Forum - View topicCX's Anime Reviews (can be spoiler-ific). Latest: Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dir
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zawa113
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Man, Outlaw Star was the first anime I knew was anime and was how I got into anime (not to mention the first anime DVD series I ever bought! Good Toonami memories too, R.I.P.) But I remember the first time I saw a DVD of Angel Links, I knew it was supposed to be related to OS, but I just didn't see it from the random used DVD it was that I likely saw. Cover was all purple and kinda bright looking, I don't recall purple being used too much in OS, I guess the character design vaguely reminded me of OS, but the story on the back was like "wuhht?" Just didn't look like OS to me so I never watched it, sounds like a good move on my part! Thanks for suffering that for me so I didn't have to! Some things just don't need sequels or spin-offs, especially one of my most (and for other Toonami/early adult swim viewers likely as well) nostalgic series ever.
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4750G
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I don't think I've ever seen you rate anything with a 0. The show must have reached a record high for sucking.
I just want to ask, is there a specific flow to your reviews? I'd like to know if you're following a schedule of sorts, so that I can anticipate the reviews of anime I wanna read. But if there isn't and you simply review what you fancy, that's cool. 
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Captain X
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Glad you liked the review.  Yeah, this was definitely a spin-off that shouldn't have existed. The story was resolved already, so there wasn't much else they could do even in way of sequel, unless they wanted to try having something else coming up. It's hard for sequels to live up to the originals, though.
I've also given zeros to Charger Girl Juden-Chan and Eiken, the former being especially insulting. Actually those two in particular made me want to give them negative scores. 
I have an index posted in the first post of this thread which lists things more or less alphabetically. I also update it with direct links whenever I post a new review. I try to post one from that list every morning, going from top to bottom. I sometimes post out of order when ANN is advertising an anime I've reviewed, or if I've just written a new review, as the list is actually of reviews I've already written some time ago and I'm just working my way through. |
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4750G
Posts: 546 |
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Found it. Thanks a lot.
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Captain X
Posts: 253 |
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Pale Cocoon
(single episode OVA) At only 23 minutes long, this is a very short OVA, and while it looks good and has a decent story, I can understand why none of the US distributers have picked this OVA up and made a dub for it yet. I was actually introduced to this OVA by another reviewer in his first "Top 10 Unlicensed Anime" list, which he splits into two parts, here and here. I have to say, though, that while I found it very visually appealing, and I found the concept somewhat interesting, it confused me somewhat and I don't really understand it. This being the case, I'm going to spoil the hell out of this OVA, so you've been warned. The setting is basically underground in what was supposed to be an underground climate control infrastructure which once covered the planet. Apparently Earth has been ruined environmentally, and the implication is that things are getting worse as people are being forced to move further and further underground. This seems to be the typical environmental aesop, because everything we see points to humanity ruining the planet. The story itself focuses mainly on two people, a young man named Ura and a young woman named Riko. The two of them work at the "Archive Excavation Department", and are among the last of what used to be a massive work effort. Basically, despite all the advanced technology humanity still possesses, somehow most of human history has been lost, and the job of this department is to dig up as much information out of the archives as they can and restore it. As one might expect, this turns out to be depressing to the vast majority of the people who had worked there as they learn about how Earth used to be and how humanity apparently ruined it through overpopulation and pollution. Ura is actually the only one left who's interested in learning for learning's sake, and everyone else has either already quit, or say that they're going to quit during the OVA. Riko is essentially the voice of the rest of humanity, voicing a very nihilistic view about their work and about the fate of humanity. She's basically stopped caring, and Ura tries to get her interested again by showing her a video file he is in the process of restoring, but she just stops coming into work, choosing instead to lay on a platform next to a glowing core of some kind, staring up at the blackness above. Ura sees something in this video file that changes his perspective along with ours, revealing the thing that confuses me about this OVA. While the video he was restoring is just a music video, apparently a shot of a spiral staircase upside down leading into the sky causes him to climb the staircase around the power core I mentioned up to an old elevator, which seems to take him even higher at a rapid speed, right before it seems to fall... right out into the sky. As it turns out, they've been on the moon all along, humanity apparently having been evacuated there following an environmental disaster on Earth. Apparently everyone has been on a ship which is still sticking out of the lunar surface upside down, though with a cubic dome covering it. Why, I don't know. All I know is that gravity is apparently being generated artificially and Ura managed to work himself out into the weak lunar gravity after actually falling out of the ground. And that kind of confuses me somewhat because that is the best sense I can make out of it. Apparently this is supposed to double as a somewhat optimistic ending despite Ura's fate not looking all that great, because Earth looks like it might have restored itself, appearing to be blue and normal in contrast to one of the first lunar colonists' description of Earth as looking rusted. Now, it's kind of obvious that out focus is supposed to be more on how the characters feel and all that, but I guess I'm too left-brained to see all that far beneath the surface. I say that because what was shown doesn't make all that much sense to me. Riko explained the very understandable depression that would come with seeing Earth all pretty and looking fine when they're all living in post-apocalyptic devastation. One of Ura and Riko's unseen co-workers even expresses some skepticism as to whether any of the stuff in the images and videos they've restored is even real. The thing is, it doesn't make sense to me that a humanity this advanced technologically has forgotten so much of its past that it's apparently forgotten that they aren't even on Earth anymore. At the very basic, wouldn't the original colonists/refuges have passed that little nugget of information onto their children and so on and so forth down the generations? So in a way, it would have made more sense for it to be aliens going through an extinct humanity's archives, but that has been done so many times that it's cliché, so I can understand this OVA wanting to do something a bit different. It also bothers me that no one seems to care what caused the apocalypse. I know some people argue that it doesn't matter, but this is something that tends to bother me even if nothing can be done about it. Another example would be The Road, which has much the same tone as this OVA anyway. I guess if nothing else, I would have thought it would be a goal of this "Archive Excavation Department" to find out what went wrong to put them all in their current predicament, but no one seems to care, not even Ura. But, I think this is supposed to be like one of those "art" films, and art doesn't always have to make sense. I guess you could say that I was somewhat disappointed, because I was hoping that there would be more to it, somehow. It actually seems more like the pilot episode of a series than a one-off OVA. I would still say, though, that this OVA is worth a watch, despite not making all that much sense, at least not to me. It's barely over 20 minutes long, so it's not like you're out all that much even if you end up a bit frustrated like I did. 6/10. |
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Errinundra
Moderator
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Captain X,
As I understand it, the lunar people's amnesia is worse than you imagine. They not only seem to think that the moon is their original home but the no longer have a concept of what the earth and moon are. All of Yasuhiro Yoshiura's works so far (see also Time of Eve and Aquatic Language) have had as a main theme the way people live under misapprehensions. Also in each, the moments of illumination can be a source of inspiration for the character and maybe even for the viewer. I agree, though, that Pale Cocoon is so cryptic that the wow! moment when Ura first claps eye on the earth is lost in the confusion. Of the other two anime I mention, Time of Eve explores the concept clearly and brilliantly. |
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Captain X
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Time if Eve is actually on my watch list, so I might have to make a point of doing that one next after the one I'm currently on. Haven't heard of the other one, though, so I'll have to look that up.
Believe it or not, though, the biggest problem I have with something like Pale Cocoon is that it isn't a series.  Well, that and the amnesia itself as I described - it just isn't all that believable to me.
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Captain X
Posts: 253 |
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Paprika
(2006 movie) This was definitely an oddball of a movie. But then since it involved technology intruding into dreams, I guess "weird" is to be expected. Taking place in the near future, a scientific team has developed a device capable of monitoring and recording a patient's dream. But it doesn't stop there, as apparently at least one psychologist can take on a dream persona and actually help people through their dreams. Again, all well and good until the devices get stolen. From that point on it becomes more of a "science gone mad" movie that I can't help but nit-pick the hell out of, mostly because of the improbability of what the movie ends up suggesting that technology, however new and amazing, can do. At first it seemed more legitimate, in that some of the head doctors working on the project were losing control of their conscious mind over to a dream, because at this point it was suggested that it happened as a result of having been hooked up to the machine. It still seems plausible there, but where it gets implausible and I lose my willing sense of disbelief is when the movie suggests this device, called the DC Mini, can somehow remotely enter peoples' minds and mess them up. But wait, it gets worse, because later on in the movie, dreams have somehow manifested in the real world. At first I thought this was simply a dream within a dream, but no, the movie tells us that dreams have in fact invaded reality. The whole dream within a dream thing has been done a lot of times before, usually to either wax poetic about the nature of reality, or to philosophize about the nature of dreams vs. the nature of reality. I'm sure this movie was still trying to do that, but I just didn't quite go along for the wild ride this time. While it would still mess with a person's mind if they kept waking up only to find that they were still dreaming, having dreams somehow magically manifest in reality kind of ruins it. Plus, as you can tell, I've really gotten hung up on this, because what started out as science fiction became fantasy. The story about how a new technology could effect humanity, in this case through the abuse of a megalomaniac (who looks a lot like Patrick Stewart's Professor X), just got lost in a jumble of everyone's dream getting mixed together and marching through Tokyo despite there being no way a device made to have the human subconscious interact with a computer should be able to accomplish this. Well, it wasn't a horrible movie or anything, it just wasn't very good. My hang-up aside, there wasn't a whole lot that actually happened. I mean, a fat guy got a hot chick (who happened to be his boss) and a cop got over a recurring nightmare, but that's about it. Mostly this movie was just eye candy, showing us something weird and throwing in some fan service here and there for good measure. There was no real depth, though, at least not that I could see. Pretty much the same thing goes for the characters. Pretty much all of them were bland, and we never really got to learn much about them, other than the shocker that the hot psychologist who is repulsed by the morbidly obese guy is actually in love with him. Well, I guess that was supposed to be shocking, but really it just didn't make a lot of sense because of the part where she was openly disgusted by his appearance and his habits, as most people probably would be, brilliant scientist or not. Actually the most interesting character in this movie was the detective whose dream we start out in, Detective Konakawa Toshimi. He's also about the only one who goes through any kind of growth, finally getting over his recurring nightmare and his completely unreasonable fear/hatred of movies. And then there's the irony of how he ended up playing out the character he played in a student film, in which he played the part of a detective. Well, the movie explains it a bit better than I do, but there's a connection to his dream and what's going on in his life during the movie. Anyway, I actually ended up being a bit disappointed with this movie. I was hoping for something that was a bit more straight-up sci-fi and got a flashy fantasy movie instead. As I already said, that's not to say that it's bad, it's just not very good either. I guess if you have a spare hour and a half this might be a good time-waster. 6/10. |
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Captain X
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Planetes
(26 episode series) This is a hard sci-fi which presents us with a fairly plausible future in which the world is a lot more interested in developing space in order to exploit a new energy resource located in the Moon and in Jupiter. This is slightly hampered by all the space trash that's been generated over decades of space development from the initial space race to the slightly futuristic setting of the series. The series actually opens with a consequence of this space trash, showing us just how dangerous something as small as a screw can be when it's moving at orbital speeds when it runs into a sub-orbital passenger liner. This sets the series up to follow the main characters, who all belong to the "Debris Section" of a company named Technora, whose job it is to go out and haul in space debris in order to make space a safer place to travel. Naturally, like everyone whose job it is to clean up after others, they get maligned quite a bit, even when they manage to save human lives. The series follows two main protagonists, Ai Tanabe, a young woman who is a great example of how easy it apparently is to get a job in space in the future, and Hachirota "Hachimaki" Hoshino, a cynical, more experienced member of Debris Section who was the most junior member until Tanabe showed up. I both like and dislike both characters to be entirely honest. Tanabe is likable in the sense that she always has an optimistic outlook on everything with a kind of fresh innocence that any fan Star Trek can probably relate to. At the same time, she tends to be overly optimistic, thinking that love can literally solve every problem, and she tends to proselytize about it quite a bit. The writing also pretty much bears her out as being right, which reminds me of one of the aspects of Star Trek I actually hate, Hachimaki is somewhat more pragmatic, at least at first, having seen plenty in just the three years he's been on the job to know better. At the same time, he also dreams of owning his own ship, though later on he accepts the fact that his job as a debris hauler makes that an impossibility. On the other hand, his negativity about pretty much everything gets just as grating as Tanabe's constantly going on about how love will solve everything. The secondary characters are somewhat interesting, though I think the two section managers were much too silly, even if they were supposed to be the comedy relief in a series that actually manages to get somewhat dark at a few points. My favorite characters are actually Fee Carmichael, the captain of Toy Box, the small ship Debris Section uses to collect space trash, and Yuri Mihairokov, a mature, seasoned member of Debris Section with a compelling background story. The show went over the top with Fee's smoking addiction and how she'll become not only cranky but actually somewhat insane if she has to go any length of time without being able to smoke, though I do appreciate the fact that the show acknowledged the fact that smoking in space isn't exactly to be taken lightly. Otherwise I found her to be likeable and a good leader who cared about her people and getting the job done. Yuri is more interesting than either of the protagonists in my opinion because he has a somewhat more substantial reason for wanting to become a debris hauler that actually involves the opening scene of the series. He also goes through a far more believable development as a character when he finally lets go of an old pain and the entire reason he became a debris hauler and decides to keep working his job as best he can. I also found the story to be pretty interesting. Not only is it something of a character drama, but it also has a bigger story going on in the background at the beginning of the series which evolves naturally into something that directly involves the main characters. Basically we have INTO, a somewhat more militant evolution of NATO and the UN pushing into space to exploit resources to its own ends. They also seem to have a somewhat more annoyingly unrealistic side in that they not only like to invade other countries for basically no reason, but they apparently have a thing for planting mines that will mess up space ships' electronics in places that could harm ships from their own member states. This makes them something of a bad guy, though they aren't made out to be entirely evil either. There are also terrorists, who call themselves the Space Defense Front, who are given a fairly realistic back-story and motivations for doing what they do, despite being much more obviously bad guys. The thing is that despite how awesome all this space development is and the clean energy source and the advanced technology it provides, it's also acting to further widen the gap between the advanced industrial countries able to exploit these resources and the poor countries that can't even feed its own people. A couple of countries are made up to illustrate this by introducing us to a few characters who are from these countries. This helps to flesh the story out very nicely. Most of the series follows Debris Section as they not only pick up space trash, but deal with illegal space dumpers, company politics, international politics, and terrorists. We also get to meet some interesting characters along the way, like Gigalt Gangaragash, a veteran astronaut and teacher to Hachimaki, as well as a former Debris Section member who is responsible for many of the nicknames various characters have, and Nono, a twelve year old girl who was born on the Moon. We also meet some of Hachimaki's friends, some of Tanabe's friends, and a few obnoxious comedy relief characters who somewhat tragically go on to die later on in the story. The story ends up focusing on the construction of a ship called the Wernher von Braun. The terrorists do everything they can to blow it up, the guy designing and building it is being a complete bastard, and dirty politics are going on in the background. Also, out of no where, Hachimaki decides he wants to join the crew and goes really balls to the wall to do so, leading to an aspect of the series I didn't like because I really didn't think it flowed very naturally, but I'll get into that later on. The build up and climax of the terrorist attack on the Von Braun made the show very interesting to follow, and I was drawn in to the point that I had to watch the last half or so of the series marathon style until I got to the end. It also shows us the after effects of the attack on Hachimaki and Tanabe, who both nearly took very dark turns in order to survive, and then deal with the consequences afterwards. For instance, Tanabe was running out of air, and very nearly took the air supply from the character she was trying to save, while simultaneously coming to the realization that this character probably deserved to die anyway. Instead, she decides she won’t cross that line, and is only saved because someone just happens to come along, and the terrorist and betrayer she saved has a change of heart and attracts the attention of their rescuers. As a consequence, Tanabe suffers severe nerve damage that would have been permanent without the advanced technology of the series, and even with it took more than a year to recover to the point she could walk on her own and to venture back into space, even if it was just for a visit. This is especially interesting in that it does this with characters who are not a member of a military, but are instead just civilian space janitors, which is along the same lines of what Star Trek could have been if Starfleet had not actually been a military, which is something the creative talent behind that franchise often stated they wanted to be the case, only to turn around and have Starfleet act like a military. Toy Box is not armed and neither is its crew. Neither is the crew of the Von Braun, which depends entirely on an INTO security force for defense against being boarded by terrorists, and ends up improvising tools as weapons in order to defend themselves and save the ship. This actually brings me to the aspects of the series I didn't like. It starts off with Hachimaki having a close call which very realistically leaves him somewhat psychologically scarred. In his recovery from this, he just up and decides to leave everything and everyone behind, including recent romantic interest Tanabe, so he can focus on joining the crew of the Von Braun. The way he does this, alienating all his friends, coworkers and family in the process just comes off as completely out of character and it literally comes out of the blue. To its credit, the series does try to explain his motivation, but I never really bought it. I also never really bought into the romance between Hachimaki and Tanabe. I know they were trying to go for that whole "opposites attract" thing, but it all came off as forced to me, and I'd really rather they'd never been more than friends rather than following convention by having the two of them hook up. Basically it's so the show can milk a bit more drama out of Hachimaki 's heel-face-turn when he just suddenly decides to leave everyone and everything behind. It was also no surprise at all when the two of them end up getting back together and actually get married. Incidentally, it's implied he got her pregnant in addition to marrying her just prior to leaving on a seven year trip to and from Jupiter, which doesn't seem very much like a happy ending to me. Then there's Claire Rondo, who was Hachimaki's ex-girlfriend and who just happened to be from one of those small impoverished made up countries mentioned earlier. She's a member of Control Section who actually seems to come around and pull her head out of her ass when it comes to Debris Section. She's fleshed out more by the revelation that she's pushing herself so hard in order to escape her humble background, much like the temp worker Edelgard Rivera, who works for Debris Section while projecting a stern, professional exterior while trying to hide her unpleasant past. The difference is, while Edelgard grows to become more of a member of Debris Section, Claire ends up betraying them. She plans out how to hijack Toy Box after being demoted to Debris Section and apparently having joined the Space Defense Front, and then does just that along with her boyfriend and former security officer Hakim Ashmead. With both of these characters, their betrayal is actually handled fairly well, with some hints being given out before hand but still being very surprising without coming off as out of character. Where it goes wrong is in the aftermath. Claire betrayed the people who had come to trust her with every intention of them ending up dead along with everyone on the Von Braun and everyone in the Lunar city they'd set the Von Braun to crash into. She also helped her terrorist comrades gun down crew members aboard the Von Braun, making her every bit a bad guy as far as I'm concerned. Yet the show tries to make the audience feel sympathetic toward her, and even goes as far as to say that Fee and Yuri, the people aboard Toy Box she beat up and left to die, wouldn't have testified against her and that she's only in prison serving only a 10 year sentence because she decided on her own to confess. While I like the fact that she was a villain with a sympathetic background and had more than one dimension, once she'd crossed the line, there was no going back for her as far as I'm concerned. Everything else I didn't like about the series comes down to nitpicks about Technora Corporation and just the way the characters were presented and the like. The thing about it is that while it wanted to present us with an international team of people, no on in it came off as anything other than Japanese, and I don't just mean how Tanabe calls Hachimaki "Sempi" or how he in turn calls Gigalt "Sensai", I mean how everyone acts. Everyone in Technora, despite supposedly coming from all over the world, acts exactly like people in a cut-throat Japanese company, treating everyone like they are in a caste-based culture, with everyone beneath them being treated as if they are sub-human. While it does make Debris Section the underdogs, it just doesn't live up to its supposed international nature, which admittedly is something most sci-fis are just as guilty of. Adding to this is the dub, which isn't bad exactly, it's just that no one even bothered to try to sound anything other than American. I know some people complain about bad accents, and to be honest when they are poorly done they tend to stand out, but I do appreciate it when the people making these shows at least go through the effort to try, even if it doesn't turn out well. Moonlight Mile even does that, and it isn't nearly as interesting a show in my opinion. Everything else about the show is pretty well done. The CGI used didn't stand out that much from the animated elements, and the animation itself was very well done, looking very smooth and capturing the motion of objects in space very well. That in itself makes this series stand out, because they actually portrayed how objects would move in space very well, and made a point of not having any sound in space, much like 2001: A Space Odyssey. In addition to that, they also had the only artificial gravity in space being generated through spinning portions of the various stations and ships seen in the series, with everything being zero-gravity, or in the Moon's case being very low gravity. At times they seemed to forget this by having people just walking around normally while on the Moon, but when they ran it was with the more familiar bounding motion that the low Lunar gravity pretty much necessitates. Overall the space aspect was very well done, and it only adds to the quality of the series as far as I'm concerned. I think I'd consider this series one of my favorites, but I wouldn't list it very high because of all the negative aspects I mentioned. That being said, I would still very much recommend this series to anyone who likes character dramas and science fiction, as this is both, and actually manages to stick a lot closer to what science fiction is supposed to be about, which is how advanced technology effects humanity. 8/10. |
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Captain X
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The Silent Service
(Single episode OVA) In some ways I could almost see this as a movie in the same vein as The Hunt for Red October, and to its credit, it shows submarine warfare fairly realistically. I just can't get over the huge axe this OVA had to grind. It's hugely obvious that whoever wrote this is not a fan of the United States and hates the fact that Japan is bound by treaty to limit itself militarily. Now I could go on a brief rant about how it's basically Japan's own fault for starting WWII in the Pacific, but that would be a waste of time. One might argue that with all the time that's past (though this takes place in the late 1980s), that everyone should probably be over that and the treaty could probably go by the wayside, but this OVA fails completely to make that kind of an argument. Instead it argues that the United States is completely made up of bastards who will violate the treaty with Japan at the drop of a hat and declare war on Japan over one submarine. While it's certainly true that the US Government has a history of going back on its treaties (*cough*Black Hills*cough*), I doubt the treaty it has with Japan would be dropped so quickly, especially since the US has an interest in maintaining its bases there so it can deploy its military to anywhere in the world on short notice, and at the time this OVA was made, that was especially important given tensions with the Soviet Union. And that's about as far as I'm going to get into that. As far as the actual story goes, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The thing starts out with an entire submarine crew faking its own death. Why? Well because there's a secret new submarine they have to crew, that's why. How nice that the entire crew went along with it. Of course it's pretty short-sighted since the crew will eventually have to resurface, since the whole point of this was that the US and Japan had jointly developed a nuclear attack submarine (basically an improved Los Angeles class) with the idea that it would become part of Japan's navy. So unless they're planning on killing this entire crew, wouldn't it have just been easier to look like they were off on some secret mission on their original submarine instead of sinking it and faking the crew's deaths? And I hate to say it, but the US would never develop a top-of-the-line submarine and then just hand it over to another country's crew, no matter how tight we are with said country. But that's pretty much the only way this story can work, because without an uber-sub that can give its captain such a huge advantage over the sub-hunting capabilities of the US Navy to the point he can even show off while he's doing it, they would just get blown away and the story would have to be a lot different, if not just end. Apparently whoever wrote this was a bit worried about losing the audience, though, since they didn't make this an act of the Japanese government. Instead, the captain pulls a Marco Ramius and defects, only instead of to another country he declares the submarine an independent nation and says he has a nuclear weapon on board. Again, how nice that the entire crew is with him on this. Literally the only person on board to give him even intellectual opposition is the American observer/advisor who was on board with them when they decided to show the fact that they'd gone rogue by firing on some other American submarines. The OVA also makes a show of having the Japanese government agonize over the idea of actually supporting this mutinous captain or not, despite the fact that the guy is as much a traitor to Japan as he is a backstabber to the US. There is a lot of convoluted reasoning put forward to support this, and really this is helped along by having the US act completely unreasonable. They even have the president declare war on Japan, even though he can't actually do that, and the only warfare that's happening is between the US Pacific Fleet and the rogue submarine. Oh, that and the JMDF ships that are stupid enough to try defending said rogue submarine. And that's where the story just sort of ends. There's a subplot involving another Japanese captain who's always been a rival of the rogue captain, but that never ends up really going anywhere either. This is probably because the manga this OVA was based on wasn't finished yet, and I'm going to guess that given the story content, no one felt like finishing this OVA series. Can't say I blame them all that much. 1/10. |
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Captain X
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Slayers
(26 episode series) While not a horrible anime series, it definitely isn't good. This is more one of those boring shows that tries to be funny and occasionally manages to be, kind of like Ah! My Goddess, only without a group like the Motor Club to make things slightly interesting. I can honestly say that after a few episodes I would have given up on this series. But as it turns out, I'm the sound guy for the local anime club, and this was one of the series they elected to watch this semester. Now to be fair, this series does have its moments where it actually succeeds at being funny, whether intentionally or not. It's obvious that this series doesn't take itself entirely seriously, and it frequently goes over the top with things and breaks the fourth wall. The thing is, a lot of the things that are supposed to be funny, like say main character Lina Inverse's eating habits, generally aren't. There are also a few other moments that lend themselves very well to being riffed and just generally being easy to make fun of. Bad voice acting was one of those things, and interjecting "so when do I get paid?" after an example of it was a fairly easy way to get a few laughs. Then there was a fight toward the end of the series that happened to fit very well with this YTMND, which my friends and I quoted over and over during said fight scene. You'll probably have had to have seen this series to know what I'm talking about, so if you haven't, don't worry if you don't get this joke because frankly it isn't worth it to watch just to find out. Unfortunately, for the most part this series was just plain boring. Usually this was when the series actually got into its plot, which was a very typical quest plot for what was a very typical medieval magic fantasy story. This is actually one of the things I think of when I think "generic anime," mostly because it seems like there are a lot of them, which I hope to never ever watch. There's some magical big bad who wants to take over the world and some random hero(ine) with some kind of special skill slowly gathers up allies and goes on side-quests to gain those allies as well as experience. And since this one tries to be funny most of the time, hijinks ensue. Oh, and they end up fighting the big bad twice. I have to say that I was relieved when this show was finally over. It seemed like it wasn't going to end for a while, like it would just keep on going around in circles, doing the same tired old crap over and over again. I have to wonder if part of the problem isn't that this series might not have been aimed at a younger audience. I mean, there were more mature jokes in there, but that could have just been parental bonuses. Either way, the humor tended to be rather childish and I tired of it rather quickly thanks to the same types of bad jokes being done constantly. Now this isn't the most horrible anime I've seen, but it is one of the most boring ones. Chobits still has it beat there, as well as in the "jokes that aren't funny" category, but not by a whole lot. 1/10. |
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Captain X
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Gasaraki
(25 episode series) This is another military drama series, for the most part anyway, with a heavy focus on giant mecha. I can't help but reiterate how silly the idea of a giant humanoid robot being physically piloted is, despite all the technobabble explanations and excuses given for the "Tactical Armor system" in this series. They try to claim something like this would be as fast as any rapid armor by running, but as an engineer I can't really see that being the case with such a design. The other informed abilities, such as being highly maneuverable and the like are also pretty bullshit, simply because of the size of these machines and the fact that having a humanoid structure would actually tend to limit how well they can move around. And as if to prove my point, for the most part that's exactly how these TA's are presented – as lumbering giant robots, slowly and sluggishly moving around, except of course when the plot needs them to move around really fast so they can evade and take out traditional armor. I guess if there's one positive thing about this, though, it's that in this case the giant robots actually have their weapons built into them, instead of having ridiculously huge rifles or pistols they have to physically carry around in their robot hands. Really the only reason I'm bothering to bitch so much about it is because of how much the story revolves around these giant robots and how supposedly awesome they are, even though the story itself really isn't about them. Instead, it follows protagonist Yushiro Gowa, member of the large family owned military industrial company Gowa Industries. He's being used as a tool to bring back some kind of ancient beast/weapon known as the title name drop, which he can apparently do by doing some kind of weird ancient traditional Japanese dance, or just by being pissed off enough. Initially the series tries to build up a lot or mystery about him, along with another test subject just like him named Miharu, who pulls double duty as the love interest. She's being used by an international mega-corporation called Symbol, which starts wars for fun and profit, apparently. Fortunately, both Yushiro and Miharu develop personalities as the series progresses, or I might not have made it through this series. So as I mentioned, the giant robots play a big part in this series. We're shown the TA system being tested out by a small group of JSSDF officers in Japan, with everything being finished up just in time for a war to start in some made up Middle Eastern company run by a Castro wannabe. Basically the US picks a fight over what they believe to have been some kind of WMD test in this country, though everyone important to the narrative knows that this is actually the same kind of summoning that Yushiro Gowa was trying to do early in the series by doing his weird dance. This ends up turning into a UN sanctioned, NATO backed invasion of the small fake country of Belgistan. *snerk* Anyway, the Gowa family manages to arrange for their new TA's to make their debut in combat by going to this country, after the US-led invasion forces have been devastated by some other giant robots. These are Symbol's, which they call "Fakes", and they're doing basically the same thing Gowa is. I'll say right up front that this is basically the most interesting part of the story for me, mostly because it's a fairly straight-up military drama with some mystery and intrigue thrown in for fun. While it's obvious that Gowa isn't on the up-and-up itself, Symbol is the big bad mega-corporation pulling the strings, with their fingers in basically everything. Symbol actually has US military assets, as well as military assets in other parts of the world, which they try to use to capture Yushiro. The Belgistan campaign is also where the JSSDF group that Yushiro is a part of has more of a role, which was nice because they were a fairly interesting group of characters. Yushiro and Miharu also come face to face here, first in combat, and then in secret as they try to meet up and escape capture by Symbol. This is also where Yushiro stops being a boring automaton, doing everything his family wants him to do. Of course, Miharu ends up being recaptured so there aren't too many questions that actually get answered yet. The action then moves back to Japan, where there's a conspiracy to overthrow the Japanese government and install what certainly sounds like a fascist government led by a very old-fashioned douchebag. This guy only dresses traditionally, and carries a katana around with him, which he actually used to blind himself because he couldn't stand to look at modern Japan. Everything this guy said led me to believe he was another bad guy and that he was going to complicate life for Yushiro and our band of JSSDF heroes, and to be frank even though the story took another direction, I still view him as a bad guy, who really was no better than Symbol. Really the only difference is that Symbol wanted to take over the world (Of course!), ol' scar face only wanted to take over Japan and rule it with an iron fist based on the rigid, supposedly ancient ideals that the earlier fascist government made up to control its people back in the 1930s, all so he could get rid of the foreigners in Japan, basically, and to get the Japanese people to give up such decadence as personal wealth and self-determination. Oh yeah, later on, this guy gets made out to be a good guy, but at least before the half-way point of the series this was looking like a fairly interesting drama of sorts, even with the little jabs here and there at the US. Things really looked up as the truth started to come out about Yushiro, and he grew a pair and ran off with Miharu, who had been captured in an attempt to infiltrate Gowa's research facilities. The two of them do make a good run, and find out the truth of their pasts, but this is actually where the story started to go downhill for me. Coincidentally, this is also where the series wasted a few episodes showing us a revised history of 11th century Japan, with many of the same characters as earlier incarnations of themselves. Naturally, they all looked exactly the same. This is also where the series really started to grind an axe against the US, which was apparently being a douche to Japan for no reason other than that apparently Symbol wanted to, for reasons which were never really explained beyond taking over the world. And supposedly everything started out with the USDA, being the evil entity that it is, lying through its teeth in an official report claiming that grain harvests were way down. This set in motion a convoluted plan that scar face was going to try to take advantage of to meet his aims, and to allow the series to show the US acting as a terrorist force to attack Japan, you know, because. Oh, and this is also the point that scar face and his plan is made out to be in the right, probably because this is someone's fantasy. After all, so much of this series devotes itself to being fan service to traditional Japanese ideals going back to ye olde days of the samurai and such, supposedly. Really the best part of this was the way scar face repeatedly whipped his katana out and used it as an allegory for pretty much whatever the hell he wanted in order to justify his ambitions. Speaking of ambitions, the Gowa family was naturally involved in this plan, which would see it put in place as a powerful military industrial complex that was the real power, in the shadows, pulling the strings, because that sounds awesome to some people, I guess. This is also where Gasaraki comes in as the eldest son seizes power of the company and family from his father, and plans to use scar face's plan of domination to his own ends in true bad guy fashion. Anyway, as you might expect, while the US was totally going to go to war with Japan for no reason, the President apparently saw the light (read: made a sane decision) and called everything off, including the embargo on grain exports it had put in place for no reason, which is what had started everything off to begin with. Why the US had it in for Japan or how a ban on exports to the rest of the world was somehow specifically a slap in the face to Japan is never explained, everything just kind of resolves itself. Scar face suddenly sees the light himself (impressive for a blind guy), and after calling off his own plan to hurt the US economically, he commits suicide, in the way you might expect a self-declared samurai to do. This leaves bad guy Gowa to carry out his own fiendish plans, which involve the use and abuse of his annoying little sister to bring on Gasaraki and give him the ultimate power (TM). This is also where all that time wasted in medieval Japan comes to bite the series in the ass, because everything is resolved at the last minute and there is no real closure. I guess the fun part here was the obvious rip-off of the last couple of episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion through the use of abstract imagery and live action footage mixed in with still imagery. You know, the stuff NGE did to try to look cool after their animation budget had run out before the series had a chance to end. When it came to characters, Yushiro was kind of interesting, at least once the series got going. He finally started to resent the way his family was treating him and finally resisted it, though in my opinion he should have been a bit more active than just trying to run away, and later on just basically yelling at his oldest brother for being an evil bastard. Miharu got the short end of the stick as far as development was concerned, because while she was also starting to resist due to the treatment she was getting from Symbol, after the pointless trip to medieval Japan she basically lost all of her personality and basically became a defenseless damsel in distress that Yushiro had to rescue. I was also somewhat disappointed when it came to that group of JSSDF officers Yushiro was initially assigned to, because they also seemed kind of interesting, and they really deserved some fleshing out and development that they didn't really get. Actually, for some pretty long stretches we didn't even get to see any of them, until the series just decided to focus on them as part of the larger story, which unfortunately was executed in a somewhat sloppy fashion. So overall there was a kind of blandness when it came to the characters, and between that and the story, which was somewhat interesting, I found myself somewhat bored watching this series at times, especially during the middle portion. I guess if there's anything positive left to say about the series, it's that it tried to make all the sides fairly ambiguous, rather than making everyone just straight-up evil for no reason. That was left to the oldest Gowa brother, and for an earlier ancestor who did pretty much the same stuff back in medieval Japan. The downside is that while parts of this series were interesting, large portions of it were pretty boring for me, and it actually became something of a chore to watch. It picked up more toward the end of the series, mostly because it had to in order to resolve the story, but even there it was pretty lacking, and we never get to see the fallout of what happened over the course of the series. So really, overall this is an okay series, not especially bad, but definitely not very good either. 6/10. |
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Captain X
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Submarine 707R
(2 episode OVA) I'm not really sure if I can make much sense out of this one. It had a lot of action, but not a whole lot of substance, I'm afraid. That actually isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it isn't really a good thing, either. The best I can figure, the bad guy, Admiral Red, is going around blowing everyone out of the water because he's convinced humanity is polluting and exploiting the oceans. The blowing people up part then doesn't make a lot of sense because, as he even admits himself, he is helping to pollute the oceans with all the junk from the ships he's blowing up. He also calls a secret underwater base home, despite thinking humans shouldn't be out in the ocean, so maybe I just missed something there... Or maybe not. Who knows? The only permanent residents there that I could tell were Red's wife and 4 daughters, who I'm convinced are only there in the hopes that we'll actually feel some kind of sympathy when the inevitable happens. This anime definitely doesn't try to be very realistic, what with the odd-shaped submarines and the city-sized aircraft carriers that can also submerge, but really the best part is the tiny 707, which is way bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. So who is driving this thing? Captain Hayami, who's fat and also has a wife and daughter. Actually the best part is how Admiral Red is able to take out entire fleets of high-tech ships and submarines sent after him, but the rickety old 707 is able to not only take on his high-tech UX submarine, but actually sink him and all the subs he'd recruited to help him. Okay, so it's not "realistic", what about the story and the characters? Well, it tries. It tries to make us like Captain Hayami and his family. It tries to make us like a trio of young cadets that joins the crew (including one that wears a dog collar and often a leash with it) It tries to make us feel some sympathy for Admiral Red and his family, instead of just seeing him as batshit insane. It tries to hide the fact that its story is practically non-existant. It tries. Okay, but is it fun? Well, sort of. I have to admit that I liked some of the ship designs, even if they weren't particularly hydrodynamic. I also have to admit that it managed to be a little fun, but at the same time it also tended to get tedious. Even if this had just been a space show it felt like it wanted to be, I doubt it would have been all that much fun or interesting. Overall, while this was a little interesting to watch early on, mainly because of the action, by the time the second episode started it actually had gotten a little stale. Introducing us to the families of the protagonist and the antagonist didn't really do anything story-wise either, so it probably would've been better if they'd been left out or just barely mentioned. It tried, but I just couldn't get into it. 3/10. |
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Captain X
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Summer Wars
(2009 movie) I can honestly say that this movie didn't look that terribly interesting to me when I read about it, but it looked interesting enough to watch. So when someone requested that I review this movie, I guess I figured I could for the hell of it. Unfortunately I'm guessing this person will be disappointed, because they probably wanted to see what I thought because they themselves liked it. Or maybe they just wanted a second opinion on it before watching it, who knows? In any case, I didn't really like this movie, because the whole romantic comedy thing just isn't my thing. I'm the type of anime nerd who reminisces about the time anime was about giant robots fighting and explosions despite being fairly recent to the whole anime thing, but this movie is more along the lines of being socially awkward. The movie follows protagonist Kenji Koiso, a high school math nerd who works as a system admin for this movie's version of Second Life, or something kind of like that, except that it's called Oz. This massive online game/marketplace/everything you can possibly connect to the internet thing is made out to be the most awesomest thing ever, but really it touches on a nerve that's kind of ironic for an internet nerd like myself to have, which is half of the story and half of the reason why it really isn't my thing. The other half of the story comes in the form of Natsuki Shinohara, who busts into the room Kenji and his friend/fellow moderator are working in. She says she's looking for someone to do a job for her, and that there's money in it for them. This being their place of work and all, Kenji and his buddy both tell her that they already have jobs. Of course it helps that she's an attractive girl, and when she mentions that the only thing they have to do is to go out to the country with her, they both volunteer. She only needs one of them, though, and a little game of rock-paper-scissors apparently sorts out which one of them gets the job, and touches on yet another thing that I don't like about shows like this. I'm sure you're wondering what that could be, so this is the part where I mention that the job is pretending to be Natsuki's fiancé. It seems that her granny is turning 90 and like most old people she's having some health problems. Like a lot of old, traditional people, she apparently wants to see that Natsuki is married off like a good little Japanese girl before she kicks the bucket, so the job is to lie to this nice old woman's face. There are so many things that I don't like about that. I'm sure you can tell that there's a values dissonance there as far as the whole being a good little girl and getting married, so there's that. Then there's the fact that Natsuki is being dishonest and manipulative in order to look good to her grandmother, even if she thinks it's somehow good for the her materfamlias (and the entire family) to think that they're adding another member to their family before granny buys it. She neglected to tell Kenji any of this on that whole long trip out to the place which made it super awkward for him, and in addition to that he was pressured to lie to a woman and a whole family he was trying to be a respectable house guest to literally within a few minutes of getting there and being introduced. I know this was meant for comedy and I'm sure a lot of people even found this funny, but I was actually a little appalled. How much was she going to pay him, anyway? Now up to this point, everything seemed more like one of those domestic bliss fantasies many members of the fairer sex seem to have. There's a big house and a big family, with lots of little kids running around, and everyone mostly gets along aside from a few little comedic conflicts here and there to make things interesting, I guess. Now I don't come from a very big family or have a big house in the country, but my family is big enough for me to see this for the fantasy it is. But then I'm biased because I really don't like most of my family, and to be frank the less I see of them the better. Oh, and I hate little kids, too, so the idea of a bunch of them running around being rambunctious doesn't make me laugh or smile so much as leaving me somewhere between wanting to curl into the fetal position and wanting to growl at them to get off my lawn. 
The other half of the story comes into play when, later that night, Kenji gets a text message from some stranger with a code for him to figure out, and like a dumbass he actually solves it and replies back with the answer. I don’t know about any of you, but when I get a text from someone I don't know, I just assume they got the wrong number and delete it. So I was completely unsurprised that the next morning he was being accused of hacking the wonderful world of Oz, since it also apparently didn't occur to anyone that a hacker wouldn't be dumbass enough to hack using their own legitimate account. Conveniently, the big family happens to count a police officer among its numbers, so that saves them from having to make a phone call to take him away. Of course by now, things are going really wrong and they can't make it to jail anyway, so they just take him back home. All the while this is going on and things are being messed up by what appears to be a generic movie brand version of Second Life or World of Warcraft, I can't help but think how completely stupid it is to have all these things connected to the internet to the point that they can actually be controlled by it. This is that nerve I mentioned before, because as much of a technology nerd as I am, the idea of doing something like this stuns me. The sad thing is, you can already see aspects of this in that society seems to have forgotten to do a lot of things without the aid of computers, and, well, I'm getting of track here. Sufficed to say, the big emergency of the movie pretty much just made me roll my eyes because it was pretty much a problem of everyone's own making. I will give them this, though, setting the real world portion of this sci-fi technological story in an old style, traditional Japanese home place with a 90 year old woman calling people on an old school rotary phone in order to help out was kind of funny. I totally see what they did there.
In any case, the black sheep of the family shows up and it's revealed that he had gone to America for a while. He'd also stolen a bunch of money from Granny, so naturally everyone hates the guy, except of course Natsuki, who it is revealed had a crush on him since she was in kindergarten. Oh, Japan... Well, he was adopted, so I guess that makes it not incestuous, technically. Of course the information we're given about him comes into play when it's revealed all the problems are being caused by an AI that's from an American university. Gee, I wonder if the two could be in any way related?
Of course they are. Granny gets so mad about it, that in spite of the fact that while he made the evil AI, it as actually the US military that set the thing loose in Oz to test it out, you know, because it's not like you'd do something like that in a controlled environment instead of something that is apparently connected to everything, including a satellite in orbit, that she actually tries to kill his ass with a spear. But hey, let's just recognize this for the shot at that American military that it is. Of course this immediately begged the question as to whether this guy would somehow redeem himself, like say by helping to destroy this AI. Since he wasn't the one who actually released the thing, I really never had much doubt there.
And then Granny dies, right after making Kenji promise to take care of her manipulative granddaughter. The conflict is then generated by most of the family naturally wanting to deal with the whole Granny being dead thing, while the few of them that actually know something horrible might happen struggle to solve that, giving Dell and a few other companies some product placement in the process. And so starts the online battle, which is one of the lamest things I've ever seen. Now before anyone gets too mad at me, you have to understand that the whole social networking thing is just not my thing. So all these online games like Second Life and World of Warcraft are lame to me to begin with. What can I say? I like shoot people from the first person perspective, so give me Halo or FEAR any day. The thing is, even with something like that, when someone plays it, it's just some person looking at a screen. In this movie, it's represented more like a fully immersive virtual reality, with everyone having a cute little furry avatar (I don’t like furs either, by the way). That just comes off as that much more lame to me especially when people who are literally right next to a character in the room playing the same game actually use their little avatars to talk to each other, and at different points in the game they react as if they feel pain when their avatar is getting beat up in the game. Sorry guys, this just came off as lame to me. Of course everything works itself out in the end, including the part where Natsuki decides she likes Kenji and he decides he likes her. The massive family even pressures them to get married and to kiss right there in front of them. You know, the sad thing is, this aspect of the movie I didn't like could have been very easily avoided had the two of them already at least kind of had a thing going for each other, and the reason Natsuki wanted Kenji to pretend to be her fiancé was because she, you know, actually wanted him to be her fiancé. Instead it was a 50/50 chance that it could have been Kenji's fellow nerd, since Kenji could have just as easily lost at that game of rock-paper-scissors instead of winning it. But enough bitching; this just wasn't my kind of movie and my grading is going to reflect that. But don't let that put you off if this actually is your kind of movie. If you like romantic comedies, you will probably like this movie even if you don't like the computer game part of this movie, simply because the romantic comedy part is like so many other movies in that genre. Like how Twister and Sweet Home Alabama start out as just being a quick little diversion from the protagonist's regular life but turns into the whole falling in love thing. If you also happen to play Second Life and/or WoW, you'll probably really like this movie, because that's basically what it is. I, on the other hand, like neither, but I do recognize the work and talent that went into making it, so I'm not going to goose egg it even if I end up not giving it a very good score. 5/10. |
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Captain X
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Tide-Line Blue
(13 episode series) This was a thoroughly enjoyable series to watch, balancing action and a coherent plot that kept me interested enough to watch the next episode. Now, it has a fairly familiar storyline in that most of Earth's surface has been flooded, making most everything take place on or under the ocean, but in this case it's caused by some unknown ecological disaster rather than a madman. While it may have been caused by some kind of "science gone wrong" experiment, no one knows and as far as the plot is concerned, it doesn't matter. Here the conflict is mainly between the New United Nations and the submarine USS Ulysses, commanded by a rogue former US Navy Captain. While they both agree that what's left of the world needs to be united if humanity is to regain anything of its former level of civilization, Aoi, the secretary general of the New United Nations, thinks that this can be accomplished through diplomacy, and Gould, the disillusioned captain of Ulysses thinks the only way to bring peace to the world is through military force. Naturally, the anime doesn't really focus much on these characters, and instead focuses on a teen-aged boy named Keel, who wants to hook up with a girl who's already knocked up named Isla. Both of them are lucky enough to live on an island that just happened to be were a massive nuclear-powered aircraft carrier washed up, so they have basically limitless power. Of course this carrier is also the meeting place of the New United Nations, and Gould has gotten to the point that he actually attacks the NUN at one of its meetings. Being the gentleman he is, he sends his adjutant to formally declare war first. As it turns out this is Teen, twin brother of Keel. The island is devastated by the Ulysses's attack, forcing most of the inhabitants to evacuate because it looks like the carrier's reactor might melt down and spew radiation everywhere. Naturally this is when Isla goes into labor and hijinks ensue when Teen shows up to help a clueless Keel deliver the baby. He also gives Keel his badge and lets him know about the ride he'd planned to take out of there, back to his ship. Teen is then captured, and Keel with Isla and child in tow make it to the ride, which turns out to be a mini-sub from the Ulysses. The series then divides its attention between Teen and Keel, two brothers separated when their evacuation from a space station goes wrong. The space station was supposed to have a pretty mundane mission originally, which I guess is why there's an entire family on it. When the "Eden's Hammer" disaster happens, the space station is damaged and will eventually fall out of orbit, so the father decides to stay on board to complete the new, important mission of mapping Earth's new surface, oceans, and remaining resources, while the mother and twin brothers are evacuated to the surface. Apparently things don't go well and as far as Keel knows, his mother and brother are both killed. As it turned out only the mother was killed, and Teen was rescued by Gould at about the same time he took on a young girl about the same age. There is some interesting character development and interaction while everything goes on, but mostly it's a kind of coming of age story for Keel. No one really stays the same, though. Naturally there's a lot of focus on action, but this doesn't drag down the story, which manages to keep a fairly consistent plot going. It even manages to depict submarine and anti-submarine warfare fairly realistically for an anime. Probably the only place it goes overboard is with the comedy, which really only does so because of the inclusion of an ostrich which is only there for comedy relief, and somehow gets dragged along everywhere. Some of the characters even complain about it, yet they keep dragging it with them everywhere, so it just ends up being one big unfunny joke. Other than that this was a pretty good series. They even made the bad guy fairly sympathetic, though I think they might have been going a bit far with how everything just kind of works out in the end. I would definitely recommend this series, and in fact I'm adding it to my list at the beginning of the thread. 9/10. |
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