Shelf Life

World's Greatest

I don't hate Chrono Crusade… I just don't plan to re-watch it or care to own it (which by definition puts it on my rental shelf). I could never have finished watching this in 2004 because I just couldn't get into it. I had a hard time getting into it this time around, too. Admittedly, the last episode is, as I'd heard, a total tear-jerker. Even with my heart of stone about this show, I have to admit my tears were totally jerked.

Basically, if you think a nun with thigh-high socks wielding a holy gun and riding a motorcycle with her demon sidekick through the roaring 20s in America sounds pretty cool, and you haven't seen this already, you're going to want to buy it. But for me, Chrono Crusade is like a long, bumpy dirt road leading to a worthwhile destination. Too rough of a road can destroy a car before it gets where it's going. I still had a lot of questions after the ending that should've been answered in the show.

The terminology was a serious problem for me. Chrono Crusade has show-specific definitions of “Apostles,” “Sinners,” and even “Pandemonium.” The Extra features include some explanatory shorts which I watched all the way through, hoping they'd help clear things up.

I suspect Chrono Crusade lives and dies on your love of the characters, since the plot starts to seem nonsensical as the show goes on. A long explanation extolled in episode 20 was so murky that I watched it twice – once dubbed and one subbed – to double-check that, indeed, it didn't make sense.

I liked Rosette (our protagonist nun) and Chrono (her steadfast devil sidekick with a heart of gold) enough, but I couldn't buy into their platonic love friendship that bordered on romance (she is a nun, darn it!). It was the side characters that really killed this show for me. Azmaria, one of the series' apostles, is a cute young girl with a singing voice that is literally heavenly. Azmaria's powers wax and wane as the plot demands. In my book, Rosette is already plenty kind, unintentionally destructive, and innocent. Adding an even cuter, younger, more innocent, and klutzier member to their fighting party is kinda like eating the rose made of frosting on a cake. Azmaria's high pitched voice in the dub started to wear me down by the third DVD.

Then there's Satella, the “jewel witch.” Apparently jewel witches summon monsters for Yu-Gi-Oh!-like battles. (I liked Adelicia, the equivalent character from Rental Magica better.) Satella is more of a boob witch than anything. Tiffany Grant's German accent sounds like a non-stop impression of Elsa Schneider in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

I would be interested in seeing a fan edit of this show in chronological order (and with a lot less Satella and Azmaria). Why not re-cut it to begin with Chrono's war in hell, when the story really started, and jump to the 1800s arc, followed by Rosette's childhood, and so on? I'm getting tired of anime series where the dramatic hinge of the story is some important past event that we get to see in a flashback three to five episodes before the series ends.

Chrono Crusade has plenty of action, and the production values are plenty high, but to me the structure is rotten, like a church with a bad foundation. It might look pretty on the outside, but that thing just ain't structurally sound.[TOP]

I think if you're in the mood for epic fantasy, perhaps after watching Game of Thrones, Tales from Earthsea is worth a look. Just don't set your expectations too high.

Prince Arren (which sounds like my name) stabs his father and more or less goes on the lam. He gets some help from Sparrowhawk (not to be confused with the chicken hawk), a wandering wizard with a staff like Gandalf the Grey, only younger. Arren and Sparrowhawk ride into a port city with a booming slave trade and some serious drug problems. To add to these social troubles, magic is draining from the land, as something in the supernatural realms has come unbalanced and dragons have returned.

Arguably the sequence before the opening credits is the most action-packed in the film and it's all downhill from there. The excitement drains away as the action is transplanted from a crowded city to a lonely stone farm house where Sparrowhawk can't seem to settle down and get together with Tenar, a motherly older lady who is looking after Theru, a mysterious and tight-lipped girl with a scar on her face.

The dub is, if nothing else, filled with celebrities. Timothy Dalton as Sparrowhawk occasionally sounds like he's doing a Sean Connery impression. I couldn't get enough of Willem Dafoe as the evil sorcerer Cob, although on the Japanese track, Cob is a witch played by Yuko Tanaka…! Somehow it works either way.

The film never gets around to solving the big problems from the beginning. It's based on a short story from a series of books I've never read, but I've heard of the major differences; all of the characters are supposed to be dark-skinned, and Theru's scars are supposed to be disfiguring rather than mildly pink.

The DVD extra serves up the same animation historian from the recent Nausicaa release. We learn that the character designs are from a Nausicaa precursor, The Journey of Shuna, which makes sense, since they seem to have the same fashion sense as the people of the Valley of the Wind. That said, some of the secondary characters and magic effects look like leftovers from Howl's Moving Castle. I like wizards and dragons and Nausicaa and Howl's, so I didn't mind revisiting these recycled realms.

The elephant in the room is that Earthsea was directed by Goro Miyazaki. I know Earthsea has been panned by other critics, and I feel bad for Goro. Hayao had the experience of working in TV animation for years before his film debut, learning the ropes of direction and every part of production before making his first feature. Goro trained as a painter and designed the Ghibli Museum. Even if Goro had worked in television, a lot of anime in-between work gets shipped to Korea (or China) nowadays, so he couldn't have learned the same things as his father. How could anyone expect this guy to fill the shoes of a giant?

I think Earthsea is just fine for someone's first film. But I wish Goro had gotten the chance to design a movie from the ground up, instead of working with his father's leftovers.[TOP]