The Official Anime Reviews Thread.

[Picard]

Fire Emblem has an anime? Whuh?

[DarkToph]

Tenkuu Danzato Skelter Heaven/Skelter+Heaven Review



Rating: 0/10

Plot: The world has been visited by a giant flying squid (It's not a hentai, I promise) and it's up to some NERV-like organization and a group of girls in mechs as well as one guy in an airplane to take it down.

Reasons for Rating: This OVA....is........ew.

First of all, this OVA is a mere 18 minutes long including opening and ending credits complete with their own themes, so we're REALLY pressed for time here. A good anime could come up with something at least decent to show in such a short amount of time, but no.....just no.

A rule of thumb when it comes to series that are so short is that, if the cast is large or hell even moderately sized, it's best to flesh out one character or at most two to at least get some characterization in there to make us care. Skelter+Heaven decided to tackle this problem by fleshing out absolutely no one.

We have a group of five girls none of whom I can remember the name of offhand. The only info we get on any of them is given in short blurbs in the character descriptions during the theme song. Oh and that the main girl, brown haired chick, is in love with some airmen/captain/whatever guy who also gets no real characterization besides, I guess, that he's serious about his job.

The girls in question are artificially created humans meant for the sole purpose of piloting the mechs and fighting, I guess. Why do they need to be created for this? What are they really? Never explained!

Since this OVA is so short, I can easily give you the play by play.

We spend the first minute of the OVA watching the sun over earth. Because when every minute counts, waste one.

The military is responding to some disturbance over the radio before we get our OP. Because wasting yet another nearly two minutes on an OP is also smart. That's three minutes out of this 18 minute OVA that have been completely pointless.

About the OP itself, the song, Naked Heart, is bearable, but terribly generic. However, it loses that title during the final line where the singer seems to huff helium and then stub their toe. The backgrounds for the song are some of the worst I've ever seen. We basically just get visual novel cut out pictures of the girls, and most of the shots look like they're in poor quality for some reason. Not only is this annoying, but it puts you in the wrong mood. It makes you feel like you're getting ready to play a visual novel, not watch an anime.

We get the aforementioned blubs, which don't really explain much outside of their names, blood types, height, weight and birthday. You know, the important information.

For those wondering, the girls are Misaki, the kinda pushy one who also seems to like main guy and wants to prove herself, Rin, our main girl whom I already explained, Konomi, our glasses girl, Midori who.....does archery once, and Ayaka whom......You know...I don't think she does a damn thing during this entire OVA now that I think about it....

After the OP is over, we see a news reporter talking about the strange object appearing in the sky and for some reason, he keeps repeating his two lines about it over and over and over.

Cut to NERV headquarters.....it might as well be that, where we meet main guy, main girl and Gendo Ikari. He's never given a name and acts pretty much exactly like Gendo Ikari, so he's Gendo Ikari.

It's also here where we get our first glimpse of the squid monster. And boy...it is....something.



Look at that.....thing.....that exists.....That is.....a thing of some sort.......yup.

The weirdest part about this squid thing is that it is insanely still. It never moves unless prompted by attack. Even then, it doesn't really move. Things on it move, but it never moves. It also never makes any noise whatsoever. It's such an awkward enemy. And how Gendo reacts to the squid, it's like it's a common occurrence for this to happen anyway.....so......the squid is basically an angel from Evangelion....Hm.

They want to call out the girls to fight the squid, so let's see what they're up to. Ayaka answers a message, Midori's shooting a bow that shoots insanely slow arrows and Misaki and Konomi are having the most boring mech duel I've ever seen. Not only are they moving way too slow to even justify being practice, but the sound effects during the scene don't match what they're doing. She smacks Konomi's mech's arms with her mech's arms and it makes a sound like she's punching a pillow.

This scene perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong with the art in this show. The character designs are passable, but the animation is incredibly stilted and seems like it's missing a lot of inbetweens. You can easily tell this when Konomi turns her head when she's lying on the ground. It practically jump cuts from looking ahead to looking to the side. The animations in the mouths are most notably awful because the mouths are way too big, oddly shaped and always seem to be missing inbetweens.

The CGI on its own isn't the worst that I've ever seen, if you can believe that. However, when it's put in scenes with traditional 2D animation, it looks like complete garbage. It's like someone took the graphics for Reboot and tried to shove them in an anime. Believe it or not, we get even worse art and animation when the girls are piloting the mechs. See, the girls pilot the mechs externally, meaning the traditionally animated girls have to be forcibly merged into the CGI by making them in that awkward cel shaded CGI in mid shots and clashing regular animation on closeups.



Some shots during this fight aren't even finished because we see Konomi, or at least who I think is her, in full CGI with blank eyes and pink hair when she pins Misaki.



That's not the only shot like that either, because Misaki is fully CGI in a couple of quick shots too, but at least it mostly looks like her.

For reference, here's how Konomi looked a few seconds earlier.



Cut to Rin taking a shower and flashing back to five years ago when I guess the girls were first going through the training program. Their training in this specific flashback is to sit on a seat that is propelled up and down while the girls moan and contort their faces.



But their careers as prostitutes didn't work out, so they decided to be mech pilots instead.

At headquarters, the girls are briefed on the situation. They devise the brilliant plan of finding the enemy's weak point and attacking it for massive damage and we cut to the squid....maybe doing something?.....It moved its tentacle! Maybe it'll destroy something!......Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand....



Nope.

Moving on.

As everyone heads out, Misaki bitches to main guy about being the second attack line instead of the first, which is Rin. She also seems to hint that there is already something between Rin and main guy. When he refuses to change the order, claiming she's too impulsive and acts too much on her own, she impulsively runs off to her mech to prove that she can do the job on her own.

The girls launch in their mechs and head towards the squid. Misaki disobeys orders and attacks first, so the others are forced to change their plans because of it. They make a slight bit of damage to the squid, but it soon starts slowly moving its tentacle back at the girls who apparently never thought that the damn thing might retaliate if it gets injured.

One of the girls is able to get away, but Misaki is swatted off the squid. They're in even bigger trouble when the slow as hell tentacle starts coming towards Midori and Misaki. It smashes into Midori and kills her. Hey, maybe it was a bad friggin' idea to have the girls pilot these mechs without a proper cockpit, eh?

The squid starts growing smaller tentacles from its bigger tentacles...I don't know why. And main guy gets attacked by them in his plane. He's thrown but I think he's saved by Rin. I say that because I can't see her actually doing it in the animation. We just see her mech on his plane in the next scene and main guy points out that she saved him.

The smaller tentacles rip off the leg on Rin's mech, which somehow causes her immense pain and as she's screaming we cut to black without a fade or anything and just as quickly cut to a flashback of Rin being created by Gendo. Apparently, whatever the girls are have intelligence and physical capabilities that far surpass humans. Would've been nice to have seen that being practiced because they all seem like they're no smarter if not less so than your average human. However, he worries about them becoming too smart and strong and is cut off after he thinks about what would happen if they were to turn against them. Then we cut back to the present. Well, thanks for that.

Just a few seconds after cutting back to Rin, we cut immediately to black again to insert another flashback. Editing of this OVA is courtesy of a blind mentally challenged velociraptor.

The flashback is of Rin asking main guy how long her estimated life span is since it's obviously different from that of a normal human. He doesn't know. The end.

Back with Rin, her mech's arm inexplicably comes off in mid-air. Am I watching Discount Mech Warriors?

After some awful lipsyncing where the lips don't stop moving even after the speaking parts end, we see that Misaki is still alive, perfectly fine and still fighting somehow even though we were lead to believe that she died with Midori before. *shrug*

Now main guy is getting a poorly edited flashback to all the good times with the girls and goes in to attack the squid, but Rin stops him to tell him that she hasn't been following orders because she has to. She does it because she loves him. Aw. If I cared about this, I would maybe feel an emotion right now.

The girls charge in to attack without main guy's assistance. They make it past the small tentacles and cut into its head where we get the only time jarring editing actually seems to have a positive impact. The music and sound all cut out and the shot turns to the black and white when they cut into his head. I'll just assume that was purely on accident.

To Gendo's surprise and seeming horror, they make it into the 'core' of the squid. Seeing as how he's been smiling at their losing battle this entire time....I'll assume he actually wanted the girls to fail for some reason.

Rin says she's going to attack the core. Not for humanity's sake, but because she loves and wants to protect main guy. That seems like it's supposed to be romantic or sweet, but it just comes off as dickish. Let me also remind you that Rin is technically five years old or so. Just because she has an adult body and supposedly higher intelligence doesn't change that fact.

She readies her attack and we cut to black again. (Rrgh) This time it's merely as an excuse to not show the attack as we cut straight from her preparing to attack to the squid to the squid....inking itself and I guess dying.



After that, we cut to all of the mechs and everything covered in ketchup—Oh excuse me 'blood', and we're left to assume that everyone died, expect Misaki, who is somehow just getting treatment at the medical bay, and main guy. However, it's implied that because of the 'failure' of the girls (yeah, I don't understand either) it's fully main guy's fault and Gendo deletes him from his phone, which I guess is supposed to imply something bad. Either that he got fired or will be killed. I really don't know; deleting someone from your phone is more like an angry breakup act.

One year later, we see more news footage about the squid leading into sightings of multiple identical squids above Japan now. Then we cut to seeing hundreds of those squids flying over the city, zoom out on the earth....The end.

Oh no wait, we have to have more visual novel shots for the ED set to a song that is just awful and takes up another minute and half of runtime. The actual end.

So....what? Are we left to assume that the world is doomed now? If all the girls but Misaki died and main guy was let go or killed, doesn't that mean the squids will take over the world now? Doesn't that mean this entire OVA was completely pointless then?

Bottomline: This OVA in its entirety was a promotional OVA for the Skelter+Heaven Playstation game; a visual novel and battle simulator game where you play the main guy and get to pick which one of the girls is your romantic interest. I have no clue how good the game is or even if it's an H-game, but if they thought this piece of crap would improve sales of the game, they must have squids for brains. If anything, I have never not wanted to play a game more in my entire life.

There's only so many excuses you can get from the fact that this OVA is 18 minutes long, and you pretty much take most of the excuses away because they seem to want to waste time if anything. Four and half minutes were completely wasted just on pointless space shots and the OP and ED when they could've been used for at least a little focus on the characters themselves, the world, the organization they work for, these squid things etc.

They pretty much did every last thing wrong. No characterization whatsoever, plot points shot into our faces and backstory wedged into completely unrelated scenes, awful editing, poor organization, a ridiculous story that baffles me with how much it seemingly rips off of Evangelion, bad art and horrific animation, forgettable character and mech designs, poorly integrated CGI, awful textures on the CGI, boring and stupid battles, poorly made OP and ED, bad to passable music, sound effects that didn't seem quite right a lot of the time, poor sound mixing with the sound effects and music commonly being too loud, lackluster to bad backgrounds, terrible lipsyncing and bored voice acting. I can't think of one thing this OVA did right outside of being mercifully short.

Even if you did want to check this out, it's really difficult to find a copy, especially one with English subs, so it's just not worth it at all.

Recommended Audience: Mild nipple-less nudity, lots of blood but no gore, and that's about it. 10+

[Picard]

This sounds like the worst show ever. I should watch it.

[DarkToph]

Shinigami no Ballad Review



Rating: 8/10

Plot: An episodic anime about a pure white and kind shinigami named Momo and her cat Daniel. While their main job is to ferry souls to the afterlife, Momo also likes to help the souls that she ferries with any unresolved issues left behind in the land of the living. She also likes to help the living move on past the deaths of loved ones as well.

Reasons for Rating: If you asked me to describe this anime in one word, the perfect word for it would be 'bittersweet'. I mean, just by the description you can tell that this is a depressing anime filled with death and discussions about the impact of death on loved ones. I've never watched an entire anime where basically every episode made me feel like crying, but you win that award Shinigami no Ballad.

However, Momo does make light of nearly every story. The unresolved business left behind by a departed soul allows the soul to rest. The loved ones left behind are then also able to get through the death of their loved once and live their lives to the fullest with what both Momo and their lost loved one taught them.

I'm a sucker for episodic anime as I really love short stories. Unlike some other episodic anime, there's nothing that ties together these stories besides the characters of Momo and Daniel. One character from the first episode makes a reappearance in episode five to help someone else deal with the death of a loved one, and we learn that his contact with Momo left him with the power to see ghosts that he'll supposedly lose when he becomes an adult (because....ghosts are like fairies?), but that's it. I really wish they had left that episode as the last one because it would've felt like the series kinda came full circle in as much of a way as it can, but eh.

Like I said, Momo is not your average shinigami. She dresses entirely in white with a nice white dress, she has long white hair and blue eyes. She holds a scythe, of course, but that's really the only indication that she's a shinigami. Momo is a very kindhearted individual who not only wants to help departed souls with their unresolved issues left in the land of the living, but she also likes to help the living (usually ones connected to a departed soul) live their lives to the fullest.

Momo is also a tragic character, but you really only get that from the opening theme song because we don't really learn anything of Momo's story, unlike, in the opposite extreme, Ai from Hell Girl. I guess in some ways Momo wants to be a part of the living world, but can't. However, she is very dedicated to her goal of helping all of the people that she can. I really liked Momo, she was a very sweet and caring character.

...But then there's Daniel. I feel like there's some sort of unexplained dynamic between Daniel and Momo. See, Momo's character design is almost that of an angel without wings. Daniel's seems somewhat demon based. He's a black cat with a red collar and blood red demon-esque wings. I can only guess that Momo is meant to ferry good souls to heaven while Daniel ferries bad souls to hell, sorta like Zombie Loan. However, since they never deal with any bad souls I can't really be certain.

While Daniel does love Momo very much to the point where he basically treats her like royalty or something, Daniel can get a little annoying because he's like Momo's foil. While Momo is gentle and will go to great lengths to help people, Daniel is pretty blunt and even somewhat rude, and he sometimes thinks that helping people is a waste of time. However, because of his deep respect and admiration of Momo, he's more than willing to help her.

All of the episodes are really great. I can't think of any episode I particularly disliked. I preferred some over others, but they were all really well written and interesting. All of the characters involved in the stories, for the most part, were likeable as well.

Art: The art was meh. Nothing really to write home about. Same with the animation.

Music: I really liked the music for this series even if Nihon reviews said it was the worst part of the series. It may seem out of place by first hearing, but it actually fits pretty well with the series as you continue to listen to it. Both the OP and the ED were really good even if I think the pacing of the lyrics in the OP are a little too slow and the BG music was memorable and enjoyable.

Bottomline: If you can stand up to a little depression and a lot of talk of death, this is a pretty damn good series. I wish it had gone on longer and that we had gotten really anything of the story behind Momo's drive to do what she does or her character at all. It's also a really short series at six episodes, when the series could have the potential to go on for much longer. I mean, Hell Girl got three seasons yet this only gets six episodes. However, that does also mean that it's a fairly short watch, and well worth the time.

Recommended Audience: Well, there are obviously a lot of mentions of death and talking about death, but you actually never see a single person die on screen. I'd say the first episode is likely the saddest because that's the only time that a character that we actually get to know while alive ends up dying during the episode. Everyone dies of either sickness, old age or car accidents, and none of the deaths are seen on screen. The final episode deals with the aspect of suicide and shows the character falling off of a bridge, but they cut away so quickly that you're not even entirely sure she fell.

Other than that, though, no questionable content. No sex, no swearing, not even drinking. Though the heavy aspect of dealing with death might skew towards an older-ish audience. 8+?

[Picard]

Hm, did I ever recommend you Mushishi? It's very episodic and similar to this.

[DarkToph]

I think so, yeah. My watch list is really friggin' unorganized. I get sidetracked too easily.

[DarkToph]

Lupin the Third Movie 02: The Castle of Cagliostro Review



Rating: 9.5/10

Plot: The gentleman thief Lupin the Third is up to his usual tricks at a casino when he discovers that the money he stole was fake; a type of extremely famous counterfeit money called Goat bills. His journey to find the source of the bills leads him back to a castle where he failed in completing the same mission over a decade ago. However, he did meet a kind girl named Clarice who offered him help after being wounded from his failure. When Lupin returns to the castle, he discovers that Clarice is being forced to marry a malicious Count who only wants to marry her for the secret behind the treasure of the Cagliostro family, and it's up to Lupin to save her.

Reasons for Rating: There are several movies that are touted as some of the great classics that must be watched by not just anime fans but also fans of cinema altogether. Lupin the Third's second movie (and yes, I realize it's weird for me to do movies out of order) The Castle of Cagliostro is one of the top picks in that group.

There are two main reasons for this outside of the movie itself; one – It's Lupin the friggin' Third: one of the most long standing and classic anime and manga series in existence. Two – It's the directorial debut of anime god Hiyao Miyazaki, and he wrote the thing too.

Well, that's a damn good start if I ever saw one.

I hate being built up for stuff because if anything I just build myself up for disappointment, but this movie actually delivered and then some.

For those not in the know, Lupin the Third is the grandson of another famous thief, Arsene Lupin. He's a gentleman thief, and a master at that. A bit of a lecherous slimeball sometimes, but overall a good natured goofball....well, depending on who's writing him at the time. Originally, under Monkey Punch's manga, he's actually fairly deplorable....He's a rapist....Yeah. However, his anime counterparts were very much toned down and even made somewhat goofy. He's still a lech, but he usually gets comeuppance if he so much as gropes a girl.

He's frequently joined by the sharpshooter Jigen, who ironically always has a hat over his eyes, the master swordsman Goemon and his on-off lover the femme fatale Fujiko. Basically the actual series is about their thieving exploits while avoiding being caught by Inspector Zenigata, an officer at Interpol who is an expert on Lupin and constantly chases him but is also a bit of a buffoon.

I really only remember this series from when Lupin's second anime series, Part II, ran on Adult Swim way back in the day. About 26 episodes of the 155 episode long series was dubbed and ran on Adult Swim for a while and I loved it quite a bit. Sadly, no more episodes were shown on the block, but Lupin still stands strong to this day. In fact, a 13 episode long anime series based on Fujiko premiered back in 2012, new TV specials get made seemingly every year, and we can't forget that he butted heads with another anime icon, Detective Conan, in a movie back in 2013.

I plan on catching up on all things Lupin sometime soon, but let's focus on today's feature.

This movie really is just a great ride all around. There's plenty of action, lots of antics with Lupin, a cute and mostly believable romance story, a mystery, a hidden treasure and just lots of fun.

I can see how this movie would appeal to many various audiences such as fans of heist movies, fans of romance, action movie fans, lovers of comedy, and even fans of almost fairy tale stories.

There's hardly a slow moment, and when there is, it's just long enough for you to catch your breath and gather your thoughts but not long enough for you to get bored.

They also put a lot of effort into making this castle and this count a legit challenge for Lupin. In fact, he actual fails in his mission in more ways than one while trying to rescue Clarice.

I also really enjoyed the fact that he and Zenigata actually team up to take down the count. For some reason, I really love when enemies fight alongside each other to take down a common enemy.

While this movie is hailed as a great classic to many, this movie does not escape criticism as apparently some people weren't a big fan of how Lupin was portrayed as heroic, Jigen was 'friendly', Goemon was joking around and Fujiko was unsexualized, and this was pretty much blamed on Miyazaki's more lighthearted style.

I never got to watch much of Lupin Part II, but I honestly didn't think they were that OOC. It's not a matter of time line, as in Part II taking place way after Castle of Cagliostro. It was actually starts two years after the movie premiered. But even Monkey Punch is noted for saying this in response to the movie “I wouldn’t have had him rescue the girl, I would have had him **** her!” Uh....Huh. Miyazaki has defended these changes stating that they're meant to reflect the characters, especially Lupin, growing up, in addition to better having the character reflect his views on an actual hero.

I had no problem with these changes, probably because it's been nearly a decade since I've seen anything Lupin related, but I honestly didn't think they changed that much. My view will probably change a lot once I check out Lupin's other shows, movies and of course the manga.

Art: The art for the characters is stylized. They're by no means realistic as many people are incredibly skinny with oddly shaped heads and those with stockier builds are somewhat blocky, but it's a style that really grows on you and fits very well with the more cartoony scenes. The landscapes are fantastic with so much detail it's really just stunning. The animation is also very fluid and fairly well polished.

Music: Some of the music has been dated a bit, synthesizers just have a hard time not dating a film, but overall it was a very fitting and lovely soundtrack.

Voice acting: I watched the English dub of this movie, but there are actually two English versions of this movie out there; one done in 1992 by Streamline Pictures and another done my Manga Entertainment in 2000. I watched the one done by Manga Entertainment, which is supposedly the better one. The Streamline version has Zenigata's name being mistranslated and Lupin being called 'The Wolf' due to copyright issues with the creator of the original Arsene Lupin.

The English dub is pretty good. Not one of the best I've ever seen, but still really good. I think Lupin, Zenigata and Jigen sound too much alike, though.

Lupin was voiced by David Hayter, whom you may know as Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho and Tamahome from Fushigi Yuugi, but I'll bet you know him better as Snake from Metal Gear Solid.

Clarise was voiced by Bridget Hoffman, whom you may know as Miaka from Fushigi Yuugi and Rem from Trigun.

Fujiko was voiced by Dorothy Elias-Fahn, voice of 003 from Cyborg 009 and Meryl from Trigun.

Goemon was voiced by Richard Epcar who voiced Mitsukake from Fushigi Yuugi, otherwise known as 'Oh that doctor guy from Fushigi Yuugi' and Batou from Ghost in the Shell.

So yeah, there's no real shortage on talent here, I just think the main three made their voices a bit too similar. You can tell them apart, but still.

In terms of acting, most of the main acting is spot on, but there are areas of shakeyness when it comes to the extras.

Bottomline: A classic remains a classic. Aged for 35 years, this movie still holds up extremely well, and it's just a ton of fun from start to finish. Diehard Lupin fans may be disappointed at the change in character, but I don't really see any reason to get upset over it.

Recommended Audience: Some mild swearing, a bit of blood and a couple of instances where characters get killed. One particular instance at the end, while not making a ton of sense to me, was a really creative death scene. However, you don't actually see the deaths. At worst, you see bodies and skeletons and you see shots that directly indicate that a character will die, but you don't see the actual death. While still being a flirt, Fujiko stays fully clothed the entire movie. Lupin gets naked once, but it's completely off screen. 13+

[DarkToph]

Btw, I'd like to send a personal thanks to SMF for making sense because I can say '****' 'rapist' and 'naked' without issue, but not 'casino.' Good job.

[Picard]

SMF is literally 4Kids.

[Kenji]

This is truth. It's practically carved into the site's foundation.

[DarkToph]

They Were 11 Review



Rating: 6.5/10

Plot: Several hundred years in the future, earth has ventured out into the reaches of space and successfully colonized. In the meantime, earthlings have met with beings from many other planets and star systems, and after time they have reached an age of widespread peace amongst all species. Out in space is a prestigious academy called Cosmo Academy, and those few who are able to pass their final tests will be guaranteed positions of power in basically any field that they choose. Graduating from this place is viewed as one of the highest honors and achievements. Tada has made it to the final exam, which consists of being teamed with nine other individuals and left on a ship, completely on their own, for 60 days. If one person fails in their duties on board, they all fail. If they call for help, they all fail.

However, there's one problem. Their team was supposed to consist of ten people, yet there are eleven people when they arrive. Someone's not meant to be on the ship. At best, they're a stowaway mooching a free ride or trying to sneak into the test. At worst, they mean to do great harm to the students. Can they survive until the exam ends?

Reasons for Rating:

Warning – All sorts of spoilers

Another feature I caught onto from reading THEM anime reviews, and they didn't really like it, even in spite of the three star rating. In fact, they said it'd probably be good MST3K material. Well, ouch.

However, as I was watching it, I thought it was perfectly fine. Definitely not without its flaws, mostly in the plot holes, but it wasn't bad in my opinion, nor was it laughably bad.

The premise is really interesting to me. While not the most original story in the world, they do manage to do some interesting things with it. The characters, barring one, are all pretty likable and even the ones who get on your nerves really only do so with understandable circumstances. They redeem themselves several times so that's not much to gripe about.

While I'm talking about the characters, let's go through them.

Toto Ni – I'll be starting out with the least seen/least important characters. Obviously in an hour and a half long movie, eleven characters are difficult to flesh out. Not to say they didn't all have their moments, but some we learn little to nothing about. Toto ni seems to be the youngest of the group. An alien from the Sava group, the best I can figure from the prologue is that he wants to learn about plant life. Toto ni is a wimpy little kid who doesn't say or do much. In fact, I was pretty much wondering how he got so far into the test to begin with.

Chaco Kacka – A Terran (basically their new fancy name for 'earthling') Chaco...exists. He gets more screen time than Toto ni, but he has no real personality. He apparently starts a small trading company....Dunno why you'd go to such lengths for a small trading company but whatever.

Dolph Tasta – Another Terran, Dolph is....something else. He's our resident doofy looking fat guy with an equally doofy voice (by Steve Blum, yay!) And I swear to god, if Chumlee from YGOGX had an ancestor in the distant future, Dolph would be it. They look so much alike, barring the hair, it's scary. And oh yeah, he has a big red nose.....and his name is DOLPH.....and his nickname is literally 'red nose'.....Uh huh. He wants to be a judge of the interstellar court.

Vidmenir Knume – From a non-aligned nation called Vidnu, Knu, as he's called, is one of the only aliens here who actually looks like a damned alien. He's a scaly very tall....human-like creature. I take what I can get. Knu is always extremely calm, and is commonly the voice of reason in the group. He also seems very knowledgeable on several subjects. Knu apparently went on to be a poet......a poet....you went through all this to be a poet. Not really too surprised, but come on. When you're guaranteed basically any job you want by passing this insanely long and difficult test, why aspire to be a poet?

Ganigus Gagtos – Nicknamed Ganga, where he is from is never explained, but he's definitely not from earth. On his planet, a terrible disease plagues basically every person, and no one has an expected life span past the age of 30 because of it. He's an experimental subject in that his blood was replaced with some kind of algae that is meant to combat this disease. Ganga is a very mature, smart and responsible person who is one of Tada's loyalest allies. He's taking the test in order to gain the knowledge and resources to rid his people of this disease forever.

Doricas Soldam IV – Another alien who looks exactly like a damn human, except his weird orange and blue jumpsuit, Doricas is one of the irritating ones in that he is constantly pointing fingers accusing people of being 'the eleventh', insulting people and just being unpleasant. He doesn't tend to let his irritating behavior and attitude get in the way of their jobs, but he does get pretty grating. He aspires to be an administrator of his planet.

Amazon Carnias – Another Terran, though where on earth he's from I don't know. Would it be too obvious to think it's the Amazon? He's from some place where hunting is a huge part of their lives, and has numerous scars covering his body from fierce hunting trips. He's not very mature and tends to goof off a lot, but he's also one of the ones to fly off the handle with accusations very quickly. Despite this, he can keep a level head when needed and seems very skilled. He ends up becoming a....musician? Seriously? Didn't he say earlier that he wanted to be a space engineer? How'd he go from that to musician? I know he showed he loved music, but he specifically stated that his goal was space engineering.

King Mayan Baceska – Mayan is simply taking the test as a challenge since he's already the king of a nation/planet. As such, he's pretty much immediately set as the leader of the group. Mayan does carry himself like a king. He's very refined and logical, and he tries to make decisions for the better of the group as a whole and not just himself. While he is the most suspicious one of the group, he tries not to point fingers and instead backs his suspicions with evidence. He also doesn't work as a dictatorship. He utilizes voting and respects the opinions of all of the other group members. Despite this, he can still fly off the handle and act irrationally.

Glenn Groff – The only other semi-alien-looking alien here, Glenn's basically human looking barring the bump on his head and red pupils. Glenn's a very respectful and kind individual who does his best to help. You know how I mentioned there was an epilogue? Well it's one of those epilogues that shows still frames of the characters followed but a short excerpt of what happened to them after the movie.

Glenn died. Yeah, he died while trying to protect one of his students during training. Thanks movie. He was a really likable character to just kill off for no reason. What is this? Stand by Me?

Frolbericheri Frol – Oh dear God....I watched this movie for ten minutes and thought 'well, this actually seems like a good movie. What are the complaints about?' and then she opened her mouth. My god, what a grating sack of crap. From the second she's on screen, she's yelling and screaming and getting into fights. Granted, she has a bit of a reason. She looks exactly like a girl (I'll get to that in a minute) and the group is flabbergasted when they discover a WOMAN on board.

Let me put this into perspective. When Knu, scaly giant, took off his helmet and revealed his face, the group was slightly taken aback. When Glenn, bumpy headed demon eyes, did the same, they also were slightly perturbed. Frol takes off her helmet and they all audibly GASP and look like she just ate her own face. How is it that this takes place in a universe where basically galaxy-wide peace and acceptance has been established yet sexism is still alive and well? Hell, it seems like it's gotten much worse.

From her outburst at their assumptions, I just thought that she didn't like being treated like a woman, especially in a group of guys, but much later on we're under the impression that her outburst of being insulted at being called a woman insinuated that she wasn't one, and that she was just a really feminine guy and has been treated as such the whole time. I don't recall them ever addressing her as 'he' so it threw me for a loop when the big reveal comes later on.

The big reveal in question is when she goes to take a shower. That's when we see that she's completely flatchested and has the physique of a guy, basically. The fact that Amazon doesn't react to her taking off her shirt is what first indicated that she was being treated as a he. Later, when an incident occurs in the shower, Amazon sees her full-frontal and realizes that her basement has neither a box nor a joystick.

Frol has no genitalia, and she's I guess a reverse hermaphrodite...Right? Hermaphrodites have both male and female genitals so having neither would be a reverse? On her planet, everyone's born as a hermaphrodite, but treated as a girl. When a person reaches adulthood, they are given hormone injections to allow them to become either a man or woman. Under government law, only first borns have the choice of becoming male or female. Everyone else is forced to become a woman. Because of this, females greatly outnumber males, but men basically have it made. They have the freedom to do whatever they want, and due to the greatly uneven ratio of men to women, they commonly practice polygamy.

Women are basically forced to be housewives and pop out children. Frol made an agreement with her government. If she passes the test at Cosmo Academy, she can become a man and live a cushy misogynist life bangin' all the chicks. If not, she has to become a woman. A prospect so awful she cries about it several times. Eek.

Frol may have the most fleshed out story, even in deep competition to our actual main character, but she's so unlikable and annoying. She has a Southern accent, however the hell that works considering she's from another damn planet, and all she does is complain and yell and scream and bitch and moan and act pushy and urhghghgh.

Wanna know something else? She's voiced by Wendee Lee. Yeah, one of the few female VA's with a huge range from guy to girl and an equally large range between great and grating, provides the super annoying hick voice of this chick. You make me sad.

What's even worse is how her story ends. She contracts an illness which forces the crew to call for a rescue, which is grounds for failure. She's devastated because she can't wait three years for the next test before she'll be forced to become a girl and Tada offers to have her come to her planet, as a woman, and marry him, another thing I'll get to in a minute. Their romance has been a bit forced, mostly because Tada seems awkward when he's in romantic or flirty situations, Frol is too annoying to root for and their chemistry is kinda off, but whatever. However, we reveal later on that because they made such good decisions during their test and made the right decision in saving Frol, they actually come out first in their class and pass with flying colors.

So yay she gets to be a guy now and live a good life, right? Nope, she decides to be a woman and live as a housewife with Tada. They don't even say she does anything else in the epilogue. She and Tada graduated and got married was their little excerpt.

Tadatos Lane – Tada is our main character. He's an empath who slowly starts learning things about his past while on the ship. I don't understand how he can be as insanely smart as he is and have such a good 'intuition' yet he doesn't remember incredibly scarring and impacting moments from when he was four.

Tada's very likable, but he's pretty bland. They don't really explain what he wants to do once he passes his test. He just wants to achieve the high honor and score a great job. They don't even explain what he did after the events of the movie besides marry Frol.

His backstory is pretty interesting, but like I said it's a little confusing that he's so smart and intuitive yet he can't remember very important events from when he was four. Including his mother dying before his eyes. I get that four is a very young age, but some people can remember stuff from when they were as young as two. I can kinda remember some stuff from four years old. Why does he seem to suffer from amnesia about this?

Now that the characters are out of the way, let's address the plot holes and issues with the script.

They specifically state that Tada just has 'a very good intuition' and isn't psychic, yet mere seconds later he's touching palms to get a clear 'reading' on whether on not people are lying and it's solidified that his talents are indeed ESP.

Why were all those bombs on the ship? I find it hard to believe that all of those bombs were put there by the instructors.

Why did Tada turn down the cooler thing if he wasn't influenced or 'the eleventh?

What was the purpose of influencing Tada to turn the circuit back on if not to injure Ganga?

Why is Ganga not punished for sneaking on board the ship? How does sneaking on board even help him in regards to the test? Surely they'd find out what he did and disqualify him.

And probably the biggest plot hole....How was Glenn the eleventh if Ganga ADMITTED he was the eleventh? Both of them weren't meant to be there, and Glenn was purposely planted to throw the count off to create a situation to test the team. Wouldn't that mean that there should've been twelve people in that team? Why were they even asking 'but who was the eleventh?' at the rescue ship when, like I said, Ganga admitted it earlier? Granted, I never would've guess that either Ganga or Glenn were the eleventh. Well, maybe Ganga a little because of the fact that he kept getting injured and making Tada look guilty, but not Glenn. He was just relevant enough to be a valid surprise yet kept hidden enough to not be obvious. Still, the reveal kinda doesn't work when you already had an eleventh established.

Art: The art and animation aren't great, but they're perfectly fine for the year. There's much worse that has come out of 1986. The character designs are decent enough even if Chaco, Dolph and Tada have dumb hair styles and some of the color choices are kinda weird.

Music: The music's forgettable, but pretty nice.

Voice Acting: English dub by the now defunct Central Park Media – The acting on some of the characters such as Tada, voiced by Curtis Jones are a little hokey. Hell, even Steve Blum himself delivers some lame dialogue. I can't really fault him on those few lines though. Not even his dulcet vocal cords could save some of these lines.

Speaking of Mr. Blum, he actually voices three characters here; Dolph, Amazon and Mayan, showcasing his awesome range. However, it should be noted that he uses a different pseudonym for each credit. He's credited as David Lucas for Mayan, Steven Jay for Dolph and David Jeremy for Amazon. Hell, David Jeremy isn't even listed on his Wiki as one of his pseudonyms. Steve Jay is the biggest clue as his full name is Steven Jay Blum, but why use that credit on Dolph when the best work in this feature was as Mayan?

Other than Frol, everyone else was decent.

Bottomline: Yes, there are glaring plotholes and inconsistencies with the story. Yes, it's very dated. Yes, some of the epilogue entries are just dumb. However, I don't find it bad at all. The situations are tense, the characters can be fun when they have time to relax, and you do care for most of them even if you don't learn a great deal about some of them. The premise is pretty interesting and they do bring enough to the table in terms of twists and other parts of the story such as Tada's connection to the ship to spice things up a bit more. You could probably make a riff on this, but it would never be my first choice of MST3K material. It's just not that bad and there is so much worse out there. I'd gladly watch it again, and anyone who's up for that warm old animation style, some interesting situations and maybe some cheesiness, I'd gladly recommend it. It's not perfect, but I had fun.

Recommended Audience: No blood, some incredibly minor violence, no nudity, no sex, hell they're even too shy to talk about genitalia in the proper terms. E for everyone.

[DarkToph]

Bamboo Blade Review



Rating: 8.5/10

Plot: The Moroe High Kendo Team is in seriously bad shape. They have very few members and their instructor seems more motivated by food and money than actually helping improve his team. However, after building up a decent team of both newbies and experienced kendo fighters for the club in order to fight another school on the basis of a bet between their instructor and his old senpai, both he and the team get rared up and ready to fight harder, get stronger, celebrate the victories and deal with the losses.

Reasons for Rating: Bamboo Blade isn't your typical sports anime, and I say that for two reasons; 1 -  it's about kendo and 2 – the team being focused on is mostly girls. Boys really have the market cornered when it comes to sports anime.

I have to say, this show got me really interested in wanting to learn kendo. Too bad there's no place within a reasonable distance of me to learn at.

It's difficult for me to really analyze the story. It encompasses about one full year of the team's various trials and tribulations. It's a realistic look at what a team actually goes through instead of being one of those predictable sports anime, shows or movies where the underdog constantly wins because that's the rules of sports shows. In fact, the team is in three different tournaments in the entirety of the series and they don't really put that much emphasis on them. I mean, yeah they're pumped about them but they don't showcase many matches, they don't put a huge weight on the outcome and it's clear that the entire tournament is really about one match or two. That's both...disappointing and refreshing at the same time. I say disappointing because, in sports anime, it really is supposed to be a big event to have a tournament. Hell, even Pokemon gives their tournaments a few episodes at least, but in Bamboo Blade, the tournaments are always over within one episode.

Let's talk about the characters.



Tamaki or Tama is an extremely shy (and by that I mean I had to keep my computer's volume on high just to understand her most of the time) tiny freshman girl who also happens to be a prodigy at kendo. She was taught kendo since the day she was old enough to properly hold a shinai by her father, a well known and respected kendo instructor who runs his own dojo at their house. After showcasing her skills with a sword.....well, okay, broom, Kirino is itching to have Tama join their team, but Tama states that she views kendo as more of a chore instead of an enjoyable activity and declines.

Later, she finds out that the kendo club is being terrorized by two bullies who are the main reason why the kendo club has lost so many members. In defense of the members of the club, she beats the bullies in a match and officially joins the club.

Tama's a very nice character and another welcome change from the loud and egotistical main characters that usually spawn up in sports anime. She's also essentially our main focus in the show.....however, you may notice that I used a word that I really hate to use in sports and gaming anime.....'prodigy'.

Yeah, Tama's a kendo prodigy who can't be touched by anyone on their team, not even their instructor. She easily takes down people twice her size and age with ease and everyone is always amazed by her skills and speed. And yes, it does get annoying after a certain point because it essentially devolves into the messiah trope. Everything always rides on Tama's shoulders and it really seems like, a lot of time, it's up to the others to merely keep the team's head above water while Tama ensures their win.

Tama's not without weakness. Like I said, she's incredibly shy to a fault. She's quick to get flustered in situations that she doesn't know how to deal with, as long as it's not kendo. But when it does come to kendo she's nearly untouchable.

I say nearly untouchable because her biggest weakness in kendo is when anyone takes the high stance, an advanced stance that Tama's deceased mother usually took when fighting. When people take this stance against her, she always tenses up and becomes extremely distracted. However, due to the fact that this stance is for advanced fighters, hardly anyone uses it against her.

Characters like that almost always have to succumb to the other trope of the 'fallen hero'. Eventually Tama loses a match, and because she's such a prodigy who has never once lost a match, she is utterly shattered by this revelation that she can indeed lose to the point where she actually resigns from the team.

It's basically like Yugi's first loss in YGO only without the catatonic state and having a loved one's soul on the line.

I mean, I've never been nearly so good at something that I've never lost at it, so maybe I just can't relate, but when you're on a team of people who frequently lose and still manage to get back up every time and learn from it, what kind of message is that sending them to quit after your very first loss EVER? Hell, her first loss coincides exactly with another character, Miya-Miya, also basically quitting kendo because she also lost in the same tournament Tama did, but the reason she quit was because she had NEVER ONCE WON IN KENDO even after training her ass off for months.

Tama is a really good character and despite the messiah-ism, she is very enjoyable to watch while fighting. To be fair, she actually had a fairly good reason for being as affected by that loss as she was. She still viewed kendo as a chore with her ultimate goal being to do nothing but win, and it didn't help that her team was constantly shoving it in her face that she was a shoe-in and would definitely win no matter what. When she finally lost, she also lost that sense of purpose and had to decide whether she still viewed kendo as a chore or if she now truly enjoyed it.

Tama has a strong sense of righteousness and justice, which is part of what drives her to join the kendo team to begin with. This is due to the fact that Tama's actually quite the big anime geek, most notably with a Power Rangers (or more to the point, Super Sentai) -type series called Blade Bravers. Tama's soft-spoken and generally passive attitude can easily be felled when Blade Bravers or anime is involved, She's especially inspired by the leader of the Blade Bravers, the Red Braver, whom she bases much of her personal philosophy on.

Her one true rival over the course of the series is actually someone who idolized a character named Shinaider, a villain and I guess anti-hero in Blade Bravers.



Ishida is the team's instructor and, at first, he really comes off as a lazy and somewhat flippant kendo instructor. He leaves most of the team's activities to the team captain, Kirino, in the beginning and really only becomes inspired to actually make something of his team after gathering more members for a match between his girls' team and that of his old senpai, Ishibashi, on the basis of a bet. Ishida lives paycheck to paycheck and is constantly scrounging together money, even from his students, to barely be able to eat. Thus the bet is that Ishibashi will take him out to a sushi dinner if he wins and Ishibashi gets the trophy Ishida won from their last kendo tournament if he loses. Ishida doesn't give a crap about the trophy, he just wants the sushi.

However, he eventually matures and grows to deeply care about his team and wishes nothing more for them than to grow and get stronger while also having as much fun as possible.



Kirino is the team captain and has been called the heart of the team by Ishida. Kirino is by far the most enthusiastic and optimistic of the team and she basically stood as the team's sole member before recruiting the others. Kirino is always the first to cheer on her teammates and she does it loudly and proudly. She is also not one to ever discount or look down upon fellow team members, no matter their skill level or even their attitude. She seems like a really great person to have as a friend. Kirino's biggest weakness is the fact that she overextends herself to please others and always puts on a smiling face no matter how much she's going through.



Yuji is one of very few male members of the team and he's a very handsome lawn ornament—I mean character! Yeah that...Look as much as I like Yuji as a character, he's very nice, well spoken, knowledgeable in kendo etc.....he doesn't do much...He's just kinda there. He gives pep talks to characters, usually Tama, but as a team member, he doesn't do much.

See, since the focus is mostly on the girls' team, this means that almost all of the male team's activities are non-existent. Yuji usually spars with the only other active male member of the club, that he actually recruited, Danjuro or Donny and really that's about the only person you even see him fighting at all. It's a shame too because Yuji seems to be almost as passionate and knowledgeable at kendo as Tama. He was on his junior high team and was part of the dojo that Tama's father runs. It's also implied that Yuji and Tama have a bit of a thing going together, but the hints that are there are fairly subtle and they're both clueless about the opposite sex.

It's even worse considering that he doesn't even really grow or change at all over the series. Donny at least shows that he's getting better and has clear weaknesses that need to be addressed (his height allowing for easy head strikes) while also showcasing his actual strengths. With Yuji, there's nothing. Again, he's just kinda there.



Danjuro or Donny as he's nicknamed in the English dub, is a very short and weird looking little guy who is full of enthusiasm and on some occasions himself. He's recruited by Yuji after Ishida informs him that they need more members, though his membership is basically moot since, as I said, the boys' team really does nothing. Donny's a very laid back and kind individual as well as being Yuji's best friend, but he's mostly preoccupied with his girlfriend, Miya-Miya, who most people can't believe he's dating due to their stark contrast in physical appearance. They're usually being INCREDIBLY lovey-duvey with each other and it's somewhat weird in the first few episodes, but their relationship actually grows and becomes very sweet over time......even if Miya-Miya initially liked Donny because he reminded her of her old pet pangolin....



Speaking of Miyako or Miya-Miya, she was arguably the most complex character and a really surprising one at that. When she first showed up, she really seemed like she'd be an annoying ditz who only cared about her boyfriend and nothing else, but she evolves quite a bit and there is definitely more to her than meets the eye.

Miya-Miya is actually a very angry, dark and violent individual to the point where she's almost a bully to some people, especially Azuma. When not talking to or being looked at by Donny, she presents a visible dark aura that freaks out nearly everyone. She's recruited by Donny and initially finds kendo boring, but the darker side of her loves the fact that she gets to fight. She is the greenest member of the team alongside Donny, but whereas Donny (supposedly) grows so much to the point that Yuji says he might surpass him by the time they graduate, Miya-Miya struggles quite a bit and never once wins a match over the course of the series until the very end.

She has two big weaknesses; 1 – The fact that her anger and that she loves to hit people seriously gets in the way of her moves. She fights very aggressively and while this can sometimes work to intimidate fighters, it also results in very sloppy swings, attacks and footwork, allowing her opponents to easily find openings for attack. Sometimes, this anger even causes her to make possibly dangerous moves. For example, she's the first to showcase a throat strike, which is considered the most dangerous legal move in kendo that only advanced fighters are supposed to employ.

2 – She has a stalker from her old school named Reimi who freaks her out so much just at a glance that she quickly loses concentration and ends up losing. She does eventually get much better both in attitude and skill, and I'm always up for an underdog story.



Saya is Kirino's best friend and the only other lasting member of the kendo club besides Kirino and the bullies, Iwada and Toyama, before the others join. However, Saya's initial participation in the club was widely unreliable because of how consumed she gets by wanting to create a wonderful song or great story. She always finds failures in these areas, which commonly devastates her to the point where her friends treat her outbursts of depression and even suicidal remarks with flippant responses. Saya doesn't really change much over the course of the series either, but she is a very close friend to Kirino and is always the first to realize when something is wrong with her.



Azuma is the final member of the team to join in order to make a full five member kendo team to be official in tournaments. It takes her half the series to actually become a character with only very brief appearances beforehand. There's sadly not much to say about Azuma. Both the ED and the OP make her look pretty bad as I had assumed that she was going to be one of those incredibly annoying characters whose only schtick is constantly falling over, but she's actually fairly bland.

She's a talented kendo practitioner who ended up quitting kendo when she reached high school. Despite her hard work, constant studying and dedication to her schoolwork, her grades continuously falter because she's so scatterbrained and makes little mistakes that end up costing her greatly. Since her parents believed kendo was only distracting her more and making her worse, she promised to give up kendo to improve her grades. However, it was noted that she is actually incredibly focused and calculating when she is fighting, and she was convinced by the team to hone these skills to actually help her grades. Along the way Kirino and Donny, who are actually some of the best students at the school, help improve her with her schoolwork. However, this plotline is never brought up again after she joins so we just have to assume it worked.

Azuma is somewhat of a doormat, and she's the target of some abuse by Miya-Miya. However, despite this, Azuma actually becomes somewhat of Miya-Miya's own personal kendo teacher, especially after Miya-Miya finds a drive to train much harder in order to beat an American opponent (who obviously has a bitchy attitude, snotty manner of speaking, red hair, huge lips and huge boobs) named Carrie who also has a crush on Donny because he reminds her of her pet armadillo.

Can I just say it's freakin' weird to want to pursue a relationship with someone on the basis that they remind you of an animal?

There are various side characters, mostly opposing kendo teams, who get varying degrees of spotlight. Most of these characters are funny and likable, but they didn't get enough spotlight in my opinion. I would've liked to have seen a sequel to get a rematch against most of the people we saw them fight.

In terms of learning about the sport, you do learn a fair degree about the footwork, stances, terms, strikes and strategies involved in kendo, and I really enjoyed learning about the sport as it's always been one to intrigue me after seeing it showcased in several forms of media.

This show handles both the drama and the comedy extremely well. None of the drama was unbelievable or seemed like it was thrown in to hook audiences. Some of the situations seemed a bit hokey like the tournament involving a serious cheater (and by serious I mean she injures people before the match to either make them quit before the match even starts or to humiliate them and make them suffer during the match if they decide to fight anyway) but it's nothing too drastic.

Art: The art was very sharp, bright and appealing. It mixed a shoujo-like style with more realistic very well. The animation was also very fluid and clean with nary a hiccup or odd scene in sight.

Music: I really loved the music, OP, ED and BG for the series. It's somewhat generic, but it adds its own flare to make it more unique. Although, I'd like to know what 'I'm calling the star rise' means....I will say that one of the sentimental pieces of BG music was starting to get irritating. Considering that there's one to five tender moments in nearly every episode, it starts to get grating, but only towards the very end.

Voice acting: English - Funimation provides superb quality yet again. The English dub was excellent, maybe one of their best works I've seen so far. Only thing I'd note is that Tama is just too quiet sometimes.

Bottomline: This is a very enjoyable sports anime with plenty to enjoy in terms of characters, story, comedy, drama and of course kendo. Even if you don't like sports anime or kendo, this is still a good watch just for the characters, comedy and the actually believable storyline.

Recommended Audience: This show is basically as clean as you could possibly get. Even the episode that states 'first public bath' shows no nudity (in fact, I'd call foul on that title because they completely skip the bath scene entirely). There's no real swearing, no sex, no blood, no gore. The absolute worse thing that happens is one of the characters injures their ankle, and even that's just a bad sprain. E FOR EVERYONE!

[Picard]

I can sort of understand the quitting on first loss thing in anime. When you've been winning all the time for so long and everyone's depending on you to win all the time, you'd feel like you've let your whole team down when you lose, because you're basically the team's trump card. It's also present (in some fashion) in other sports/competition-based shows like Chihayafuru, where the team's morale drops and gets utterly stressed out when they realize their team's best is losing and they themselves feel like they can't win anymore. When you do lose, you feel like you've' lost your purpose in the team, and you may as well quit.

[DarkToph]

I''s (From I''s) Review



Rating: 4/10

Plot: It's summer vacation for Ichitaka and he wants to spend it with his crush Iori, but she decides to spend her summer working hard on her acting career like Ichitaka's childhood friend Itsuki did by going to the States to work on her sculpting career for big time Hollywood movies......These people are in high school. Anyway, he decides to spend his summer vacation traveling around on his bicycle instead and completely forgets that he made a promise ten years ago with Itsuki and another childhood friend Yosuke to meet back up at a nearby shrine. However, Yosuke and Itsuki don't forget and travel to the shrine only to meet with life-threatening circumstances.

Reasons for Rating: I had a very iffy relationship with this series' successor I''s Pure. And yeah, it's supposed to have two apostrophes (or one quotation?) I don't know why. I found Ichitaka to be very stalkery and the overall story to just be fairly blech. I decided to revisit the series by checking out the original two episode OVA and seeing if there's a better story here.

Mm. Nope.

This series showcases a problem I never even truly realized in I''s Pure; Iori and Ichitaka have no chemistry whatsoever. The entire relationship seems completely one-sided and even when Iori reciprocates, there's nothing there. It's completely hollow. He has more chemistry with Itsuki, but he'd much rather chase after Iori for some reason. And the chemistry with Itsuki isn't even that much in this series.

I won't go step by step for this, even if it is two episodes, but I can lay out the entire thing for you in summary.

Ichitaka still has the hots for Iori but she barely shows any affection for him. He's not really stalkery this time around, it's mostly your average crush gawking, so that's a bonus.

The start of episode one is so slow, and it takes well over half the run time for something to actually happen. Ichitaka accidentally bumps into Iori who is shooting a bunch of....'scenes' for a movie. I say that because....it's more like she's modeling on video than she is making a movie or show. She never has any dialogue and never works with any other actors. She just poses and does stuff for the camera. What kind of acting is she pursuing?

He gets hit on by a bunch of hot girls for some reason after being rescued by them and we see Itsuki returning from the States to fulfill her promise. We also see Yosuke driving around on a motorcycle with a bunch of other bikers supposedly both leading them to Iori, whom I'm not even sure why or how he knows her, especially after seemingly being gone for a long time, and meeting with Itsuki and Ichitaka. It's clear that these guys are just the most over the top and insane generic biker bad guys ever, and they clearly have sexual assault on their to-do list for when they meet Iori so I have no clue why Yosuke agreed to lead these guys to her considering he seems like a really nice guy.....a really nice guy with awful, stilted and completely unreal dialogue.

When they make their intentions clear, even brandishing a knife, Yosuke drives off and the other bikers follow. He passes the tracks that Itsuki's following and the bikers just stab him and push him into the lake that, and this is really important to remember because they keep repeating it, wasn't there when they were kids.

They realize Itsuki is a witness, one who doesn't even realize that the victim was her friend Yosuke, and chase her as well.

The first six minutes of episode two is just the last six minutes of episode one. Hooray laziness! Thanks Studio Pierrot!

The leader guy wants to be really clear that he's the bad guy so he licks the bloody knife (that's sanitary) and also grinds the knife on the ground as he rides to be super intimidating and stuff. Yeah, that knife is going to be totally dull as crap once he stops that, but whatevs.

They also voice that, since they can't have Iori, they'll just **** Itsuki instead and then kill her. Because transparent bad guy dialogue.

Meanwhile, Ichitaka and Iori finally have their second conversation of the show and he decides to take her on a boat ride to some island that they say binds two lovers forever when they go there. They both know this, have no romantic development whatsoever, but a crush and a blush will have to do.

As Ichitaka arrives at the island, he realizes that the entire lake is the land that Itsuki, Yosuke and he used to play in, but they built a dam and now it's a lake. He also remembers the promise that he made to meet up in the future just as he hears Itsuki's cries for help back on shore as she's being captured by the super bad guy gang of evil people. Ichitaka leaves Iori on the island for some reason and rows back to shore. Yeah, in reality, they would have kidnapped her and been long gone by the time he reached shore or she'd be sexually assaulted and dead. But eh it's a romance story I think maybe, so super Ichitaka rides his valiant row boat to save Itsuki.

He fends off the other two thugs for a minute with an oar, but Itsuki gets easily captured by Knifeman who rides off on his motorcycle.

Ichitaka's friends, three of which are completely foreign to me, one of which being Teratani (yay!) fend off the thugs while Ichitaka pursues Itsuki. Two perfectly usable motorcycles on the ground; pursues them on foot. Genius.

He takes a shortcut over a rotting footbridge as a downpour starts. The bridge breaks, but happens to break directly over Itsuki and Knifeman and he totally Tarzans her away from him, causing him to crash. They fall into a rushing river and we cut to them safe on a nearby shrine saved by Yosuke. I honestly do not understand Yosuke's character in the least....at all.

Yosuke's a ghost, let's get that out of the way, but Itsuki doesn't realize he's a ghost and thinks the guy named Yosuke who looks exactly like the Yosuke she used to know and has a picture of the same little bear thing on the back of his helmet as the toy he got her when they were kids, is a different person.

They see that the island Iori's on is flooding, so Ichitaka runs to a secret entrance in the shrine that Yosuke and Ichitaka discovered when they were kids that conveniently leads right to the shrine on the island she's on through a cave.

Yosuke says that now that he's met the two of them again, he can rest in peace. Wow, really, that promise that Ichitaka didn't even remember and wouldn't have remembered if he didn't fall into this place while traveling, the one that nothing really hung on, was keeping this guy from passing on? Well, okay. Just get a better writer and acting lessons in heaven, please.

He finds his old beloved basketball that he buried near the shrine because that sure would be completely inflated and looking like new after being buried for 10+ years right? And uses it as a float to save Iori who is not even making an effort to....ya know...swim. It's never stated that she can't swim and she's not trapped in a room filling with water, she's out in a lake and it's merely raining. The water's not even choppy. See, that's why people who can't swim need to wear life jackets even in leisurely boat rides on a lake.

All's good again. Itsuki still doesn't realize Yosuke's dead even after the bad guys were caught by the police, seem to have admitted everything and are clearly in the water looking for a body.

And....that's it. The end. That was....something. I don't know how to feel about this OVA. The story's fine I guess, but it does have various problems. Yosuke's a hit and run character who is supposed to be more important yet never gets developed at all. His role was ultimately confusing on all aspects. Why was he with those guys? How did he know Iori? Why was he leading them to her when they're clearly awful people? Why was his dialogue so unforgivably awful? I know I'm still on that but geez.

There's really a big lack of romance, which is a very significant problem for a romance series. Iori and Ichitaka have no chemistry, no development, no nothing. They go to an island for lovers that seems stupid for them to go to considering they haven't even dated yet or even discussed romantic feelings, he rescues her from drowning and then they share a small look at the beach at the end. Even if Ichitaka was creepy and stalkery in I''s Pure, at least there was something there between the two of them, albeit very very minor. Here, it's nothing.

Despite liking Itsuki more than Iori for Ichitaka, he never views her as a romantic interest and she barely shows any inkling of romantic interest in him here as opposed to Pure. At the very least he didn't think twice to ditch Iori to save Itsuki from the thugs here instead of deciding to stay on a date with Iori while Itsuki could've been burning alive or dead like Pure.

Teratani's role is tragically short, the other side characters get no development at all. I don't even know the other two girls' names. The silver haired guy named Koshinae is apparently a skilled martial artist. And he's also gay according to wiki. So there ya go.

The dialogue is really clunky and exposition-y. As I mentioned, Yosuke's is the worst, but it's prevalent all over.

Art and Animation: The art's okay. The animation, especially during the bridge scene, is blech. They reuse footage and flashback to scenes we've already seen like it's going out of style too.

Music: The music was forgettable for the most part. The ending theme was forgettable and bad. Not a pain to listen to but it's just ech.

Voice Acting: English Dub: Also completely meh. None of the voices stood out, though it seems like the bikers were a little too into their roles. Yosuke's VA either needed better direction or just was completely wrong for this role because he sounds so bad.

Bottomline: I can't bring myself to really say this is better or worse than I''s Pure. There's less character development than Pure, but the story's kinda better and Ichitaka's not a stalker here, he's just pretty bland. And there's the big problem of the lack of romance in this romance anime. Given the various flaws and good aspects, it's basically on par with Pure in terms of quality but for completely different reasons.

Recommended Audience: There's some mild fanservice and talk about sexual assault, no nudity, no sex, mild swearing, one closeup shot of a stabbing. 13+

[DarkToph]

A Very DT Holiday Special FINALE! - Tokyo Godfathers Review



Rating: 9.5/10

Plot: Three homeless people, a drunk/gambler washed up father, a crossdresser/homosexual man and a teenage runaway find a baby amidst some trash. With only few clues as to who her parents are, the three set out on a mission to find the baby's parents to decide whether they should return her or contact the police.

Breakdown: Welcome to the AVDTHS finale! And despite not getting in nearly as much as I wanted to review this year, I did stick to my guns on my finale date this time as opposed to Halloween where I was a weasel. :x

And what better way to close out the holiday season than with anime?

Technically, this isn't much of a Christmas movie. While the entire movie plays out over the Christmas season with the movie spanning what seems like Christmas to New Years, there isn't much connection to Christmas outside of decorations, a few songs and the implication that Kiyoko, the baby, has it in with God.

That being said, this is still a Christmas movie, and a damn good one beyond that. This is another of Satoshi Kon's babies....no pun intended, and it really does have his style all over it.

While not being gut-busting funny, the movie does have several laugh-out-loud moments and the characters both major and minor are very memorable and their stories are very interesting and well-written. Only Gin, the washed up father, might have a slightly cliché backstory.

The story has a very straightforward path, get baby to parents, but this is one of those movies that seems more about the journey than the destination. The various hurdles that they have to jump to find Kiyoko's parents are both believable and hit all the rights intended notes.

For instance, there's a scene where Gin gets jumped by a bunch of teenage asshats who just want to beat the crap out of a homeless person (and a dead old homeless person as well) for no reason other than entertainment. This is a really hard to watch scene, especially since they steal something very important to him, resulting in him getting beaten even worse in an attempt to get it back. Just when you think he might die, they top off the scene with a great joke to lighten the mood. The joke doesn't seem out of place or even out of character for the sake of a joke, and that type of sudden contrast can only be pulled off with real finesse.

While the characters are all very funny in their own right, they each have fairly sad stories that really make you feel for each of them. All of the emotions here, over the top for comedy effect or not, are all very genuine.

The story, while seeming very straightforward, had several twists and turns that I honestly didn't see coming, especially the twist with Kiyoko's mother.

If I had any qualms with it, the story seems a little too convenient at times. They just happen to stumble upon people from their past, the exact clue to where they need to go etc. a lot during this movie and it's only towards the end where you really start to notice, but still. This can be explained away by possibly whatever connection Kiyoko may or may not have to God, but *shrug* According to the Wiki page, these coincidences are done on purpose to showcase the little connections that we may have even with strangers to strongly link us together. Still, it can seem a bit wonky sometimes.

Also, I would've liked more exploration on Miyuki's, the runaway, story. Her dad may or may not have done something to her pet cat that made her stab him in the stomach. He later says he has the cat and it's fine, so I don't know what happened there.

The art and animation are fantastic, yet another Madhouse production, and the city feels so well done that you really feel like you're there.

The music is also great with Christmas music, some classical selections and a somewhat jazzy BG set melded together.

The voice acting (Japanese) really shines here. Everyone is just fantastic in their roles, especially Hana's VA, Yoshiaki Umegaki.

Bottomline: This may not be putting the spotlight entirely on Christmas, but it is still a feel-good Christmas movie with great characters, a fantastic story, plenty of action, drama and comedy and just a great experience overall. I can see myself watching this at least a few more times in the near future.

And that, sadly, closes out A Very DT Holiday Special. Here's to next year!

Recommended Audience: Some rather crass homophobic slurs get tossed around, and there's some other swearing. There are also a couple of suicide attempts and one guy gets shot up. In terms of nudity, there are a couple boob shots but both of them are for the sake of breastfeeding so make of that what you will. 13+