Star Crossed Anime

A few weeks ago we had this discussion on the shoutbox about Berserk. I was really looking forward to it, but people were saying that it did not hold up, compared to its manga. And fair enough, the anime is only 25 episodes long, while the manga has been running since 1990 and still hasn’t finished, meaning that there was no way for the anime to be able to completely tell a story that wouldn’t conclude, even thirteen years after its airdate. The original manga of Berserk also seems to be one of the most well received mangas out there.

The thing is though, and most people who have been reading this blog for a while have been very much aware of this, but I’m terrible at reading manga. Blame a lack of time, but series like Blade of the Immortal, Bokura no, Himitsu Top Secret, Pandora Hearts: I loved all of them despite being somehow unable to just grab and check out their respective mangas. Even though some of them made huge changes and none of them get to the real meat of their source material, I’m still a huge fan of them as standalone, albeit very incomplete stories, based on manga that are God knows how good. I’ve been stuck at the Bokura no’s thirtieth chapter for years now, despite it being awesome just like its anime counterpart.

In any case, Berserk is the same: ridiculously incomplete, ending with one ridiculous hell of a cliff-hanger, but it’s also a ridiculously well executed anime.

I t really immediately sets itself apart from all of the other fantasy series that were spread across the nineties. The atmosphere is dark and gritty, it doesn’t try to glorify its battles (this series is completely brutal when it needs to be, and never tries to hide it), and the battles themselves are very well drawn, detailed and animated. The series quickly stars focusing on battles on a larger and larger scale, and yet the series consistently stays many levels of believability above what you’d usually expect in series that focus on medieval warfare.

What really sold me to Berserk was its character-development, though. Even though I have no idea how good the character-development in the manga must be, the anime really makes excellent use of its time to put as much meaning as possible into its three main characters. The plot is entirely meant to explore them, push them forwards to their goals, and get the best out of their characters while remaining perfectly paced so that each event flows into the other.

As a contrast though, the rest of the cast pales in comparison. They’re mostly static and really not the most interesting. There are unfortunately a lot of episodes that focus on them, and I feel that this series would have been even better when it made its characters, especially the people who end up on the other end of Guts’ blade, a bit more down to earth and give them a bit more character, rather than having Guts kill the same hordes of punching bags over and over again.

Really though, just for Guts, Casca and Griffith I’m really glad to have watched this series. It’s really one of the most mature action titles out there, both with its gore and the way it uses this gore to look at its characters. As for the ending… I don’t think I really need to describe in how many ways it gave us the middle-finger, but I nevertheless consider this series to have an amazing finale.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Slow, but very solid, and absolutely brutal when it needs to be.
Characters:	9/10 – The side characters are nothing special. The main characters are wonderfully developed, though, with a lot of meaning put into them.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Gorgeous artwork from the nineties. Plus, its soundtrack was composed by Susumu Hirasawa.
Setting:	8/10 – A detailed look into medieval warfare, but ridiculously incomplete.

Suggestions:
– Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-Hen
– Gilgamesh
– Gungrave

I think that from the start, it was obvious that Heroman would be nothing like the usual standard you’d expect from Bones. Even Bones’ flawed series are full of ambition, have this sense of maturity even when focusing on kids and teenagers, and are produced with a lot of attention to detail. Heroman however was a concept that none other than Stan Lee presented to them.

Now, it’s one thing that the creator of Spiderman, the X-Men, the Hulk and Iron Man was involved here, but Heroman is just so safe, it just has so many cliches, it has such a mediocre writing staff and it has the maturity of a 13-year-old, that it’s easily one of Bones’ weaker premises. Not the weakest, that title goes to the Mars Daybreak, but Heroman lacks both the ambition and execution to make it into any kind of memorable mecha series.

The premise: there is a kid who is pretty much a very kind-natured loser who finds a giant robot who is more powerful than anything mankind has ever created, he has a rich female childhood friend who acts as a semi-girlfriend, and he’s friends with a high school teacher who clearly is an uninspired homage to Doc from Back to the Future. Throughout the series he battles a bunch of aliens with powers that pretty much appear whenever the plot needs it.

With so many cliches, it really depends all on the execution here: how enjoyable is this series? How good are the characters? Heroman tries, but doesn’t really seem to know how to either develop its characters or create an enjoyable action series. Joey himself is very unlikable as a lead character: the creators tried to make him too pure, resulting in that we see 26 episodes in which a whiny little kid ends up saving the world. The creators do try to give the lead cast a little depth, but for some reason they decide to wait until twenty episodes have passed in order to only reveal some of the most basic of background information (I’m looking at you, Psy!).

Out of the 26 episodes, there are about four, possibly five episodes that really have good action. The rest aren’t anything special, and depend more on the story to keep the tension and the attention of the audience. This works decently in the first half, but in the second half the creators lose track of the plot completely, resulting in a bunch of pointless filler episodes that try to tie themselves into the main plot, but could have been deleted just as easily. The final battle of the series is way too rushed for the epic level it tries to reach.

There have been plenty of examples in which I’m able to ignore those kinds of flaws if the end result ends up enjoyable. High School of the Dead, for example: I am fully aware that it has flaws, but the way it played out was varied and kept my attention from start to finish. That’s what I look for in an anime. Heroman is different, though. I really get the feeling like it doesn’t know some of the basic techniques of storytelling, like a proper build-up. After you pass the climax of the second arc, there is hardly any variation left: we’re treated to things that we’ve all seen before and the things that are new don’t fit in the story at all.

In the past, Bones has already made a series about a kid who gets a toy that is able to fight and uses that to fight through hordes of opponents amidst bits of simple intrigue, and this was in 2001. The only part in which it doesn’t dwarf Heroman is that it tried to be much less epic, which is only a good thing, to be honest. Heroman completely has no value. I was positive about this series for a while, but in the end, now that the series is properly finished and I can get a proper look at the whole picture, I really have to admit that it wasn’t really worth my time to sit through this entire series (that is also why the rating for this series is much lower than the ratings I’ve been giving it at my monthly summaries. If you’re slightly interested, then watch up till episode nine: for that part, this series still is pretty solid. It’s in the part after that for which this series leaves too much to be desired, and this only gets more obvious as the series goes on.

Storytelling:	6/10 – The first half is solid enough, but especially the latter half is poorly laid out, and really fails to entertain or captivate.
Characters:	7/10 – Way too safe with its stereotypes, and the development comes way too late into the series.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Here is the thing: the animation of Heroman is very good with Bones’ usual standards, but I can only remember relatively few animated scenes that really impressed me. There are more frames than with most series and they are all solid and well quality checked, but it’s just so safe.
Setting:	8/10 – America, which is decently portrayed and decently responds to the main storyline; it does what it needs to do, but nothing more.

Suggestions:
– Angelic Layer
– Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
– Overman King Gainer
These are just a few examples of how redundant Heroman is and how it could have been done much better.

I would like to thank Hikaru no Go for some of the most riveting opening episodes of any long series that I’ve seen in a while. The first arc of this series, encompassing episodes 1 to 14 is masterfully written and an emotional highlight in the way that it toys with its characters. It plays out unlike any other shounen I’ve seen in the way that it throws its young protagonist in a world that he totally doesn’t belong in. With a simple, but extremely chilling soundtrack, it really is a roller-coaster ride that combines an excellent build-up with powerful and gripping drama that really blew me away.

In the rest of the 75-episode run of this series, it calms down a bit and it turns into more of a classic shounen set-up, emphasizing slow and gradual development. It’s a bit repetitive, but said development is still more than worth it to continue with this series until the end. 75 episodes is a lot of time for characters to change, and the creators really make use of this by making not just Hikaru change, mature and grow up, but a wide variety of different characters are portrayed growing throughout the series.

This show doesn’t just look at the Go game itself and its various layers of strategy, but what’s possibly even more important is the place of Go in Japanese society, ranging from how simple amateurs play it to the world of professionals of all kinds of levels, with even a few international side-stories: this series explores the full spectrum here.

Shounen series usually have this tendency to drag out their matches, but Hikaru no Go is a big exception here as well: I don’t think I recall any Go match that took up longer than one episode. Instead, the thing that bothered me that there may have been a few too many matches that simply looked like each other, which are played against similar characters with similar premises that play out in similar ways. I mean, 75 episodes is a lot of time here for things like these to get boring, and especially around the middle there just are a few too many Go matches and characters that look like each other for my tastes, despite making full sense in the story.

Nevertheless, this series still is chock full of interesting twists and tons of well written Go matches that put you to the edge of your seat. It especially sets itself apart with its development, which makes excellent use of its long airtime. At times it takes a bit too long levelling up its lead characters’ Go skills, but it remains a very detailed look in the world of Go, with especially the rivalry between Hikaru and Touya standing out as memorable.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Really knows how to make Go matches exciting, and really likes to toy around with emotions.
Characters:	9/10 – Has 75 episodes and makes excellent use of them to show half its cast change and mature.
Production-Values:	8/10 – I can only imagine how pain-staking it must have been for the creators to draw hundreds of different Go-matches, but what especially catches your attention is the hard-hitting soundtrack.
Setting:	9/10 – An excellent portrayal of Go in Japan. Pays attention of the wide variety in which it gets played.

Suggestions:
– Glass Mask 2005
– Nodame Cantabile
– hunter X Hunter