Category: Anime Reviews

I haven’t been looking forward to the Eureka7 movie, for the following reason: the series was pretty conclusive, wasn’t it? Why ruin it with a movie. I therefore just assumed that it was going to be one of those recap movies like with Gurren Lagann, but as it turns out it takes place in an alternative universe. Alternative universe movies are always a bit tricky to do, as they tend to be completely different from their original source material. When inspired of course, this can lead to awesome stuff as the Utena movie. Now, did the same happen with Eureka7?

Errm, no.

While not entirely bad, this movie certainly isn’t a good one. It’s mediocre: it entertains but its content is flawed and often nonsensical. The best way I’d describe it is “shallow”. This is the sort of story that I’d label as pretentious. There is A LOT of dialogue throughout the movie, but you quickly realize that it’s not really about anything.

There’s a lot of talking spent on explaining the setting for the movie, but hardly anything is done to develop it or go in-depth. The movie also has its share of symbolism and moralism, but the symbolism either is overly obvious or doesn’t make any sense (especially Anemone’s ramblings are part of the latter), while in terms of morals this series never really gets further than saying “killing is bad” over and over, being a hypocrite in the process when Renton kills a bunch of enemies while he didn’t really need to do so.

But the biggest offender is the relationship between Renton and Eureka, because BOY has it turned cheesy. 99% of the lines between the two are directly copied from any other romance story. The lines they use are so incredibly ambiguous that they fit in any sort of situation. When they’re not angsting and repeating these lines over and over, they behave totally incomprehensible; their actions make no bloody sense and feel like they have been thought up on the spot by the creators.

Since this is a movie, it does have a number of kickass action scenes, whenever the characters aren’t talking. But here’s the deal: this is Bones. When you compare the animation in this movie to what they showed in Eureka 7 and especially Bonen no Xamdou the animation actually feels inferior. It really makes you wonder where the budget for this movie went, if the TV-episodes were animated so beautifully.

So yeah, when the story is supposed to come together in the end… it doesn’t. the plot twists, revelations and insights don’t make any bloody sense and the movie falls flat on its face. I usually like anime with lots and lots of dialogue (see Amatsuki and especially Mouryou no Hako), but this was just… shallow and rushed. Do yourself a favour, watch the amazing series, skip the movie.

Storytelling:	6/10
Characters:	7/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	7/10

Igano Kabamaru is a unique anime, in the way that it’s only popular among the Greek community, and virtually unheard of in the rest of the world. I’ve been meaning to want to check it out, but the only version I could find was a crappy Greek dub. Since my Greek is virtually non-existent (the only word I know is “nè”, which means “yes” and sounds a lot like “no” in Dutch), so I unfortunately had to pass it up.

Cue the awesome people at Saiei who were nice enough to bring out a Japanese version of the series. So yeah, this is another one of those raw-reviews, so unless you happen to know Greek or Japanese, don’t bother to ask me where to get it. One of the purposes of this review is to give some more attention to this series, with the hope that it might get subbed one day, because this series has a lot to like. Sure, it also has its share of things not to like, but it’s one of those crazy and wacky comedies that definitely demonstrate that the eighties had a great sense of humour.

So yeah, this series is basically another one of those high-school comedies with a weird cast of characters. It runs around the premise of a kid who has been trained as a ninja for all his life by his evil grandfather, moving into a school whose headmistress has a crush on said grandfather (who now is dead, by the way). The big twist is that this kid (Igano Kabamaru, hence the title) is the most incredible goofball you have ever seen. He runs around the series screaming, yelling, making the silliest jokes, behaving like a little kid, and eating.

The major fun in the series comes not from him, but from the rest of the cast. These people are all some sort of parody of the romantic genre (we have the cute girlfriend, the rival, the pretty boy, the elite ojou-sama, and a lot more). Every character has something amusing about him or her, and they’re also hilarious in their attempts to deal with such a weird and uncontrollable lead character, and be sure to expect lots of nervous breakdowns. Hopeless overacting in most cases is a bad thing, but in this case it makes for a number of hilarious scenes, with my personal favourite being the marathon-episode.

Unfortunately for this series, it also has that nasty thing called a plot. The show gets really dull when the focus falls back to Igano’s traumatic past, and the time he spent with his best friend Hayate. It just keeps dragging on, and nearly completely takes over the series once it hits its second half. Because of that reason, the second half is a lot less fun than the first one, and the comedy that’s there is nowhere near as fun as in the first half.

To the show’s credit though, it does have a kickass finale. It’s worth watching through the second half, if only because of the awesomeness of the final two episodes. I was originally planning to give this series a much more negative review before I watched these two episodes, but they really make up for the rest of the disappointing second half. Episode 24 feels like the creators wanted to stuff as much creativity in 20 minutes as possible, while episode 23 has a brilliant conclusion that nobody will see coming.

So yeah, don’t expect much innovative parts, since there are a lot of clichés in this series, even for a comedy (like how this show proves that the Tsundere was already a staple more than twenty years ago). The serious parts suck, but there are a certain number of comedy episodes that are absolutely hilarious, and are in no way inferior to the comedies of the past ten years. This series is crazy, but in a good way.

Storytelling:	8/10
Characters:	8/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	8/10

I’ve been a fan of Ryousuke Takahashi for quite a while now. This guy always manages to combine realism with an intelligent plot, that yet are epic and full of action. Because of that I obviously had to check out the series that put him on the map: Armored Trooper Votoms. And like most of his later works, it really is an excellent series that takes both itself and its audience seriously.

It’s interesting how this one of the few mecha-series that aired between the original Mobile Suit Gundam and Zeta Gundam, and because of this it has the advantage of being inspired by the more serious and realistic Mobile Suit Gundam, but not the repetitive emo-fest that was Zeta Gundam. This allowed Ryousuke Takahashi to really play with the formula, and significantly improve on it in a lot of areas. And he succeeded at this really well.

Chirico really is the antithesis of all those wimpy teen-aged leads you see in anime through all ages. As an adult, he stands out as being a regular soldier, following the duties from his superiors. He is cold, heartless and can’t live without fighting, and even though he slightly softens up throughout the series he never loses his hard edges.

Another thing that’s been bugging me a lot about Gundam series is that while they start out diverse and different, for some reason they always start looking too much like each other, with the final quarter being a string of random battles that look like each other and most of the time hardly resolve anything. Again, Votoms aired before this trope was even created, so it beautifully avoided this. It’s basically made up out of four arcs of about 13 episodes (or 12 episodes and a recap), with each of these arcs being distinctly different from the others, and all of them get better and better as the show goes on. There really is plenty of action, but the creators manage to make the battles count: each of the battles has a point or purpose in the story, even if they’re very small. This really allows the story to evolve continuously.

There are some lighter parts in this story though: Chirico spends the series with three rather silly henchmen around him who are the ones who sometimes provide the comic relief. While at first they may seem annoying, this series knows very well how to handle them. They’re not just there to brighten up the mood and prevent the story from getting too dark, but they also prove to be surprisingly useful to the plot at times; they help to develop Chirico’s character, and tend to remind him what a socially awkward idiot he can be. While they’re not often the most pleasant to watch, without them this series would have lost one of its sparks, and looked a whole lot more generic.

This series does have its flaws, which mostly lie in small plot-holes throughout the story. It really is a series that continuously evolves, but for that it had to sacrifice a few things in the plot, like bringing a bunch of characters from one point in the universe to another instantly when it’s necessary for the plot, or characters knowing things that they aren’t supposed to know. And really, I’ve seen 52 episodes of this series now, along with the 12 episodes from the Pailsen Files, and I STILL don’t know what the “Votoms” in the title stands for. It seriously never gets mentioned in the entire series.

But yeah, those are just nitpicks. Votoms is a great recommendation if you’re looking for something old and dark, away from most cliches and teen-aged stereotypes. There is a romance in the series, but it’s handled really well and forms a central part in the series without dragging on. Ryousuke Takahashi is one heck of a talented director, and he already showed this in his first major series.

Storytelling:	9/10
Characters:	9/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	9/10

When I first learned about Hajime no Ippo, I wasn’t that eager to check it out. Heck, I had no interest in sports, and it’s one of those shows that has a premise that you just can’t explain without making it sound like some sort of Dragonball Z knock-off:

“So yeah this show is about a guy and he trains to become a boxer and then they fight and he gets beaten and beaten and then he manages to find his inner strength to win from his opponents!!1!1!1”.

It’s true that this show is formulaic, but it’s also SO INCREDIBLY ADDICTIVE. The sheer intensity of the boxing matches is nearly unrivalled, and the only way you can really get an idea of how incredibly good this show is is by watching it yourself. This series knows exactly how to pull the right strings during the boxing matches, and even though most boxing matches take up multiple episodes, they just keep you glued to the screen and only make you want more.

New Challenger forms an excellent introduction to the franchise for those who find the 75 episodes of the first season a bit too much of a commitment. It’s an excellent standalone series to watch. I myself watched nothing of the first series and yet I was perfectly able to follow it; some of the references to the first season that it made were perfectly explained for those new to the franchise, and the characters were already strong enough to carry the show on their own.

What’s also interesting about this new season is that while you might expect this show to be mostly about the titular Makunouchi Ippo, it’s actually one of those series that doesn’t have a clear main character. Instead, we get a bunch of arcs that each focus on a different character, and Ippo only plays the central role in one of them (that arc, by the way, also was arguably the weakest of the bunch; the thing with Ippo is that he’s by no means a bad character, but he is one of the least interesting members of the cast). Especially the Brian Hawk-arc was absolutely epic.

So yeah, Hajime no Ippo stands out in its simplicity; for every arc you know exactly what you’re going to get: an incredibly intense boxing match with sympathetic and strong characters and awesome graphics. And it never gets old. It’s the perfect series for if you want to blow off some steam.

Storytelling:	9/10
Characters:	9/10
Production-Values:	9/10
Setting:	8/10

I was pretty excited when I first saw Koukaku no Regios, or Chrome-Shelled Regios as it’s called in English. It promised a grand setting with many different sides to it, a large cast of different characters and a really interesting sense of mystery that all seemed to lie behind it. That’s why it’s such a shame to see what kind of an utterly mismanaged mess it turned into.

Take the following analogy: suppose you have a beautiful multi-layered birthday cake. Koukaku no Regios, instead of focusing on this entire cake just keeps staring at one of the candles, while hardly having any attention for the delicious rest of it. It presents a post-apocalyptic world, in which people can only live withing walking cities. It’s full of strange creatures like glowing goats, mutant bugs, who all have their own role and purpose, and behind the world seems a grand complot by people with dog-faces. And what does this series decide focus on? An inconsequential harem that never really gets anywhere! Talk about a let-down.

If the love polygon was good, it would have been able to excuse at least something, but unfortunately it even screws up there. Basically we have our lead character Layfon, and a bunch of girls who are in love with him. Layfon has a ton of girls swarming over him, but in the end none of these relationships get any substantial development, with perhaps the exception of Nina, who only gets blander as the show goes on.

This blandness syndrome by the way can be found in more characters in this series. Felli starts out as a nice wise-cracking and witty girl, but only gets more and more generic as the series goes on. Dalsiena turns from a past-driven character into a generic side-kick, Naruki gets turned from a headstrong policewoman in useless harem-bait, Salinvan turns from a skilled mercenary into an emo kid who can’t forget the past, Harley Sutton turns from an interesting side-character into an incredibly generic one devoid of any personality, and DO NOT get me started on Savaris.

So yeah, because the main storyline pops up so late in this series, the finale simply becomes a disaster. The creators start pulling random powers out of their asses, characters who were in one episode very badly wounded are completely fine in the next one, the plot twists really come from absolutely nowhere and because the main storyline received so little attention, none of it really makes an impact and therre are SO MAY questions that are left unresolved after that final episode.

The salvation for this series that I can see is if a second season got announced. Regios has potential, and I still remain convinced of that. If a second season would come, and make optimal use of the building up that this series has provided, then it’s going to rock beyond belief. The characters who didn’t turn into paper bags were interesting enough to watch and there were definitely good parts in this series. It’s just that there was too much crap that overshadowed it. The creators never knew how to properly pace and outline their series and in a way, the one behind the series composition seems to be the one to blame for this. Yes Mamiko Ikeda, shame on you.

Storytelling:	6/10
Characters:	7/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	7/10

When judging first episodes, I always try to look at the potential for the rest of the series. Kurokami had a fairly generic beginning, but I saw potential for the rest of this series. I believed that the Dopple-liner system, in which every person has two clones living somewhere, with these clones destined to die when they get too close to their “Root”, definitely had the potential to become interesting later on. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

As a typical Sunrise-series, Kurokami is all about action: every single episode is really written for the battles, which use the aforementioned Dopple-liner system as a shounen-esque base to explain the various superpowers that appear through the series, but it’s all fairly generic: the side-characters all have interesting powers, but the lead characters and villains don’t have any fighting style other than “lots and lots of power”. Still, the battles are what made me keep watching this series: they’ve got this sense of despair when Kuro (the lead character gets beaten over and over again. It’s fairly formulaic, but especially in the beginning it’s strangely watchable.

But all goes down the drains in the second half. Up until the halfway point, despite the formulaic battles the series had actually done a fairly well job in letting us get to know the main characters. The story was finally coming together… until the writers completely jumped the shark with a string of the most blatantly obvious Deus ex Machina. The storyline that was up to that point at least fairly layered turns into a dumb “beat the bad guy”-storyline and turns completely ridiculous. My biggest gripe was with the episode that revealed why the major villain of this series became the bad guy. I won’t spoil it, but let me just say that those plot twists feel so incredibly contrived that they really destroyed any suspense of disbelief I still had for this series.

The characters are mostly just okay, but the male lead character is such an annoying character. He only has two personalities: an emo one (“leave me alone! I don’t want to fight!”) and a fearless one (“Let’s beat them, Kuro!”). I was hoping that he would change over the course of the series, but unfortunately he only got more and more generic as the show went on. So in the end, the only thing that this series did well is its pretty pictures. Sunrise is behind the animation, so at least the action looks solid and consistent, and the background art is very stylish.

Still, I really don’t recommend this series for anything. There really is much better stuff out there, and this series fails to stand out in any way aside from its Dopple-liner system, which it never really goes in-depth with anyway. The story is full of holes and power-level inconsistencies, battles are written so that Kuro wins them at the last possible moment and overall, it just smells of mediocrity.

Storytelling:	6/10
Characters:	7/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	6/10

Game adaptations are of course notorious in how they tend to fail more often than not, but Sengoku Basara at first sight looked like it was going to be among the good ones. It was full of manliness and great fights, but along the way it didn’t really manage to fully live up to its expectations. Sure, there still is potential for that second season in January, but when taken a look at this series individually, it isn’t really worth the time you invest on it.

So yeah, Sengoku Basara is based on a game which is very, very loosely based on the Sengoku Era of Japan, when the country still was populated by a number of smaller countries, all looking to become the sole ruler of the island Honshuu. Its trademark is manliness: lots and lots of it. The dialogue is extremely exaggerated and passionate, full of righteousness, justice and inner conflicts. This isn’t a show about a bunch of teenagers; this is a show about true men.

Unfortunately, the rest of the execution falls short a bit. The characters… really are nothing to write home about. There is some small development in a select few of them, but none of them really make an impact. Also, for a show that aims for entertainment, this series tends to get side-tracked into angst too often. It feels that it’s in its own identity crisis at times, not knowing what it really wants to focus at.

In the end, there’s just one reason to watch this series: the battles. This series is animated by Production IG, who really are the masters of realistic animation and character-designs, and here they use them really well in combination with the incredibly unrealistic nature of this series. There are two fights that really were worth the watch: the ones from episode 2 and episode 12. These battles really kick ass and are really fun to watch. Aside from that though, this series simply remained overshadowed by better productions: in terms of entertainment and manliness, the new Mazinger this season is doing a much better job at it, and for manly historical supernatural swordplay there are shows like Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto which really surpass this show in nearly every single way.

Storytelling:	7/10
Characters:	7/10
Production-Values:	9/10
Setting:	7/10