Author: psgels

Ah, how refreshing. Finally we have a modern-day series which doesn’t focus on a teenager, or even a person in his or her twenties or thirties. What we have here is a man in his forties in the middle of his mid-life crisis. A nice twist when compared to all the geeky schoolboys and the busty schoolgirls who seem to run after them. Though that’s not all. This is not an ordinary salary-man, he’s an ex-rock-star, longing back to his days of glory. Add in a love-affair, a bunch of quirky side-characters and a number of space-ships, and you’ve got yourself a great concept for an anime.

Yes, you read that last part right. This anime has a rather peculiar premise. Evil aliens are on a mission to conquer the section of outer space in which the earth resides, and the only thing which can stop them is “The Ultimate Weapon”, which can only be triggered by the main character’s “groove” when he’s playing the guitar. For a seven-year-old anime, it really had some fresh ideas. And, of course, seeing a bunch of middle-aged guys in business-suits play in a rockband was just extremely cool to see. Who said that all salarymen were boring? ^^

This anime gets accompanied by a really good combination of comedy, action and drama-scenes. The drama is very heavy at times, though the comedy-parts make sure that the show doesn’t drown in its own mood. This makes sure that you can really feel along with the characters during the climaxes, and get cracked up during the funny parts.

Still, despite these good points there are three major bad points in this anime. The first and most obvious one is the ED. Black Heaven comes with a great soundtrack. Seeing as our main character used to play in a heavy-metal band, the anime goes accompanied by several heavy-metal-songs, each of them lays a huge focus on the electric guitar, making this the perfect soundtrack for this show. The OP also consists of a rocking tune, combined with interesting video-material which makes you wonder whether the guys who did the OP for Sci-Fi Harry had any say in it. But then the ED comes, and somehow, the creators managed to slip a cheesy j-pop song in. God… the horror. Even for j-pop, it was an abomination, which made me rush to the stop-button as soon as every episode finished. Naturally this rather ruined the cliff-hangers.

The second bad point is the romance. Good romances, and especially love-triangles are very hard to do right, and unsurprisingly, Black Heaven isn’t one of these anime which provided a nice twist to this. It starts out good, however, with a rather comical note. See, the case is this. The main character has been married with his wife for a nice couple of years now, when he meets up with his newly transferred busty blonde secretary who actually happens to be one of the commanding aliens on the space-fleet which was assigned to defend earth, and the two fall in love with each other. His relationship with his wife is interesting. His relationship with his “secretary” isn’t. It’s just stale, poorly developed, boring and full of clichés.

The third bad point is a small one, though it did annoy me at times. I’ve watched a fair amount of anime up till now, but never, and I mean NEVER have I ran into one who realizes that there isn’t any SOUND in space.

Overall, this is an anime with its good points and bad points. though I really have to say that the good points majorly overweight the bad points. Especially if you’re a fan of heavy-metal it’s worth to check this out, simply because you’ll get to see how a ex-rockstar spends his life, what he thinks, and how he longs back. Though even if you’re not really into that genre of music, it’s worth to check this out. It’s got a great set of characters, it’s fun to watch, there’s a nice pacing so you won’t get bored and there’s a rather creepy final antagonist.

Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran really felt refreshing when I watched its first episode. I’ve been watching so many serious samurai-anime, full of realism, death, poverty and suffering that it was very nice to actually see a light-hearted samurai-series. This show doesn’t care whether it’s true to history or not, great for a bit of variety.

The overall story is nothing special. All the events tie around two travellers who keep running into each other, and get attached to each other. They’ve got interesting characters, though. Ran is a nice twist to the silent samurai due to her love for sake and Meow (yes, there’s a character named Meow in this show. You’ll understand when you see her) is actually an interesting variation of the annoying impulsive brat. Each episode tells the story of either one of them getting involved with some kind of local problem, and dragging (almost literally) the other along with her into it.

Especially in the beginning, these stories are rather basic, though it’s clear that that’s not the thing the creators decided to focus on. There are two elements this anime relies on: the comedy and the fights, both succeeded very well, in my opinion. Especially the earlier episodes cracked me up when Ran kept annoying Meow, and vice versa. The battles also are surprisingly well done, for a show of this nature. There isn’t much tension, but the choreography has been done brilliantly. These fights really reminded me of Jubei-Chan 2, though less extreme, perhaps.

The weak point, though, lies in the middle part of this anime. The anime consists out of 13 episodes, and with episodes five till eight, the novelty of the concept begins to wear off. Where the first four episodes managed to crack me up lots of times, these only made me chuckle once or twice, and the fact that the stories all look like each other (as in, Meow and Ran arrive, they run into people, they overhear bad guys, Ran slashes bad guys, Meow and Ran leave) begins to get more annoying by the minute. The fact that Ran is almost invincible and wins every fight with ease doesn’t do much good either.

Thankfully, the final five episodes manage to recover from this when Meow runs into a childhood friend. Starting from this point, the stories get more complex, and actually touching. Ran actually gets beaten by a likable enemy, and we see an old friend of her return as well. These five episodes actually managed to make me care about its characters. This series is one of the few comedy-anime which successfully managed to insert drama and serious scenes into its final episodes. Something which definitely deserves credit.

Overall, it’s been a nice watch, even though it was nothing amazing. It’s a good series for a quick watch, and it does belong in the category of successful comedies. I’m also still wondering why other shounen-series won’t look at the fights of this anime for inspiration, instead of continuing with their slow, uninspired fighting scenes.