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Dragon Half
(2 episode OVA)

Pretty much the entire premise of this OVA is to make fun of anime clichés, particularly those associated with the ones set in a medieval fantasy realm. I haven't seen many of those, mostly because I just have no interest at all in that genre, so I might actually be missing out on more than what I caught. Of course, there's plenty of other stuff to laugh it, including the portrayal of anime fangirls. A stereotype to be sure, but definitely based on something, as I've had the misfortunate of witnessing myself. Of course that also makes this OVA a bit annoying, mostly because high-pitched squeals just have a way of annoying the hell out of me.

Visually, it's pretty average, or at least as average as low budget anime goes. Actually one of the things about this OVA is that it bounces back and forth between a more typical visual design, and something more like a super deformed chibi style. It was trying to be so cute that I wasn't sure if I wanted to vomit rainbows in disgust or just laugh at it. Given the context of making fun of cutesy anime, I pretty much just decided to snicker a bit, though to be honest I probably would have anyway if it'd been played straight ... right before I turned it off and tried to forget about it.

Naturally, this OVA also makes fun of fan service, or maybe it just used it as an excuse to have some of its own. It's probably a mix between the two, as there was a little lampshade hanging, but that doesn't stop it from throwing in some animated boobies at the very end. I guess that's a perk of being an OVA instead of something aired on TV. Wink

There actually was a plot hidden in amongst all the fluff, but it really wasn't much of one. What plot there actually is just parodies any anime where a female character has to go on some convoluted quest in order to change herself so she can be desirable to the object of her affection. In this case, there's the kind of long-haired effeminate warrior type you've seen in every anime like this who kind of pulls duty as a singer/star/celebrity. He's supposed to be a dragon slayer, too, which I guess is supposed to be funny since the main protagonist, Mink, is the title half dragon who he is on a mission to slay. There isn't much in way of plot resolution, though, as the OVA stops short of finishing the manga it was based on.

The characters are actually kind of annoying, but then they're supposed to be. All of them are based off of some stereotype that's showed up in pretty much every show like this and played for comedy. The downside to that is that none of them are particularly interesting. The brainless muscle character Damaramu was probably my favorite out of all of them, though I can't really explain exactly why.

This was a fairly fun OVA overall, and it is mostly just fluff. It isn't the best parody anime I've seen by a long shot, but it isn't bad or boring, either. I wasn't bored either, and I did find myself chuckling from time to tome. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it or not, but if you do decide to watch it just know going in that you can't expect a whole lot out of it. 6/10.

E's Otherwise
(26 episode series)

This was one of the most boring and pointless series I ever bothered to watch all the way through. It is entirely my own fault that I did, though. I can't even really explain why, either, other than being mildly interested in what the big evil secret plan was, and the continued hope that things might pick up and that something important might happen. It pretty much takes more than half the series for that, though.

The series takes place in a kind of dystopic future that is run entirely by competing mega-corporations, which almost seems like something out of the '80s. It follows Kai Kudou, a psychic who works for ASHURUM, one of the twelve mega-corportations I mentioned. The term "psychics" is used a bit more loosely here to mean anyone who is either telepathic or who can use telekinetics, which is apparently way more common here. Of course they also tend to be referred to as "E's," which gives the series its name. In any case, Kai is caught up between the conflct between humans and psychics because it turns out that Ashrum wasn't what he thought it was, and neither was the mission it sent him on.

As cool as the premise of the series sounded, it really didn't turn out to be much about this conflict or whatever these evil corporations were up to. Occasionally the series would touch on something, but mostly it seemed like a distraction from the somewhat typical slice-of-life anime that had developed following Kai being found by some random girl and brought to the home she shared with her adopted brother, you know, instead of to a hospital. Well, in this case there's a kind of reason for that, but still, it kind of turns into this thing where Kai is the fish out of water and the two people who took him in have fun, wacky adventures, like dressing Kai up like a chick and finding a lost cat. Oh yeah, there's this rebellion thing going on, too, but it isn't entirely clear who the rebels are or who they're fighting for quite a while into the series because apparently the adopted family thing is more important, or something.

Eventually we find out that Ashurum is brainwashing psychics in order to use them as weapons, and that both it and Kai's boss, Eiji Sagimiya aren't what they are initially supposed to appear. Shocker. Oh, and the big secret evil plan involves basically destroying the world as we know it by killing pretty much all of humanity. Of course! Just like so many other anime outings I've watched, including Code Geass just recently.

So you might say I'm a bit disappointed, mainly in that I didn't follow my initial instinct after the standard 3 episode trial and just stop watching at that point. I would have spared myself from the cookie-cutter plot, all the attempts at cuteness and being funny, the annoying asshat of the series's antics, and the lame sequel hook. Oh yeah, we never do find out what happens to good guy Kai, bad guy Eiji, and a few other characters after the big battle at the end. The series just sort of ends, while making a very lame attempt at suggesting that there might be more to follow. Honestly, this series was mostly filler, and it could have done everything in 12 episodes and probably still had plenty of filler to make the big evil secret plan still feel like it was falling into place over time. Maybe the quality of the animation would have been better then, too.

Probably the most fun I got out of this series was unintentional. The series opens itself up for pedophile jokes way too easily, all though part of that is thanks to the character design. I don't know how old Asuka, the girl who found Kai is supposed to be, but at one point a feminine man shows up and wants to marry her. He also has a thing for candy, so one of the first things he does is to ask her if she likes candy. Seems legit, right? Wink

Then there's also the standard Catholic Church pedophile jokes when it turns out some cardinal is keeping a bunch of children locked up. So yeah, it's safe to say that the only fun I really had out of this series was unintentional, because lord knows the running gags of Asuka not being able to cook and all the cross-dressing crap wasn't funny.

I honestly would recommend skipping this series if you're thinking of watching it. About the only way you'd probably enjoy it un-ironically would be if you're a fan of the adopted family hijinks type shows, and even then you'd probably lose interest when the plot finally kicks in and people try to kill each other 9and sometimes succeed). It's sad, but I actually enjoyed Divergence Eve more than I enjoyed this series, and by that I mean the actual plot of it. 1/10.

Eiken
(2 episode OVA)

I wasn't even sure if I should have bothered with this one, and I could see within about a minute or so that I'd made the wrong choice. Being the glutton for punishment I sometimes am, I decided to finish watching the hour long OVA all the way through, mostly out of morbid curiosity. I'd heard that this OVA was bad, and now I've seen for myself that it is.

I've read that this anime and the manga it's based on are fairly popular in Japan, which makes me giggle a little on the inside. I also read that this was horribly panned in the US. At first I was thinking that it might just be an overreaction to the obviously large amount of fan service. Being a pervert, I thought maybe at the very least I'd get some laughs out of it. I didn't. About the only way this show is even remotely funny would be to take clips of it out of context and add some humorous music, you know, just like AMV Hell, where I first saw clips of this show.

This OVA tried really hard to be funny and sexy, but it failed at both. The entire premise is built around boob jokes and panty shots, and while I know this is supposed to be a parody of fan service, it still manages to not be funny. Hell, normally I might just say something along the lines of how a joke done constantly over and again becomes unfunny, but in this case all the boob jokes and innuendo were never even funny to begin with. As for sexy, same thing. I'll admit right up front to actually liking most fan service, so theoretically I should like something full of it. Of course, it might help if the women being flaunted were even remotely attractive. In fact, I usually found myself grossed out a little. There's not only the impossibly huge breast thing going on, there's also how most of the fan (dis)service also tended to pour out of their stockings and other clothing, rather like a marshmallow being squeezed out of the end of a smore. You're welcome for that image, by the way. Wink

Disturbingly, I've seen this kind of thing at anime conventions before, when overweight women have cosplayed in costumes not unlike what were in this show. And just to add to the grossness, the chick that wants the main character, Densuke Mifune, so bad that she literally throws herself at him and practically rapes him is his step-sister, which while technically not incest is still close enough, especially since she constantly refers to him as "brother".

Amazingly enough, there actually was a plot, only it was the stereotypical "guy must win competition to win girl" plot. And the contest was just another excuse for even more fan service. That was about the extent of the plot, though. Pretty much this was just an hour's worth of seeing how many ways Densuke could feel up extremely busty school girls (and his teacher) and how embarrassing all that was supposed to be. Basically situational comedy for pervs.

Needless to say, I recommend that you stay the hell away from this OVA. Even if all you're looking for is fan service, you'd probably be better off just watching some porn. If you think there might be some actual comedy to be had from this, there really isn't. If you decide to watch this anyway, well, I warned you. 0/10.

Last edited by Captain X on Thu Mar 01, 2012 10:54 pm; edited 1 time in total

Elfen Lied
(14 episode series)

This is both a stunning and a disturbing series. Right away audiences should be clued in to the adult nature of the series by the beautiful opening theme that features quite a bit of female nudity, but if it didn't, the opening scenes of Lucy's escape should do the trick. So right up front, let's just make clear that this is a graphically violent show that features a lot of blood and guts thanks to some invisible hands literally ripping people apart. Confused? So is this series.

Honestly one of the oddest parts of this series is how it can jump back and forth quite suddenly between what could be a more typical anime along the lines of Cobits, and something that could give you nightmares. This owes in large part to the split personalities of the main focus of the series, Lucy. I'm not sure if she can be considered an out an out antagonist or a protagonist, all I can say is that Lucy is pretty much just a heartless killer. It's true, as the series goes on and we learn about her past, she actually becomes somewhat sympathetic. Of course that doesn't change the fact that she will kill anyone who happens to get within two meters of her simply for being human. In the first episode, there's actually something of a prolonged set-up just to illustrate this by introducing us to a clumsy assistant who can't even manage to keep a cup of coffee balanced on a tray as she walks down the hall. Unfortunately for her, she happens to literally stumble right into Lucy's path as she makes her bloody escape from the secret installation she's been held prisoner at since she was a child. Lucy doesn't even hesitate to kill the bumbling assistant and then use her headless body as a shield right afterwards. But just as Lucy manages to get out of there, she catches a .50 caliber anti-tank round in the side of the metal helmet that had been on her head and Nyu is born.

Nyu is like a child. Actually she reminded me a lot of Chi from Chobits in that she can basically only say one word over and over and it becomes her name. That and her "innocence" means she doesn't understand the concept of modesty and tends to wander around naked at first. Actually I probably would have been annoyed and just stopped watching if not for the fact that Nyu was for all intents and purposes a blood-thirsty killer.

Kohta and Yuka are the first ones to see Nyu/Lucy as she wanders naked up onto the beach. Kohta is pretty much the obvious protagonist of the series opposite Lucy/Nyu. He and Yuka have a history going back to their childhood, and it seems the two of them (especially Yuka towards Kohta) have a thing going for each other. They also happen to be cousins. Yay.

Anyway, Kohta also happens to have a connection to Lucy going back to their childhood, and it has something to do with a day that Kohta has repressed from his memory. Naturally there is a lot of mystery surrounding this and Lucy's origins, which is a big part of the appeal of this series.

The characters are all fairly interesting, and I have to say that most of them are pretty messed up, too. The series does so a pretty good job of making the majority of them actually somewhat sympathetic, though, while it plays with a lot of themes involving prejudice, abuse, revenge, regret, and human emotions.

For instance, Lucy belongs to a new species called Diclonius, which is made up mostly of females with pink hair and two horns protruding from their temples that have something to do with their other feature – invisible arms that can rip through pretty much anything quicker than a human can blink. All the women also seem to be infertile yet there are constantly new births happening, almost as if a virus is spreading and creating them. This is eventually explained, but I'm getting off track here. The thing about these girls is that soon after they get the use of their invisible arms, they start killing people, usually starting with their parents. However, there is a lot of question there as to whether the Diclonius are simply born horrible killers, or if they are driven to this by how they were treated up until they discovered their abilities. Thanks to the horns, most of them are shown to be mistreated by pretty much everyone they meet. Lucy wound up at an orphanage and was bullied mercilessly, at one point being forced to watch as her bullies beat a puppy she had recently found and started caring for to death with a flower vase.

I really can't say enough about this series. It has an interesting and engaging story, the characters actually have some depth to them, the music did a good job of setting the mood, and the animation is very well done. That's not to say that there aren't some plot holes (most of which get lamp-shaded) and that the series isn't at times seriously messed up. I will say this, though, of the graphic nature of the violence – it's not really much different than what one would find in a Hollywood slasher film. My only real disappointment with this series is that it ended the way it did. It's pretty obvious that there was supposed to be a continuing storyline, and a look through the Wiki article confirms this. There are a lot of plot threads left hanging, and while Lucy's fate was left ambiguous, it wasn't that hard to guess who was standing on the other side of the door at the end of the series.

Edit: I've since changed my mind about this series. Please look for the second review of this series to see the new score.

High School of the Dead: Drifters of the Dead
(single episode OVA)

Well, being the nerd that I am, I just had to watch this follow-up to the series. And this is going to be a short review, because there isn't all that much to say about it. You know how in the series review I mentioned that this could have been a serviceable zombie apocalypse story if it weren't for all the fan service and mood-swing-ish comedy? Yeah, the OVA has given up any pretense of doing even a semi-serious zombie story.

I guess the people who made this decided there just wasn't enough fan service yet, so they decided to throw in a beach episode for the hell of it, as this OVA is just an excuse to get everyone into bathing suits and to frolic together. Oh, that and since this is an OVA they finally drew in some nipples. Still, not much to write home about. Then, of course, there's the reinforced misogyny in the form of all the women pressuring the two male characters into searching for food, just so they have an excuse to play around on the beach and have fun. This is made even better by the fact that when the main protagonist (at least of the series), Takashi Komuro, fails to get anything, the same chick who was basically in charge of getting all the girls out of work gives him crap about it. The OVA tried to say this was funny, but I wasn't amused. But hey, there was fan service, so I guess I wasn't supposed to notice. Naturally the fat nerd character that the audience is no doubt supposed to identify with is the one who gets everyone food.

The expected demographic.

No one gets a chance to eat, though, as the perfect time has come for more fan service. This time, everyone gets to hallucinate so everyone has a chance to make out and/or have sex with each other. Everyone apparently sees their own ideal partner, with the nurse seeing her girlfriend, and the angry aggressive chick seeing her mom. Yeah... And if that wasn't fun enough, it's implied that Takashi made it with a zombie when he thought he was doing it with the psycho chick who got off on the violence during the series. At least they show him managing to keep several bikini-clad zombies at bay while still hallucinating that it's the group of women he's with.

Of course, this OVA just admits that it isn't even trying anymore by expositing all the "important" information at the beginning and end of the OVA, with the characters even hanging the lampshade about it. As you might guess, I'm not going to go easy on it. And before anyone asks why I bothered watching it – to make fun of it. It's not that I was expecting much out of it or anything, and as an added bonus it's only about 16 minutes long, about 3-4 minutes of which is the opening theme. I did kind of think there might be some semblance of story, though, kind of like the series, but nope. 1/10.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (When They Cry) &
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai
(50 episode series)

This is an exceptionally well put together series, which approached the story from many different angles and kept me hooked from start to finish. That’s actually why I’m including both the first and second seasons together in this review, because it’s only together that they make a complete story. That’s what makes it that much more unfortunate that the second season apparently wasn’t picked up for a dub like the first season was. The story was just as good even if I had to read subtitles, but to be honest I’d gotten used to the dub cast, and some elements just weren’t as effective in my opinion as in the dub because what’s said has to be filtered through emotionless subtitles.

Moving on, as much praise as I’m giving this series, I’m going to say right up front that it’s hardly perfect either, though its flaws aren’t anywhere near being a deal-breaker, at least for me. While the story itself is actually made up of repeating time loops in which are main characters each tend to do things a bit differently and things tend not to end well for them, I can’t help but feel that there was also something of an anime within an anime here. While I liked the main anime, which was a murder mystery/psychological thriller, with plenty of drama thrown in, I didn’t much care for the anime within it, which was the kind of typical, cutesy, moe, slice-of-life anime I just don’t like. As the main character who serves as the primary protagonist for the first season, Keiichi Maebara is also the only male character among the other main characters, who also form an after-school club in their small, one-room school located in the village of Hinamizawa. This has all the makings of a harem anime, and to be honest the anime within the anime seemed to pretty much be that. The character designs kind of added to this, and was somewhat disarming to the horrible murders that take place in this series, while simultaneously making it somewhat amusing for that fact, just like Elfen Lied. I feel that the cutesy slice-of-life bits distracted from the story somewhat, but while I would have done it differently, I completely understand why this aspect of the story was done – so we’d care about the characters.

Since the story is pretty much TNG’s Cause and Effect or Groundhog Day with a murder mystery, it’s pretty important that the audience gets to know and care about the characters, otherwise, there is no point to watching them die and/or kill over and over again other than as gore porn. That’s what I feel is a major failing of the vast majority of most horror films, because it isn’t so much about the characters (who are usually too stupid to live anyway) as it is about seeing the horrible way they meet their end. Gore porn, in other words. With Higurashi, however, we learn a lot about the characters and their village each time the story makes its way through the fateful events of June 1983. Sure, it’s a bit over the top that each of the characters has some kind of a past shame that makes them kind of scary in some ways, and that the village has such a sorted history as well, but this is also what makes the story interesting. I also have to admit that this is where the moe slice-of-life bits actually help to add to being able to care about the characters, as we get to see them when times are good, and it makes it that much more tragic when things got to hell. Often it involves one of the friends losing it completely, betraying, and killing all of their friends.

The first season doesn’t really explain all that much. Actually this is where one of the more annoying flaws of the series stands out, because information we already learned as the audience tends to be constantly repeated. I’m cool with the way information was slowly learned with each new time loop, and in fact I actually liked that and the pacing it set, but I really hated hearing the same information repeated. It was better when the story changed to focus on other main characters, though. I also liked how each new time loop started with a vision of the horrible ending it would have, with everything then adding up to what we saw it start out with. The thing is, it becomes apparent very quickly that more is going on, involving a conspiracy of some kind with parties unknown committing some of the gruesome murders in Hinamizawa valley. At first we’re lead to believe that people in the village itself are responsible, but much like having Keiichi act as the protagonist for the first season, this is somewhat misleading.

The season ends with Rena Ryugu, one of Keiichi’s friends going psycho and killing a couple of people, who to be fair were conning her father for basically most of what he had. Her friends help her to hide the body, but eventually she gets paranoid and takes her entire school hostage, apparently intending to kill all of them using a gasoline bomb. Keiichi manages to talk her out of it, however, and the next season starts from here, only about 25 years later, with Hinamizawa being the abandoned site of a disaster that had apparently killed everyone but her, and which we see happen more than once with a different main character as the sole survivor each time. At the start of season 2, this is Rena. We also get the first really obvious clue that what’s going on here was definitely an external conspiracy.

While season 1 was the build up, season 2 is the climax, finally explaining all the mysteries. To begin with, as it turns out there actually is a Bill Murray character who technically then would be the true protagonist of the entire thing, though here she’s only the protagonist of the second season. Kind of surprising considering that in the first season we only got a few hints she knew more than she was letting on.

Meet Bill Murray, aka Rika Furude.

Rika is the shrine maiden for the local deity, Oyashiro, a supposedly wrathful and vengeful god who has been said to be killing and disappearing people every year for going on the fifth year. This naturally isn’t actually the case, and as it turns out, Oyashiro is actually Hanyū, a meek spirit who was apparently an ancestor of Rika’s who was sacrificed to bring peace to the village, and who originally set the rules meant to keep the local disease or parasite from spreading further or getting out of control. She has been watching everything go down, though she is unable to do anything but watch, and it is because she wants the village to avoid being destroyed that she brings Rika back to some prior point in history after Rika is killed in June of 1983. Apparently this has added up to over a century of time, and the two of them have become somewhat jaded for that reason. Fortunately, and somewhat conveniently, other main characters start to remember events from previous time loops, and are able to fight their fate.

Along the way, we learn more and more about what is going on, who is involved, and what role they play. For the most part, the pacing is perfect, though at one point we go back and see how one character apparently became the monster that they are in 1983, and I felt the story dwelled a bit too long on that part. Seeing the conspiracy that was first hinted in the first time loop come together was definitely interesting and important to the story, however, especially when it becomes apparent that the event that kills the entire village is not the tragic natural disaster it was initially thought to be by authorities.

The final time loop and climax to the story is a fairly good payoff. The only disappointment in my opinion is the lack of any real punishment to the main big bad of the series, who is responsible not only for the massacre of the entire village in previous time loops, but for the butchery of Rika in order to set that massacre in motion, and for other murders which occurred prior to June 1983 and are not undone by Rika and her friends. Actually, one of the people she consistently killed in each time loop and tried to kill in the last one ends up being sympathetic toward her and lets her cry into his shoulder. How disgusting. Yes, the point of this last time loop was that there weren’t supposed to be any losers, but it’s also a little too perfect that not even any of the bad guys wind up dead in what was supposed to be a life and death battle. The final battle was kind of lame that way, because it consisted of a bunch of kids setting non-lethal traps for people who were instructed to kill all of them on sight and were armed to do so. But, the end was still pretty satisfying when everything that had been building up came together in the end and the grisly fate of Hinamizawa was finally avoided.

As far as other weaknesses, for the most part they’re nitpicks. Things like Mion and Shion Sonozaki packing a revolver and no one noticing or mentioning it, and never actually using it when it would have made sense to do so, or Hanyū showing up in physical form for the last time loop, but still having horns, only no one seems to notice and never get mentioned. The thing I personally hated and found to be the biggest flaw, however, was the sexualizing of the younger girls, and taking this further by having an adult character have a sexual attraction to one of these girls (we’re talking grade school age) and playing up his pedophilia as being funny and a joke. Fortunately this doesn’t come up very often, or it might have effected my ability to enjoy the show. The other major weakness of note is the ending. Basically it suggests that an adult Rika or Hanyū has gone back in time and has successfully managed to keep the major event that leads to the big bad becoming the big bad from happening. That actually kind of ruins things considering everything the story has gone through, and the way the characters fought so hard for their happy ending. Not to mention that it doesn’t make much sense in how the series established the time loops happened to begin with.

That being said, I can’t recommend this series enough for you to watch, especially if you’re interested in murder mysteries and psychological thrillers. However, be warned that many of the murder scenes are somewhat gruesome, and if the thought of cute little moe characters going crazy and killing people disturbs you, you might want to pass on this series instead. If that doesn’t bother you or you otherwise think you can handle it, definitely watch this series. Just skip the last season and don’t bother with the live action movie. 8/10.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei
(5 episode OVA)

This OVA is completely pointless and adds nothing to the series at all. In fact, it seems to forget or ignore aspects of the series. So basically this OVA does to Higurashi what Terminator 3 does for that franchise.

I started watching this wondering by wondering what could possibly happen to add to the series and manage to be wrapped up within 5 episodes, because while the end of season 2 has an odd sequel hook, it could basically be ignored since it didn’t make any sense to begin with. The story was over, we saw it end with a nice happy ending that had no losers. Now I was hoping that it might be another mystery/psychological thriller story that added on to the series proper and showed us some kind of consequence of what went down. Naturally, I was disappointed. The OVA is actually three separate stories, and really nothing adds to the series proper. It also seems to forget that Hanyū should have a physical human body now and that the big bad was, you know, the big bad. Instead she becomes the comedy relief for the two comedy stories that serve as bookends to the more serious middle story that takes up only three episodes.

Now, I won’t bash the first episode completely, because it was pretty obvious that it was never meant to be taken seriously even a little bit. I also have to admit to laughing more than once during it, despite it pretty much being the cutesy, slice-of-life stuff that I really don’t care for. Most of the humor for me pretty much just came from the absurdity of it all. I might have even forgiven this as just a fun little romp that didn’t mean anything, except that this wasted an episode of an already short OVA, and the fact that the next episode and the start of the serious story arc made it clear that the main characters’ day at the pool did take place and the absurd events from it did actually happen. I hate you, OVA.

The last episode was also a waste of an episode, and consisted of a story where some magical charm makes one of the main characters fall in love with whoever happens to have another magical charm that goes with it. You know, one of those stories… Yes, I know it’s just supposed to be a fun romp, but by now my patience was at an end and all I saw was a waste of an episode, and to be frank a waste of an OVA. Why? Why, OVA, why?

Okay, so I’ve bitched about it, now for the “good” part. The serious story arc that took up only three episodes of this 5 episode OVA actually does present a somewhat interesting dilemma, in which Rika, the Bill Murray of this blood-soaked Groundhog Day story, must choose between two worlds which each have positive and negative aspects to them. There’s the one from the series proper (aside from the mistakes I mentioned earlier), in which she and her friends fought to overcome fate and now live happily together, or there’s the alternate world she finds herself in. Basically, in this new time loop, the big fight over the construction of a dam that essentially started everything in the series proper never happened, none of the gruesome deaths happened, and none of the main characters have the tragic pasts they had in the series proper. Oh, and Rika’s parents didn’t die. This also serves to complicate her choice, as the key to Rika getting back to the familiar world she knew was trapped in the form of her mother, and the only way to use it would be to kill her mother. And it was also apparent that while initially she was unhappy with this new world, she could potentially be happy in it now, so it was an interesting dilemma, even if the choice she was going to make was pretty obvious.

The downside is that we’re basically cheated here. We started out getting cheated by having Rika act like a complete idiot in order for her to die and end up in what appears to be a new time loop. Her being an idiot aside, initially this is something of an “oh shit” moment, because it looked like she might have to go through everything all over again, and all because she was a dumbass and got herself run over by a truck. We’re then cheated again at the end of the story arc, because we never see her make the choice, we just see her wake up back in the timeline from the beginning of the story arc, apparently having recovered from having a truck run over her face (Hanyū’s doing, somehow, apparently). We then learn that apparently the entire story arc was a cheat, and that the entire point of it was to get Rika to respect and miss her parents again. I think. Thanks for wasting my time, OVA…

So you could definitely say I really didn’t much care for this “addition” to the Higurashi saga. It really didn’t add anything, and the one good part of it was basically a cheat. I can honestly say that even with the somewhat interesting dilemma faced in the three-episode story arc, I wish that this OVA just hadn’t been done. The series already has a decent enough ending and didn’t need this little addendum. 4/10.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
(2008 live action movie)

This is unfortunately yet another example of a good animated series being poorly adapted into a live action movie. I was disappointed, because when I’d heard that there was a live-action version of this series, I was hoping that it would be as good as or better than the series itself. But, that’s not really being fair, because stories that originally took a lengthy series to tell rarely adapt well into movies. I guess I got my hopes up here because the first movie only told the story from the first time loop in the first season of the series, with another movie already having come out and it looking for all intents like this will be a series of movies. And hey, the first story arc from the first season was one of the creepiest ones, so really this movie could have been pretty good. But it wasn’t.

Now, I’m not going to bitch because this movie wasn’t exactly like the anime; I completely understand them taking liberties with the story in order to adapt it to a movie. What’s important is that the main point of the story isn’t lost, and here a rather important aspect of it was, namely that it was already apparent that there was some kind of conspiracy involving a mysterious drug in a syringe, with that fact being covered up by parties unknown. The conspiracy aspect was kept, and the syringe even showed up, but the ending was kind of one of the clues that came up later on, and here it was changed, as was Keiichi’s end, and it doesn’t look like for any real reason, other than perhaps to show that the town’s doctor might know that the nurse who was supposedly burned to death in a barrel was actually still alive. But we don’t actually see that, so having him die in the hospital instead of being found after he’d died doesn’t really add anything to the story.

Really though, the two biggest enemies of this movie are the seeming lack of budget, and the lack of acting ability of the cast. Now, I say seeming lack of budget just because that’s the impression I got – that of a low budget horror movie. It looks like everything was shot on location, and while that does add to the realism of the setting, it also makes the movie look cheap, and leads to some issues with a severe lack of room. You know, for things like wildly swinging a bat around to kill two girls.

Speaking of, I was disappointed that this scene wasn’t actually shown save for a few flashes in the beginning of the movie. That should have made a pretty good hook to make people want to watch this movie, you know, some horror to go with the creepy tone, like in the series. Maybe it didn’t shoot well because of the lack of space on the set, or maybe the special effects didn’t have a budget to speak of.

Anyway, as if the visuals kind of souring me on this movie wasn’t enough, the actors just couldn’t sell me at all on what was going on. I honestly couldn’t even tell you if the voice acting part of it was good or not, because I don’t understand Japanese and had to depend on emotionless subtitles. What I can tell you is that what I saw didn’t really sell me on anything even being creepy, let alone scary. It was like watching a pale imitation of the anime made by some college kids for a film class. As if to rub this in, the ads at the end of the movie didn’t just advertise the next movie, but the DVDs of the anime and volumes of the manga.

This movie was a waste of time, and doesn’t in any way encourage me to want to keep watching this live action movie series. If you liked the series, save yourself from having to endure a more boring, unconvincing version of what you already saw and liked. 1/10.

Ergo Proxy
(23 episode series)

This is an amazingly well done series. The artwork and soundtrack are beautiful, the story is intriguing, and the characters actually have some depth to them.

Technology as presented here is pretty interesting. Everything is obviously pretty high tech, and yet it all has a kind of art deco look to it that seems to hearken back to the 1920s view of the future, actually kind of mixing modern and past visions of the future. For instance, while there are androids (referred to as AutoReivs), they look nothing like the tin can versions or ridiculously human versions seen in other sci fi. Instead, they manage to look both interesting and creepy, looking more or less human in shape, but with faces that look more like porcelain masks and bodies that seem to resemble canvas. About the only exception to this are AutoReivs that resemble children, like Pino.

Taking place in a post-apocalyptic future, it seems that earth's environment has been devastated, ironically in an attempt to create a clean energy alternative. Most of the story is focused around a domed city called Romdo, which could almost be a city from the TV movie adaptation of Brave New World. People are grown in artificial wombs and programmed to serve a particular function within this artificial, dystopic city. They're also constantly encouraged to spend and buy new things, while throwing out all things. Outside the dome, people eek out an existence off of Romdo's scraps in the desolate landscape while dodging Romdo's many robotic patrols. There were also obviously other domed cities at one point, but they are either empty of human inhabitants or destroyed.

This series has two protagonists who share the focus fairly evenly. The first is a man named Vincent Law. An immigrant from another failed city, he works as an AutoReiv disposal worker. AutoReivs have started getting a computer virus that makes them become self-aware, and the disposal unit basically hunts these down and kills them. Romdo is a very structured place, so people and Auto Reivs that don't fit into their pre-determined place in that society are basically just hunted down and killed. Vincent, though, has something of a mystery surrounding him, and soon after we meet him he ends up being whisked away outside.

The other protagonist is Re-l Mayer, a police officer as best I can tell. In some ways she reminds me a little of Ricker Deckard, at least in some aspects. She's investigating a series of murders perpetuated by infected AutoReivs when we meet her, along with her AutoReiv partner, Iggy. She actually hates Romdo and its structured society, though this at least in part seems to be out of resentment for her grandfather, who runs the city. Naturally life gets complicated for her soon after we meet her and she meets Vincent. She develops a strange kind of obsession with him, especially after she first encounters what will come to be known as a Proxy.

While there is some sporadic action, if you’re looking for some kind of sci fi action piece here, you'll be disappointed. Instead, the series focuses a lot more on the frame of mind of the protagonists as they are taken through the story. Vincent has a mysterious past that he's determined to remember, and to do this he goes on a long journey into the devastated landscape he finds himself in. Re-l catches up with him and ends up going with him on his journey, along with Pino, who is the only one to be there with him the whole way.

Neither Vincent nor Re-l are perfect, either. Thankfully the series doesn't go too over the top with their flaws, making them feel a bit more real. For instance, Vincent is kind of a wuss, and he also is more than a little into Re-l, to the point he comes off as somewhat creepy. Re-l, on the other hand, is pretty much a selfish bitch who at times can be very difficult to sympathize with. But, like I said, at least they aren't too over the top.

The story could at times get a bit boring, but for the most part it was intriguing, and left me wanting to find out more. The first few episodes in particular drew me in as everything was set up, and they tended to end as cliffhangers. It's say Ergo Proxy's biggest faults lie with what were basically just filler episodes. Basically Vincent, Re-l, and Pino would come across another dome or habitation of some kind and one or two of them would have some kind of strange adventure. These were somewhat mitigated by what self-discovery was made by the characters involved, and what little additional information we learned about Vincent and his past, as well as about the Proxies (incidentally related, to spoil you a little). The worst offenders though were the episodes that broke the fourth wall just to give us some exposition. The book store episode and the game show episode were especially bad that way. And then there was the Disneyland episode, which was more about having Pino have something to do than anything that actually contributed to the story. Basically, when the story was good, things were interesting and occasionally would tug at my heart strings, but when it was bad it was pretty much just boring and seemed more diversionary than anything.

I'm going to do something odd for me and not actually reveal all that much about the story. Instead, I'm just going to encourage you to watch this series. Some may not find it interesting, but if you're into more cerebral sci fi, you just might like this series. 9/10.

Last edited by Captain X on Tue Feb 23, 2016 2:42 am; edited 1 time in total

Moonlight Mile
Season 1: Lift Off
(12 episodes)

The opening to this series made it seem very interesting, and based on the description I'd read of it, it looked like something I could get into. The first thing we see as the show starts is a female astronaut who has crash-landed on the moon and is struggling to maintain a rigorous running pace in the low gravity so she can reach a distant outpost before her limited air supply runs out. That would have been enough to draw me in as it was, but then she runs into some robot soldiers who try to shoot her, only to back down and wait for someone in an EVA suit that hides their identity. The teaser then ends with this person pointing a pistol at the astronaut and pulling away quickly as she screams. Then the awesome opening sequence starts, promising space battles and political intrigue. Unfortunately the series never really delivers on that.

While I was hoping the series would go back to whatever was happening on the moon, it didn't, and I'm not entirely sure if that scene was set some time after the actual start of the story, or if it was meant as an in medias res beginning. I was given some brief hope when things started out in the International Space Station (ISS), with some crew members remarking on a blizzard in the Himalayas. Unfortunately this was only a set-up to introduce the main characters of the series, who are both mountain climbers. This is also our introduction to the fan service and the more immature aspect of the series.

Okay, let me take a break here and say that I actually like fan service to an extent, and if you've read my other reviews, you probably already know that. That being said, I appreciate it when it's more mature and isn't just there for its own sake, though to be honest I still won’t complain that much about being able to see naked women. The reason I call the fan service in this series immature is that it pretty much just is there for its own sake, since the only function it really serves is to show how immature the main characters they are. They both seem to have a "tradition" of a "good luck fudge," where they have sex with some random woman before going on a climb or whatever else they have going on. The series actually opens with both of the main characters having a foursome in some tent at the base of Mount Everest. But naturally this keeps up through the entire series, which splits up to mostly follow Gorou Saruwatari, the Japanese climber, and he literally has sex with a woman every time he changes location. Even when he finally ends up on the ISS, there happens to be a female astronaut there who wants to have sex with him.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself there. After Gorou and Lostman, his American climbing partner, finish having sex, the blizzard that was going on during their introduction is over and they start climbing Everest. They are some distance off when a French climbing team is hit by an avalanche. Naturally, like any decent human beings, they go over to see if there are any survivors, though their conversation during this is our first hint that they're actually callous bastards. They do find one survivor, who just happens to be an attractive woman, and start dragging both her and the three dead men who were on her team back down the mountain. Another blizzard starts and they decide to stop, and this is where I really start to not like the main characters. For no reason at all, and despite having dragged them all that way, Gorou decides to just dump the bodies of the French team off of a cliff instead of just leaving them on the side of the path they'd been following so they could be found later. As it turns out, one of these men was actually the French woman's husband. She's in pretty bad shape herself, and not long after she wakes up, she apparently hallucinates and sees her husband, and asks for him to "keep her warm." This is where Lostman and Gurou come off as especially callous, because not only have they basically been talking about this woman like she's just a piece of meat they want to fudge from the moment they found her, but they've already given her up for dead at this point. And rather than trying to actually keep her warm and alive, Lostman makes a comment to the effect of blowing her off, and suggests that Gorou give her one last pity fudge before she dies, which he then proceeds to actually do. Then they just burry her under a pile of rocks and continue their climb. The best part is that when they get to the top, both of them act like they're bored. And at this point I really don't like either of these characters. Later on, Gorou is at least supposed to come off as being somewhat more sympathetic and kind of a nice guy, but really I can't help but think of both him and Lostman as pricks.

Really, though, this has all been a set-up for these two to decide they want to be astronauts and climb mountains on the moon. So they split up and go about it their own separate and equally complicated ways. Lostman joins the US Navy and becomes a pilot, all so he can pilot the space shuttle. Gurou becomes a construction worker and turns down repeated attempts to promote him to an office job, all so he can become an expert at operating cranes and the like, because it just so happens that all the major space agencies have been combined to form the International Space Agency, and the ISA is interested in going to the moon to exploit resources there. Naturally, things work out for the both of them, though the series takes some time by throwing could have been interesting hurdles their way if I'd actually cared that much about either character, and had the pacing of the series not been such to basically just breeze right through all of this. Basically they take a span of years and breeze through it all in a few episodes. Lostman actually ends up getting shot down in a third war with Iraq and becomes a POW for a year, and the episode literally skips over this year during the commercial break. We are then introduced to an Iraqi boy who also appears in the awesome opening title sequence, but he never appears again for the rest of this season.

I'd say that the first season was basically just a set-up season, but I couldn't help but feel disappointed. In my opinion the pacing was actually still too fast for what it apparently wanted to cover, so it either should have started further along in the story, or it should have been a longer season. Of course it also might've helped if I actually liked the main characters, too, or if any of the secondary characters had been fleshed out a bit more. The only other one to get much attention is essentially the series' Ms. Fanservice, and she's a selfish unlikeable character herself, who actually tried to sabotage Gorou from being selected as their company's astronaut candidate for the sake of the guy she was having an affair with at the time. She does this by calling his cell phone to distract the already drunk Gorou, who is right in the middle of a very precise crane operation meant to rescue a man who has been trapped under some fallen girders at the top of a skyscraper under construction. She does this after being told that not only would this man be killed, but the girders would probably all fall, causing millions in damage, and probably taking the crane and Gurou along with them as they fell. Of course this not only makes me hate her (she later goes on to supposedly be a protagonist), but it helps me to not like Gurou that much more, because his reaction to this attempt to sabotage and possibly kill him was to want to have sex with this woman, which he does succeed at, by the way.

I guess you could say that while I wasn't interested in the main characters or their plight, I was still somewhat interested in the story. I liked seeing the different space agencies work together to colonize the moon and some of the different hurdles they had to overcome during this process. I was also hoping some of the things from the opening titles would come to pass, but they never did. Actually the closest the first season got to political intrigue was an attempt by a Japanese industrial boss to stretch out the development of the lunar construction robot his company had been contracted by the ISA to design and build so he could line his pockets, even if it meant the death of one of his divers and the ruin of the best developmental engineer his company had, and a bit involving Area 51 and a secret military build-up in space. Maybe everything that series seemed to promise is in the second season, but since the second season hasn't been picked up by anyone, has no dub, and apparently no one's bothered to sub more than the first four episodes, I guess I'll never find out.

So I guess overall this is an okay series. They do put some effort into being somewhat semi-realistic during the space sequences, though this goes out the window when we're introduced to a space fighter that Lostman gets to fly. The visuals are fairly good, though the CGI that's used stands out quite a bit from the traditionally animated elements. The dub is also somewhat decent, and one of the things I appreciated was the attempt at accents for the characters who were supposed to be from other countries instead of making everyone sound like they are from America with dialog suggesting that they are all speaking Japanese. 6/10.

Moonlight Mile
Season 2: Touch Down
(14 episodes)

This series left me feeling frustrated, because while it definitely improved in terms of both writing and maturity, it still ended unresolved, and just as I was really starting to like it, too. Cuss words! You have no idea how much I hate it when a series does this.

This season picks up right where the last one left off, though it was nice enough to do a "previously on..." montage just to refresh my memory. Just to refresh yours, this series follows two main characters, a Japanese man named Goro and an American named Lostman. The two of them climbed all of the world's highest peaks together and on the summit of Everest they decided that they both wanted to climb even higher, by going to the moon. They both did this in an extremely roundabout way, Goro becoming a notable construction worker and Lostman becoming a notable Naval pilot. So by the end of season 1, both were in orbit with plans to head to the moon – Goro through the International Space Agency's project being constructed from the International Space Station, and Lostman through a secret military base run by a secret branch of the US military. The other notable thing about the show is that it was basically an excuse for Goro to get laid every episode, and for use to see how good at drawing breasts Studio Hibari is. Which is to say that they're pretty good, but I think they should seek other reference material since most of them looked porn star fake. Wink

In any case, I was just interested enough to seek out the second season of this show, due largely in part to the unresolved storyline. Just as I suspected, the first season was just the set-up, but then the season titles probably should've tipped me off. The thing that took me by surprise, though, was that the second season was actually a lot better than the first. The writing was better, the story was more in depth, there was actually a little character development here and there, and best of all, the show even matured a little, so it wasn't basically Golden Boy in space. Oh, there was still fan service, but it was definitely cut back on, and it was to the show's benefit that it could concentrate more on the whole "going to the moon" storyline instead of just making weak excuses to get Goro laid.

There were still a few drawbacks, mainly coming from the insistence of the show that the vast majority of Americans are not-so-nice-people. For instance, there was this Arab kid who helped to save Lostman as a POW back during the first season, and we get to see how he's doing in the US. While I could see the government giving him some grief being a recent immigrant from the MidEast and gathering up a bunch of rocket parts, not a lot else makes sense as far as the racism the kid faces from basically everyone. And really, at every point the show makes a point of showing Americans to be complete not-so-nice-people, so that didn't earn it any points there. And while there are plenty of not-so-nice-people in every country, and I've met my fair share of them from both the US and Canada, it's not nearly as bad as this show made it out to be. And this is coming from someone who tends to hate people in general. But there's plenty of anime that seems to have someone with an axe to grind when it comes to the US, so I try not to take it too personally.

The other major weak point of this series is actually the characters, though this is more a case of "too much" than any real lack of trying. The problem here was more that there were simply too many characters for any of them to get much of a chance to be more interesting than just some random extra with a name. While I like ensemble casts, this show only really got half-way with that. Unfortunately the show also picked up something of a spokesperson in the form of Maggy, a somewhat obnoxious young woman, at least in front of the camera. Apparently she's the host of a show that's all about selling the ISA's moon project to the public, and she just happened to take the form of an obnoxious, somewhat moe Japanese hostess despite not being Japanese. She even goes into space. Thankfully, the astronauts reacted the way most normal human beings would when exposed to moe.

Fortunately she gets better, for the most part. She's actually shown to be somewhat more normal when she's not on camera, and she even tones it down a couple of notches when she's in front of it not long after she gets into space. Of course this is also after she's revealed to be close to 30 and an aspiring journalist, so I guess they thought she should be a bit more serious to actually reflect that.

As for the story, big improvement over the first season, mostly because it's a lot more focused now. The ISA's heavily involved in colonizing the moon in order to exploit it. Just like in the movie Moon, they're after Helium-3 as a power source. So this multi-national project is named Project Nexus, and it's being pushed especially hard by the US. Since the last season, the ISA has been dropping crates full of supplies and building materials for the future moon base, and the first half of this season is mostly about building the Galileo, a large spaceship meant to take a dozen astronauts and even more supplies and building materials to the moon so they can start construction of the base. Naturally, pretty much everything that can go wrong does, and just as the new big ship is finished and the crew selected, a massive debris field messes the ISS up with everyone on it, and they lose several astronauts. They also mess up the space shuttle that is the only remaining means of getting back to Earth's surface, as the evac shuttles had been deployed earlier thanks to the most massive solar flare in recorded history. So, with the Galileo miraculously undamaged, everyone who's left (coincidentally 12) heads to the moon, including the obnoxious TV hostess.

Meanwhile, the other big element of the story is all the politicking going on. China isn't having any part in Project Nexus because they want to have control over the distribution of Helium-3. So to start things off, they launch what is initially believed to be an anti-satellite satellite, but what turns out to be two space fighters. Good thing the United States Space Force (*snicker*) already has its own fighters. Unfortunately for them, the Chinese space fighters are a fairly even match for them, which is why there's a ton of debris that messes up the ISS. Next China builds its own space station, and then quickly announces its existence in order to prevent the US from adding even more debris to Earth's orbit.

Unfortunately, while everything just kept building up, it became obvious in the last few episodes that most of these plot elements were going to go unresolved. And just as it was getting interesting, too. Hell, they'd even come full circle and actually showed what lead up to the opening scene of the series, though it didn't really make any more sense, unfortunately. Presumably since this series was based on a manga, they'd simply run out of material to adapt to screen, and had to stop. Or maybe the show just got non-renewed. Or both. But, just as with Zipang, whatever the reason this show had to just stop mid-stream like this, it's still disappointing. I suppose that's actually a mark in this show's favor, simply because it was interesting enough for me to actually care about what would happen next. This show was not only interesting, but it managed to hit some of the right notes in order to resonate with me during a few episodes. That pioneering feeling that goes with space exploration and all that, not to mention an episode that ripped off October Sky (they even called it "The Rocket Boys"). So I guess you could say this was something of a double-edged sword, and you should really be aware of that if you think this show sounds interesting and you decide to watch it.

Overall, this was a fairly decent series and I think it was worth the trouble I went through to find a fansub of season 2, since apparently no one has bothered to pick it up yet on this side of the Pacific. 8/10.

Excel Saga
(26 episode series)

This series is very safely in the refuge of absurdity. In fact its entire purpose is to make fun of as much as it possibly can. Every episode tackles a genre and mercilessly parodies it. For the most part, it tends to focus on anime, though it expands itself somewhat to include American animation for one episode. There have been a lot of shows that have done the whole "make fun of anime" thing, but this one is definitely one of the better ones I've seen.

At first I wasn't entirely sold on it, because it seemed like just another anime in the same vein as FLCL and Dead Leaves. That isn't to say that it was bad, or that those shows were bad, but I was a bit bored for the first few episodes. The three episode rule definitely applies here, though, as the series seems to pick up after that. It helps to have watched a fair amount of anime to recognize all the references in this series, though. Actually it wouldn't surprise me if I missed a lot more than I caught. Probably the most obvious ones for me were the references to the Captain Herlock franchise. But really if you're familiar with any of the genres Excel Saga parodies in any of its 26 episodes, you'll probably get at least some enjoyment out of it. But that's just because the people who made this did such a good job, that they managed to make an episode that had no gags into one big gag itself, mostly because all the clichés being played straight on purpose ended up being just as funny as the usual treatment they got in the rest of the series.

I'm not really sure what else to say about this series, other than that it's worth a watch, of course. There is literally so much that it's a bit overwhelming, and I feel like I'd either have to go into detail about everything, or just not bother getting into it. So I'm just not going to bother getting into it. Wink

This is definitely a weird show, but it's very enjoyable to watch. If you can laugh at yourself about being a fan of anime, or already like to make fun of the many clichés that tend to show up in anime, you'll probably like this series. If you like to take anime seriously, you probably won't. It's pretty much that simple. Either way, I'm giving this an 8/10, which isn't bad for a parody series.

Puni Puni Poemy
(2 episode OVA)

It showed up toward the end of Excel Saga as a show within a show, as a gag to make fun of the magical girl anime, so it shouldn't be all that surprising that this gag would have been followed up on. Actually this OVA is pretty much just episodes 27 and 28 of Excel Saga, parodying magical girl anime, yuri (lesbian) relationships in anime, and of course fan service. Yes, I imagine they had a lot of fun making fun of fan service. Wink

The anime anatomy and other self censorship kind of ruined that a little for me, but all the cracks about it made up for it, a little.

The major running gag of this OVA is the constant breaking of the fourth wall. I didn't really find it all that funny, but then I didn't find it unfunny either. Basically Poemy constantly refers to herself as the name of the Japanese voice actress who plays her, and just to rub it in, said voice actress actually shows up in the opening theme as she sings it, and at the very end of the OVA after the credits. It loses a little of its effect that she's dubbed over, you know, in the dub, but I have to admit that it was still a little amusing, especially since she was cosplaying as the character.

There actually is a plot about aliens trying to take over the world, but it's actually pretty pointless and pretty much just serves as a means to set up the jokes.

You're welcome.

In any case, if you liked Excel Saga, there's a pretty good chance that you'll like this, too. I mostly did, though I have to admit that I didn't really enjoy it as much as Excel Saga. To be fair, that might just be from overexposure, but either way I'm giving this a 7/10.

Fist of the North Star
(1986 movie)

Ah yes, another anime "classic." Well, I can't say this was really to my liking either. In pretty much every way, this anime is the stereotype that everyone and his uncle loves to make fun of, and that's pretty much where I derived my enjoyment from.

It has a pretty basic story. A nuclear war has happened, and it pretty much leaves the landscape and people looking like something you'd expect to find in a Mad Max movie. Actually pretty much all the guys look like some variation of Lord Humungus, the only real variations being the outlandish armor and hair style they happen to have, and how big in relation to one another they are. Apparently the nuclear war has caused men to grow into giants even though there's a distinct lack of food and water. Of course they can also glow and pull off impossible fighting moves that can bring down skyscrapers on their own heads that won't even make them flinch. On the other hand, most people seem to be made of pudding, and certain "skilled" warriors can just stab them or cut them to shreds using nothing but their fingers, or better yet, they can use some made-up martial art fighting move to touch all the right pressure points to just make people spontaneously explode. So really the only way to enjoy this movie is just to turn your brain off and accept it as the over-the-top kung-fu action flick that it is. Otherwise you're bound to notice things like how characters who are strong enough to shred all their clothing by just flexing will suddenly have them back again, and how the bloody mess of the person they just made explode is suddenly not there anymore. I'm actually reminded of Sengoku Basara in just how over-the-top and manly this show is, or at least tries to be, except that Sengoku Basara is completely tongue-in-cheek and this movie isn't.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the story, I kind of got of track there. Like I said, the story is extremely basic. The protagonist, Kenshiro, loses the love of his life (who was actually just betrothed to him by his would-be father-in-law) to his former best friend. Apparently humanity is divided into sects of North and South, and the two sides have slowly been moving toward peaceful coexistence. Ken is from the North, and his old buddy who backstabs him, Shin, is from the South. The chick he was supposed to marry, Yuria, is also from the South. So Shin kicks his ass and takes Yuria for himself. Ken also has a couple of evil brothers who basically want to be the special successor of the martial art style they've all been learning from a master of the art, and one of them set up the whole thing while the other just decided he wanted to take over the heavens, starting with the planet. So that one kills their master while the other dumps the mostly already dead Ken off a cliff so he can take his place as successor to this martial art style. Some time later, Ken appears out of no where to save some innocent kiddies and goes on a roaring rampage of revenge. And that's pretty much all there is to it. And Ken manages to not even really win in the end. He doesn't kill his asshat older brother Raoh, and Yuria just kind of disappears, like she found hammer space or something. Ken just ends up wandering everywhere to try to find her again, but in the end he doesn't. Logic would've suggested she ended up somewhere in the rubble of all those skyscrapers Ken and Raoh knocked over during their fight, but this movie is the opposite of logic.

Reading about this movie prior to watching it, I actually elected to watch the Japanese version first because of all the flack the English dub was getting. Having seen them both, I can't see I noted a lot of difference there. The English dub changed the story a bit, unless the subtitled version I watched was wrong in its translation, but as far as quality, well, it sounds like a cartoon from the '70s. It isn't the most horrible dub I've heard, but I can sort of see where people were coming from. But honestly the Japanese dub wasn't any better.

As far as suggesting this as something to watch or not, I'd say it's only something to watch just to see and make fun of yourself. There isn't much point to the actual movie itself since nothing of the story-line is really resolved, and there wasn't a whole lot to the story to begin with. I will throw it a bone for the unintentional entertainment value, though. 1/10.

New Fist of the North Star
(3 episode OVA)

A reboot rather than a sequel to the 1986 movie, this OVA manages to change a lot of the details without really changing the story. Mostly what's different are the characters and the roles they play. We no longer see Kenshiro's origin, and he's no longer been betrayed by his best friend or his brothers from as much as I could tell. But there's still a big bad that has to be fought and a kidnapped woman who has to be rescued, even if it isn't his girlfriend.

To its credit, this OVA does try to improve on the old movie, and to an extent it does. The artwork is a lot better even if the animation really isn't and the use of CGI can be somewhat distracting. We're introduced to a sympathetic set of characters before Kenshiro is introduced rather than showing his origins, and the OVA even plays a bit with drama. Some of it even works a little, but then it's easy to tug at heart strings by killing a child, especially a sickly one. The story also tries to be a bit more expansive, introducing a city called "Last Land" where most of the story takes place as well as a group of fighters which has sworn itself to seal away the weapons and the secrets of the nuclear war that devastated the planet. This OVA has also practically made Kenshiro into Superman. For all the fights he's in, he's never actually hurt and he tends to just devastatingly defeat any enemy that fights him, no matter how many people that might be. He also seems to have about the same sense of justice, only killing people who really seem to deserve it and committing selfless acts to help others despite having no real connection to them.

But in the end, this OVA is still just a bunch of impossibly well-muscled dudes fighting each other. There are still two big bads Kenshiro has to fight and defeat, with the last fight stopping short of actually killing the other combatant. There's still a busty blonde woman who is kidnapped and must be rescued, and there is still some random kid who Kenshiro feels the need to defend against anything for. Then there's the typical over-emphasis on fighting style, with each pressure point that's touched being loudly called out with an accompanying expository description of what exactly it does. The only difference there is that these pressure points can also be used for insta-healing instead of just making peoples' heads explode.

The characters themselves are rather bland, and the mediocre dub doesn't really help anything. Kenshiro himself is the stereotypical mysterious short-spoken hero type, Sara is the hot chick whose purpose in life is to heal and who hates seeing violence, and the other characters are pretty much just defined by their role. Then there's Toby, who started out somewhat sympathetic, but ended up suddenly turning into a giant douche and locking Kenshiro up, and then attempting to become sympathetic again in time for him to die.

So really if you liked the first movie, this is pretty much the same as it, just longer. It has the same kind of fighting, more or less the same style of character design, and the same story, with just a bit of fan service and nudity thrown in for fun. That may appeal to some people, but it doesn't really appeal to me. It's about as enjoyable I guess, because while it lacks the corny charm of the first movie, it is just a little entertaining on its own. 1/10.

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Forum - View topicCX's Anime Reviews (can be spoiler-ific). Latest: Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dir

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CX's Anime Reviews (can be spoiler-ific). Latest: Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dir