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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Karin DVD 1
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WesW
 Posts: 144 |
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Checking the ratings here, I think that Karin is quite underrated. I found this to be a really nice, sweet, entertaining show. I would strongly recommend this to anyone who likes romantic comedies.
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Eruanna
 Posts: 451 Location: Canada |
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I thought I would pipe up and say. "No, it hasn't, really." I really dont know why everyone seems to think that there is tons of vampire anime out there. There is not very much anime out there dealing with vampires. A scant 19 titles that I can find, three of those being silly kid shows, one of them only just announced and so not even in existance yet, and about half of the remaining so poorly done that nobody should ever bother trying to watch them. Out of the thousands of anime titles, I hardly think 19 titles is enough to warrant an "Anime has long had a fondness for vampire tales" Of course I am not counting shows that maybe happen to have a vampire for a side character, of which I am sure there are a few more. Nor am I counting misc. monsters shows about demons, wearwolves, or witches, which for some reason tend to be lumped in with the vampire stories. Probably because there is so little vampire anime out there that it can hardly stand as a genre by itself, so monster tales help to fill it out more. Anyways, I do mean to check out Karin eventually. As a connoisseur of vampiric stories I feel honor bound to do so, especially considereing the affore mentioned lack of vampire anime, but I really cant stomach teenage drama very well, so I dont except alot of good out of this show. |
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Merciful Evans
Posts: 18 |
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I don't think saying that anime has had a fondness for vampires is the same as saying it's a large genre. Whether or not anime has a huge amount of vampire stories, it does have several well-known examples; Vampire Hunter D was one of the first anime flicks I was exposed to, and between the Hellsing remake, Blood+ and Trinity Blood series being released relatively recently, all at least fairly prominent, I think it's reasonable to say that anime likes vampires. |
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GoodLuckSaturday
 Posts: 567 Location: Indiana |
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As much as I ended up enjoying Karin, I thought the first set of episodes were fairly dull and uneventful. For the first disc, I'd say the review and scores are a bit generous, but it definitely seems fair in the scope of the show as a whole. I do agree, however, that this is definitely a great show for anyone looking for a romantic comedy, but I think this first disc review is more than fair. |
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MorwenLaicoriel
 Posts: 1617 Location: Colorado |
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Oi. I think I'll probably give this anime a rent--I like the novel idea, and I'm a bit of a romantic comedy fan when it comes to anime--but I'm not sure if I'm going to buy it. I don't know if I really want to encourage Geneon to settle for a dub that "isn't intolerably bad", even if I like watching subs fine.
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DKL
 Posts: 1962 Location: California, USA |
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Hmmm...
... I liked and bought Moon Phase, so what's the deal here? Buy? Deepdiscount still has the sale going on, so I'll probably consider this... Yeah, I'll buy. |
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bci110
 Posts: 391 |
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Another ANN review I was anxiously waiting on, especially with the somewhat controversial decision of Geneon using an outsource studio to provide the English-language track. I heard some "horror" stories about Odex dubs (mainly from those that watched Fantastic Childern since nearly everyone I know said that the English dub was horrendous) so I basically approach the English side of Karin with some doubts and concerns. I was already sold of the excellent Japanese performances and the cuteness of the J.C. Staff animation (even though it's not as fluid or consistant as some of their past titles) and story concept thanks to the Chibi Vampire manga and novels from which the anime is based, so purchasing Karin Vol. #1 was automatic in my view.
To be honest I was pleasantly surprised with how good the Odex dub turned out to be. There are some performances during the four episodes that made me cringed a bit, but overall it wasn't too bad. I took an immediate liking to Chelsea Curto's portrayal of Karin Maaka, and her performance was definitely the highlight of the volume. While I liked the Japanese portrayal a lot, I thought that Chelsea gave the right amount of spunkiness and emotion to Karin. Honestly, the vocals Chelsea portrayed thus far is exactly how I'm envisioning how Karin sounds like while I'm reading the Chibi Vampire manga. There were some areas where she tends to overact a bit, but overall it's a very good performance. If she continues to improve, she could develop into a pretty good actress down the road. I also liked Hillary Blazer-Doyle's performance as Maki. Although there were times where she sounded a little too high-pitched or high-strung, I thought Maki's voice was very cute. Maki's vocal performance complements Karin's pretty well, and I love their scenes together. They sound very cute together. Another performance that I feel will get better with future volumes. Anju's voice fits the character very well, as does Boogie's. Fumio wasn't too bad, but I was hoping that she sounded a little more mature in the earlier scenes. But when she received the blood infusion from Karin near the end of Episode 2 and reverted to a more peppy voice, I felt that the performance justified the nature of the character at that point. It's another vocal that I'm picturing during my reading of the manga. Kenta's vocal performance is one that I going to have to monitor as I move forward watching the rest of the series. It's not a bad performance, but it's not a good one either. I was hoping for a more serious-sounding voice, but thus far it's not really clicking with me at this point. Hopefully it'll improve once future volumes become available. The same is true for Ren's voice. At first he sounded terrible, but as the series progressed I could hear significant improvement from the voice actor's performance. I didn't like the performances of Carrera and Henry at all. I was hoping for a more Europeean-sounding style to their voices, but they sounded too whiny and plain to me (especially Henry). If I would to grade the English performances of Karin, I would grade them a solid B. There were some great performances (Karin, Maki), performances that fit the nature of the characters (Anju, Boogie, Fumio), and performances that can still use some improvement (Kenta, Ren, Carrer, and Henry). For this being my first experience listening to an Odex dub (I haven't seen Fantactic Childern or Clockwork Fighters, and I only have the first volume of Zipang and watched it in Japanese), I was very surprisingly pleased with the majority of the performances. If they do show some improvement in the acting and direction in the future volumes, I believe that Odex will eventually shake off its reputation of having poor-quality dubs. |
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Randall Miyashiro
 Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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I actually enjoy Moon Phase(and Tsukihime even more) better than the first volume of Karin. I had no idea what this series was going to be about (about 3/4 of my anime is blind purchases) and was dreading the worst when the DVD arrived and I saw the cover. I thought this was going to be the definition of quirky generic high school romance. I'm frankly quite surprised at the decent ratings considering how Theron can be a tough critic. I enjoy how this series also seems to take a bit more of Karin's perspective (like Shana) as opposed to shows like Bleach and Fate/Stayt where we follow the (until recently) ordinary high school male character and rarely see what the "super hero" girl is doing and thinking when he is not around. I'm glad I didn't bother with the dub, but seeing how this is yet another series set in Japan I went with the subs. I'm glad this is at least a mediocre title since I already preordered the 2nd and 3rd volumes. |
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CaptainAvatar
 Posts: 381 Location: Saint Louis, MO |
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Maybe its just me, but can't we at least pronounce the names right? Karin becomes Karen, Usui (pronounced oo-soo-ee) becomes (oo-swee), and clearly some of these actors do not speak english as their primary language. Is it an acceptable dub, I suppose, (after all Midori's name was mis-pronounced throughout Midori Days), but is that what you want? Make no mistake, the better these Odex shows sell, the more we will get from them, and the less we will get from top studios like New Generation Pictures. Make your opinions known to Geneon on this poor choice. I was actually surprised Kadokawa would sign off on this choice.
As far as the show itself, I am a fan of the Manga and novels released so far, so story-wise, I have enjoyed it so far. I was a bit taken aback on the animation, as I felt it fell short of what I have come to expect from J.C. Staff. This is a rental until I see how it plays out. Had the dub been from over here, I probably would have bought it sight unseen. |
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WesW
Posts: 144 |
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Well, I guess I need to clarify then. I was referring to the fan ratings here, not Key's scores in the review, though I do think that the writing and plotlines for the overall series are better than what Key gave for this volume. From what I remember, there were some pretty touching scenes involving Karin's siblings. You could tell that the manga was pretty good source material. |
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samuraiuni
Posts: 4 |
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Maybe someone can help me cause I'm not getting something here
In his review he says
then after all this the reviewer puts Overall (dub) : B- Is this a mistake or is B- poor in this site's ratings? |
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MorwenLaicoriel
Posts: 1617 Location: Colorado |
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Probably the rest of the show is good enough to outweight the weak dub? Because it's overall, not just the dub performance.
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18496 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Exactly. Graded individually, the dub would get, at best, a D rating. Averaged in to all the other grades, it only drags the series down to a B- overall.
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