Review: The Place Promised in Our Early Days (雲のむこう、約束の場所)

Posted by ranpha on 4th March 2008
Posted in: anime movies, anime review - reposted. Tagged: , . 1 comment


The element of weather such as rain is really beautiful in this movie. There are a few others like snow that you should see at this blog photo album for this movie here.

Two reviews in two consecutive days, I am really on fire! For this entry, I will do a mini-review of The Place Promised in Our Early Days movie, with lots of 1080p screenshots, some of them featured in this entry.

 
That mysterious tower with a Predator drone looking on.

Story:-
In a version of Japan where they got to vote for the president in White House, two middle-schoolers dreams of flying an aircraft towards a mysterious tower at Hokkaido. But a girl who uttered the word ‘sugoi’ a lot falls into a coma and their plans shattered just like that (no spine whatsoever). The two middle-schoolers went their separate ways but the comatose girl reunite both of them to save the world from the tower that the girl’s grandpa built.

The synopsis maybe a little out of whack, but the story is actually decent. The main feature of the movie seems to be the awesome sceneries that this movie seems to have a lot than necessary. The story started slowly and only gets better towards the end.

The movie uses plenty of time-shifting to help do character development and also advance the story. And there is not much character development in here anyway, I guess that’s the advantage of being a movie. The movie does not have any weaknesses that I can comment, but I do not think that this movie is a masterpiece storywise either.

 
A tree in different seasons 1.

Character Design:-
The character design in this movie is of the realistic type, the way Ghibli movies are. I think this movie is also one of those that thinks brown is the new black, but then again Japan here is part of United States so who am I to complain?

 
A tree in different seasons 2.

Voice acting:-
A positive aspect of this movie, the voice acting here is excellent, but no one really stands out.

 
A tree in different seasons 3.

Music:-
This is where the movie fails. As a whole, the music (OST or ED theme) is wholly uninteresting. Hehehehe.

 
Even as one of the states under United States of America, English is failing in Japan…

Animation/Direction:-
Despite having great arts, the animation did not really match them. This movie really suffers in some fast-paced scenes where the animation is not fluid enough. At first I thought Media Player Classic is dropping frames (after all, this is a 1080p h.264 movie), but with CoreAVC and quad-core CPU utilizations that never exceeds 25% I do suspect that the animation fluidity in those scenes is simply not good enough.

The directing meanwhile is pretty decent, with no obvious weaknesses and is able to juggle all those time-shifts to create a coherent storyline.

 
…but a much better attempt can be seen here.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. If you want to see pretty arts and scenery you should consider watching this one.

 
One of the protagonist and the sugoi girl.

Review: Inukami (いぬかみっ!)

Posted by ranpha on 3rd March 2008
Posted in: anime review - reposted, The Scream Painting spoof in anime. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


English failed understandably in this not-so-futuristic anime.

The first review for March this year is for an animal-themed anime, Inukami. This is a 2006 anime, so it will compete with Kiba the TV Animation. I wonder how long I can keep myself away from Myself, Yourself….

Story:-
Our nudist hero Raou is an inukami tsukai who has a pet dog whose hobby is sending Raou to jail. Occasionally, Raou does his part-time job of destroying demons and such. But most of the time, he has to dodge fireballs and the police force while chasing everything that is female (humans or demon, he takes them all).

As a simplification, this anime is a cross between the recently reviewed Nagasarete Airantou and Zero no Tsukaima. The only difference is that Inukami is much better than those two mentioned. The story by itself is not that great if you want to compare it to Zero no Tsukaima (they have many similarities because they are of the same genre) but other factors makes Inukami more palatable to watch.

The first reason is the hero Raou. Raou is one of the best protagonists from this kind of genre that I have ever seen. While his pet dog a.k.a. the female protagonist is pretty much a stereotypical carbon copy of the main female leads in Nagasarete Airantou or Zero no Tsukaima, Raou really is a breath of fresh air. The second reason why Inukami is better than those two is the much better control of the flow of the storyline. This series did not repeat the mistake that Nagasarete Airantou does, which is a complete void of plots and character developments between the start and the end. Well, Inukami did has those blackhole episodes towards the first-half of the series but that’s about it. Apart from those episodes, Inukami usually has episodes that advanced the storyline and helps character developments. No silly episodes like the main protagonist and his harem entourage going to hot spring baths doing absolutely nothing but useless fan-service or silly toilet humors really helps.

This series does have some weaknesses. One of them is how little some things are explained in the story. One example is how I only get to know that Raou is a high-schooler only after 7 or 8 episodes. Plus, this point is not expanded at all. Another is the careless grasp of timeline, where Nadeshiko asked why Kaoru tells his own inukami to get a ranking from Raou a day earlier, when it was supposed to have happened at least 7 days before.

 
The anime takes its own sweet time to tell the audience that Raou is still a student.

Character Development:-
A positive point of this anime, character design in this anime is very well done especially for the female characters. I do not remember any black hairs so maybe this is not a positive aspect after all.

Voice acting:-
Voice acting in this anime is mixed bag. Some characters like the female protagonist has good voices while others like Raou is just average. There’s none that are bad though (but no one outstanding either), so I will let it slide.

 
You will see a lot of this throughout the anime.

Music:-
The OP and ED themes are good but not so for the OST. The OST is almost non-existant, a pity for an anime this good.

 
The latest anime that featured The Scream parody.

Animation/Direction:-
Hmmm… I think the animation quality is pretty good, and fast-paced scenes did not suffer. Choreography for them is also done very well. The directing can only be superb if he/she can keep the audience with continuous episodes filled with storyline like that, or does he/she really is that good?

Conclusion:-
9 out of 10, tying Kiba the TV Animation. But overall, Kiba is still a better anime for 2006. Nevertheless, Inukami is excellent for its genre and a recommended watch.

 
Some screw-ups done by the director. Raou are supposed to dig inside the hole, not making a new one.

Review: Buzzer Beater 2007

Posted by ranpha on 19th February 2008
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


At first I think English has survived the assault of the Japanese in the far future….

Today, I will review a sequel of an anime I watched before this blog is started, titled Buzzer Beater 2007. From the title you would have realized that this is a Nodame Cantabile’s challenger. Just in case you did not know, Takehiko Inoue of Slamdunk does the story, so do not keep your hope up.

Story:-
Continuing from the previous series, the all-human Earth Team is now challenging alien’s invasion dominance in basketball at the Intergalactic Minor League. While doing that, the team will have to contend with all typical problems a sport team will face. Imagine a story about a high-school sport team that aims for the nationals, except that it happens far in the future where aliens and humans can interbreed.

Apart from the context, the story is not that different from your typical high-school sports anime, with the exception that the main protagonist is already awesome and need little training. Watching the first season is a must, or else you will be lost in an alien story. Character developments are carried on and continued well, but the ending is probably not very good, although YMMV.

My only gripe is that the basketball games actually takes a back-seat compared to the story itself, or else how then you can explain episode 10 where the hero wiped out a 15-point deficit all by himself instantaneously.

Character Design:-
Well, the hero is blue-haired but there are fair amount of black hair in this one. With this anime being set in a futuristic setting, I would not have complained if there none at all. Anyway, the character design is quite realistic and a positive point of this anime.

 
…just to find out it did not escaped unscathed.

Voice acting:-
The main protagonist is excellent, and so the other character named Lazuli. While the rest is not that bad, none is as good as the two above.

Music:-
The ED theme is decent, but not the OST. There is no OP theme here.

Animation:-
This 2007 anime, unlike the majority of its counterparts, has awful animation quality. This is really obvious in fast-paced scenes, and this anime has lots of them. At first I think Media Player Classic dropped some frames with the EVR custom presenter, but subsequent tests shows that this is not the case.

The directing is good, with the exception where the final league game in aforementioned episode 10 being watered down a lot.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. Nodame is still number one.

 
Basketball is serious business.

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