Keonyn's Anime

STORY: Pretty boring and uninteresting story. Each episode tended to have a pretty weak plot, although shows of this nature are rarely ever loaded with much in the way of story. Problem is that Astro Boy tried to be a story oriented show and a kids show at the same time and it just didn't seem to work. Others have done it but Astroy Boy simply couldn't pull it off.

CHARACTERS: Pretty ordinary characters with pretty much your average array of personality types in the group. I didn't watch too many episodes but there never seemed to be much development in what I did see.

VIDEO: Pretty low par animation I felt, and the art style is just one that I'm not overly fond of. The backgrounds and scenery seemed pretty well drawn out at times in some of the episodes I saw, but overall I felt the art and direction was fairly low quality.

AUDIO: Not exactly the most impressive voice acting I've heard and the voices pretty much sounded about as typical for their respective characters as the character concepts were themselves. The music isn't really very good and sometimes the effects almost sound a little too old school, and not in a good way.

OVERALL: The stories just never interested me and I didn't feel the animation or artwork was really very interesting either. It's just a kids oriented show that tries to be a story driven show, but never seems to actually deliver much of a story. It just tries to be too many things and never really seems to try hard to actually be any of them. Take that and add in the other aspects I wasn't fond of and I just couldn't really enjoy this show.

SEEN: A handful of episodes here and there.

STORY: I saw only a handful of episodes but I can't really say the episodes inspired me to want to continue watching it. It did seem to have a story, but from what I saw the story never progressed much and I found what was there to be uninteresting and even a tad cliche.

CHARACTERS: Typical kiddish personalities, nothing new or impressive to bring up here. I didn't really find any of them to be likable myself but it is possible that's just due to the fact I didn't watch it long as well. The awkward romances that were set up between these children was nothing short of awkward and an obvious attempt to toss something different in such a show and draw in a specific niche audience.

VIDEO: Animation seemed pretty standard and the character designs looked to be the typical cutesy kid character models. I didn't see it as bad really, just not good.

AUDIO: The coice acting didn't seem to bad to me, but again it didn't really pull me in either. There's not really a dub to speak of here, at least not a dub done to the unedited version. The music was almost annoying I thought and that really didn't work in its favor either. Normally I can dismiss the music or just not notice it, but in this case it made me almost want to mute the show at times.

OVERALL: I could have given it more of a chance but I just never saw enough in what I did see to inspire me to do so. A lot of what I did see also annoyed me or seemed pretty weak to me as well. It's a much loved show so it's possible I may be missing out, but for the time being I have no intention of watching it any further.

SEEN: First twelve and a number of later episodes in no specific order.

STORY: There's a story? Looked like a lot of grunting and cheesy dialog to me. This is one of the weakest anime I've ever seen and the scariest part is it is as popular as it is. I'm sure there is a story in there ... somewhere, but the rest is so laughable I don't even want to think about how good of a story it could be or sit through the episodes in order to find out.

CHARACTERS: They seem to like grunting a lot and they all look like they spent their childhood soaking up radiation. They have the depth of a mud puddle and seem to be about as developed as a blank roll of film, which would incidentally be more entertaining to look at.

VIDEO: It's horrible, just plain horrible. Long, drawn out fighting moves and long moments of people just sitting there trembling or moaning or grunting; if someone walked in at the wrong point they might think you're watching some kind of animated homo-erotica. The animation isn't very good at all and the artwork looks incredibly antiquated, and while that can be a good quality in this case it's not antiquated in a good way.

AUDIO: Some of the voice acting is actually decent as far as the actors ability to do their lines, but a lot of it is pretty bad, especially the villains. But otherwise there's just a lot of really bad sound effects, really bad music that is often too loud and overly dramatic and far too much grunting and other vocal sounds that really barely qualify as dialog.

OVERALL: The best example of a really bad show that is incredibly popular for some really weird reason. There's just nothing good or redeeming about this show and you'd have to hold a gun to my head to get me to watch another episode. I guess it's possible I'm just missing the point entirely, but from what I've seen I don't really think I want to get it even if that were the case.

SEEN: Roughly 15 various episodes.

STORY: I only really saw the first few episodes but I just didn't find what story there was to be of much interest. You had the typical kids in another world where they meet the typical stranger that helps them as they start to get attacked by the typical evil monsters. Yeah yeah, been there and done that, and at that time it was done better than this.

CHARACTERS: Very very typical, nothing new to see here, move along.

VIDEO: I couldn't help but laugh at some of the monster designs, they just weren't scary or even cool looking. They were more like freak show creatures drawn up by a collaboration of 2nd graders. The animation wasn't really any good and, while some of the artwork was interesting, the majority of it was just boring.

AUDIO: Some of the voice acting was alright but I really have to say that Evan's voicework for Yu was just horrible and made the dub completely unwatchable for me. It's possible he gets better later on, but I have to say from the episodes I've seen it wasn't even remotely tolerable. The rest of the voice acting was mediocre to average on both sides and the music was not all that interesting either.

OVERALL: This just wasn't a very good show and is yet another Final Fantasy disappointment in their efforts to bring the franchise outside of the game market. Their problem really seems to be that their attempts so far have really had nothing to do with the franchise aside from the names.

SEEN: Episodes 1-4.

STORY: If you want the real story then stick with the novel or the somewhat well done(but somewhat modified) movie adaptation by Kevin Reynolds in 2002 if you want to see it on screen. This series reflects the work of art it's based on in only the most basic of elements and unfortunately just doesn't capture any of the essence of the original at all. Now I'm not one to normally care about a re-imagined or redone story so long as the basic essence is there, after all I watch and enjoy the new "Battlestar Galactica" and "Samurai 7" and usually defend minor "Americanization" which so many tend to blow out of proportion. Unfortunately in this case the changes to the setting, characters and story are just too significant to dismiss as part of re-imagining the story.

CHARACTERS: The names of the characters are consistent but unfortunately that's about it, otherwise they don't much resemble their novel counterparts and all seem rather one-dimensional (a term I hate using).

VIDEO: I'm just not a fan of this art style, I know many others praise it but it just doesn't appeal to me. It seems far too fabricated and lazy which doesn't interest me in the slightest. It's a unique style, I'll give them that, certainly is worth noting that they were innovative but unfortunately just not in a way that I really liked. I am in the minority on that so take my opinion with a grain of salt, while I don't much care for the artwork there are a great many that do.

AUDIO: I didn't find anything truly impressive or bad about the voice acting in this series. The music is actually pretty decent and does a good job of conveying just what it's meant to. My only real gripe with the voice acting is how the characters are acted, which does fit with the series but doesn't fit with the actual novel. Of course, they can't play the characters to match the novel and not the series since this is the series so I can't really dock points for that.

OVERALL: Ultimately this series just took many liberties with the original story and doesn't have enough substance to it to really make up for that in my mind. I admit, I'm a huge fan of the original and even the recent film, which I mentioned previously, so my views here may also be somewhat bias. As far as the art style goes; I just don't care for that style regardless of the series or artwork it's found in. I was really hoping for a nice anime adaptation of one of the best literary classics and was disappointed to find that story and its great cast of characters twisted in the manner found here. I seriously do suggest to anyone who watches this anime, whether you love it or not, to at least check out the book and the movie to get a better grasp on what the real story is or at least to view a semi-decent and true to form adaptation of it. Obviously the movie takes a few liberties as well but it is still far more true to the original than this series pretends to be.

SEEN: Episodes 1-8. I've also read through all the spoilers, so I know how it plays out from there.

STORY: The story here was incredibly slow paced and just didn't seem to make much progress at all. It was somewhat interesting but not enough to make me want to continue my pursuit of it.

CHARACTERS: The characters weren't bad but the goth theme was a bit overdone and with some of them you just never really quite understood how they thought and why, although it's likely that is intentional. I didn't like Tatsuya at all and, as the story seemed to center around him as far as I have seen, that really kind of drove me from keeping up with the series as well.

VIDEO: This is where I felt things really took a wrong turn. While the character artwork was intriguing and a good deal of the artwork throughout the anime had a unique and interesting look about it, the fact is the animation was just plain bad. A lot of the animation reminded me of old school "Scooby Doo" episodes and it just gave the whole thing an inconsistent feel to it as it was ugly to see such good art mixed with such poor animation. The animation was really the biggest factor that turned me away from the series and usually animation quality isn't necessarily a huge matter to me.

AUDIO: The voices are alright but in the voices as well the whole spooky, subtle and gothic qualities are a little too present and that really detracts from the quality as it gives almost every character an almost identical feel. The music as well isn't to inspired and tries too hard to build on the gothic theme.

OVERALL: The gothic aspect is just overdone in visuals, character design and the vocals/music to the point it's simply too much. Add to that the really weak animation and it just starts to lose too many points to make it a very enjoyable title to me.

SEEN: Episodes 1-4.

STORY: It isn't exactly the greatest story or the most original but it does tell it in a somewhat entertaining fashion that's paced well enough to not feel like it's going on far longer than it should. It does still, at times, feel a little longer than it needs to be and they could probably have cut some episodes out here and there, but it is still interesting to an extent with enough twists and changes to keep it from being overly repetitive.

CHARACTERS: The characters seem to be modeled after your average good and bad guys using almost a TMNT formula. They're not really very well developed and don't have a whole lot of depth either, not to mention they seem to adopt a lot of cliches from the good guys to the bad.

VIDEO: The animation is nothing great, pretty much your standard style and quality for shows of this type and vintage. The fighting moves they use get a little repetitive as they always use the same animation when they use the moves and often times the fights rely on little else than these moves. The action really feels underdone and the scenery is pretty much unoriginal and uninteresting.

AUDIO: The voice acting is alright but nothing spectacular. The voices are a little generic for their roles and just make the characters feel that much more formulaic. The music isn't anything memorable and could be almost anything and it wouldn't really matter much.

OVERALL: It's a decent shounen series and actually one of the first I really started watching. The action isn't all that great and the characters are a bit cliche but the story has enough elements to it to make in interesting and worth watching. If it was much longer, like many anime of this type tend to be, then I don't think I'd be able to watch it but luckily it doesn't try to extend its life longer than it needed to be.

SEEN: About half the episodes or a little more in incorrect order.

STORY: A kid has a cyber buddy that he uses to fight bad guys in which he magically prevails at the end of each episode. Typical storyline that is sometimes decent, but in this case it's too formulaic with weak characters and weaker villains.

CHARACTERS: They just completely lack any unique design or concepts in the characters and each one from villain to support to main are as cliche and typical as can be.

VIDEO:Not exactly what we'd call great animation and the net sequences really seem to be an excuse to use cheap animation rather than a really intriguing idea. Not to mention the backgrounds and scenery is virtually non-existent and there's just never anything interesting to see aside from the characters, and they're not exactly all that great themselves.

AUDIO: Hooray for annoying tunes and bad actors. There's just nothing about this series' audio to even think about praising.

OVERALL: It's just another typical show perfect for afternoon TV that fails to really deliver anything in the way of a good story, visuals or even a single interesting character.

SEEN: Handful of random episodes on television.

STORY: This was pretty much a show made to capitalize on the success of Pokemon and Digimon, at least it felt as much, and as such the story was somewhat similar as well. Unfortunately the story didn't have enough actual story elements aside from the villain/problem of the day to actually give you a reason to watch it.

CHARACTERS: I hated most of the monsters from their voices to their personalities, and the kids just seemed incredibly dense to me. Watching this cast was almost painful at times and I simply couldn't stay interested in the characters at all.

VIDEO: Pretty much standard TV show animation for the time, not great and not bad. It had the usual shortcut action sequences but the character art was hideous, especially the monsters.

AUDIO: The voices for many of the monsters was just bad and irritating and the kids weren't that well done either. I honestly don't even recall a single song from the series off hand so I can't much comment on the soundtrack, although if it were decent I'd likely remember something of it.

OVERALL: This was the weakest of the pocket monsters wannabe style shows on pretty much every account. With a weak story, irritating and ugly characters and standard animation there was just no reason to watch this over Pokemon and Digimon.

SEEN: Handful of random episodes on television.

STORY: I loved this show as a kid because the story fascinated me and this is really my oldest memory of an anime I have, although at the time I was not aware it was an anime or even what anime was. Sadly as I didn't always have control of the TV I never got to see it from start to finish, but I was always fascinated by it when it was on.

CHARACTERS: I don't remember significant details about the characters unfortunately, as it has been probably close to 20 years since I last saw this show.

VIDEO: Due to the age I doubt the animation is that spectacular, but I can't remember all that well. I did love the art direction as a kid though and I certainly remember a number of details about that, so I know it had some impact.

AUDIO: Honestly can't recall much more than the theme song which would sound pretty outdated by todays standards. Voices and such are lost to me.

OVERALL: This was one of my favorites as a kid and it's a shame there's really no means in which to see it again as I wouldn't mind getting a chance to watch it from start to finish as an adult. Due to the age and the target audience at the time I have no doubt I would likely no longer see it as a favorite. I would think I would still enjoy it though, even if for the nostalgia alone.

SEEN: Can't entirely recall.

STORY: Okay, so people say this story is great but I couldn't find it interesting in the least and it was mostly just laughable, and supposedly the episodes I saw were some of the more important as far as the story goes. Yeah, could have fooled me.

CHARACTERS: The characters are basically uninteresting and a lot of the times ... idiotic. There's no real chemistry or diversity here and the villains are usually more interesting than the primary characters, but that's still not saying much in favor of the villains.

VIDEO: Pretty standard animation for a long show, some episodes look decent and others look like garbage. The character art is decent, it's just too bad their personalities aren't half as interesting. The artwork isn't too bad and even the edits don't butcher it up too bad.

AUDIO: The voice acting isn't all that great on either the sub or the dub and I found many of the characters annoying, although that may also have to do with the facts their personalities themselves are annoying. The music isn't really any good although it's not as bad as other shows of the "too many episodes of filler and fighting" genre.

OVERALL: This is just another show of the whole "DBZ" and "One Piece" design and although it's a little more well done it is still not very good. The story, or lack thereof, is still boring and slow and there's still too much filler, and a lot of this just feels like a waste of time. Although filler and wasted time isn't always bad, in this case there's nothing worthwhile in the episodes to waste that time on. Simply, you're better off with a shorter series that better spends its time and actually has content worth spending that time on.

SEEN: Episodes 1-19.

STORY: The story has some certain unique elements to it but I just couldn't get into it. It really feels like it's trying too hard to be meaningful and layered and it doesn't really work in my mind. The whole thing just seems overrated to me and maybe that's because I went into it expecting so much based on all the praise it had received.

CHARACTERS: The characters really did seem generic to me and to be honest I absolutely hated Shinji. I really didn't find myself liking any of the characters and the only development the main cast seemed to receive in the episodes I saw only made me dislike them more for one reason or another.

VIDEO: The animation is really quite good and the design and artwork to the eva's themselves is quite nice. I really don't have much in the way of complaints as far as the animation and artwork goes and it's good to see they took a different direction with the mech genre, although they are not technically mechs, but they are close enough to the premise.

AUDIO: Voice acting is alright, but unfortunately they had to act characters I wasn't very fond of. The music I noticed didn't seem all that impressive and I wasn't fond of the opening or closers either.

OVERALL: I don't know, after all the praise this anime has received I really expected a lot more and it just seems incredibly overrated to me. The story has some interesting elements, but overall it just seems like a twist of the same old basic thing. Even the main characters follow the typical style and aren't all that unique, not to mention their personalities just irritated me. I wouldn't say it's a bad anime, but I just don't get the praise myself and the angst and drama and characters just didn't draw me in.

SEEN: Episodes 1-8.

STORY: Problem here is the story just drags on and on and on and on from needless constant dialog to extensive flashbacks and memories. It just takes this anime so long to tell its stories and there's really just no need for it to drag on like it does. The story is a good enough story for a kids show, it's just the pacing that is way off and makes it so difficult to watch.

CHARACTERS: There is a decent variety of characters and personalities, but unfortunately they're a little too rigid. They're just too predictable, even for a kids show cast. There is a good deal of character development, unfortunately it is this development that is often overdone to the point it drags the stories on episode after episode. The villains are just horrible half the time as well, in both design and personality, and they hardly even feel like a threat.

VIDEO: The animation is pretty much your standard kids show style and is really nothing impressive. The character art really bothers me though, often looking more like a freakshow than an anime, even a kids oriented anime. A lot of the landscape and architecture suffers from similar problems as well. I do recognize this is a kids show but it simply looked a little too goofy for me, and this coming from someone that does enjoy some Digimon or Pokemon now and then.

AUDIO: Well first off, I'm not a big fan of this dub and it's even worse due to the fact it's edited beyond belief, making the dub virtually unwatchable. The voice acting in the sub isn't too bad but still nothing I'd give any praise to, especially since a few of the voices just didn't seem to match the characters.

OVERALL: The story wasn't all that impressive and I would personally say Pokemon has a more interesting world and story. Add to that the fact it just seems to drag on forever and you get a story that just gets really tiring, really fast. It may just be that it seemed to drag on to such a degree that it made me lose interest in it that much more, that is always a possibility. I also just didn't like the art style of the series at all and that definitely kept me from really getting into the series. All in all I'd say the art style is tolerable but the pacing of the story is not and is the main reason I just couldn't get into it. This is easily one of the most overhyped pieces of trash I've ever watched and only watched as much as I did because I was told I'd get into it eventually. Well, 44 episodes and it was still god awful so regardless of the rest, that's a failure of a show to me. Of course, I'm not a big fan of incredibly drawn out shows anyways of this genre.

SEEN: Episodes 1-44 of the sub, only a handful from the dub plus a few clips tossed my way via YouTube for comedic purposes.

STORY: The advantage Pokemon has is that it doesn't rely on long extended arcs and each episode is generally completely self-contained, although they are interconnected to a minor degree. This prevents the story from seeming too drawn out like other anime of this length, although the story itself doesn't have a whole lot of depth. But like most episode by episode shows it doesn't have a lot of draw to it to keep you watching and episodes are really hit or miss, ranging from great to unwatchable.

CHARACTERS: It actually has a fairly varied cast of characters but it's also a rather undeveloped cast. Most of the added support characters are pretty generic, especially the nurse and cop who are literally identical from town to town. There's a huge variety of Pokemon, but a lot of the time they have similar to identical attacks so, in many cases, you could swap one Pokemon for another and it would basically be the same thing. The variety is more in appearance than abilities.

VIDEO: Standard animation for a show of this nature or, in other words, it's not really that great with plenty of shortcuts and mock motion scenes. The character design is pretty standard and consistent and the Pokemon are often unique and different in appearance which tends to give each episode something new, although the abilities of the various Pokemon rarely differ significantly. The landscape and scenery isn't too bad and varies a great deal, despite the massive episode count of this series.

AUDIO: The music is familiar to most gamers as it is heard in the games, although it gets a bit redundant when the same themes are played for hundreds of episodes. I personally prefer the dub voice actors, but of course I watched the show as a dub for years before I even once heard the sub so it's likely a matter of what I'm accustomed to. There's nothing really terrific or outstanding here but the voice actors do a good job and the music is decent for its purpose. Pokemon saying their names over and over does get a little tiring at times, but otherwise I have no real complaints here.

OVERALL: It's just a fun little kids show that does manage to keep it interesting without dragging on with overextended story arcs that never seem to end. There's not a whole lot in the way of story or character development or any elements that will keep the attention of anyone who requires those things. It's more or less just a fun kid oriented show that manages to do what it sets out to do, and that's to just entertain.

SEEN: Majority of the episodes from the original and Johto arc and a handful of the rest.

STORY: The story here was pretty weak and almost every episode followed the exact same formula. Evil guy creates evil creature, lions attack and get beat down, then they form Voltron in a needlessly extensive and flashy sequence and then Voltron gets beat pretty badly. Eventually they use their great power or sword or whatever and the monster gets a large glowing wound and explodes in an almost nuclear flash. Yawn.

CHARACTERS: Standard pack of characters, the only interesting one gets lost in the beginning and replaced by the irritating princess. The bad guys are about as cliche as you can get and the good guys are hardly any better. Nothing is barely worth a mention as far as characters go.

VIDEO: Pretty much the usual for the day, I guess maybe it was even a little better, but still nothing impressive. Character art was the typical style and the scenery was pretty much plain. A lot of the animation was endlessly recycled and the fights between Voltron and the various monsters were almost all identical. Saw one episode, you more or less saw them all.

AUDIO: Bad music, mediocre acting, the audio wasn't exactly this shows strong point and the cheesy effects only manage to solidify that.

OVERALL: This show is old and outdated at this point, but even so it manages to almost define various well known cliches. The story is rather bland and it manages to make a rather uninteresting story even worse by making each and every episode nearly the exact same thing as the rest. It was alright for its day, because standards weren't high then and the idea was new, but it certainly wasn't great even then. Even as a kid I didn't like this show a whole lot. The toy line wasn't bad though.

SEEN: Can't entirely recall.

STORY: Not a bad story, although the card duels do kind of drag on and on, not to mention they get repetitive. The back stories are usually pretty uninteresting and only detract from the primary story that's going on, and there's a lot of sappy and cheesy elements involved. Yugi's almost losing and then coming back to win with some amazing move gets a little old too, you'd think being as good as he is that every now and then he'd just wipe the walls with someone. Still though, it's not too bad for mindless entertainment, although once you've seen an episode it's not all that worthwhile seeing it again since the amazing surprise card/move that is inevitably played is no longer a surprise.

CHARACTERS: Tea is an annoying character with her over abundant optimism and bubbly behaviour. Yugi isn't too bad for a lead and gets some development and the rest are all just pretty average with mild development and they work decently as a supporting cast. Problem is sometimes those supporting characters get center stage for some episodes and it just doesn't seem to work very well. Seto is especially annoying because he seems incredibly clueless and ,despite everything that happens as the series progresses, it just seems as if he's completely blind to everything around him and his brothers blind loyalty and knack for always getting into trouble gets old.

VIDEO: The animation is really pretty plain and sub par, but some of the artwork with the cards effects and the monsters is pretty good. It really tends to be hit or miss with the artwork, some is great and others are bad or ugly. Character art is pretty standard, although some of them seem to wear needlessly complex costumes and certain females wear either incredibly short skirts or a top that looks like it belongs in a lingerie catalog.

AUDIO: People hate the dub acting but I actually think it's decent, I don't think it's great but I do think it's decent. Frankly I also think the acting in the sub isn't exactly wonderful either and I'd simply choose the dub because I can understand the language but neither are worthy of much praise. The theme song isn't too bad in some renditions, but they could stand to vary the music in the series a bit more as it really seems to be the same few tracks over and over.

OVERALL: It's entertaining but it's not great. It does well for an afternoon time slot but is nothing I would really want to buy episodes of. The story gets a tad redundant and staring at a duel arena gets a bit tiring. Another problem is that once you know how a duel is won the value of watching the episode again is pretty much nil, so there's just no replay value. I don't mind it for some mindless entertainment and it is enjoyable at times, but it's nothing I'd go out of my way to see.

SEEN: A large number of various episodes in no specific order.