Category: Anime Reviews

Spring 2007 was a big year for the epic mecha-series. There were plenty of huge-scale battles between mechas, space-ships and other sorts of futuristic technology, ranging from amazing (Toward the Terra, Bokura no), to the entertaining (Gurren Lagann, Heroic Age) to the downright cheesy (Kiss Dum). Among them was a series with a premise that could give Code Geass a run for its money in terms of political incorrectness:

Far into the future, twelve of the major countries enter a battle royale: every one has one overpowered mecha, and the goal is to be the last one standing, and be the country to rule the world. Whoop-dee-doo… guess which two countries will end up being the only two left? This series is way too full of nationalistic messages like “Japan rocks!”. This of course isn’t really the message that an international medium like anime should have.

Credit has to be given for the creators in their attempt to solve the language barrier in such an international series, but even that turns into a disaster once the characters start talking horrible Engrish. So indeed, in the final episodes, the creators just turn to universal translators in order to solve this problem. Eventually, they give up completely and make supposed English people talk Japanese without any reason whatsoever.

The saving grace for this series, however, is its characterization. Gigantic Formula would have been a total train-wreck if it wasn’t for the characters. Every single pilot of the mecha of each different country gets sufficient attention and development, in a way that surprisingly goes beyond all stereotypes. Every pilot has his or her own problems, and the creators do a really good job of making the viewer empathize with them, despite the ridiculous premise of the story. My personal favourite was the episode about the Venezuelans. At that point, I was actually willing to call this series a success…

Unfortunately, these thoughts got completely bashed into the ground by the ending. To be blunt: the final climax of this series is utter crap. Even compared to other series with disappointing endings, this ending was just bad. It forsakes nearly everything that the series has built up for, it descends into a boring cheese-fest with overmoralistic views that were most likely pasted together at the last minute. I guess I should have known that there was no way to get a satisfying climax out of such a premise as this…

I’m not sure who to recommend this series to. It’s obviously got a number of good points, especially around the middle when the nationalistic messages weren’t so god damn obvious, but at the same time it’s got an equal amount of bad or downright painful points. Even if you want cheese, you can better check out Kiss Dum. I guess that this is one for the mecha-fans, because it does have mecha-designs, coming from 14 different famous mecha-designers.

Fantasy Game adaptations have always been a rather notorious genre, due to the huge amount of lazy productions. These series seem to think that “fantasy” means “lack of realism”, and where the end result is almost always an uninspired story about a young swordsman travelling from A to B, saving the world and getting the girl. There are two animation-companies who have managed to break this tradition: Bee-train and Gonzo. Even though .Hack//Roots and .Hack//Dusk were rather questionable, Bee-train did produce .Hack//Sign, which looked more at the philosophy-part of gaming, and the charming adventure story Popolocrois. Then Gonzo came and delivered the hilarious MMORPG-parody Master of Epic, and with Druaga no Tou (or the Tower of Druaga) they did it again.

Druaga no Tou is based on an arcade-game from the eighties. It follows a band of questionable heroes as they try to climb a tower to save the world, but that’s where the generic stuff ends. Finally there’s another series that’s put a bit of thought into its setting, and a lot of ideas went into it to keep things interesting. I especially liked the magician who fights with golf-clubs.

The real charm of this series, however, is that it knows exactly how much it should take itself seriously. It’s not entirely silly, because you can never get a good story out of it, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously at times, which helps swallow the fact that this remains a story about a young inexperienced male on his first adventure. There are a few hilarious episode that successfully parody and homage a number of classic games, but there are enough episodes that focus on the more realistic side of the setting, and Jil (the male lead) is constantly reminded that he’s just an inexperienced attention-seeker, both by the other characters and by the story itself.

When compared to other similar series, Druaga no Tou did a pretty good job, but the fact remains that it’s a miracle that the main party survived, considering that they all were just inexperienced, especially considering the huge amount of people who failed to do the things that they did.

Gonzo had been quite pathetic ever since Bokura no ended, with their only contributions to the past Autumn and Winter season being the crappy Dragonaut and Rosario to Vampire. Special A also went nowhere, and Blassreiter still misses something because it keeps focusing too much on emo, but Druaga no Tou really delivered once it caught steam. I’m glad to see that 2009 will see a second season, because there’s enough left for this series to play with, and with a bit of luck the characters will really warm up and develop significantly there.

I first learned about Overman King Gainer through its OP that you’ll either absolutely love or absolutely hate. In my case, it was the former, so I just had to watch the series, hoping that it would be more than just a cheesy mecha-show. As it turns out, twenty-five years after creating Gundam, Tomino still knows how to make a good anime.

As it turns out, he left the realism as seen in Mobile Suit Gundam for what it is (after all, after creating 200 episodes and various movies of Gundam, how much more can you play with realism?) and instead he decided to focus on creativity. The result is a series that might be nothing special when concentrating on the big picture, but is filled with lots and lots of details that sparkle with creativity. The setting in the middle of Siberia, the Exodus where entire cities travel for hundreds of miles, looking to “break free”, the mobile suits designs, you can see that a lot of time has been spent to make the setting as original as possible, and it really works.

Tomino also didn’t forget how to pull off good action. In this series, there are no episodes dedicated to intermezzos or aftermaths. Every single episode has something fun in store for its viewer, leaving hardly any chance to get bored. So much is happening on-screen. This is really an anime that’s meant as entertainment, and I call this mission accomplished.

Interestingly, Overman King Gainer has the same weakness as Mobile Suit Gundam: both have a main character that becomes the pilot of the main mecha through very questionable reasons. This one needs a bit of minutes to get the hang of it, after which he can pilot the thing as a master, only because he happens to be good at video games. This will indeed give you improved reflexes, but there’s also the matter of getting accustomed to the new controls, and learning to endure the physical strain on your body while fighting.

The plot overall isn’t the most solid ones around by far. During some fights, the writers pull random powers out of thin air, just to keep the story flowing smoothly, and there are quite a few sloppy explanations that rely too much on the viewer’s imagination. The ending also goes on for too long. I really feel that this would have been perfect for 22 or 23 episodes, simply because the climax takes bloody ages, becoming a bit too serious for its own good. Thankfully, this series manages to finish with the bang that it was supposed to deliver, but the road to this descends to a generic “stop the world from getting destroyed”-plot that moves too far away from what made the rest of the series so enjoyable.

It’s interesting to see the evolution of such a prominent director. Overman King Gainer isn’t better than Gundam, but instead it’s fresh and fun. If you liked series as Gurren Lagann or Code Geass, you’ll probably like this one as well, and personally I enjoyed this one the most: it’s got the fun and down-to-earth factor that Code Geass seems to be lacking, and the engaging storyline that I was missing in Gurren Lagann. It’s far from perfect, but very enjoyable nonetheless. I wonder what Tomino’s up to right now. He hasn’t released anything since the Wings of Rean, has he?

Hataraki Man joins Omoide Poro Poro on the very short list of anime with a female main character who’s older than 25. It’s another series to have aired in the famed Noitamina-timeslot. It’s an anime about a workaholic. I originally dropped this series because I didn’t think that such a concept wouldn’t be worth exploring. So I was wrong.

Hataraki Man is a series that’s always critical of itself and its characters. Throughout only eleven episodes, it shows how the female lead (Hiroko) and her colleagues deal with their jobs, how they manage their stress, why they work the way they do and what goes on inside their minds. Every episode focuses at a different side-character, along with Hiroko. What we have here is a well-written series with characters you can connect to. Some episodes also refer to events that happened in past episodes, creating a series that feels whole, instead of a bunch of random episodes.

It’s almost a shame when the final three episode take the focus more away from the side characters, onto Hiroko. Don’t get me wrong: it’s here where the series manages to deliver some powerful climaxes, but somehow it feels a bit out of place in this series. Because of the extra attention to Hiroko, several side-characters end up left behind without development, even though they had enough potential to be put under the magnifying glass. The final three episodes also try to stuff a bit too much bad luck for Hiroko in too little time, and the result feels sort-of soap-opera like.

Nevertheless, we’ve got ourselves a very fine example of Noitamina here. It’s got energy, a good rocky soundtrack, OP and ED, the setting is very original for an anime, and I feel like anyone who’s dealing with stress. Although the animators do need to pay attention to their romanji a bit. ^^;

There aren’t many shounen romantic comedies that I’ve actually liked. Most of them end up dull, stereotypical, clichéd, uninspired, too much focused on moe, et cetera, et cetera. Though once in a while, one comes along that’s actually worth it. Examples of this are Magikano, Umisho and of course Mahou Tsukai Tai. Thankfully, DNA² managed to join this list.

Really, how often do you run into a harem where it’s at least made plausible that every single female falls in love with the loser male lead. Him being shot by a bullet that turns him into a mega-playboy may sound a bit far-fetched, but it works surprisingly well in this series. It makes sure for a couple of hilarious situations, and the love-triangles that emerge from it are actually worth it. There are no fillers, and the creators know exactly how to use their time and keep things interesting, with a plot that continues to get pushed forward.

Unfortunately, there’s a rather large downside to DNA²… The comedy is hilarious, the romance is rock-solid, but the action downright sucks. These action-scenes have a nasty tendency of getting in the way of what’s really important in this series, and the characters turn into super-saiyan wannabes with way too exaggerated power-ups. This anime especially falls flat on its face during the OVA that concludes this series. The comedy is entirely taken out, in favour of a more epic plot, but at the same time it also degrades into a boring cheese-fest, and the actual climax is downright disastrous. I could have tried to sugar-coat this, but you know when the creators are having a bad day when they’re reaching out to use the power of love as a plot device.

Nevertheless, DNA² is among the better shounen romantic comedies. Especially the first half is really worth watching, and many of its current counterparts can learn a lot from this series, for example comedic timing, proper build-up, the avoidance of stereotypes and a bit of wit.

After the fun, light-hearted and brightly coloured Kero Kero Chime, the obvious next thing would of course be a mysterious dark and gritty horror-series. Enter Gilgamesh, a series that fits this description perfectly. Ad in the end, Gilgamesh turned out to be an excellent series, and a great recommendation for any Japanese-styled horror-fan.

In Gilgamesh, it’s not the storytelling or the dialogue that stand out (they both do their job, but they’re nothing extraordinary), but instead the story and characters themselves are the highlight of this series. A large part of the series is a character-study, backed up by an excellent story that knows how to build up and back up said characters. The characters are surprisingly down to earth and aside from some of the lesser important “villains”, every character is fleshed out and developed. This series continues to get better once it hits its second half, but the first half also has a couple of pretty memorable moments.

One thing I like about mystery-series is their ending: they’re either complete flops or pure excellence, depending on how creative the scriptwriters are feeling. As for Gilgamesh: you’ll either love or hate it, because the ending is unconventional to say the least. I personally loved the final episode, but if you prefer your endings to be along the lines of “Hero saves the world and gets the girl”, you won’t be too happy with it.

As for the bad points: the animation. The character-designs are actually gorgeous, and they will make you think that a good guy is actually a bad guy when you first see him (or her), but a number of shots in the first half have characters walking around like a bunch of thunderbirds, and this series also gratefully likes to re-use animation of previous episode. The storyline also has a few bugs here and there around the middle: in the world of Gilgamesh, computers are supposed to have stopped working, but at one point a character suggests to look up some information on a computer, but this is nothing major.

I also feel that the background of the lead children could have been a bit more elaborate. Don’t get me wrong, their backgrounds are complete, we just hardly get to see anything of it apart from a large number hints here and there. I guess that this was done to give these kids an air of mystery, but at the moment I’m still edging to know how Tatsuya’s mother changed, and in what kind of mess Fuko and Madoka were before the story began. Overall though, I had a great time watching this. I often had to force myself to stop watching in order to do other things, because the cliff-hangers kept making me hungry to see more of the storyline.