2007 November | My collection of short anime reviews

Nov
09
2007

Review: Seirei no Moribito (精霊の守り人)

A senior citizen having fun at an amusement park.

As promised in the last entry, Seirei no Moribito takes its turn to challenge Nodame Cantabile and snatch the Best Anime Of The Year 2007 from it. Certain people says that this is the best anime since sliced bread was created, so let’ see whether the claim is true or not.

Story:-
A wandering spear-wielding (female) warrior found herself in a sh*thole when she was asked by a desperate queen to become a bodyguard for his young son to protect him from his murderous father a.k.a. the king of the land. This is because the prince is ‘pregnant’ with a water spirit that will bring downfall to the ~~country~~ world. The warrior lady has to dodge royal assassins while helping the male prince to ‘give birth’ to the spirit, and that’s about it.

Contrary to the hugely simplified description above, the story is actually very well done. Set up in lush environments that remind me a lot of the Twelve Kingdoms anime I watched and reviewed last year, it started up very well until it hits some fillers right about midway of the anime’s run. Poor usage of flashbacks near the end also mars the story’s presentation. Instead of doing 2 episodes dedicated to flashbacks, the director could do by integrating them into the storyline, like the one done at the scene where the dying female warrior is hallucinating about her past while the prince is looking for help.

The ending is very well done with an ending that is different (and better) than the one I anticipated will happen. In fact, this anime has one of the better closures from all the anime I have seen recently.

FOUND! The Madeleine McCann kidnapper in action, with her latest conquest!

Character Design:-
The design is taken straight outside the book of the aforementioned Twelve Kingdoms. The characters here are more realistic, BLACK HAIR (very important) is common (as it should in a medieval setting in Japan) and no overly large eyes. In a way, it is similar to Nodame Cantabile.

Voice acting:-
Unfortunately for the anime, the quality of the voice acting is mixed at best. Some of the voices are great, especially for Balsa and Tohya while some of the other characters such as the medicine man and his master Torogai are average at best.

Music:-
The OST is superb, comparable to the one in Nodame Cantabile (a music-related anime) but why oh why the OP/ED themes are nowhere near the quality of the OST?

You won’t be disappointed with the action scenes in this anime. Here you got a Starship Troopers-esque imitator in action.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation in this anime is just as good as the one in Heroic Age, if not better. This is definitely a plus point of the anime. Choreography of the fighting scenes is of the high quality, up there with Claymore, and my only complaint is that there is not enough of it to go around. The directing can be frustrating though; sometimes it can be excellent with creative usage of camera angles and ability to ensure a smooth storyline while it can be bad in other parts of the story by inopportune usage of unsuitable plot devices.

Conclusion:-
9 out of 10. Probably the nearest challenger of Nodame Cantabile as of today, but it falls just a little bit short.

TONITE, DINNR IZ U!

Written by ranpha in: anime review - reposted | Tags: Seirei no Moribito (精霊の守り人)

Nov
06
2007

Review: Heroic Age (ヒロイック・エイジ)

Pastel colors in a scene for a mecha anime are rare. Enjoy while it lasts.

If sword-wielding half humans and blue-haired otaku failed to wrest the title of Best Anime of The Year 2007 from Nodame Cantabile, can a teenager who can transform into a robot do better? Read on to see whether Heroic Age has what it takes to do so.

Story:-
Age (name of the protagonist) was found by Princess ~~Lacus~~ Deianeira at the corner of the galaxy and she wasted no time ~~using him as the weapon of mass destruction~~ hailing him as the savior against the man-eating Silver Tribe who has conquered planet Earth. Eventually they succeeded to drive the Silver Tribe to another dimension and everything is all fine again.

The story is soppy and sloppy at times but has a decent ending (meaning: the storyline is basically average and not worth writing about). This means the character strength of the main characters takes center stage, the way Eat-man series does. The main character is pretty likeable, mildly retarded but most importantly NOT AN EMO and are able to make correct decisions decisively in key events (probably helped by the fact that he can somewhat sees the future). You can’t really say the same about the princess which resembles that certain annoying bitch in a certain famous mecha anime though.

The best part of this series is the continuous action scenes that is both intense and fast-paced. At best, there are only a couple of episodes where Nodos vs. Nodos battles or epic space battles (the way Legend of Galactic Heroes does it) is not at the forefront. This almost makes up the for forgettable story. The action scenes are also used to convey some parts of the story, but you will not care about that because you will be enamoured by the all those action scenes (if you like those things just like me). There is no romantic crap or fillers here, at least obviously, and that’s a huge win for the series.

Character Design:-
Originality is not a theme you can use here as XEBEC influence is clear throughout the anime. Well, it wasn’t really that bad, but nothing to write 1000 words about. Meanwhile the mecha/Nodos/spaceship designs are very well done.

Voice acting:-
Voice acting here is great, a positive aspect of the anime. While there are no stand outs, overall virtually all voice actors does their part well.

Music:-
Just like the mentioned Eat-man, this series has great OST but the themes are disappointing.

Animation/Direction:-
Another plus point of the anime, the animation here are top-notch. This anime obviously has a big budget because with all those very many action scenes, very minimal scenes are reused, probably less than 5 (and I essentially tried to look for them). It also did not suffer in high-paced scenes. The choreography of the action scenes are virtually perfect from start to end (and the reason why I follow the anime), a far cry compared to the the ones I see in the admittedly far older Yamamoto Yohko. The directing does not really have to deal with the story here as most of the air time are spent in battles, but in the few scenes where battles are not included, the directing does not seem to be comparable to the choreography.

Conclusion:-
8 out of 10. Average story and average music and the anime lost 2 points. Obviously, this series failed to capture the award from Nodame Cantabile. The next review will be Seirei no Moribito, which I heard good things about it.

To Your-Mom group – a QC is sorely needed for your future projects. This is a vast improvement from that travesty that is School Rumble ni Gakki though.