Supernatural was definitely an interesting experiment: produce 22 straight to DVD episodes, based on a popular American TV-series. Supernatural adapts the first two seasons of the Live-Action series, and delivers quite an excellent storyline in the process.
The series is episodic, and follows the “First half Random stories, second half plot”-format. In the first half it takes a look at all sorts of supernatural phenomena, and it always tries to make things more or deeper than what they seem at first. Some stories are better than others, but they always make sure to also build up to an overall storyline in some way, or give mode depth to the main characters. It really gets going however when the second half arrives and the characters and main plot go and stand into the spotlight. There is a ton of character development and every episode just finds some way of making things more interesting.
It’s a series that loves to give its own spin on familiar concepts. At first you might think that this show has a lot of tropes, but it always uses them significantly different from what you’d expect. This series is fresh, and makes use of it.
The big flaw of Supernatural is that at times the acting is a bit stiff, that leads to a number of cheesy scenes at times, especially in the first half of the show. As the series goes on though, the character development more than makes up for it. This series especially rocks in how it shows many different stages of the lead characters’ lives, This show doesn’t just have one flashback that shows about who they were when they were younger: it has a ton of them, and you can really see how the events they went through shaped their characters.
With very stylish visuals, Madhouse surely delivered on this series, after the disappointment that was Iron Man. The show looks gorgeous despite a tight animation budget, and it really has the plot and characters to make for an amazing watch.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 – Excellent version of the “first half random stories, second half plot”-format. Knows how to tell stories with twists and uses them really well. |
| Characters: | 9/10 – Terrific character development. |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 – Not consistent and has problems with making characters move believably, but the visual style is definitely impressive. |
| Setting: | 8/10 – Re-imagines folklore in quite an interesting way, and some parts are looked at with a surprising amount of detail. |
Suggestions:
– Witch Hunter Robin
– Rainbow
– Night Head Genesis
a deus ex machina ending is excellent?
Let’s just say that the ending would have been amazing without it. It was a deus ex machnina, but it had enough character development to make up for it.
Having watched the live-action, the anime did a great job to bring out the best of live-action story and also its own original story.
Yes, that the acting is a bit stiff and some jokes are a bit lame… guess it’s the Japanese style of joking which somehow made it awkward for the anime that has the modern day American cowboy theme.
Hope it get to cover live-action season 3-6, the serie just get better and better. And all the unanswered questions in the anime will be showed there. Really curious to see how they will designed the up-coming chracters, it’s one thing that I really like this show for it did not try to design overly moe-girls and bishonen to ruin the mood of noir drama theme.