Category: Anime Reviews

The Tales of-franchise stands out because every game gets to be adapted by a different production company and a total different staff. This leads to a wide variety of different adaptations with all their own focuses, interpretations and things at which they stand out. With Tales of Vesperia, it’s Production IG’s turn, and they went with the movie format. And holy crap, is it good. This is everything an RPG adaptation should be.

At first it might seem like your average fantasy story: alas, the protagonists are young. One of them appears to have a princess as girlfriend, there are more cute girls, meant to act as the voice of reason when the lead males go out of control again, blah blah blah. But make no mistake: for every cliche that this show uses, it subverts two of them. While this is a fantasy movie, it for once does not require the leads to travel across the world and have all kinds of adventures. No, these guys are part of a town guard: they simply belong to a unit, responsible for protecting a bunch of people. There’s nothing like saving the world in here. Aside from the initial cliches, there’s no attempt made to make these characters seem any bigger than they are: they merely follow the orders of their captain when they fight a battle.

Also, this is animated by Production IG, and it really does live up to their name. The battles here are incredibly well animated: in duels, there are no still frames or convenient cuts; a lot of focus has been put on the sword skills, team work (and not just a team of four warriors or something, they often fight battles with a small squadron in which everyone knows his place). Fights aren’t a matter of whacking a sword long enough until the other party goes down, instead they’re calculated, realistic and believable. Because of this, the magic system can also be fleshed out a lot more: the spells here are a lot more interesting, logical and believable than you usually see in fantasy series.

There is a lot of drama in this movie, most of it centred around the coming of age of the two lead characters. The two of them are flawed, and a lot of the focus of this movie is about fleshing these two out, and developing them. Especially in the first half of the movie these two like to cause trouble, which can be annoying to watch at times, but it’s all with a purpose: to get the best out of their development. They really both develop into great characters in the end. What also helps throughout the first movie is a great sense of humour: it’s got a very good comedic timing.

The fact that the characters for once are simple town guards also has another advantage: you really can get a good feel of the people who live in this town, and this movie takes optimal advantage of that: it chooses a few random townspeople and gives them a convincible personality and character, which all do a great job of bringing the town to life.

I do have a few question marks about the ending credits, though. I’m not sure whether it’s meant to be an advertisement about the games, or a sequel, but it showed many of the cliches that this movie avoided so well. In any case though, this movie is yet another excellent example of how good RPG adaptations can be when some actual effort is put into them. Despite some initial cliches, it’s got excellent characters, a believable scenario, excellent animation really manages to bring its setting to life.

Storytelling:	9/10 – It’s got a ton of fantasy and action, but brings this realistic and believable. Well paces, nice ideas and good attention to detail.
Characters:	9/10 – There are cliches, but makes up for this with excellent character-development and great chemistry between the characters.
Production-Values:	9/10 – What you’d expect of a movie: no cut corners, well portrayed battles that find a very nice balance between believability and action.
Setting:	8/10 – Inspired and lively, though loses points because of how young some of the characters are.

Suggestions:
– Tales of the Abyss, Eternia, Symphonia, Phantasia.
– Strange Dawn
– Popolocrois.

I did not like the first Rebuild of Evangelion because, well… it was a recap. I’ve got a big problem with movies that do nothing other than follow the exact same scenario as their predecessor, it should be a format for trying out new things, experimenting and just going all out with wild ideas.

Anyway, the second movie however follows its own scenario, which makes it a lot more enjoyable to watch. It combines the build-up of the first movie, a few things here from the TV-series and a bunch of other things that are completely new. A lot of the “monster of the week” angels of the TV-series were dropped, and instead the action focuses much more on the three lead characters. At the same time, we get an array of new characters, and the new twists that this movie pulls are definitely interesting. The final two movies do have a bit of work to do to cover up for the seeming techno- and myth-babble of this episode, but at this point there is no reason why they shouldn’t be able to do that.

The thing I liked most about this movie was the artistic direction during the action-scenes, which was with no doubt fantastic. The action, the use of colours, the soundtrack. Everything was a feast for the senses. This is just one of those movies with unique and awesome graphics. I also liked how the creators discovered that you can get pretty neat effects when you play a piece of soundtrack for a scene that at first sight doesn’t fit it at all. At the same time though, surprisingly little has been done to blend in the CG with the traditional animation outside of the action-scenes.

My biggest issue with this movie was the characterization, though. It’s just unrefined and rushed. Asuka’s development is just way too quick and sudden, and the quiet moments in the movies, which should be used to build characters, make use of too many shallow cliches. You know, the cliches that you see in dozens of high school shows already. The focus on cooking has been done to death by now, Shinji’s friends have degenerated into these typical high school “best friends”. Characters also really like to describe themselves with cliched one-liners, and these small things just keep piling up.

So yeah, this is pretty much a movie that kicks ass during the climaxes but is a bit tedious to watch during the quiet parts. This is one part of balance and characterization that the next two movies really have to get better if they really want the Rebuild of Evangelion to be remembered ten years from now.

Storytelling:	8/10 – A bit of myth-babble does not take away imaginative twists on the original Evangelion with clear attempts to make the story even more interesting in the next couple of movies.
Characters:	7/10 – Nice ideas, but the characterization is too shallow and there are too many cliches.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Magnificent during the action scenes. I would have given 10/10 here if it wasn’t for the obtrusive CG at times.
Setting:	8/10 – Nice potential, interesting ideas.

Suggestions:
– Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence
– Bonen no Xamdou
– Princess Mononoke

You know, I like the concept of how strange foxes, take away the stuff that we have forgotten. The focus on memories in this movie had quite a few charms. Oh, if only it would have focused more on these themes!

Unfortunately, apart from that… we’ve got ourselves another “watch for the visuals”-movie. And what great visuals they are! It’s a shame that everything is in 3D (botox-faces!), but there’s still a ton of eye candy. The visuals bear a ton of imagination: while the script may suck, the animators at Production IG really threw their best effort into making the visuals as interesting as possible.

But dear god… the plot. Here’s a proposal for a drinking game: take a drink whenever this movie a) breaks obvious physics or b) inserts a plot-hole. You’ll be drunk in no-time. This pretty much is another movie about a kid (whose mother is dead, by the way) who gets transported to another world by accident. This isn’t that bad on itself, but everything just goes way too easy for our heroine. The creators pull really weird plot twists in order to just keep the plot going and make her feel special. There are a ton of things left unexplained that desperately need explanations, especially about the underground thieves: just about everything about these things just doesn’t make any sense.

I see this disturbing trend in Production IG’s movies and OVAs: this is their third in a month and a half that puts style above substance. What happened to the Production IG that was always wonderfully able to combine these two?

Storytelling:	4/10 – It may be a family movie, but that’s no excuse for so many plot-holes.
Characters:	7/10 – Utterly bland side-cast. Lead character has her charms…. once in a while.
Production-Values:	9/10 – 3D may be 3D, but the amount of ideas the creators put into it is impressive. Watch this movie for the visuals.
Setting:	6/10 – Interesting ideas, but doesn’t use it enough and contradicts itself too often.

Suggestions:
– Gin-Iro no Kami no Agito
– Brave Story
– Spirited Away
– Yobi The Five-Tailed Fox

If you managed to watch the TV-series of Patlabor, I really urge you to also check out the Second OVa. It’s very much a direct sequel to the TV-series, and it’s got all of the charms that made it so memorable and timeless; all condensed in just 16 episodes, it’s in no way inferior to its already excellent predecessor.

It’s got the same formula: one really big arc, and a whole number of episodic stories. What stands out the most are these episodic stories, though. Especially because they’re everything that episodic stories should be. Instead of having dull and uninspired slice of life scenarios that have been done for ages, it always builds its episodes around a certain idea or concept that really tries to be fresh and original.

The result is a number of classic episodes that are up to par to the best episodes of the TV-series; my personal favourite being the episode about the serial-bomber, with the “driving-home”-episode on the second place. Every episode is well built up, and what makes them even better is how grounded in realism they are: some crazy and wacky stuff happens here, but the creators never forget to base it on its realistic characters and scenarios, rather than just being wacky and over the top all of the time. There are those rare series out there who should serve as an eample of how to do things right at their genre. Patlabor without a doubt belongs to them.

On top of that, it still has the classic element that makes any Patlabor installment worth watching: the cast. After finishing this OVA, I’ve now seen everything from the Patlabor franchise, which amounts to 70 episodes and 3 movies in total. After so much time, the cast has really grown into a lovable and memorable bunch of people.

Watching this OVA, I really have to say that it’s a shame that Mamoru Oshii doesn’t do TV-series and long OVAs anymore, because he really is brilliant at bringing these characters to life. It’s a bit of a shame that for the past years he’s gotten stuck at things like Musashi, because he really is a one-of-a-kind director.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Wonderfully built up, nice ideas, very varied.
Characters:	10/10 – Incredibly charming characterization that’s in no way inferior to the previous Patlabor installments.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Good and detailed, though not the best Patlabor has to offer.
Setting:	9/10 – One of the best mecha settings of the pre-Evangelion age: realistic, creative and believable, despite the strange scenarios that pop up once in a while.

Suggestions:
– Patlabor – The Second Movie. The conclusion to the Patlabor-franchise. Do note that if I were to watch it today, that review would look completely different.
– Ooedo Rocket
– Rumiko Takahashi’s Rumic Theater

Out of all of the pre-Evangelion mecha franchises, two stand out as my favourites: Votoms takes second place, but Patlabor even surpasses Ryousuke Takahashi’s epic for me. This OVA only reaffirms this.

Like the TV-series, the OVA that predated it by about a year has a bit of everything. Some episodes play out as a cop drama, there is the fun action-comedy, monster-science fiction, slice of life. Mamoru Oshii (yes, he directed this thing) shows a lot of different sides of him here. We of course have his trademark talking thriller arc (which of course was the best part of this OVA), but he also shows here that he’s terrific at all of those other areas.

The thing I liked best was how every episode was built up. One similarity between all of the episodes is that they always build up to some kind of punchline; everything is well calculated to make the optimal use of its time, preparing for these punchlines that, despite their wit, are all widely varied.

Standalone this is an excellent OVA. However, at the same time most of the stuff that it did here, it would do even better in the later instalments. The talking arc would be surpassed by the incredible second movie (which had this strange effect of becoming more and more memorable as time goes on), while the lighter episodes would be surpassed by some of the filler episodes of the television-series (as witty as they were, they just don’t match up to some of the classic episodes). Only the first episode really shows the franchise as its best, while the final episode is a bit of a disappointing conclusion.

As a compilation to introduce people to the world of Patlabor however, it’s excellent. The large format of 50 episodes will probably be a lot to swallow for people who don’t know a lot about the series, while the movies don’t bother to introduce the cast, which will also be confusing. This OVA is a perfect opportunity for people to get a taste of what the rest of the franchise is about. The brilliant characterization is definitely worth it.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Great balance. Excellent build-up and nice ideas. That would later be surpassed, though.
Characters:	9/10 – Absolutely lovable cast, excellent voice acting. Especially Goto is one of a kind.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Combination between still frames and really smooth animation.
Setting:	8/10 – You will need to watch the rest of the franchise in order to get the best out of this, as it only offers a quick overview of everything that’s going on.

Suggestions:
– Mobile Police Patlabor (TV). (My advice is, that if you have the time, to watch this series in chronological order, instead of the disjointed one that I’ve been doing)
– Jin Roh
– Gosenzosama Banbanzai

Don’t get me wrong: I love Hunter X Hunter. All shounen series should take a look at it for example of how to do the shounen genre right. But the final Greed Island OVA is a very disappointing conclusion to the series.

Usually I applaud series that go into completely different directions. The finale of Greed Island also has a bunch of ideas into it that other shounen series would never dare to use, and you still see that people actually prepare for fights, rather than rush in randomly. The problem however, is that it also destroys a ton of the carefully laid-out build-up of the previous installments of Hunter x Hunter: it’s poorly produced, and makes a mockery out of the series’ battle system, characters and philosophies.

The combat in this season is exceptionally disappointing. And don’t get me wrong: the battles are fun, if your standard is at the level of a badly animated Heroman. For Hunter x Hunter however, they leave a lot to be desired. One thing that made the special powers of Hunter X Hunter so fascinating was that they were all built around restrictions: it takes a huge amount of time and effort to fully understand the concepts, and actually be able to do something useful. The reason why Kurapica kicked so much ass in the first OVA was because of the huge restrictions he put on his powers. The previous seasons all stressed a ton of times on being careful. We saw over and over that Gon and Kilua were just rookies; that they had a lot to learn.

So, what does this episode do? We get a training montage that spans 3 months and changes Gon and Kilua from inexperienced rookies to god-moded powerhouses. What a shame! The power system of this series also gets pretty much reduced to: the one with the largest aura wins, and whenever Gon’s aura is the weaker one, he just goes super-saiyan enough until he has the upper hand. If that wasn’t bad enough already, probably the hardest thing to grasp is that somewhere along the way, this series lost its concepts of pain. In this OVA, the characters sustain some truly horrific injuries, especially considering that they’re all just kids. But yeah, it kills the tension a lot when you just see them walk away from that without a problem.

If that was the only problem, then okay. I could have lived with it. But there are a ton more of them. The pacing for example: Hunter x Hunter always was a pretty slow series, but you could always see that they used their slow pacing to build up as good as possible. Here however, the creators just needlessly drag on fights and training arcs for episodes after each other. There are too many recaps, and the entire story could have easily been condensed into the regular eight episodes.

The characterization also suffers a lot. The side-characters, while usually bright and colourful in how they were portrayed, now are bland, one-dimensional and we never learn anything about them. It feels like nobody was fleshed out throughout the entire 14 episode run, and the increased amount of comedy and silly faces from the two lead characters Gon and Kilua completely lacks the subtlety of the jokes of the earlier instalments.

The animation itself also is amongst the worst we’ve seen from this series. I consider the character-designs of the side-characters of Hunter x Hunter to be amongst the best that you can find in shounen anime. Here however, they’re all bland, and the main villain looks sort-of like an emu; the creators tried really hard to make him look as evil as possible, but it only resulted in making him sillier.

It’s interesting to see Nippon animation during the past ten years: whenever they’re trying to be innovative, they’re brilliant. Hunter x Hunter, Les Miserables, Fantastic Children, and even Hyakko and Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge: they all pushed boundaries within their genre. When they try to squeeze too much money out of their own franchises however, they suddenly suck, as shown by the mediocre Konnichiwa Anne and also this final ova. You can see that the creators tried too hard in making it more mainstream, but to me it seems like the anime staff behind this ova didn’t understand the underlying story. Standalone this would have been a nice enough action-manga, but it doesn’t live up to Hunter x Hunter’s standards.

Storytelling:	7/10 – Pointlessly slow and dragged out, but there’s an interesting game-element to the battles. But a training-montage?
Characters:	7/10 – Very mediocre characterization. We never learn anything about both the main and the side-cast aside from a few dull and predictable lines of exposition.
Production-Values:	7/10 – Poor, especially for Hunter x Hunter’s standards.
Setting:	7/10 – Some very interesting ideas, but it seemed to me like the creators didn’t understand them.

It’s so refreshing to watch Hunter X Hunter. It goes right where nearly all other shounen series go left. It’s here where Nippon Animation show that shounen series don’t necessarily have to be fight-fests with shallow battles that last for episodes after each other. The first Greed Island OVA continues where the previous OVA left off. And to be honest, it isn’t as good as the OVAs. But those standards were set really high after all. Greed Island has a lot to like here.

The interesting thing is that this OVA is mostly focused on two things that are often really hard to do well in anime: training arc and exposition. They actually pull it off, though!

Here’s the thing with most training-arcs: they’re completely shallow. They often pointlessly waste time and advance their characters way too unrealistically. Way too often, we see characters do some random movement over and over, and suddenly they’ve mastered a new technique, became twice as strong, etc, etc, yadda yadda, without actually understanding the deeper meaning behind it. Part of the beauty of martial arts is that you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t know what you’re doing, and that’s a trap that so many shounen-series fall into.

Hunter x Hunter is different though: it links the series concepts of Nen and combines it with realistic fighting abilities. It’s true that the lead characters are talented, but the reason how the powers work here is detailed and fleshed out in one of the most believable ways I’ve ever seen in a shounen series. Or a series based on superpowers for that matter.

Then the exposition: a lot of time of this OVA is spent on outlining the unique features of the world that the characters have run into (Greed Island), ranging from how the rules work, to strategies one could take in playing it. It fleshes out the residents, as well as the other players inside it and explores their motivations. Seeing as there are only eight episodes, a lot of time is just spent on people talking, and I don’t mean in the way in which series as Katanagatari use their dialogue to build-up to a climax each episode.

The reason why exposition often gets boring is… well, because it is. When you’re detailing some obscure details of your world that are shallow but require a ton of of time to explain it just wastes time. Here however, I was consistently interested in what was going on. This OVA kept making me hungry to learn more about what was going on.

This is of course also helped by the fact that it has already seventy episodes full of character-development behind it. And unlike the TV-series, the pacing here wasn’t as unbalanced: this show knew when to shut up and move on and not go on for too long on the same subject. It’s a shame that the best characters are virtually gone in the OVA, but Gon and Killua themselves are excellent characters themselves as well, and the creators did well in giving the new characters believable personalities, rather than stuffing a bunch of stereotypes in. My only complaint here was one particularly overacting minor character. You’ll know who I mean when you see him.

Storytelling:	9/10 – One of the rare cases of exposition and training arcs done right.
Characters:	8/10 – The best characters… aren’t here. the ones that are here do a great job, though.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Not as good as the OVA, but decent enough.
Setting:	9/10 – Excellent. A lot of time is spent on fleshing the setting and back-story out, and it’s very interesting to watch it unfold

Suggestions:
– .Hack//Sign
– Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi
– Darker than Black
(no need to recommend the first Hunter X Hunter OVa of course. It’s a truly excellent OVA, but by the time you’ve arrived at Greed Island you’ve probably already seen it ^^;)
PS. A short update on my to-watchlist: I still have three OVAs left to watch before I can get to the 50 series on my to-watch-list that I’ve been looking forward to the most. It’s taken me two years, but I’m finally nearly finished with its first (and by far largest) part. Just do expect that from now on I won’t take any new suggestions to watch.

Mazinkaiser is testosterone. In its purest sense. It’s completely brainless, full of action, fighting and needlessly yelling out attack names. it’s meant as a homage to the Mazinger-franchise, condensing its plot into just 7 ovas and one movie, and just about everything is dedicated to recapturing the essence of the many manly giant robot series that graced the seventies and eighties ad nauseam.

Just about everything here is over the top: the fanservice, the acting, the characters, the action, the explosions, the comedy. Who cares about that thing called substance? This series is really for those who want to see giant robots sending waves of badly named attacks at each other. It’s really something I would recommend to the fans of the cheesy giant robot series out there, because this series really knows its action: it’s greatly animated, and an excellent watch if you want to let loose of some energy.

But yeah, the problem really is that there is no substance whatsoever; and I really mean none. The plot is only about a bunch of robots fighting each other. If you’re not a mazinger fan here, then you shouldn’t even bother with this series. It’s series like this that, as a homage, have a select audience: one that’s already familiar with a number of other giant robot series. Overall, I too noticed that the quiet moments (in which nobody was fighting and the creators were trying to build something up) were just boring, simply because the cast is paper-thin and never tries to be anything more than they are, and even the action itself would have been more enjoyable had they actually had a bit of depth. Because of this, half of the action-scenes in this OVA failed to be interesting.

On top of that, this series also has lost a bit of its value after Shin Mazinger appeared, which did just about everything this OVA did, plus a whole ton of more things, including a bigger cast, character-development, and actual multi-layered plot and actual plot twists. Especially Baron Ashura in Mazinkaiser feels just a shallow shadow in comparison. The only reason why you would want to watch Mazinkaiser over Shin Mazinger would be the animation and I feel like I would have enjoyed Mazinkaiser a lot more if I had not watched the new Mazinger before it.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Knows it’s a homage, and does just about everything to recapture the mazinger feeling.
Characters:	7/10 – Likable, but no depth whatsoever.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Excellent animation, plus an over the top soundtrack that fits the mood perfectly.
Setting:	7/10 – Simple good versus evil. Very true to the Mazinger standards, but the setting feels just like a collection of random names.

Suggestions:
– The New Mazinger
– Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
– Betterman

Before Kazuki Akane came with his epic Birdy the Mighty Decode, there of course was the original Birdy the Mighty OVA. While I knew that it was bound to lack depth in terms of the TV–Series I still got curious as to their differences and decided to check it out.

And really, I was pretty surprised at how little these two series have in common. Aside from the main premise of Senkawa being transferred into Birdy’s body and the fact that there are aliens sneaking around somewhere, the storylines are completely different. Hardly any of the side-characters return: I could only recognize Natsumi (who plays the role of romantic love interest here) and that moustache guy (who has a much larger role here).

The story that Decode went with is of course much more superior, but it’s interesting to see how many changes it made, even to the core of the premise. It completely removed the main antagonist that we see here in this OVA. Because of her, the OVA turned into some inconsequential revenge flick that doesn’t really know what antagonist it wants to focus on. Basically, Birdy battles a bunch of bad guys, and that’s pretty much her side of the storyline. It’s nothing that we haven’t seen before, and completely lacks the depth of Decode.

Senkawa’s part in the OVA meanwhile keeps hopping back and forth between amusing and annoying. There are times where he’s pretty nicely characterized, but there are others in which his charms are completely overshadowed by his blandness as a character. The comedy is pretty much the same: some jokes just don’t work, and are the types you see in every comedy series out there. However, some jokes, like the complete lack of tact of Senkawa’s father worked pretty nicely.

Overall, when compared to the stellar standards of Birdy the Mighty Decode (especially its second season), the OVA of Birdy the Mighty is just too short, lacks depth and doesn’t take enough liberties. However, as an action-flick it works pretty nicely. The action certainly isn’t as impressive, but it’s well animated and nice enough to keep you interested. Senkawa and Birdy both have their moment, and this is a pretty nice OVA for those who are looking for very light entertainment.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Light entertainment; nothing more, nothing less and knows it.
Characters:	7/10 – Nicely characterized, but lack a ton of depth.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Pretty good animation.
Setting:	7/10 – Again: no depth. Decode made the setting really come alive. Here it’s just way too standard.

Suggestions:
– Birdy the Mighty Decode
– Black Magic M66
– Canaan