Star Crossed Anime

Hell yeah! This is going to be review number 666, and what better series to spend it on than another controversial Bee-Train title?And I mean, after watching Madlax, I just have to say that these guys continue to amaze me.

Madlax is the second instalment in the “Girls with Guns” trilogy, after Noir and before El Cazador. Girls with Guns is a very misleading title, though. It’s true that all series focus on girls that have guns and all, but in essence, Noir is the only one of the three that should be watched as an action series. The focuses of the other two are completely different, and therefore they don’t spend a lot of their time on creating interesting action scenes. With El Cazador, the main focus was its characters. With Madlax, the main focus is the plot. Despite the many similarities in the premises, this leads to three completely different series: if you dislike the simple battles of Madlax, there is Noir’s action and atmosphere. If you find the characters of Noir not fleshed out enough, there is El Cazador. If you were annoyed with how nothing in El Cazador seemed connected, there is Madlax.

And really, all three series are truly excellent at what they focus at. Madlax has a truly excellent plot that is wonderfully told. The plot never takes a break or drags: every episode is meant to flesh it out, and contains just the right balance between build up and new developments that just make the story of this series more and more interesting with every iteration. The story itself is very creative, and I loved the many different twists that would give either a character or a subplot a whole new dimension. For every conventional element of the plot, there’s also an unconventional one.

In terms of the characterization, out of all the lead characters of the Girls With Guns Trilogy, Margaret has the least interesting characterization. She has however the most interesting background, so it all evens out this way. Madlax meanwhile is a very compelling main character, who really keeps the series interesting, along with just about every other side character. This show also seems to have the talent to make any minor side-character who just only has one or two lines more than just a paper bag, and actually like someone with a clear purpose in the story.

The graphics of this series are by far its weakest point. There’s nothing wrong with the inbetween animation (which really can get quite good at times), but there is hardly any animation cleanup, leading to tons and tons of distorted faces. In the same way, the gunfights in this series are simply tools to tell the story. The music on the other hand, is absolutely fantastic. It manages to save the simple action scenes time and time again, and does an absolutely wonderful job at supporting the storytelling.

Now, there is something that you should know before you check out this series: in order to build up, it uses repetition and one liners. This is a series full of morals, and in a lot of scenes, characters often tend to repeat things that have just been said. This isn’t to the point where it gets in the way of the story: it’s all properly balanced so that you don’t have endless scenes of characters saying the same things over and over again, but there nevertheless is a lot of it in this series. If you already know that you don’t like the series that pull these things, then Madlax will be a bit harder to enjoy. It would also have helped if the voice acting was a bit better for these build up techniques to really work.

I’ve often been criticized with why I keep complaining at other repetitive franchises like Shaft and Gundam, and yet keep praising Bee-Train. And yes, I agree that there are a lot of similarities between Shaft and Bee-Train: both are pretty much built around one director with his particular style, and both produce series with a lot of similarities. Bee-Train often has ridiculously skilled marksmen, mystery plots, strong female characters and similar settings (in Madlax, people continuously travel back and forth between two countries, just like they did with El Cazador; half of the show takes place in France, just like it did in Noir), while Shaft, while having many different premises and characters often repeats the same jokes, gimmicks and scenarios and has a lot of pointless sequels. (Both have more than enough exceptions, of course)

For me, the essential difference is that Bee-Train keeps recycling is premises, while Shaft keeps recycling its scenarios. Based on the right execution, you can make any cliche good, and that’s what Bee-Train keep doing: all of their series have this distinct style, but yet when you look at the details they’re nearly all interesting in their own way (their good series in any case). With Shaft on the contrary, it gets a lot harder to care about their premises when they keep repeating the same joke or joke formats that I’ve gotten tired of ages ago. Repetition can be a bad thing, but it’s not as black and white that it’s impossible to make something great out of it.

Storytelling:	10/10 – A number of coincidences are used here and there, but aside from that it has a terrific use of build-up, an excellent plot that just keeps moving, many intriguing plot twists and wonderful use of music to support the storytelling.
Characters:	8/10 – For Bee-Train’s standards they may not have the best characterization and the voice acting is a bit off at times, but they’re still wonderfully colourful and interesting to watch.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Bad cleanup animation, good inbetween animation, awesome soundtrack.
Setting:	9/10 – Moral-heavy, but a very interesting back story that’s well portrayed as well.

Suggestions:
– .Hack//Sign
– Noir
– El Cazador de la Bruja

Out of all the series this season, MM had by far the most bizarre design decisions. It’s not just one thing about this series that’s weird; it’s got an entire washing-list of points that make me wonder what the hell these creators were thinking when they made this, both in good and bad ways. Allow me to elaborate.

Contrary to everything I expected, this series actually starts out pretty good. The main character is bothered by extreme masochism, but instead of glorifying this like most other moe shows that are based on a fetish, it makes it very clear that the lead character hates his condition and wants to be cured of it, and the people around him have similar problems The first four episodes are actually an interesting look at people with these severe disorders that were created by traumatic events in their pasts. It’s a bit overdramatic at times, but works surprisingly well here.

And then… the show becomes completely different. I mean it, they jump a gigantic shark at episode five, and continue on as a show consisting of nothing more than random fillers based on bizarre situations. These episodes are bad in many ways, including the “so bad that it gets good again”. The only possible explanation I can think of this is that Zexcs executives realized too late in what kind of direction the creators were originally planning to go and forced a complete change in the middle of the production here, in order to make this series more sell-able.

By far the weirdest result of these changes is how ridiculously out of character some of the people start acting here, the two lead females being the biggest example. One is a typical tsundere who at completely random times completely loses her “tsun”-part for no other reason than plot convenience. The other is a shy and humble girl who at random points becomes sincerely energetic and shameless. Both make no sense whatsoever considering the way in which their characters were built up.

Bad Xebec has been overshadowing Good Xebec way too much for the past few years. For every Pandora Hearts and The Third they make, they also come with tons of series that are nothing but harem antics. They’re much, much worse than what Gonzo once was. However, I also have to admit here that for a generic Moe shows, MM was actually one of the few that I enjoyed.

The fillers are stupid, filled with fanservice and filled with moe cliches, however they’re not really generic. They’re so ridiculously over the top that they become fun in this “mindless entertainment” way. There are some repeated jokes here and there, but all of the episodes are based on some neat idea that at least keeps the series fresh. The hypnosis episode in particular made me fall of my chair laughing. The other fillers, while nowhere as funny, still managed to keep my attention.

A big help for this series is that for a generic harem, it does have a very good male lead. Half of the time, his masochism is indeed used as a strange gimmick, but his dynamics do manage to carry the entire series. At heart, MM is a series about perverts, but it keeps a healthy balance between showing their positives and negatives, never overly glorifying them like you see in most other otaku shows. Just don’t expect anything to resolve itself, though.

Storytelling:	7/10 – It’s just bad at times, but never really boring, bringing enough creativity to the table to last 12 episodes.
Characters:	8/10 – Quite engaging at some times, ridiculously moe and out of character at others.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Nothing special, but quite solid.
Setting:	7/10 – Never, ever let the creators attempt to treat deep traumas or masochism. Seriously, don’t. And don’t even think about trying any of the “masochism cures”-in this series seriously!

Suggestions:
– Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou
– Kenko Zenrakei Suieibu Umisho

Madhouse, they’ve really established themselves as a powerhouse unlike any other animation studio, so when they announced their marvel project, I’m sure many people were looking forward to it: four twelve episode series, focusing on Iron Man, Wolverine, the X-Men and Blade. With two years of hype surrounding it, I was really looking forward to see what they could do with these premises. And then Iron Man finally aired. Oh boy.

Let’s start with the visuals. I usually don’t mind strange character-designs at all. In Iron Man though, people just look silly. The character-designs themselves aren’t particularly the problem, it’s just that all of the characters are drawn off-model 90% of the time. The result isn’t pretty: Tony Stark looks like a goat, one of the reporters looks like a warthog, it just screams uninvolved outsourcing all around. An interview with a Madhouse executive seems to hint at how the highest priority for their staff was spent on finishing the movie Redline, and it really shows that this had its effects on Iron Man.

If the graphics were just the issue then this could have been easily forgiven. But just about everything about Iron Man is just horrible mediocre. Take the plot: the series follows the tried and tested “first half random stories, second half plot”-pattern, and it fails at both of them. The random stories int he first half are just utterly stupid. Things are just there, without ever getting a reason why. They’re a complete mess at stupid decisions made by just about everyone. My favourite was the time in which Tony Stark gets attacked by a hacker, and the hilariously bad way in which he eventually gets defeated. Most of the stories though are so dull that they aren’t even bad enough to be funny.

The main story of this series on the other hand is just so ridiculously corny that it completely saps any kind of creativity that could have been put into it. These are especially the parts that feel like they were written by a twelve year old: it pulls the cheesiest twists in the book, over and over again. The dialogue is full of these cheesy morals without any attempt to give them depth: they’re completely shallow. Especially the final episodes are just one big soap opera that pull the kinds of plot twists that try to be sad but end up horribly corny and predictable.

That kind of a mess of a plot could in theory have been saved by the cast of characters… but no. They suck too. The worst is this reporter girl whose annoying antics have no place in this story, but every single character in this series is bad. Tony Stark has been turned in this moralizing womanizing dork, and the people around them lack any kind of creativity or even characterization.

I’ve been blogging for more than five years now. And seriously: I have never seen a worse season for Madhouse than the current Autumn Season. I wish I could say something positive about this series, and I guess that there is one episode that I actually liked. I mean the one with the psychic girl. It’s still riddled with problems, but at least it tried to be a bit genuine. The rest all is mediocre at best and while it may not be the worst series out there (hey, it’s nowhere as terrible as say KissxSis or Ladies Versus Butlers), this one could have been infinitely better, if it just was handled by a staff that actually cared about it. In the end, I can only say one positive thing about it: the soundtrack rocks. Seriously, go listen to it.

Storytelling:	5/10 – Moderately entertaining at best, cheesy, corny, shallow, superficial and just plain stupid at worst.
Characters:	4/10 – The character development that’s there is terrible, most of the characters are just paper bags.
Production-Values:	7/10 – I very rarely deduct points in this category: I only do that when the graphics actually get in the way of the rest of the series. They do here, making characters who try to be really serious look incredibly silly.
Setting:	5/10 – It’s the kind of setting that tries to be epic but fails horribly.

Suggestions:
– Ultraviolet: Code 044 (This is how superhero anime should be done god dammit!)
– Testujin 28-Go (Yes, Tetsujin roughly translates to Iron Man)
– Mobile Police Patlabor
I mean, there are so many examples this series could have followed. And yet it went with the most generic one.