This is a review of the pulsating anime series Tokyo Underground, filled with lotsa screenshots! And Engrish too!
Story:-
Two hot chicks from an underground mini-world beneath Tokyo (called Underground), escape to the surface world and accidentally meets with an ass-kicking high school delinquent (series’s protagonist) and his nerdy friend. The delinquent then helped them hide from the kidnappers from Underground, but eventually failed. As the Maiden of Life (your typical anime chick which role is damsel-in-distress waiting to be saved) is kidnapped, the boys and the other hot chick went off searching for the power to rescue her in Underground.
Just like E’s Otherwise, this anime started bright enough. In fact the plotline when they are still at the surface is good enough and I have been considering giving this one an 8 out of 10 rating (why not full, read other sections below). But the storyline quickly sinks, just as fast as they descended the underground tunnels toward the Underground.
Then comes the battles, which is another of my complaints about this anime. The pace of the battles are erratic. The battles at the big town where the tower are situated are unnecessarily long, just like Naruto’s battles when Orochimaru attacks Konoha. Then again the battles at the tournament are rushed as if to comply with the 26-episode schedule. And they are not done very well either, but read the directing section for more info of that.
And there is a question that baffles my mind, which is why on earth the baddies are too weak? I wonder what kind of hero the creator of this series want to portray. Does the writer wants the hero to be some kind of weakling that suddenly obtains the power of wind and then gradually learning his was up as he master his new-found power? If that was to be the case, his winning ratio is way too high to be one. He was almost undefeated, especially after they arrived at the Underground. The hero doesn’t seem to be an all-encompassing invincible protagonist like Alucard either, as he still make hard work of beating his enemies. The baddies here doesn’t acts like baddies enough, they need to be more cruel.
Generally, this cliche-laden typical shounen storyline is nothing really to shout about, and I will safely burn this series into my DVDRs to be watched again maybe in 5 years time, if I am still alive.
Character Design:-
They are very well-done, from the nerdy guy to your helpless damsel-in-distress all the way to the baddies. Definitely a positive point of this series.
Voice Acting:-
Definitely not as good as Princess Nine, and this is not one of Tomokazu Seki best’s outings. Mainly because many of the voices sound overbearing to me. And unfortunately, none of the baddies sound that way.
Music:-
They are not good enough to be mentioned at all here.
Animation/Direction:-
The animation really suffers at some high-speed battles scenes, especially projectiles’ animations. A dagger let fly from the background can easily reach foreground with virtually no animation at all for the trajectory. And this kind of below-par animations happens frequently in this anime. The directing is not that good either; some scenes are played way too quickly for anyone to know what really happened, for example the scene where the nerdy guy shoot three projectiles at the big boss. I have to rewind a little just to see what I have missed. And there is also problems with continuation between episodes, which is a problem I rarely see in other anime titles. Just see the ending between ep.20 and ep.21 for example (or ep21-22 maybe).
Conclusion:-
Just like the lady above, I hereby award 5 out of 10 for this anime.
