Category: Anime Reviews

It was really hard for me to start watching this series. The 1984 version of the series was really bad, and I wasn’t looking forward to the same bad execution for 51 more episodes. Still, I’m glad that eventually I did give this series a chance. This isn’t simply a case where the new creators improved the show at certain areas. What we have here is two versions of the same story, where one of them is utter crap, while the other is downright awesome. This really shows what good execution can mean for the overall quality of a story.

Especially when you’re making an anime about a talented actress, you need to be extra careful to fully understand what you’re adopting. The creators of the 1984-series clearly didn’t, and turned the lead character (Maya) into some sort of hopelessly over-acting Mary Sue, and they failed to emphasize that Maya was just a frail little girl, and that her talents came not from being incredibly talented, but rather her one-mindedness and ability to completely shut herself off from the outside, which was perfectly portrayed in the 2005 version.

The new voice actress also really helped: Masako Katsuki as Maya was one of the biggest miscasts you could imagine (think in the order of magnitude of putting Norio Wakamoto in the role of a young school-boy). Sanae Kobayashi however, does a much better job at portraying Maya, and that’s an understatement. Both when she’s on stage and when she’s herself, her voice captures the right nuances and makes for a believable and captivating actress.

The biggest strength of this series is its cast of characters, and then especially Maya and Ayumi full well-rounded characters at the end of the series. The rivalry that develops between the two of them is definitely memorable, and a unique take on the “hard work versus talent” theme: for once, it’s the lead character who is the talented one and the main rival who achieved her successes by working very hard. This series has 51 episodes, and they make optimal use of this long length to fully develop the bond that develops between the two of them.

But also the rest of the cast is great to watch. With perhaps the exception of some of the very minor side characters who are jealous of Maya’s successes in the beginning perhaps, every character has a clear purpose, and evolves along with this series. My only complaint here is Tsukikage, and especially her heart problems, which feels like a simple plot device. This is up to the point where you find yourself able to predict exactly when her next heart attack (or whatever it was that attacked her) is going to happen.

For a 2005-series, the animation of this series isn’t anything special, though I do want to applaud the creators for going with down-to-earth character designs, rather than the overblown shoujo-ones of the 1984 series. Especially Ayumi’s character-designs changed from the look of a stuck up princess to someone with simply good looks, nothing more and nothing less. And while most of the animation of this series isn’t that much to write about, the show does have a number of very artistic and good-looking shots of the different characters. The soundtrack for this series is also awesome, but this is where I’m really biased, since the composer also created the soundtrack of Mahou Shoujotai. ^^;

Overall, I’m glad that I listened to Hashihime and the other fans of this series, because the 2005-version really makes up everything where the 1984 version went wrong. After watching this series, I’m definitely going to look at acting in a different way, and that’s something that should be the case with every anime that’s about such a focused subject as this one.

Note: this is a rant, and a pretty big one. Mushrambo, or Shinzo as it’s also been called, is one of the guilty pleasures that I watched when I was still in my early teens, back when Dutch children’s television had yet to descend into utter crap. My taste was pretty bad at the time, but I loved catching the latest episode on television despite the series’ very obvious flaws (the two biggest fights took up 6 and 10 (!) episodes respectively and the plot suffered from some pretty bad inconsistencies (what can I say, my taste was pretty bad at the time; I was fourteen…)). So when I learned about a remake of this series on movie, by none other than the director of Mononoke, I obviously got excited to relive my teenage memories.

Well, I’d like to thank this series for completely destroying them. The movie became nothing but a freaking recap. And a very bad one as well. It’s clear that there went absolutely no budget whatsoever in this thing, and I have no idea what the director of Mononoke was thinking here.

The problem with recap movies like this one is that they take series that have a slow pacing which they use to build up their characters for A REASON. Ultimately we now have a cut-and-paste job of the best scenes of the series that move way too bloody fast to prove any sort of credibility. It’s here where a capable writer manages to condense the story so that it can create a proper story within ninety minutes, but either the director had a really bad day when he wrote this series, or the producers were sleeping through the production process and only realized that nothing had been done a day before the deadline (because really, this is the kind of movie that you can easily make within a day, and I’m really not exaggerating here).

Nothing is explained whatsoever for the ones who are new to the premise. In fact, at one point it’s so bad that the characters look back at events that NEVER EVEN HAPPENED IN THE MOVIE. At one point in the series, for example, the lead characters get an upgrade in power. This upgrade is completely skipped in the movie, and yet the characters costumes magically changed themselves.

One of the things I hoped for in this movie is an number of very sweet graphics (because despite the clichés, I remember how a lot of very nice ideas were put into the setting and it would be awesome to see what they’d look like with a movie budget), but to my despair, the graphics look even more horrible than I remembered them. It’s one thing for a movie to simply look the same, but this movie actually looks and sounds WORSE than the TV-series. WHAT!?

If I had to mention the worst part of this movie, then it’d be the voice acting. If there’s anything that comes close to downright abysmal, then it’s the voice actors of the lead characters. These guys did the impossible: they made Dutch voice-actors sound awesome. I never knew that depths like these existed.

Overall, I watched this for the sake of nostalgia. There’s no possible reason why you should torture yourself with an hour and a half of this thing. I can’t believe that Toei put Mononoke’s director on such a large piece of crap when there’s so much potential left in the guy. I know that the original series wasn’t exactly good, but it was still pretty successful in terms of its entertainment value and it had some really neat ideas for a shounen series; it was nowhere near the levels of crap that the movie explores. I’d almost say that this is some kind of rickroll, but why would someone go through the trouble for such an unknown series, let alone find its raws?

Kaleido Star is yet another example of why Gonzo can produce really outstanding series when they really want to. It first starts out as your average shoujo series about gymnastics and acrobatics, complete with ultra-talented female rival, a just as talented male potential love interest and another love male interest. And yet, with these ingredients it grew into everything a good shoujo series should be.

What made this series work so well is its excellent use of its 52 episodes. The first 26 episodes are already a very capable series by themselves. They show perfectly how Sora (the lead character) rises as a capable rival for Layla, emphasizing guts and hard work, never giving up, and including a number of plot twists that make sure to emphasize that not everything always happens in the lead character’s favour. Overall it’s a very satisfying story by itself, and then the second half of the series comes and pushes this development even further. The new characters of Leon and May really manage to get the best out of Sora in terms of development and make her into a really memorable character by the end of the series, and both of them also pretty impressive by themselves.

Since this is a series about acrobatics, performances also play a huge part in it. And while the creators didn’t have an unlimited budget, the animation does look really nice nonetheless. Especially the costume design for the different parts that are played throughout the series are top-notch, and the creators know exactly how to use their camera-angles and lighting effects to create a great show, based on still shots and close-ups.

If I had to mention a flaw in this series… then it lacks realism. Some of the moves that are performed by the characters are near-impossible, while at other times they master top-notch moves with only a week of training, not to mention that this is a series where seals turn into dogs. But really, the characters shine enough to make up for this flaw, and it never really gets in the way of what really is important for this series. Neither is the romance, by the way. When I first started watching this series, I was afraid that typical silly love triangles would develop over time, but the romance only appeared once in a while, and knew exactly that it shouldn’t get in the way of the characters.

So yes, this series deserves all of the praise it gets. Even though it’s got 52 episodes, every single one of them is dedicated somehow to pushing one of the characters forward, and I especially liked how much of an in-depth look it gave into the themes of working to your dreams and never giving up. It’s a wonderful series, definitely the product of Good Gonzo.

Matsumoto Leiji: the founder of the space opera genre. While his first work, Space Battleship Yamato, lacked a lot of polish, his next work, Captain Harlock, would feature an improvement in just about every aspect. This is the series that would define epic, and would provide inspiration for the many other space opera anime that would follow. Thank you Live-eviL, for having the patience to fully sub it.

While the set-up of the series is again simple (evil aliens known as the Mazone are attacking the earth, and Captain Harlock is the only one who can stop them with his battleship the Arcadia), this series knows how to use its 40 episodes very well. This isn’t a simple series where the Mazones just keep throwing monster after monster until they eventually die, but every episode serves to flesh out and develop the members of its cast, so that the end of the series closes off with both the good guys and the bad guys feeling complete.

Especially the Mazones and Captain Harlock provide to be more than capable of being the respective villains and hero of this series. While the Mazones are most definitely evil, this series makes them more than villains who are just evil for the sake of being evil. Harlock on the other hand stands far apart from your typical lead character. He’s a character who knows what his duty is, no matter what gets in his way, and after watching, I can really understand why Harlock managed to capture the hearts of many when it first aired.

But yeah, you really need patience in order to watch this. The best parts of this series only really start to shine in the final quarter of this series, and the building-up parts can be really nerve-wrecking at times. Especially the middle part of the series can be tedious to get through, in its attempt to give every major character a sufficient amount of background.

Nevertheless, the result of this build-up is an epic series with a rock-solid final quarter, even though it’s already more than thirty years old at this time. While this is definitely not a series you want to marathon in the beginning, it’s nevertheless a series that has a clear purpose and has found a good use for its forty-two episodes. So it’s nowhere near Tomino or World Masterpiece Theatre levels, but nevertheless it’s among the better series to have aired in the seventies.

Well, time for a quick review about another very obscure OVA from a few years ago. It’s basically about fifteen minutes ling, and what you’d call a minimalist anime: there’s no real animation, but instead the story is told by showing a number of drawings in quick succession, combined with sound effects, a bit of music here and there and two voice-actors. The result is a nice way to spend 15 minutes.

What’s especially nice is that the short starts with one big question-mark, and as it goes on it gradually starts explaining itself, until everything makes sense at the end. There’s a continuous haunting atmosphere, and especially the few fights simply delve into the surreal. The characters aren’t anything special, but so what? Who cares, it’s only fifteen minutes.

I like these kinds of short movies that only take up such a relatively short time. They’re able to experiment a lot with different animation techniques and concepts, which would be too risky for full fledged movies or even TV-series. Things as Genius Party, Robot Carnival or individual shots as Atama Yama, She and her Cat and Comedy. They lack the time to fully flesh out their storyline and characters, but nevertheless, they’re all interesting to watch. G-9 seems to be part of the GA-Nime franchise, and I hope to see the rest of it subbed some day.

A modern Japanese cruiser that somehow through some strange cosmic reason travels back in time to 1942. Of course, for these sorts of premises it’s easy to simply fall into a “let’s use this chance to show those American pigs how superior we are”-formula, though it’s one that Zipang does pretty well at avoiding these clichés. Instead, it becomes an intense and thought-provoking war-drama.

The interesting thing is that despite this being a series about the Second World War, there’s hardly anyone that’s really portrayed as a bad guy, apart from a number of high Japanese officials who hardly ever get any screen-time. This series isn’t looking to provide excuses for what happened back then, but instead focuses on completely different issues: if you had the power to prevent the loss of thousands of lives, yet this involved a radical change of history in who knows what kind of direction, would you do it? And what do we people who have lived in these times of peace, know about what being in a real war is like?

It’s a surprisingly intense series, and what makes it so interesting is that every single character has a different view on the events that happen through the series. Everyone has different ideals and priorities, which quite often clash with each other. Characters like Kusaka, Yonai and Kikuchi and their ideals are a delight to watch.

As for downsides, this series showed me why Studio Deen’s series hardly ever feature any major use of CG: they’re just not good at it. They were unable to evade it with this series, and the CG-warships look pretty fake. It’s a shame, because the characters look excellent and down to earth, not to mention the terrific soundtrack. Then there’s also that final episode: it’s rushed, doesn’t really solve anything, and simply stops at a point where the manga went further. Sure, I can understand that the series was planned for 26 episodes, and that the manga’s storyline simply doesn’t fit in such a length, but at least some kind of closure would have been preferred.

Overall, Zipang is for those who are looking for series about realistic warfare, which lacks humanoid mecha and instead focuses on traditional military weaponry. In fact, most of the action here is psychological warfare, rather than fast-paced and flashy dogfights. Thumbs up to Kazuhiro Furuhashi, the director of Chevalier, Amatsuki and Rurouni Kenshin Tsuiokuhen.

I remember how I one had a very strange bias against sports anime. I’m still not sure exactly why it was, but after watching shows as One Outs and Princess Nine, this bias is completely gone. Princess Nine makes baseball look fun.

You shouldn’t go into this series as a baseball-fan, however. At heart, this is a typical shoujo series about a bunch of characters who simply happen to play baseball. If you want baseball action, you should go and watch One Outs. Princess Nine is really about its characters. To give you an indication: episodes 1 to 20 only feature two official baseball matches. The rest of the time is really used to flesh out the cast, and give them depth. It’s a formula that works surprisingly well, although it’s not the most perfect execution.

Nevertheless, the creators succeeded in bringing an entire baseball team alive, including coach and manager. What especially shines is the series’ team spirit, as a baseball team that’s made up of girls tries to break through in a male dominated sport. It’s very well explained: while overblown a bit, but if you take talent from the entire country and gather it in one team, then you’ve got a pretty strong team that’s able to compete with males in a professional level.

The problem with this series come from its shoujo roots. The creators just love to let things play out like a soap opera, by throwing in lots of dramatic plot twists whenever they can. Think of random punks that arrive, just before a male and female character are about to meet each other, and especially the love triangle between the main characters gets a bit too melodramatic as the series goes on.

The series’ finale is without a doubt the weakest point of this series: not only does the love triangle really get in the way of everything that makes the series good, but the creators also tried to stuff an entire tournament in only four episodes. There’s no way to make these short matches have any impact, and so every unnamed player becomes a total noob, rather than the formidable opponents that they were portrayed as in the earlier parts of the series. I also think that the creators made the powers of their female lead a bit too powerful, up to the point that she only throws weak balls when she’s feeling lovesick, rather than standing against powerful opponents.

Nevertheless, I really liked this series, if only because of the downright awesome soundtrack. The creators managed to get the Warshaw Philharmonic Orchestra to perform for this series, and it shows: the soundtrack is rich, varied and epic. The series is most definitely overblown, but the characters nevertheless remain lovable, and of the kind that you can’t help but root for, despite that the matches themselves are perhaps a bit predictable.