Review: E’s Otherwise (エス・アザーワイズ)

Posted by ranpha on 20th May 2006
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: . Leave a Comment

The entry for E’s Otherwise at Anime News Network encyclopedia cannot be more misleading than it can be. Surely someone can fix that one up……

Anyway, here comes another review, quite a lot of anime I watched recently.

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Story:-
Well, the anime is about Kai Kudou, an ASHURUM psychic who at first glance, looks like Kira Yamato with the souls of Athrun Zala and Shin Asuka combined. He has a sister Hikaru who is treated at ASHURUM’s hospital, a fact that’s almost irrelevant for about 2/3 of the series. At a mission, he screwed up and caused the death of his partner, and then went berserk and wiped out a part of Gald (think of Shin Asuka in SEED mode with the power of a Super Saiyan) where the mission is done. ASHURUM declared Kai to be MIA, and he was saved by some girl that looks and sound so much like Sakura in Tsubasa Chronicle. Ironically, her name is Asuka muahahaha.

He doesn’t even run away, or decided to do so.

The first few episodes up to the part where parts of Gald was vaporized are great, and they captivates me greatly. All good things have an ending though, as the story went downhill from there with episodes that doesn’t really advance the storyline while exposing the stupidity of the Shin Asuka/Athrun Zala soul amalgam inside Kai.

Well, when you are rock bottom, you can only go up right? That’s what happened as the series lumbers on towards the end. And the ending has no real closure whatsoever. Kai and the evil villain who wants to destroy the world collides, a huge explosion happened, and almost immediately the ending credits started to roll. I don’t hear news/rumours about any second season/OVA/OAV/movie so that ending can be considered to suck big time.

Character design:-
No complaints whatsoever. Is that good enough for you? See the pictures below to get what I mean.

Voice acting:-
Well, nothing really distracting. Not as good as Samurai 7 though. 

Animation/Direction:-
Hmmm… after being spoiled by Samurai 7, this one is a step (or two) down. Not very shabby unlike BECK. And this is the DVD-rip I watched.

Music:-
Fact: I skipped the OP/ED theme after listening to them the first time.

Fact: The OST is actually decent.

Conclusion:-
Extra point for fan-service, thus it get 6 out of 10.

 

Review: Samurai 7 (サムライセブン)

Posted by ranpha on 17th May 2006
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


Today, I just finished watching Samurai 7, and here we are again.

Based on Akira Kurosawa movie titled Seven Samurai, this one takes place on the future where mecha is aplenty. A village is harassed by mecha bandits who wants to rob all their rice (yes, rice), and send their water maiden to get some samurais from the city to help defend from them.

Not your usual mecha anime, with the description above you would have think those bandit mechas ate rice

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Story:-
I have not watched the original movie to compare with this anime, but even as a stand alone anime, the story itself is just your standard shounen samurai story. We got a pretty water maiden who comes to a hostile city try to bribe/recruit samurais (is that a correct plural form – can’t be arsed to check) to help defend her village with rice. Maybe if she use other methods that make full use of her assets, she will be more successful. Unsurprisingly (since this is anime after all), she managed to do just that and managed to get seven samurai to help defend her village.

Up to this point, I have mentioned 2 facts:-

1. This is a mecha anime.

2. The story is just a standard shounen samurai story.

This is because, despite this anime containing plenty of mecha, none of them samurais pilots one (and no, the water maiden is not an elite Coordinator Gundam Pilot even if she has some ESP powers). A big chance to make the story more interesting has just gone up in smoke, a pity considering one of the samurai is an emo kid (see what you got if you use rice only to hire samurais), and the captain of the bunch is also some emo indecisive wreck. Well, one of them is a mini-mecha muahahahaha.

Character design:-
Mecha design is great, a shame none of the samurais pilot one. Human character design is also the same, except maybe for the water maiden who deserve more efforts at the designer side to be more beautiful. Generally no complaints from me here.

Voice acting:-
From all entries in this blog, Samurai 7 has the best voice acting overall (so far). Ukyo and Rikichi has that quirky but great acting quality that will make their characters to be permanently etched in my mind. Others does not disappoint me either.

Animation/direction:-
One of the more expensive anime ever made, the quality of the animation does not disappoint. The CGI and traditional animations are all top-notch. The direction is also great, especially in the action scenes in the latter part of the series.

Music:-
The only thing that disappoint me. The OST itself is not that good (read: average), and the OP/ED themes are disappointing.

Conclusion:-
Great character design, voice acting, animation and directing, but not so good music and story. 7 out of 10 is what this one get.

Review: Karin (かりん)

Posted by ranpha on 15th May 2006
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


Surprisingly cheerful for a horror vampire series.

A departure from the previous entries, now I will review a horror vampire anime with a very misleading title called Karin.

Basically, this anime is about Maaka Karin, a high school-going super strong vampire than is not afraid of sunlight (take that Alucard). Not only that, she doesn’t have any need to suck blood, and she bite people just to give FREE blood transfusions. If she can’t find a victim, she will conveniently spill excess blood all around her while glaring at other people to clean up her mess. Even her family of normal vampires with normal strength and afraid of sunlight are truly afraid of her.

This continues until she meets a human who volunteered that Karin should bite him so that she will stop spilling blood all around ever again……

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Story:-
The above synopsis should make everything clear, with the majority of 24 episodes was filled with the main character Karin antagonizing whether she should just bite that pitiful volunteer human instead of making him ‘bento’, or working with him at the same restaurant while avoiding a vampire hunter that have killed 10000 vampires in their class.

Her indecisiveness was repeated in many episodes, with one causing her to bite that human’s mother instead, and also the vampire hunter himself in another episode but never the volunteer human himself. This caused Karin’s older brother and younger sister to be stressed out, and they have to go out of their home to find stressed/jealous women at the city, doing what vampires should do.

Basically, you just went along the episodes to find out whether she will bite the volunteer human, and the result will be revealed at the last episode after an ‘excellent’ build-up in the previous episodes. If you are an extreme horror anime fans like me, you will certainly find this anime refreshing, with the strongest vampire in the history of Japanese anime.

As I don’t read the manga which is the base of this anime, I can’t comment whether it has fillers or not.

Character design:-

Character design has mixed results. The main protagonist Maaka Karin was beautifully designed; with pretty face, big breasts, nice haircut, big breasts, voluptuous body, big breasts, nice legs and big breasts. But the character design of that pitiful volunteer human can do with slightly more effort. I think the designers want to portray that human as average, but I think you can make ugly humans that are better looking than that volunteer human.

Considering that others has decent character designs, I wonder what holds the character designer back. Speaking about that, the strongest ever vampire in anime history is a little bit on the short side too.

Voice acting:-
Just like Yuyu Hakusho, nothing really to shout about. Except maybe for that vampire hunter (Kouki Miyata) and the volunteer human (Katsuyuki Konishi).

Music:-
The OP theme titled scarlet is excellent. I even have it on my iPod. And to get into my iPod, a certain degree of excellence has to be reached. Meanwhile, the ED theme and OST are forgettable.

Animation/direction:-
Well, great use of bright colors despite this being a horror anime. Very refreshing indeed. Can do with more bouncing breasts of Maaka’s though. Directing is great, with some great focus on her bouncing breasts in action. Such things always scored high points with me.

Conclusion:-
Will be 10 out of 10 if not for that volunteer human character design and also below average OST and ED theme. Thus I will award 9 out of 10  to this series.

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