Star Crossed Anime

Black Magic is another one of those movies I had no expectations of, and yet turned out quite entertaining. Don’t get fooled by the title: the story has absolutely nothing to do with any sort of magic. Instead, it’s a science-fiction action-flick. Sure, the movie has a lot of flaws, but fortunately it has enough good points to make it worthwhile.

The thing that made this movie for me was how refreshing the characters feel. Every single character is in the movie and becomes involved for a good reason. I especially liked how everyone in the military has a personality and is more than just a walking paper-bag, like you see in so many other anime. The villains for this movie, although you’ll never get any good development or depth from them in any single way, do have good reason for their actions, and they’re so much better than “bad guy X who wants to either destroy or rule the world”.

But yeah, don’t expect the plot to make sense at all times. The movie tries, but when the main character comes into action you’re going to wonder how she survives. There’s also absolutely no character-development and the movie gets less interesting as it nears its climax. Something which should have been the other way around!

Incidentally, Masamune Shirou seems to be behind Black Magic M66. While I haven’t seen his other works of Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed, I doubt that this is among the best of his works. Thankfully, though, Black Magic knows exactly what it is: an action-flick. It never attempts to be deep; it never attempts to emotionally connect with the viewer, it doesn’t try to be 100% believable at all times. All it wants is to entertain the viewer for 40 minutes. Well, mission accomplished.

After looking at the promo-art, it’s easy to label ef as another of those harem-series. I too, at the beginning, wasn’t really motivated to continue with this series. Still, ef proved quite early that it doesn’t care about stereotypes. It’s not even a harem: it’s just a story about one love-triangle and one tragic couple. On top of that, this production has been supervised by Akiyuki Shinbou, which provides excellent graphics that actually symbolize the story, and the music is absolutely terrific. Even those who aren’t into romance can give this series a try.

But the thing that really makes this series is the dialogue. It’s deep, it’s detailed, and it’s meaningful. Neither the characters nor the story are that special for this series, but the dialogue makes everything so much better than if it were written by a lazy writer who only cares about his pay-check. The first half of the series basically builds up and fleshes out the characters, while the second half drastically increases the dramatic tension, and with great results.

There lies my problem with this series, though. ef has an excellent middle part, but I’m a bit iffy on the ending. This series seems to want to go out with a bang, while I think it would have been more appropriate to have let it end more peacefully. The twists near the ending feel forced, and just there to get a happy ending together. I would have liked to see an approach more similar to that of Hitohira: just have one big climax, while the rest of the series either focuses on building-up or the aftermath.

Still, I consider ef as one of the best visual novel-adaptations I’ve ever seen. There is a lot of crap amongst this genre, especially the eroge-adaptations, but ef ignores this and delivers a moving story between multiple couples. While there were a few side-characters who lacked development, the others were just as deep as the main ones. If you don’t plan on watching this series, then at least try to get your hands on the soundtrack, because that one for me has been the best soundtrack of the season.

For my 200th review, I was looking for something special (because yes, this is currently the 200th review I’ve written for my blog!), and lo and behold, the second Kino no Tabi-movie popped up on Tokyo Toshokan at exactly the right moment. With a length of half an hour, it’s again nice and short, and those who have been disappointed by the first movie will probably be delighted by the second one.

While Life goes on too place a few years before the series, Byouki no Kuni takes place a few years after the series. You can see how Kino has grown up a bit. She’s less scared to be emotionally involved with the people she meets, and she has much more trouble to hide her gender when compared to the series. ^^; The graphics also look better than they have ever had, and especially Kino looks beautiful.

Yet again, the movie features another random story that could very well be a glorified episode. Still, unlike the first movie, it feels complete, and it’s an excellent way to spend half an hour. Ryutarou Nakamura (Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost Hound, the director of the original series, but not the first movie) returns to the director’s seat, and the result is some excellent storytelling. I think that it can be best compared to the storytelling of the original series, combined with that of Ghost Hound.

Another great thing about this movie is that it’s completely standalone. You don’t need to have seen anything of Kino no Tabi before if you want to enjoy Byouki no Kuni, and it’s actually a very good introduction to the concept of the rest of this series. Overall, Byouki no Kuni is a relaxing movie that manages to recapture the essence of the series, while being more than just a glorified filler-episode; something that very rarely happens with movies that are based on series. This is also why I believe that a Mushishi-movie would be awesome. If you’ve seen the rest of the series, then I see no reason why not to check out the second movie of this great series.

Aachi wa Ssipak belongs in the categories of absurd movies, though this one has been made by Koreans. Right from the start, it’s clear what the purpose of this movie is going to be: breaking as many taboos as possible. Constipation, drug abuse and addiction, useless violence, crime, porn, you name it, and chances are big that Aachi wa Ssipak has got it. Especially if you’re into toilet-humour, then this should be a movie to consider to check out.

But yeah, the formula gets old very fast, and it doesn’t help that the characters are very, very hard to like. Every single one will probably get on your nerves due to their endless stupidity. The endless violence also gets old very soon, and after a blue mutant has been killed for the tenth time, then the fun quickly dies. (Seriously, how many of them are there anyway? It feels like thousands of them got slaughtered in the making of this movie).

Thankfully, later on the movie manages to redeem itself with a very entertaining mining-cart chase-scene. In fact, the action-scenes look overall very good, which prevented this movie from becoming a total waste of time. This isn’t the first time where a movie tries to be as gross as possible, and while it does add something new with the huge emphasis on defecation, it’s ot really my cup of tea.

Obviously, you should keep this one away from your little brother and sister. This is an interesting movie to watch with a bunch of friends while bored, though. The stupidity of the characters is enough to laugh at, and the action remains fresh. This is a Korean production after all, and these guys do have a knack for interesting action-scenes.

Here’s one thing I don’t get: Kodomo no Jikan has had to endure a lot of bad publicity, just because of its premise: a grade-school student who falls in love with her teacher. People were dismissing it immediately, without giving it a chance, labelling it as useless bait for paedophiles. The backlash even caused the license of the manga this series is based on to be cancelled. And yet, Moetan, which aired in this summer, was 10 times worse and yet nobody doesn’t even squeak at it.

I’m not claiming that Kodomo no Jikan is perfect. Heck, there is indeed a lot of useless fanservice (thankfully censored in the tv-version, though). The haircuts for the three main female characters are ridiculous. Sometimes, the children behave a bit older than what you’d expect from their age. And yet, unlike Moetan, this isn’t a series just to extract money from the paedophiles.

Kodomo no Jikan is about how to deal with traumatized kids. The teacher in the story is just starting out, and in his homeroom-class, there are three problem-children, who have been raised unusually, or had some traumatic experiences in their past. In Rin’s case (the main character for this story), this causes her to fall in love with her teacher, in an attempt to help her forget her horrible past. The teacher, in his turn has to learn how to deal with her properly, and how to not focus all his attention on her, while neglecting the other children in his class. Rin has a lot of problems at home, but what can a mere teacher do to solve it?

Unfortunately, not the entire manga was animated, so the answer to this question is quite rushed and unnatural. It’s a pity, because the rest of the series works quite well. The comedy in this series is of the feel-good type, and this series knows exactly when to be funny and when to be serious. And unlike Lucky Star, the show doesn’t get the chance to be stale. One complaint would be that one or two episodes are a bit too dramatic, but the others provide an excellent drama between Rin and her teacher.

Overall, this series would have been better without the fanservice. There’s also a lot of fowl language in this series, but that one hit surprisingly close to home, and reminded me of my own days in grade-school, where we just learned the new perverted words and tried to use them at every possible occasion. ^^; Kodomo no Jikan doesn’t deserve the bad publicity it’s been getting, as it’s a very capable series.

Oh my god… I’m amazed by this small OVA called Hitsuji no Uta. After watching 3×3 Eyes and reading the premise, I expected this to be another one of those action-flicks. “Boy lives random normal life, but then meets his sister and discovers he’s a vampire and together they bust up crime with lots of action”, or something similar. Heh, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The only “action” for Hitsuji no Uta takes place in the character’s minds.

It’s easy to hate this OVA, though. The animation ranges from mediocre to downright abysmal. There’s a huge amount of reused cells, and at times the animators just get too lazy to even move the characters’ lips when they’re talking. There’s one particularly ugly shot of the main character in the first episode that’ll have every cynic press the x-button as soon as it gets repeated for the third time. But seriously, the scriptwriting more than makes up for this.

First of all, this “vampire”-ability is nothing more than a disease. None of the characters have any superpowers. This is just a story about two siblings with an incurable mental disease: they freak out with a lust for blood. Hitsuji no Uta is how not only the brother and sister deal with their disease, but it’s also about the people around them. The few that wish to involve themselves to try and take care of the siblings.

The animators may have been just a bunch of monkeys, but the writers of Hitsuji no Uta are brilliant. They make sure that every single character is fleshed out and developed. They make sure that the dialogue is smart, that the characters feel more than just a bunch of idiots. The two main characters may have a mental disease, but that doesn’t prevent them from rational thinking. Even though they’ve been living apart for more than ten years, they feel drawn to each other because of their similar fate and blood-relation. And the writers did an excellent job in conveying this to the audience.

One thing I absolutely love about checking out these random series, movies and OVAs is that you never know when you hit an unknown gem. Hitsuji no Uta is one of these gems, when it provides an engaging realistic character-study about a curse-struck family. While it’s easy to label it as an emo-fest, those who look beyond it will be rewarded with two hours of excellent drama.

So since nearly every series is going to take a break for the Christmas Holidays, I decided that it would be a good time to watch a lot of movies and OVAs. 3×3 Eyes is an action-OVA that got released around fifteen years ago. It consists out of two parts: one four-episode release, and the continuation, consisting of three episodes. Unfortunately, both parts have their problems.

In the first part, the storytelling is all over the place. Especially the first and third episodes are a mess of random Deus ex Machina and convenient plot-twists that don’t make any sense. The main character is also one of those teenaged boys that meats a beautiful and special girl for a very weak reason. Still, despite all this the first part has one big advantage: it’s fun to watch.

Then the second part comes, which was released about three years after the first part stopped. It indeed does fix the storytelling-issues, and the story flows much nicer. But in exchange, it ends up taking itself way too seriously, not to mention that every single character that made the first part so fun to watch either just disappears, or in the main characters’ case develops into rather dull stereotype. The main female lead was fresh, strong and likable in the first part, but the second part turned her just into a boring damsel in distress. There is a lot of angst and sadness, but when the characters fail to connect it only ends up working against this OVA.

Still, 3×3 remains incredibly stylistic, and the first part offers a pretty nice blend of comedy, action, drama and romance. It also isn’t afraid to show the darker parts of action, and the villains don’t hesitate to use the most dirty tricks to overcome their enemies, with the best being episode two. The second part is also well-crafted and built-up. It’s just a shame that the characters don’t work when they take themselves too seriously.