And with this, I’ve probably got almost all of the shows of 2006. All that’s left now is to wait till the Christmas-OVA’s get released. The current batch is another interesting one.
Tokyo Tribe 2
This anime has an interesting focus: a gang, or “tribe”, in urban Tokyo. It’s currently in conflict with one of the more powerful tribes, which happens to be lead by an old friend of the main character. The first episode was quite good. It has a nice atmosphere, something you’d expect from an anime with these themes. It’s a nice focus, though at times, the first episode went a bit too far with its disturbing scenes. One particular scene had a huge yakuza-boss raping a schoolboy and killing him in the process, which wasn’t too good for the overall mood.
FREEDOM
I wasn’t expecting much of this OVA, though it pleasantly surprised me. The art may look strange from a distance, but when you actually see it in animation, it actually works quite good, apart from one point perhaps. The creators have yet to find out how to synchronize the character’s mouths correctly with their voices, though this is a minor detail. The episode started off as a basic series about a boy, living on the moon and who likes racing in self-built engines. Despite being a 14-year old brat, he was actually interesting. He’s also got a nice rival, and when you combine the two of them, you get quite a nice combination. Still, it does seem that this episode served merely as an introduction, as the story really started off at the last scene, where the main character finds a strange picture about a girl and a couple of children. Another interesting aspect of the story is the fact that every child (and possibly adult too) has to wear a strange bracelet, which is used to control and monitor them, wherever they go. Even though the colony on the moon was fairly advanced, and looked extremely well built, our main character does feel locked up, and the anime portrays this quite nicely. While it’s far from awesome, this definitely will be an interesting watch. 🙂
Mai Otome Zwei
Heh, this episode already spawned a huge wave of posts about it. The question remains whether this OVA is so good that it deserves so much attention. Unsurprisingly, the answer is no. Everything’s all fairly basic. A hugely strong enemy appeared, who’ll probably be defeated by Ariko, fully powered up at the end of the fourth OVA. As a twist, it’s been turning various Otome to stone, taking over their form. Though unfortunately, the creators wished to focus more on action than on the reaction of the ones who were close to the ones who were petrified. I was also secretly hoping that the same kind of comedy we saw in the final episode of Mai Otome was included, though unfortunately, it stays with a few jokes which miss the mark about half of the times. Oh, have I already mentioned the rather useless fanservice? The only really good thing about this OVA was the conflict between Mai and Mashiro. The latter is finally learning that you can’t please everyone, though the former just can’t seem to understand this.
I want to see FREEDOM soooo much. Otomo character designs = win.