Blade
Short Synopsis: Our lead character hunts vampires.
And the final installment of the marvel adaptations is Blade. Once again, a solid opening. It really seems like Iron Man was the bad apple in the series, because the others had some pretty good starts. Blade too: this episode was an interesting combination between horror and action, and it hit a lot of right notes: the animation isn’t as good as the X-Men, but it still convincingly takes second place: the action looks gorgeous and the images are very creative, especially that birth scene. The protagonist Blade kicks ass, the female lead looks to be an interesting co-star, the creators made the right decision to immediately establish and introduce the main villain, and there are no teenagers in sight. Oh, and this series of course also deserves points for having an actual black characters. It’s been ages since we’ve had one of those. Overall, this episode feels like it takes the middle ground in the Marvel franchise: it doesn’t have the animation nor setting of the X-Men, but on the other hand it also doesn’t have Hisako and it doesn’t try to pretend to be anything more than it is. On the other hand it doesn’t have the fight choreography of Wolverine, but the animation and acting is much better there (although there is still quite a bit of ham). If this gets done right and if it manages to combine the best out of the previous X-Men series, this could very well become the best in the series.
OP: Pretty much what we’ve come to expect from the Marvel-series, although I have to say that I like the designs a lot.
ED: Unlike the other Marvel anime EDs and a lot simpler. It works.
Potential: 80%
Rou Kyuu Bu!
Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to coach a junior high basketball team.
Okay. Look. I have been looking forward to this season a lot. It’s promising to be an awesome season. But this was completely abysmal. In every single way. The creators did it: they somehow succeeded into making every single character a pain to watch. This is complete and utter fanservice with some of the most terrible script-writing, just caching in on popular trends. The voice acting is utterly terrible from the moment the five lead girls opened their mouths, and aside from that they all are completely stereotypical. The entire episode was just uninspired dialogue and fanservice over and over, but the worst thing is that it actually tries to take itself seriously: this episode kept hinting in the most unsubtle hints that half the cast has a dark past with some of the ham-handed build-up imaginable. This is pretty much the archetype of what’s wrong with modern anime.
OP: The song… is exactly the same as every other generic moe girls OP. Seriously, it’s like a direct copy with perhaps a bit of a louder drum base.
ED: Brings obnoxious to new levels.
Potential: 0%
Double J
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a random high school girl.
What happened to the days of Hanoka, when the flash anime actually put some effort in their animation? Seriously, Double J is the latest in a string of utterly horrid Flash shows that could have easily been out-produced by a bunch of high-schoolers. I can only imagine how ridiculously cheap these are to make, and ever since Tono to Issho they just keep coming and coming, but there really has been an explosion of them during the past year (most of which I refuse to review). Double J is an evil one, though. It is a very evil one. Most of the episode was exactly what it says on the tin: random girls talking. It’s far from the worst of the genre because at the very least it didn’t try to deliver the most awful jokes with a straight face. But then the ED arrived and they showed that the producers actually DID get a really good animator for this show. Seriously, if the rest of the animation of this series was even a tenth of how good that was, I’d watch it. Instead we got these ridiculously cheap series that just hope that some random otaku find the girls cute enough to buy it…
OP: Just a random CG thingy that even I could have made with the right tools.
ED: Now this is some awesome animation!
Potential: 10%
I didn’t understand any of it, because I watched it raw, but, yeah the visuals are pretty bad. There isn’t any attempt to hide the fact that the characters are animated on top of a still reference photo; they could easily have improved the look by processing the photo so that it looked like someone drew or painted it. The characters are not consistently designed from one character or another (meaning that some characters were drawn with a style that was inconsistent from the other characters, and look like they belong on a different show). Of course the animation quality in terms of fluidity is non-existant; the characters jerk back and forth from expression to expression.
Now on the positive side, the VAs were pretty good, which makes me think Japan really knows how to turn out competent Voice Actors; they must be a 100-yen per dozen there.
A lot of fanboys get a kick out of watching random girls talk. Judging from your review, this is a pretty worthless show.
Honestly, if you are going to make a “flash anime,” then at least put some effort into the comedy. Seriously, just look at Fireball Charming. It was hilarious, and it only had two-minutes to be such.
What makes it worse is that the Double-J manga is from the same guy as Cromartie High School, which I loved.
Odd, the OP to Rou seems… really out of place. It was half expecting them to either activate their super powers, get in a mech, or fight a vampire.
I don’t believe you in anything!
wtf -_- why is a loli driving car.
“Oh, and this series of course also deserves points for having an actual black characters”
Yes! and please dont anyone say Tiger and Bunny…I mean Black characters that are actually part of…*society* as in not just gay okamas, some random token boss guy that you see every now and again, or some overgeneralization (you know Big body BLACK skin and big giant RED lips) like actual CHARACTER that people can relate to. I felt that anime and Japan in general is just too afraid of putting black people in a positive light so they just resorted to making black people look stupid or *abnormal* in some way, and really being black myself, I find myself face palming at the horrible depictions of the very few black people in anime, especially since is seems that all Japanese people want to be white or something (blond hair blue eyed bishounen on pretty much 99% of anime series I have ever seen. . .) it is a breath of fresh air to see black people in a show that are taken seriously as characters. Maybe its becuase Obama is president now, I know that the main spokesman for the SoftBank phones is a black guy who looks like a decent member of Society (which is why I switched to them…seriously) So maybe Black people can be finally seen as…well you know “people” instead of Caricatures.
the future is looking up.
My comment above was based on watching Double-J raw. Now that I have been able to catch it subbed, the topic (traditional arts) is actually pretty interesting. The approach was clever, so I was amused, although it would be a stretch to call the show hilarious. I’ll definitely check out another episode to see what happens.
I checked out the Double J ED, and it’s really nice. Doesn’t suit the crappy animation of the episode at all.