My collection of short anime reviews

The paranoid main protagonist.

In the midst of heavy work-load that is customary near the end of the year, I can still slip in a new short review of yet another sport anime, titled Ookiku Furikabutte. A 2007 anime, it will challenge Bokurano that was crowned as ‘Anime of the Year 2007’ holder just recently. Not helping its cause is the sport genre handicap that was applied by virtue of being a baseball-related anime title taken place in a typical high school setting. Thus, read on to see the failure of this anime in its quest to defeat Bokurano and becomes the new successor.

The busty head coach doesn’t waste any time to force the players to endure a customary training camp in their quest for Koushien.

Story:-
Our wimpy main protagonist Ren-Ren that cries a lot (even more so than the protagonist in Over Drive) but is actually very talented in baseball pitching (far more talents than Over Drive’s protagonist) reluctantly joined the newly formed understaffed baseball club at his new high school. Unlike his middle-schooler teammates, his new teammates quickly recognized his talents in baseball. Still, our main protagonist is haunted by his bad experiences during middle school days and that constantly makes him become emo and paranoid plenty of times, sometimes in the middle of an important match. Therefore his boyfriend need to ‘comfort’ (let your imagination runs wild here) the protagonist so that he can focus doing what he does best on the mound. If Saki features plenty of main female characters while relegating male characters as insignificant side characters, this anime is the other way around.

With some rare exceptions, stories in sport genre titles tends to be just average and filled with all the usual clichés associated with the genre, and this anime is not excluded. But just like almost all titles in this genre, the anime becomes far more interesting once the action started. This anime doesn’t waste its time to go straight into its (genre-requiring) training camp and the staple friendly match at the end of it. With the Koushien (hahahahahaha – very original indeed) being the club’s aim, the scenes where hard work, steely determination and unbreakable team spirits are abound in this anime, especially during the matches. The story has excellent flow and nice pacing, plus the director followed the example set by Over Drive and dedicates a full episode for the well-executed good ending, which has a lead-up to a second season.

There will be a second season right? This anime really deserved one! Still plenty of unfinished business in this anime!

Character development potential in this anime is huge, and the best positive that this anime has. Even after 26 episodes, I think the director only has tapped a tiny bit of potential that this anime has in this regard. There are plenty of notable characters in this anime that still need to be developed further. I do not think that will be doable even if this anime has 50 episodes, such is the detail put into that extremely long (and good) first round match of the summer prefectural tournament. I may have to visit lurk@irc.irchighway.net, the manga where this anime is based on is already in the 12th volume. It goes without saying that while the main protagonist is the character that has developed the most in this anime (definitely the best character in this anime), I can still feel that he can still evolve much further physically, mentally and of course with his talent too. The same can also be said for his teammates, especially the protagonist’s boyfriend (the protagonist’s cousin doesn’t stand any chance at all romantically).

And I will say it again. This anime really needs a second season. Really! And so are Bamboo Blade, Saki, Umisho etc.

An apt desription of the main protagonist by his boyfriend.

Character Design:-
The character designs in this anime is common for a generic shounen title, although the faces that main protagonist made is mildly interesting. Black hairs are rare, replaced by the more common brown hairs with different shades for each character. The design are decent but not spectacular.

Voice Acting:-
In general, voice acting in this anime is decent, although I can’t pinpoint any characters that is outstanding in this aspect. Uhmm… I have nothing else really to say here.

The prelude of the ‘bonding process’ between the main protagonist and his boyfriend, tha will lead to scenes that are NFSW that happened off-screen.

Music:-
The two OP themes and the 2^nd ED theme are quite good really. Meanwhile, the OST is basically unnoticeable and the 1^st ED theme is not really good unlike the others.

Despite their ‘intimate’ relationships, it takes the main protagonist quite some time to know the first name of his boyfriend.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation quality in this anime is very good, even in fast-paced scenes. Choreography in action scenes in this sport anime are realistic and not overexaggerated unlike a certain sport anime that should remain unnamed. The director has done a decent job with this anime especially with character developments and story handling. Definitely a positive point for this anime.

A dedicated flashback episode in a sport anime? Surely not!

Conclusion:-
8 out of 10. Still a decent sport anime despite the failure of challenging Bokurano for the ‘Anime of the Year 2007’ title. This anime is good enough for me to go read the manga version before I start watching either the long awaited Clannad After Story or the long-stored Paradise Kiss. See you later, probably next week if I can help it.

Some nice advice from the boyfriend that will really help keeping their ‘intimate’ moments smoother.

The lecherous main male protagonist, on top of one of his sexual conquests.

This review of Kaze no Stigma will be the last for quite some time, as the usual end-of-year activities eats up my free time. Kaze no Stigma is a shounen 2007 anime, which will then compete with the newly crowned ‘Anime of the Year 2007’ winner Bokurano. After this anime, I planned to watch either Ookiku Furikabutte, Paradise Kiss or Clannad After Story. The order is not determined yet, you simply has to wait until their time comes.

The main male protagonist, yet with another woman in his arms, making fun of the luckless and miserable main female protagonist (the one at the left).

Story:-
Our main male protagonist loses a duel against the main female protagonist for a family heirloom called the Enraiha, causing his father to disown him. He then went overseas, and somewhat managed to obtain an ultimate power during his journey. He then returns to Japan after 4 years in wilderness and easily exacts revenge upon his father that he hated. After that, the anime went downhill and you can safely drop this anime from your watch list.

Sheesh, this anime started so well (and raised my hopes of seeing a decent shounen title) but the story craps itself out after only four or five episodes . A minor savior of this anime is the mildly interesting main protagonist who are standing head and shoulders above the others. The main female protagonist is ordinary, the side characters are uninspiring and the antagonists are the usual genre-standard low dogmatic characters. But in the end, the main male protagonist was tarnished by one of the most obvious anime endings I have seen for quite some time, it was even worse than the one in Shangri-La when it comes to predictability. BTW, the ending is structured to have a second season that probably will not come.

The story arcs after the first one are bland and sometimes ridiculous, sandwiching the occasional filler episodes that served their purposes of not advancing the story or doing character developments. But regardless of what I think about the story itself, the fillers and the lame ending, I can’t deny that this anime does have good presentation; this anime has a decent plot flow and development path plus with excellent pacing that was only marred by the filler episodes. The same can be said about the lame ending too, which has plenty of airtime to develop that ridiculous plot-twist non-event. Thinking about that, the thorough preparation for the ending only makes the flaws of the ending stands out even more.

Character developments is yet another negative aspect of this anime. Despite being the most interesting character in this anime, the main protagonist has an almost static character development strategy. This means that the main protagonist in the first episode is almost the same as the one in the final episode. The storywriter depends too much on past events (shown to you courtesy of admittedly very-well presented flashbacks) to expose the essence of his character. As for the main female protagonist, the way (or the lack of any) she falls in love with the main male protagonist is just as bizarre like what happened with the social club president character in Princess Lover! Therefore I think there are no outstanding character(s) in this anime.

One of the cheesy lines he used to pick up one-night-stand victims.

Character Design:-
The character designs in this anime are just your usual standardized designs you can see in any given average shounen title (big eyes, impossible body shapes and stuff like that). Black hairs are rare, in some very unimportant characters. If they exist at all.

Voice Acting:-
Here, the voice acting  is only average, with the main male protagonist being the best in this anime. The other voice actors/actresses are just filling their roles with no visible efforts to make their characters comes to life.

Music:-
Only the second ED theme (the one with daylight animation montages) in this anime is decent. The OST, the other two ED themes and the OP theme did not meet my standard.

When in battle, the main male protagonist has no qualms whatsoever at breaking any Geneva Convention rules he can; in this case he is using a pixie (instead of human) shield to cover his ass.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation in this anime is good, even in fast-paced scenes. The choreography in action scenes is just average though. The directing in this anime is great despite the average story, mostly because of the presentation (I only realized that he is also the director of the best ever anime I have watched in the course of writing this review). Definitely a positive point of this anime.

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. Bokurano makes short work out of this distinctly average anime. Clannad After Story, Paradise Kiss or Ookiku Furikabutte; which one of them will come next? Find out about that in the not-so-near future.

This anime may be a couple of years older than Koukaku no Regios, but spoken English in this anime is still better by a distance.

The title protagonist.

From the creator of the excellent Kaiji series, come another proper thriller anime titled Akagi (he actually wrote this one first before Kaiji). Unlike Kaiji which is basically a darker and  deadly version of Wipeout Australia, Akagi is a mahjong anime (kind of like Saki). Therefore, this anime will be subjected to the sport genre handicap. This is a 2005 anime, thus none of the ‘Anime of the Year’ title holders will be challenged this time around.

Story:-
During the era of reconstruction right after Japan’s loss in World War 2, a desperate man is betting his life in a mahjong parlor in a rainy night with the local yakuza. On the verge of defeat, suddenly a drenched middle-schooler barged into the mahjong parlor. Sensing something special about the white-haired student (I told you white-haired people are evil!), the desperate man asked him to play mahjong in his stead, and everything started from there on.

The story in this anime is almost non-existent, but the mahjong games in this anime are intense, complex, very deep and mesmerizing. And that’s about it with this anime. The games are more realistic with the players getting more normal hands unlike in Saki where its players gets rare hands far more often. The protagonist especially is really skilled at getting hands that cannot be anticipated by his opponents or getting them to do what he wants, and he usually achieve that using mind games, deceptions (this guy cheats quite often), phenomenal calculating abilities, psychological warfare, abnormal strategies and sheer luck. Add them up to his charismatic, cool and calm persona, the protagonist is a very good template for a manga/anime character specialized in mind games. If only Lelouch Lamperouge has his ability, the Code Geass series would have easily gotten a perfect score. And he is just as good as Kaiji or Kaiser Reinhard or Yang Wenli, probably even better than them.

The flow of the plots during the games are excellent, which more than adequately covered for the lousy story transitions when not in-game. The presentation of the games is top-notch, with gazillion of monologues from the players, the spectators and very helpful commentary from the narrator that explains the strategies used in the games and their ramifications. Because of the narration, this anime is more accessible to mahjong n00bs than Saki (the fansub group also helps explaining the scoring system used in this anime, which differs than the ones used at my localities). Character developments is basically scarce, applies only to the main protagonist, and mostly done before the first time jump. Most of the main protagonist’s developments happened in the games played before the first time jump, with more off-screen developments during the two time jumps this anime before we get the (assumed) final fully developed character for the final game. BTW, the title main protagonist is definitely the best character here (as if you have any other options).

Unlike Saki, there are no metaphorical exaggerations in this anime, and of course far less flashbacks (they are nicely done). Some of them appears during the final game though, see the screenshot below. The ending is neat and tight, with some loose ends purposely left in ambiguity. Although I hoped that a second season will arrive, I do not think one will come.

This metaphor may be ugly, but it was relevant within the context of the scene where it was used.

Character Design:-
My comment from the same section in my Kaiji review applies, after all, the same person is responsible for this anime too. It is also interesting to note that there are virtually no female characters anywhere in this anime, even on the background. Definitely a positive point for this anime.

Most of the dialogues comes from spectators, gobsmacked by the crazy turns the main protagonist is taking.

Voice Acting:-
My comment from the same section in my Kaiji review still applies. The main protagonists in both anime are voiced by the same person, with the same level of performance. The only difference between these two anime in this aspect is that the main character in this anime speak (or being in monologues) far less than his counterparts in Kaiji. In fact, the narrator and some of the recurring characters that acts as the spectators may have far more lines (after all, they like to doubt the crazy strategies the main character deployed in the games he plays). Definitely a positive point for this anime.

Your typical antagonist that is common in any shounen titles.

Music:-
Unlike Kaiji, the OP theme and the hard-hitting two ED themes are excellent. The jazzy OST are sparse, but they are good too. Definitely a positive point of this anime.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation quality in this anime is quite good, even in the little fast-paced scenes this anime has (I will put the blame on camera panning problems upon the shoulder of the encoder). Choreography in this anime is decent in the few fighting scenes this anime has. The directing is good for the things explained in the story section.

And the antagonist will not be complete without evil laughs and creepy hairs.

Conclusion:-
Despite the sport genre handicap, this anime will get a 10 out of 10. Although if I were to compare this anime to Capeta (which incidentally is also a 2005 anime), this anime will come short. Capeta is, after all, is one of the best anime I have ever watched and has far better story than this anime. This anime is good enough to depose Uchuu no Stellvia from my Top 5 Anime of All Time list though, taking the spot number 4 currently occupied by Galaxy Angel series. Galaxy Angel is now number 5 in the same list.

The antagonist would have easily vanquished the protagonist if he have read that website! He should listen to his underlings’ advice more.