Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

The Fire Hunter Anime Review – 31/100

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews, Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction, Reviews by Lenlo, The Fire Hunter

Novels. The progenitor. The alpha and the omega. So often ignored for its easier to digest kin, Light Novels and Web Novels, yet often containing some of the best stories I’ve ever experienced. In anime, they gave us works such as Run With the Wind, Tatami Galaxy and Fune wo Amu. However sometimes… Sometimes even Novels fail us, as they have by giving us todays topic. Animated by studio Signal MD, directed by Junji Nishumura of Vlad Love fame (?), with music by Kenji Kawai and art direction from Hiromasa Ogura, I give to you the most disappointing show of the Winter 2023 season: Hikari no Ou AKA The Fire Hunter.

Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for The Fire Hunter. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. Continue reading “The Fire Hunter Anime Review – 31/100” →

Wolf’s Rain – 9/10 [Misgivings/Moon’s Doom] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday, Wolf's Rain

Welcome back everyone, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! This week see’s return of Blue and the Hunter, Darcia makes a new friend, and the gang has a pest problem. Lots to talk about, so lets jump right in!

Before we get to deep into that though, I wanted to address some concerns regarding last weeks post. Namely, I think my concerns regarding Cheza were misunderstood. My fear was that Wolf’s Rain would treat her as a sort of McGuffin. That, based on her initial first impression, she would never become more. I wasn’t criticizing Wolf’s Rain, we had just met her after all, it would be ridiculous to do so. I even pointed out ways in which Wolf’s Rain had already started to avoid that. Rather I wanted to talk about what could happen in a lesser series. Something that I’ve seen anime screw up before, on this very website. So far though? Cheza isn’t bad. We haven’t seen enough to really judge her at all, I feel. At least until this week that is.

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 9/10 [Misgivings/Moon’s Doom] – Throwback Thursday” →

Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 11 [Scale of Hope]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea

Welcome everyone, to the grand finale for Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! Or at least the most finale we are going to get until the movie in October. I won’t lie, this week was a bit of a disappointment for me. Kaina really screwed the pooch at the end. There’s a lot of reasons for that though, so lets dive into them!

Starting off, more then anything Kaina’s ending felt rushed. It resolved more plot points in the last 3-4 minutes, from Valghia’s surrender to visiting the Canopy to convincing Ririha’s father of the Great Canopy Tree, than the other 20 minutes of the show combined. Considering Ririha lost the map in a fire, which apparently didn’t matter at all, it feels like an entire episode is missing from this finale. Some kind of “This is done, where do we look next” sort of epilogue. Knowing there is a movie coming softens this blow a bit, sure. But as a standalone season of TV, Kaina’s ending doesn’t feel that good. Considering the potential it had at the start of the season, that’s what I mean by disappointing.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 11 [Scale of Hope]” →

Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 10 [The Builder]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea

Welcome everyone, to the penultimate episode of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This week sees some questionable decisions, both in universe and out. What am I talking about? Well lets jump right in and talk about them.

Right off the bat, I have to ask… did the people of Kaina not know you could… melt… snow? Into water? Is that going to be how the Sage made as much water as he wanted? He just knew how to put a pot over some fire? I really hope that isn’t what just happened this week, because that would be a massive disappointment if so. Not only does it directly undermine the main conflict of the world, IE resource scarcity, it makes every character in the show seem like a moron. Especially when they have steam baths/saunas, which they presumably use… Snow… for. At least I hope they aren’t using their precious water resource for that. Suffice to say, if Kaina doesn’t give us a justification for what happened and what this means next episode, I will be massively disappointed.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 10 [The Builder]” →

Wolf’s Rain – 7/8 [The Flower Maiden/Song of Sleep] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday, Wolf's Rain

Welcome everyone, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! This week is a bit of a lore dump, but it’s an interesting lore dump, which is how it should be. We learn more about Darcia and Cheza while Cheza finally meets up with the wolves, all things I wasn’t expecting to happen for a while yet. So without further ado, lets dive into the episodes!

So starting off, the visuals. This is the first week that I really felt some cracks in Wolf’s Rain‘s production. Not due to any scheduling issues yet, more just the limitations of the time in which it was made. I’m of course talking about the CGI airship fight at the start of episode 7. It felt… off to me. The ship moved weirdly, the lasers didn’t look very good, and the whole sequence moved in a confusing manner. Once we got past that Wolf’s Rain was back to its old self for the most part, but this sequence definitely took me out of it after an otherwise stellar start. Beyond that, I also found the way Cheza fell through the air to be kinda silly. I get it, she’s spinning like a flower in the wind, it’s funny and fits how she’s styled. But it was also a little silly.

P.S. Apologies for the delay by the way, I had some trouble getting images this week.

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 7/8 [The Flower Maiden/Song of Sleep] – Throwback Thursday” →

Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 9 [Insignia of an Ancient Castle]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea

Welcome everyone, to another (late) episode of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! I really need to get my shit under control, these are taking way to long. Let this be a lesson about doing 4 shows in a season, you just get to busy. Speaking of busy, Kaina has a lot going on this week, so lets just jump right into it!

Starting off, lets talk about the war. So far? It’s fine. A pretty standard affair if I’m being honest. The most I can say is that it’s nice Kaina is actually trying to use tactics. Setting up a beach head to prevent ships from landing, cannons to whittle them down from afar, Orinoga planning a surprise attack on their command. I like that it’s all based on imperfect information. Orinoga doesn’t know that Valghia is kind of a tyrannical dictatorship at this point, nor that there really isn’t a command structure. Of course they won’t care if he attacks the capital, there’s nothing of value there. The more people he kills the less mouths there are to feed later. It’s a decent way to add tension to the fight while giving him and Amelothee some one-on-one time while the ships duke it out. Not bad really.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 9 [Insignia of an Ancient Castle]” →

Wolf’s Rain – 5/6 [Fallen Wolves/The Successors] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday, Wolf's Rain

Welcome everyone, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! This week we arrive at a new city, meet some new wolves, and see some dead dreams. All in all a pretty cheery episode if you ask me! But enough jokes, lets dive into the episodes.

This week I wanted to start off by taking a look at the music. After 6 episodes I feel like I have a decent idea what it’s like, of what the legendary Youko Kanno of Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop fam is going for. And you know what? I think it’s just as good as her previous work. She doesn’t restrict herself to any one style of music, picking and choosing what would work best for each track/purpose. In particular I love the sheer amount of vocal tracks in Wolf’s Rain’s OST. Stuff like this episodes “Strangers“, playing as they run in the snow past a train, or “Amore Amaro” as they all reconcile and recover from the night before. There were a few others in previous episodes as well, but I don’t want to look through the whole OST and spoil myself on anything coming.

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 5/6 [Fallen Wolves/The Successors] – Throwback Thursday” →

The Fire Hunter – 8 [Garden of the Gods]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, The Fire Hunter

Welcome everyone, to another week of Fire Hunter! This was an interesting week, lots of lore drops, and a possible shake up of the status quo. Was it good? Will it save the series? I don’t yet know. But at least I have plenty to talk about. Now lets dive right into it!

Starting off, credit where it’s due, Fire Hunter has some incredible lore. We learned so much this episode. From the Flickering Flame being a satellite in space put there by the previous civilizations to the Treefolk being experiments created by the Divine Clans, with only the “successes” being sent out into the forests to act as benevolent helpers to the villages. Meanwhile the failures are left to rot inside the city, unloved and uncared for by their creators. There’s even some backstory regarding how humans came to be this way, along with the Flame Fiends! It’s all pretty interesting stuff. Which makes Fire Hunter’s ability to deliver it in the most dry, uninteresting way imaginable all the more egregious. Despite the lore being inherently interesting, all I could think of while watching the episode was if I could get away with skipping forward or not. And that sucks.

Continue reading “The Fire Hunter – 8 [Garden of the Gods]” →

DanMachi S4 19/20 – Colosseum/Astrea Family

by Amunchet, posted in Currently Watching:, DanMachi 4

I can hear what you’re thinking – “Amun, didn’t you say this season of DanMachi wasn’t going to be good?  Why are you coming back and writing about it now, three-quarters of the way through?!”  So hear me out.  I was right about the first half of the season, especially the bits with fighting the twin floor boss – but I forgot something that DanMachi does every season (even the atrocity of season two): randomly, in the middle, there will be two insanely good episodes.  Now, what makes a good vs bad season of DanMachi is how the following episodes are.  Which will this one be?  Only time will tell, but let’s take a look at where DanMachi is currently.

Continue reading “DanMachi S4 19/20 – Colosseum/Astrea Family” →