you know. Edison Chen has little airtime, even the revamped and luckier Itsuki has more of it. And that’s the bad thing here.

Character development is obvious only for Jay Chou and his dad, with everyone else can almost be described as decorations. The ending is a mixture of the first and second season endings, with Jay Chou victorious at the end. Only that, he loses his (super hot) girlfriend unlike the manga/anime version. Whoops, is that a spoiler?

Natsumi is HOT, a far cry than that sorry excuse for a woman in the manga/anime version.

Character Design:-
This does not apply here because this is live-action movie. But Natsumi is HOT, unlike the anime/manga version. So are Edison Chen and to the lesser extent, Jay Chou.

Unlike Steamboy, dark scenes (there’s a lot of them) in this movie is actually watchable.

Voice acting:-
Also did not apply here. But the acting in general is decent I think, especially Edison Chen. The only problem you have is to believe that people in Akina speaks Cantonese instead of Japanese.

Imported from the anime version:- Censorship of plate numbers.

Music:-
No m.o.v.e. tracks here, so in this aspect the anime is superior than this movie. It has a couple of good Jay Chou songs though, if Cantopop is your thing.

But in key scenes like this, the plate number is visible. I wonder why the movie company even bother doing it in the first place.

Animation/Direction:-
This isn’t an animation, but being a hi-def movie, the details are spectacular. The directing is not that good unfortunately. Overuse of that stuttering camera shots ruins the presentation of this movie, but camera angles in some of the racing scenes are excellent.

A shot of that famous ‘gutter’ overtaking manoeuvre.

Conclusion:-
8 out of 10. If you are a fan and can stomach the missing/altered details, you should give this a spin. Hint: Get the hi-def version, you will like it immensely.

That cheesy scene that has been parodied by Izumi Konata is also here.

Review: Steamboy (スチームボーイ)

Posted by ranpha on 10th March 2008

Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: Steamboy (スチームボーイ). Leave a Comment

London in the 19th century. The light ray effects are used frequently in this movie.

This is the review of Steamboy, a second straight review of yet another 1080p movie just like the last entry. It means a post that will take ages to load and an album with lots of HD-size screenshots. It also means I can delay reviewing Myself, Yourself a little longer.

The hero that ‘failed’.

Story:-
Set up in 19^th century England, a boy from a family of inventors finds himself being chased by cohorts from an American multi-national company that specialize in weapons manufacturing. Dodging bullets, tractors and airships, the boy eventually failed and capitalism wins handsomely at the end.

The story is much better than the one in The Place Promised in Our Early Days (TPPiOED). Not only that, this one has a lot of action scenes, and that can only be good. Character developments are limited, with the same reasons as the TPPiOED. The ending is better too, with some loose ends that seem to point to SteamBoy II. And I just checked ANN while wanting to make a link and there it is. I hope it will be a TV series though; this title has a lot of promise.

In other words, Steamboy really whips TPPiOED in this aspect.

Our hero chased by a train and a tractor.

Character Design:-
Just like TPPiOED, this anime employs the same realistic type designs for all of the characters here. There are considerable black hairs here too although the settings is located at Europe. Here, TPPiOED and Steamboy matches each other.

An awesome depiction of Big Ben in London.

Voice acting:-
Voice acting in this movie is superb all around, and Scarlett O’Hara particularly stands out from the rest. This is definitely a positive point of this anime, and Steamboy is better than TPPiOED. The only thing you may have problems is to really believe that Mancunians from north-west England can really speak Japanese, which actually makes me uncomfortable a little.

One of the few shots from Manchester.

Music:-
Again a section where Steamboy is better than TPPiOED, with the OST being pretty decent but not exactly. It is good to see that Steamboy did not fall into the trap of needing a special theme just for this movie.

The light effect is used in this night scene to great effect again.

Animation/Direction:-
This is where Steamboy really shines. The animation is of the highest quality, and fluid even in the fast-paced scenes. So, it is just TPPiOED that fails in fast scenes and not my quad-core CPU dropping frames. The only problem is the dark scenes where it was simply sometimes too dark to see what is happening clearly, especially in scenes in the Steam Tower near the end of the movie. It can’t be my monitor, which is a fully calibrated Samsung 226BW S-panel, so I place the fault on the movie.

The directing here is exceptional. From the start to end, you will get the feeling that this movie is not directed by someone ordinary. Great control of the storyline, usage of the camera angles, choreography of the action scenes and more is what makes this movie great.

One of the less-darker scenes here. Some of the later scenes are so dark it may frustrates you.