Future Card Buddyfight 100 Review

Posted on June 4, 2016 by dreager1

Buddyfight 100 started off really great and it was looking like it would easily be the hype replacement for the original show that I was hoping for. The first few episodes were loaded with high stakes and awesome fights. Unfortunately, the middle of the show is bogged down by an incredibly large amount of day to day monster filler. It doesn’t really get great again until we start nearing the end and by then there was no way that it could catch the original Buddyfight. It’s still a fun show and one that I’d recommend, but it’s a step down.

The immensely powerful Yamigedo has arrived on Earth. He has already devoured many planets and even the universe is not safe from this beast. Gao Mikado and his friends must stop him, but the only way is to find the 8 Omni Lords so that they can seal them. Yamigedo’s human partner is Ikazuchi and he has the 100 Demons on his side so the heroes will have to fend those fighters off as well. It’s going to be tough, but Gao has a lot of friends on his side and together, they can do just about anything!

Right from the get go, Buddyfight 100 tried to have more tension. Gao’s first big duel with Tenbu was great and Ikazuchi has a great design. Yamigedo’s an imposing villain and even the intro before the theme song was epic for once as it has Tasuku and Gao talk about how they’re probably doomed and that they might not be able to save everyone this time. Considering the fact that Yamigedo can literally eat planets as well, this should have been awesome. Let’s tackle the main issue with the series right off the bat.

After the initial attack and the villains retreat for a while, Ikazuchi decides to send one of the 100 demons each episode. We have around 20+ episodes of that being the plot. He sends a monster, Gao defeats it, rinse and repeat. It doesn’t help that Shido is typically the host for the monster so it’s like watching the same duel over and over and over again. Once in a while the formula is changed a little as a friend gets mind controller or something, but it doesn’t help. I don’t mind seeing the same duel a few times, but it gets really stale after a while. The episodes may hold up well against the average show, but certainly not one that I had such high hopes for like Buddyfight. The plot would move at a snail’s pace as a result. A similar formula was used for finding the 8 Omni Lords and it definitely took a while.

The Omni Lords plot was infinitely more interesting and satisfying, but it doesn’t change the fact that it was very formulaic. You knew everything that was going to happen in the episode before it ever did. There were twists and surprises regarding the identities of the Omni Lords though and most of the true forms were satisfying. The only disappointing part is that Kazane was not an Omni Lord, nor was her buddy even though there was a lot of foreshadowing for her to get a big role. In the end, the twist was that someone she barely knew was an Omni Lord. That twist fell flat if you ask me.

By the end of the series, Buddyfight regained its stride. It was definitely too late to boost it to the original Buddyfight’s level, but it was great to see the show end on a high note. We got back to the high stakes battles and there was even a celebrity guest star who dueled Gao and helped him get back to dueling with his heart. The final episodes involved a lot of big duels against Yamigedo including one where the beast had a super ability that was basically unbeatable. You have to defeat him 20 times for the monster to stay down and that’s never going to happen. Luckily, Gao had a deux ex machina card that is just as crazy strong. Lucky eh?

Gao remains as one of the cooler main characters out there. He’s not quite as awesome as he was in the first show though. He went around wrecking everyone there and managed to go and defeat everyone who stood in his way. Here, he finally goes through the “shaken confidence” phase that most heroes seem to go on at some point or another. It gets to the point where he can’t hold a card without getting severely burned, which puts him in a pretty rough spot. You can’t duel if you can’t hold onto a card right? Once he gets over that he goes back to being the hero that I remember though. The good news is that this likely won’t affect him in the third show since most of the time this just happens to someone once. He’s easily still the best character in the show even if that was a bit of a set back.

Drum makes for a decent partner. He isn’t quite as charasmatic or likable as most toyetic partners like Megaman or Pikachu, but he’s not bad. Drum’s matured a lot since the first show so he’s no longer running away from Gao or being rebellious the whole time. By now, his bond with Gao is quite strong. He’s done well in preparing to be the leader of the Dragon Clan someday. At least he gets a role unlike Gao’s two friends. They never quite became big and that’s the problem with not being able to duel. You end up getting written out of the plot right away.

Tasuku still gets a large focus in this season as with the last one. Jack gets damaged at one point so he goes on a quest to find someone who can fix him. It involves a lot of time travel and traitors, but Tasuku always gets down to the bottom of a mystery. He’s always pretty serious about how to handle a situation and it’s good to have a pro on the team. Due to Jack not being around as much as usual, he doesn’t get a whole lot of duels this time around. Still, you can always count on Tasuku in a pinch and he makes for a solid rival to Gao. I dare say that he has been surpassed by Noboru so he would be my third favorite character in the show now. Still pretty high though and he appears a lot more than Noboru so it’s always good to see him.

As with Drum, Jack has gone through a lot and he’s had many different forms. I wouldn’t say that his personality has changed all that much since he’s always been reasonable. His quest for vengeance on Variable Cord at the end never really went anywhere and came out of nowhere, but I suppose he really doesn’t like traitors. Who does right? I definitely prefer Jack to Drum and he is the best Buddy Monster in the show.

Noboru finally comes back to town and I’m instantly reminded how much I’ve missed the guy while he was away. Noboru made for another good rival to Gao and his overwhelming confidence is always good to see. He immediately challenged Ikazuchi and nearly defeated him which was definitely impressive. Having him as a big villain for a while was also cool. His evil personality was just as likable and I’m just disappointed that he never got to have a big fight with Gao in the end. I was waiting for that since it’s been ages since they’ve gotten to fight. Speaking of which, while there were a lot of throwaway duels as a result, one good thing about the episode count being so long is that every character got to have his/her share of fights. Pretty much everyone from season 1 got to Buddyfight and Noboru eventually turned almost everyone evil so they could fight the heroes again. It may not have been the most thrilling thing in the world since I can’t take most of the season 1 friends seriously, but it’s good for their fans. Having the 8 Inverse Omni Lords was definitely quite the stretch though.

Tetsuya’s about the same as last season. He’s a nice enough guy who always dances and sings while he duels. It’s an intriguing way to fight, but not any more so than wearing actual bananas on his head. He gets a medium sized role as he gets a few episodes to himself and gets one of the big final duels. His skills aren’t that bad and he gets a lot of character development, but he really should take the duels a little more seriously. It’s easy to see why Zanya gets so annoyed with him. Tetsuya could get away with his antics more if he was one of the greatest duelists out there, but that’s not really the case. It’s good that he’s forgiving though since Asmodai constantly tries to keep secrets from him. The two of them need to work as a team more since trust shouldn’t be an issue at this point. It’s a little sad for Asmodai since most of his plans don’t work out so well, but he does come through quite a few times for the heroes.

Zanya gets a new ninja in addition to his normal one for this season. The ninja’s gimmick is that he’s super chatty so now Zanya won’t have to always be so silent all the time. The talkative one is actually pretty decent though and he is certainly cooler than the silent ninja. Zanya helps the heroes out and gets quite a few episodes of his own during the adventures. His “must avoid girls at all costs” shtick can get a little tiresome, but this running gag isn’t used quite as much as it was in season 1 so that’s a good thing. He’s one of the more skilled supporting characters, but I don’t see him ever getting a huge role again. He has basically been replaced by the newer fighters to an extent although him and Tetsuya still had the biggest roles this time.

Rouga was a big rival in the first season and keeps that role here. He is still always eager to enter a fight and plays by his own rules. The show makes it a point to show off his advanced skills, but Rouga’s role was still very small in the end. He never got to fight Ikazuchi and only had a few battles in the entire series. I was expecting more of a reaction when Kyoya appeared as well since he wants to be friends again someday. Rouga’s my kind of character and I hope he gets more of a role in the next season. At worst, he can be a little generic, but for the most part he performs his role quite well. He just needs a cool new monster since he hasn’t gotten a power up since season 1.

Kiri gets a huge role here. In season 1, his personality did a 180 towards the end as he became a hardcore fighter instead of the little kid who looked up to Gao a lot. That happens here once again as he realizes his destiny of being one of the big Omni Lords. As a result, Kiri becomes a pacifist and prefers not to use his super powers. His new form has a cool design, but my favorite version of Kiri was probably his hardcore one from the end of the first series. This is still a big improvement over his initial form though. I’m assuming that he is one of the people to decide to stay on Earth, but if he did leave, then I guess he may return as a guest star someday.

Sofia has always had a lot of hype and is always making plans in the background. Her teleporation ability is incredibly useful and makes her a dangerous character to have as an enemy. That being said, she does get intimidated by Gratos and playing all of the sides was a very dangerous way to go about things. The show still hasn’t really discussed what her motivations are for working with the villains yet. After two seasons she is still as mysterious as ever. Sofia’s a solid character, but I want to see the heroes directly challenge her a little more. It’s the opposite with Shido as he gets completely wrecked numerous times throughout the series. He rarely ever wins although he does get one serious fight at the end where he proves that he is actually a very good duelist when he is trying. I thought that it was actually a very solid episodes and it occurred during the final 4 of the series so he got some major props there. Shido is a likable character. He’s typically used for comic relief and doesn’t mind being a villain if it’ll help him out in any way, but he’s ultimately not going to try and destroy the world or anything like that. Now that the villains are gone, he may be able to finally have some peace and quiet for a change.

Kazane was one of Gao’s rivals to an extent, but that’s not really her role this time. She has to prove to the Count that she can protect herself and helps the rest of the heroes in the final battles. Ultimately, her role was not as big as I had anticipated it to be. She still had a pivotal role in the end I suppose. Cracking under pressure when fighting the frog guy was not great though. Between her and Gao, we had a lot of cracking in this season. She still should have gotten some kind of twist after all of the foreshadowing. Jin and his fellow season 1 fighters deserve a quick shoutout here, but that’s about it. They all returned for some quick fights, but they don’t really do anything here. They’re really meant to be cool guest stars, but these guys were never all that great so it doesn’t work too well. Jin and the others aren’t bad characters, but to be a cool guest star you need to be someone a little better like Noboru. Now having him return works a lot better as a guest star.

Ban Enma is one of the new characters in Buddyfight and he’s definitely cool. He’s a good fighter like Gao and it’s always fun to have some hand to hand fighters around. His true form is just as cool and I’m glad that his personality didn’t change. In another series, he easily could have been the fan favorite character or the big rival. This series has enough rivals at this point so I’ll just call him a friend, but Ban is definitely a likable guy. I would definitely love to see him have a big role again next time. His followers are definitely some of the more loyal ones around and that’s because of Ban’s charismatic personality.

Mukuro is a character that I actually mixed up with Variable Cord the first time around. I just figured that they were the same character. Mukuro’s big plot twist in the end about how he’s actually a hero was definitely out of the blue and felt a little off, but he’s a cool character anyway. All of his appearances signified that something epic was about to happen. His deck was really cool as well and in the end he proved just how heroic he can be. His role wasn’t huge, but he made his presence known. I’d say that he’s even a little cooler than Ban.

Tenbu is one of the 8 Omni Lords and he is unfortunately a pretty bad character. Just think of Brock from Pokemon or a similar character like that. He flirts quite a lot and spends most of the time getting beaten up or knocked out. He even lost his memories of why he was trying to warn the heroes in the first place, which ends up making him a huge liability. If the heroes had known what was going to happen a little earlier, it’s safe to say that things may have turned out very differently. He never got better as the series went on.

Ikazuchi was a really cool villain in his debut. I didn’t care for the plot twist that he used to be a hero though and ultimately that’s the route he took. Ikazuchi made the right move of course, but it also resulted in random hijinx of him trying to live a normal life and then getting wrecked by Yamigedo for a while. He was cool as a villain, but we rarely got to see him actually do anything. His first duel with Gao was still the highlight of this character’s career. That being said, I like him more for the design than for his personality so it barely counts in the end I suppose. If handled right, he could make for another good rival in the next season though. He is apparently skilled enough to win 99 games against Gao after all, although I find that hard to believe.

Yamigedo was the big hyped monster and he got a big role. He even got to talk quite a bit in the end during his final form. There’s definitely no reason not to like this fighter. He’s huge and is one of the more impressive giant monsters that I’ve seen in a while. His ability to petrify anything that he touches is quite the lethal ability as well. His best deputy, Gratos was also pretty cool. Gratos was actually treated like The main villain for a while and he was certainly very imposing. He never backed down from a fight and he handled the situation very well the entire time. He even seemed to figure out that Sofia was hiding something, although he never really made any moves to stop her. He relied on scare tactics and they were effective to an extent. He even came with his own throne. It’s hard not to recognize this guy as the best villain. If we don’t count Kyoya since his role was small and he is supposed to be more of a hero nowadays, then Gratos definitely takes that honor.

Count Dawn is an all right character I suppose. His gimmick of constantly turning to dust can be a little repetitive though. He also goes a little power crazy in my opinion. He’s a relatively new character and yet he quickly assumes command and acts like a big shot. I don’t think that it has been earned. So, maybe I’ll downgrade him from all right so slightly sub-par. Captain Answer finally gets to fight here which was pretty neat. He had one fight in the first show as well I believe. My main problem with him is that his human alias is completely unlikable. I can’t believe that the guy was ever a big hero based on how he acts. It’s too extreme and he never got to do anything cool since he was mind controlled almost immediately. It’s a shame since I love Answer himself.

Variable Cord is an intriguing character. While he may not have had his memories for a while, I can’t say that it really excuses him from being a total villain for most of the series only to let us know that he was a hero all along. I didn’t buy it and I feel like he was just playing all of the sides until a victor was near. He has a really cool design and he’s definitely a very powerful foe, but I feel like you’ve got to count him as a villain. Regardless, his episodes were always fun and the subplot with him and Tasuku’s future adventures was always enjoyable as well.

Kyoya was the big boss of season 1 so it makes sense that he would show up here. I’m glad that he didn’t deny being the hero by the end even if it wasn’t true. Still, I feel like the writers dind’t think his plot through all that much. His big plan is hyped up for many, many episodes. Yet, when he finally goes through with the plan, it fails miserably. It wasn’t even close to succeeding and it has to be one of the worst attempts that I’ve ever seen. Even his cool monster which made a lot of big threats back in the day got one shotted by Yamigedo. I think Kyoya was squeezed into the plot for no real reason and ultimately his plot never actually went anywhere. He’s still a cool character though and easily one of the most charismatic figures in the series. I think it’s safe to say that he’s still the best villain since I find it hard to believe that he’s really turned over a new leaf.

Well, one thing’s for sure, the moment where Gao lost his first duel was a pivotal moment in the series. It was treated as a major event which is what should happen. Gao has never lost a duel before and he’s dueled all of the strongest fighters in the world. This showed just how much of a threat Ikazuchi and Yamigedo were to have such a feat. Instead of the episodic One Hundred Demons and Omni Lord finding episodes, I would have continued that with a big training montage. Maybe send Gao to the future where he is trained by himself or something like that. I think it would have made for a very epic adventure.

The animation is solid as expected. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it is a big step up from the original Buddyfight show, but it is a little better. You can see the difference if you watch an episode from both titles, but it’s a subtle one. It’s probably just because the series came out afterwards by a week so it had about a year’s worth of time to beat the respective episode from the first series. Regardless, it’s definitely solid. When it comes to the soundtrack, it is a huge improvement over the first series. Most of the themes are catchy, but there are 3 that stand out above the rest. One is a “hope is lost” theme that plays whenever something super tragic just happened or when the villain is winning. The cool thing is that the theme only consists of a single sound for the most part that keeps on repeating. It has some background elements after that, but it’s quite effective for being so simple. A second really good theme is another despair one that pops up quite a bit for the villains. A third one is your average battle theme. There were probably a few others in there as well.

It’s also worth noting that the openings for this show have been much better than the first one. The main one with the Giant Monster running around and Gao vs Tasuku the mini fight is the best one. It feels more like an anime opening than the first Buddyfight show, where it was a little too unfocused and just about showing off the visuals. This show remembered that foreshadowing and a good amount of action can go a long way in an opening.

Overall, Buddyfight 100 was a good sequel to Buddyfight. Considering how many great new characters were introduced, you’d think that this series would have beaten the original. Unfortunately, the bad pacing ended up hurting the series quite a bit. Still, with its length and solid replay value, Buddyfight 100 is still a series that I’d recommend to anyone. It’s one of the weaker card shows overall and I’d say that it may be the weakest unless we count Capsule Monsters, but that just shows how high the bar is set for these kind of titles. I’m confident that the next series for Buddyfight will reclaim its former glory even if it’s not off to the greatest of starts. It feels a little like a soft reboot and the characters are certainly a lot more expressive than they used to be. It’s very odd and I’m waiting for the twist that this is actually a parallel universe. Well until then, wait and see what other anime reviews I’ve got in store for you all soon.

Overall 7/10

Cardfight Vanguard G Review

Posted on June 3, 2016 by dreager1

It’s time to take a look at G, the next era of Cardfight. It already has three seasons so this era could end up being just as large as the original. That’d be great since Cardfight’s been a great franchise thus far and a worthy rival to Yugioh. G is the weakest installment so far, but that’s typically the price that you pay for pushing the old cast to the side and introducing new main characters. It’s still fun though and a good show in its own right.

A decently large amount of time has passed since the previous Cardfight Vanguard season. The world that Kai and friends protected has finally arrived into an era of peace. Aichi has taken the time to head to America after quickly bumping into Chrono. The other Vanguard warriors still reside in the city, but they mostly just stop by for the occasional guest star appearances. Kamui is the semi manager of the new cardshop though so he is a main character. He meets up with Chrono, the new hero of this story. Chrono isn’t a very approachable guy and typically looks like he has a bit of an attitude so he doesn’t have any friends. That’s when he is introduced into the game of Vanguard. Through it he finally starts to make friends and really gets to know two other characters, Shion and Tokoha. The three of them decide to form a team known as Try3 and go around entering tournaments. The more tournies that they win, the higher that their ranks will get.

This series is mostly a slice of life adventure. There is a bit of a plot towards the end and a lot of foreshadowing, but this season is mainly used for character development. At 48 episodes, that is definitely a lot of time for it. The cast is quite large though and this gives the show time to ensure that everyone gets a fight. It’s also used to have the main characters go through their slumps early on. Chrono doesn’t really know what he’s fighting for and works to get better at talking things out. Tokoha wants to get out from her brother’s shadow and Shion has trouble balancing his duties as the heir to the Kiba family while still playing Vanguard. The three of them all get through these troubles by the end of season 1 so the good news is that we won’t have to worry about this for season 2.

As for the bit of plot that I mentioned, one of Chrono’s friends used to love Vanguard. Then he made the mistake of joining a clan to work on getting better and has lost all of his nice emotions. Chrono figures that the training regime is not good for the kids so his team goes to their headquarters to see what’s up. They will have to defeat the head honcho there though and the guy is fascinated with the mystical Depend Cards. Those will become more relevant in the next season. Either way, Chrono can’t back down now! Of yeah, did I mention that Chrono has been mysteriously receiving cards for the one of a kind Gear Chronicle deck? It’s part of what gets him into the game in the first place and also helps to give him a bit of an edge since nobody’s even seen the deck before. Chrono’s Dad also mysteriously vanished a long time ago and is presumed dead, but is he really?

One unfortunate change for Cardfight G is that the card fights are no longer shown in their entirety. In fact, most of the time nearly the whole fight is off screen. The next season fixes that a little, but it’s still nowhere near the days of old. In the original Cardfight show, you would see each move and you would always see the characters activate their counter blasts and triggers. It was more fun that way, at least for big card fighting fans like me. Instead, the fights will either start in the middle here or just show us the virtual reality part so we see the avatars making moves, but they don’t explain what happened in real time. You can get what’s happening anyway for the most part if it’s just an attack, but not if an ability is used. It also makes the characters make some odd decisions like just attacking with the vanguard and not summoning any support units. It feels like an easy way out for the writers since they don’t have to think up a whole duel this way.

I like seeing the virtual part, but not at the expense of my thrilling card fights. As I mentioned though, you want to go into this show with less of an emphasis on the action and cardfights and more on just watching the characters have a good time. The main cast is likable so that helps quite a lot. Some shows can’t handle this approach very well, but even if it’s just an episode of the characters going shopping or fishing, it will still be fun. In that sense, the show was definitely not going to go under a 7, but it wouldn’t go higher than it either. This is probably the limit for a show like this, but so long as the show was fun in the end, I can say that the approach was successful. In theory, it should be all uphill for the show from here.

The animation is nice and sharp. I always thought that this company did a good job with the animation. I’d say that Legion Mate and Link Joker still defeat it, but this show can hold its own with the average modern show. It’s not going to be making a run at the top shows of course, but the animation isn’t lazy or sloppy. It works well here. It’s always good to see the monster fights and the character designs are always a bright contrast to the surrounding area so they stand out. Unfortunately, I can’t say that the soundtrack is quite as good. I actually liked the English theme song for this one by the end. That being said, I can’t say that it’s really fitting. It’s pretty emotional and downcast while the series is always very chipper so it’s an odd contrast. It’s the reverse of Madoka Magica in a sense. There aren’t any really good themes here. Not to say that music is all bad though. The themes are fairly fitting for the scenes and maybe it’s just because there haven’t really been any scenes that would need great themes. Cardfight Vanguard just had a very large array of awesome themes back in the day. G’s are more on the generic side. It’s not so much that they’re too upbeat, but where aren’t any real battle themes, which is my problem on that side. Still, it’s not a bad soundtrack by any means and while you’re watching the show you probably won’t think about it all that much.

Chrono is the main hero and he’s a solid lead. His character arc of looking mean, but actually being a nice guy on the inside is a good one. Not everyone can come across as super happy or approachable like Naruto or Aichi. Some people just naturally look mean and Chrono’s haircut in and of itself probably makes him look tough. Once he starts dueling, Chrono develops into a very good character. He definitely looks out for his friends and does his best to rescue the various duelists from the final boss of the series. With the various mysteries plaguing him from all sides, Chrono will have to keep his guard up at all times. In a show like this one, a character’s duel avatar is important and Chrono Jet Dragon is a solid go to card.

Shion has to balance a whole lot of duties so he probably has the toughest time behind the scenes when compared to the other two characters. Attending a lot of functions, being a kendo master, and an expert duelist is a lot to ask of a kid who still has to attend school as well. He does a good job of completing it all silently and without a complaint though. At first Shion is very with drawn, hiding in the shell of formality, but by the end he warms up to the others. Chrono’s still my favorite character of the main 3, but Shion makes for a good rival. He blurs the line a bit in the sense that he may count as more of a friend than a rival at this point, but he could work as both. Either way I want a Chrono vs Shion rematch at some point with high stakes. Maybe fighting at a tournament soon once they are both at peak strength. Shion uses the Royal Paladins so I certainly want him to fight Aichi at some point.

Tokoha is the third member of the group and easily the most outgoing person on the team. She really keeps the team together and helps to jump start their bonds by having the team help in clean up activities and volunteer all over the place. Her subplot of getting out from her brother’s shadow definitely would have been annoying if it had lasted too long so I’m glad that it’s over now. She came to terms with it well and now she has less drama to deal with than the others. Shion’s troubles carry on into the next season along with Chrono’s to an extent. All of them will still deal with future troubles, but for the most part their core personalities have been solidified. Tokoha uses the Neo Nectar Deck so she has a lot of grass based fighters. The deck doesn’t look as imposing the other two’s, but her skills are certainly at their level. At the moment, I would consider Chrono to be the strongest followed by Shion and then Tokoha. At least by the end of this show, but we’ll see if that changes at some point.

Kamui is a main supporting character which was good to see. He was always one of the weaker members of Q4, but he is still a world class duelist just the same. At this point, I feel like he should definitely be considerably stronger than the main 3. If the world is ever in danger again, Kamui would likely be the first line of defense. He still uses a very offensive deck to suit his fire style and he’s a solid character. Since Emi is rarely around, he is usually fairly serious the whole time. His character has a lot of depth and that’s the result of being a main character for all 5 seasons.

Kanzaki is the final boss of the show. He doesn’t have much in the way of charisma or development though. He gets a cool flashback where we find out that his horse can run on skyscrapers though. He wants to be ultra strong and to be the best. Those are decent motivations though, but he is certainly a villain with how he handles his base. The kids there also just have low will power, but that’s a whole other issue. Kanzaki is certainly powerful though and winning 3 duels at the same time was certainly very impressive. I wouldn’t mind seeing him again at some point.

Shouma is certainly a more interesting villain though. He likes to take shots at those who were born with enormous riches and political power. He loves to see his opponents humiliated before defeat and has a lot of mind games against Shion. His abilities are certainly quite real and he even has a short physical fight against Ibuki. I’d actually say that Shouma is easily the best villain in the series and it’s safe to say that he should have a big role in the next season right?…..

Rin is Tokoha’s rival. She makes sure to remind Tokoha about how her big brother Mamoru is a much better duelist than her all the time. The tactic works a little too well, but once Tokoha got over that she was able to surpass this villain. Without her mind games, I’m wondering if Rin has enough character to make another appearance necessary. She’s rather similar to Ren’s teammate after all. She wasn’t a bad villain, but not as interesting as Shouma.

Sugiru easily had the smallest role out of the three villains. He made the mistake of underestimating Chrono and that’s never a good move to make. He was basically written out after his defeat so there’s not a whole lot to say about him. I suppose that we needed an expendable and he fit the bill. He’s rather similar to Shion’s fencing rival. The guy is around and he’s relevant I suppose, but he really just stuck to having a bit role.

Kouji is a mysterious figure. You can’t really call him a villain although he is hyped like one at first. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t take him seriously as a result. His duel against Chrono was probably the first epic episode in the series, but after that he had too many happy scenes just drinking and eating with Mamoru. That was around where I started to figure out that he couldn’t be a villain. I think the show handled his approach incorrectly and he still hasn’t had much of a real duel at this point. I do think that his character design is good though and having a mysterious rival for Chrono could be good. I think they should just save him for moments like that though or just make him a total good guy. The second season basically does this and that’s an improvement over straddling the line between protagonist and antagonist. He was never meant to be a villain so it was misdirection, but it wasn’t needed.

Mamoru is Tokoha’s big brother and the head of the Dragon Empire branch. He’s a relatively powerful fighter and he gets a good amount of hype. I want to see him have a serious duel before I buy into it, but he’s a good character. He just hasn’t had anything really big to do at the moment. Jaime is another character who gets hype, but I don’t like this guy at all. His constant flirting got annoying the instant that he first appeared and his catchphrase of (My Heart!) is always annoying as well. The show couldn’t have made this guy more irritating if they tried. It gets worse when you consider the fact that he is actually portrayed as a tough character so he’s going to be around for quite a while. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. He’s easily The worst character in the show.

Trinity Dragon has a catchy jingle whenever they appear so I’ll give them that. They’re basically the equivalent of Dex from Megaman. They’re comic relief characters who can’t duel for beans, but they always have a lot of confidence anyway. They don’t back up from any group and are always determined to one up Chrono. I like the leader of the group, but I don’t care for the other two. They’re doomed to their roles for the duration of G so if you don’t like them in their first appearance, odds are you won’t like any of their moments after that. There are a lot of them so hopefully you become a fan. Shin was a big supporting character in the original Cardfight show, but he never got to do anything. It was said or implied that Shin was a world class duelist at some point, but it was never really delved into. Even during the Link Joker debacle where Shin stepped in a little, he never got to do much. G is setting him up to be a bigger player this time around. He has a serious duel with Chrono and you can bet that he’ll still be around for the next season. Shin does get serious from time to time and this upcoming fight involving Chrono’s past will be more personal than usual. I’m ready for a serious Shin, but hopefully the contrast between him being serious and comic relief isn’t too drastic.

There are some other minor characters who appear in the show like Takeru. He faces off against Chrono in a tournament and they become friends while travelling across town. He’s a fairly strong duelist and I would definitely expect him to appear again someday. That being said, Naoki returning makes this guy a little irrelevant since they are so similar. Tokoha also has a friend who wants to learn how to duel and loves eating pastries. I don’t see her ever being a big character, but it’s always nice to have a supportive friend. The final big character is probably Taiyou. He’s the kid who is brainwashed by the evil branch and wants power at any cost. He is shown to have a lot of latent potential as he quickly surpasses almost everyone and nearly defeats Chrono. Now he’ll learn how to win the right way. Taiyou was fairly annoying the whole time though and added a lot of drama by letting himself be warped so easily. I didn’t care for him, but with that whole situation behind him, he should start being a good character now. At the very least, his plot did add some real stakes and tension though so it was good that he was in the show. The fights with the villain group were some of the best in the series.

This show is at its best when the tournaments are going on or when Team Try3 is having its grudge matches against Kanzaki’s group. Those episodes felt like they could have been right out of the original series. That’s the personal level of stakes and trash talking that I missed in this season. Tournament battles are always cool after all and remember earlier that I mentioned how the series did have 1 or 2 good tunes. If I recall correctly, both of those played during the fights with Kanzaki’s team. Still, G’s character introduction approach works well. The characters have all been securely introduced and most of them got a lot of development. Just look at Jaime, he had 3 episodes to himself although he’s still a terrible character. This show won’t be beating any of the Cardfight or Yugioh titles anytime soon, but it does defeat BuddyFight 100. That’s a start and with how much the next season has improved, it could make it back to 9 territory someday.

Overall, Cardfight G is another solid show to add to your collection. It’s the definition of a fun Saturday Morning Cartoon. It all goes back to my definition of what a good TV show, Comic, Manga, Video Game, or any sort of media should be. It should be fun. You should walk out of the experience knowing that you had a good time. A grin should be on your face and you should be glad to talk about it for a while. If those things didn’t happen, then something went wrong. The term “slice of life” may have a bit of a negative connotation to it when placed in the context of a show like Cardfight, but it really shouldn’t. The Earth isn’t always in danger and you know that the show will get back into the action genre soon. Having some time for the heroes to actually enjoy the world that they have protected these all years is good. G is a show that is very easy to talk about and there is a lot to discuss. Each episode was a blast and I can’t recall any bad ones. A lot of plots have been set up for the next season so there is a lot to wonder about. Most of the episodes also have an after credits scene so I recommend being on the lookout for them. One of them even solves the mystery of who has been leaving Chrono his new cards. Whether you like Card fight shows or not, I recommend checking this one out. Just about any kind of anime fan can get into this one with ease. I’ll have a review for the next season shortly.

Overall 7/10

Sorcerous Stabber Orphen Review

Posted on April 30, 2016 by dreager1

After watching all of the Slayer seasons, it was time for a slightly more serious take on the fantasy genre. By “slightly” more serious, I mean that this one is very somber and dramatic for the entirety of its run. (Ignoring the sequel series/season) You can tell that this is the tone that it is going for as soon as the first opening plays. It’s catchy, but the images are also quite sad. It depicts a barren wasteland and a solitary hero who must wander through life on his own even when his friends are near. His mission is a fire one and the stakes are high. It’s a fun series even if one of the characters goes through a personality shift a little too quickly at the end. (Azalie)

A long time ago, Orphen was taught magic at the Tower of Fang. Things went well for a while and Orphen became one of the strongest magicians in the world, but his mentor (Azalie) became greedy with power and used a mystical sword to stab herself which transformed her into the dragon, Bloody August. The Tower of Fang decided that she must be eliminated which caused Orphen to leave on a mission to save her and to defeat the Tower of Fang if necessary. On his travels, he ended up meeting up with a kid named Majic and a rich lady named Cleao. Majic gets involved in the quest because Orphen decides to take him in as an apprentice (For a good amount of money of course) As for Cleao, her family owns the legendary sword that transformed Azalie in the first place so Orphen decides to take it back. Cleao follows him so that she can take the sword back once he’s done with it.

The sword isn’t powerful enough to change Azalie back to her human form though so Orphen needs to find a few relics to amp up its power and allow him to cast the spell. Is it that easy though? A lot of complications occur and naturally the Tower of Fang aims to stand in his way. Along the way, Orphen softens up a little with the group, but for the majority of the series, he’s serious business through and through. He can’t relax until the mission is complete.

Orphen’s plot is pretty engaging and this first series builds up a lot of the universe as we learn about the current status quo. The Tower of Fang seems to be the only ruling body in the world or at least the main one by which all others look to for advice. I wonder how they got such a high rank since the group doesn’t seem all that tough. If I could change one thing about the show’s plot, it would be that I’d like a better resolution at the end, fight-wise. There wasn’t really a big fight to end the series surprisingly and Orphen never got to have a big fight with Childman. Even fighting Azalie in her final form would have been a blast to see as the student surpassed the mentor. Unfortunately, all of these fights never got to happen which was a little disappointing. The series had a good amount of action in its run, but I feel like all anime should end off with a big fight. End on a high note right?

Orphen’s the lead of course and he makes for a good one. He’s completely focused on the mission so he rarely humors his comrades on their comic relief subplots. He’s an excellent mage so he rarely ever loses a fight. He reminds me a little of Train Heartnet although he is typically in denial a little more. Azalie isn’t quite as selfless and nice as Saya was in Black Cat. It’s still a noble goal to save her of course, but he certainly bites off a lot more than he can chew here. Regardless, Orphen’s tough personality and ace combat skills make him a great lead.

Cleao’s the main heroine and she always means well. Unfortunately, she’s not much of a fighter. She gets into arguments with Orphen quite a lot, which ultimately help him not get too focused on the mission to the point where he’ll lose everything else. When a fight starts, Cleao’s glad to try and help even if it’s only a little. It’d be great if she could learn a spell or two, but Cleao is certainly charasmatic so she’s got that going in her favor. The group needed an energetic character in the mix for the good banter and contrast that it brings. She owns Leki, a magical dog of immense power who comes in handy quite a bit. This also ended up helping Cleao a lot since Leki is immensely powerful and can blow away most opponents with ease. When Leki grows up, he could even end up being stronger than Orphen if the bigger versions of him are any indication.

Then…we have Majic. Unfortunately, he’s a bad character. He’s one of the main comic relief characters of the series and a running gag is that his magical abilities are terrible and seem to never actually improve no matter how far the series ends up progressing. One scene towards the very beginning of the series doomed him though even if it was meant as a quick comic relief scene. Majic uses his spells to make a mirror next to where Cleao was bathing so he could watch. It’s a pretty despicable act and while Orphen put an end to it, it shows that Majic definitely has no standards. It’s a quick scene and Majic never does anything like it again, but there’s no way that he could be a likable character after that. When you’re in a small group on the road, you have to be able to trust your partners. After an act like that, there’s no way you can really trust Majic so it’s good to see him fail at performing spells for the rest of the series.

Volkan and Dortin are the other comic relief characters. Volkan always acts as the voice of reason against Dortin while Dortin forces him to come along anyway. Dortin is like Hercule or other comic relief characters who always talk a great game before getting wrecked. It works really well for Dortin though and he is easily one of the best comic relief characters of this type out there. He gets most of the best lines in the entire show and the banter between him and Orphen helps to make the series so enjoyable. Typically, any scene with the two of them is going to be pretty good and a lot of Dortin’s schemes are fun even if they’re doomed to fail. I don’t really care for Volkan, but then again, I typically don’t care for the “straight man” in jokes or the serious comic relief character. It just doesn’t work for me at all and destroys the point of a comic relief character.

The whole show is really about saving Azalie so she has a big role in this. For the first half of the series she’s essentially mindless. Not completely as seen when the dragon turns into Childman and he still has control, but it is hard to see what her plan is. Later on, we find out a lot of startling plot twists about her. The sword transformation may have not been how she planned it to go, but she was aiming for power for all the wrong reasons. She always wanted Childman, but as he was a reasonable mentor, he placed the friend zone card. That’s what Azalie wanted vengeance and she ultimately ends up taking over Childman’s body.

From there, she freezes one of the Fang members, tries to destroy Childman, and also breaks the mind of one of the Elders. She is a complete villain through and through, there’s no way to get around that. Despite all of this, everyone treats her as a likable hero by the end who just went a little off course. You can make a plot like that work such as Cardfight Vanguard where Kai went around doing quite a few evil things before being taken down, but it has to be gradual. In Orphen, this turnaround is just about instant as soon as she is essentially defeated and Childman is turned back into a baby. Also, we learn that she essentially becomes the boss of the Tower of Fang in the sequel series. She never gets to pay for her crimes of murder and assault in the slightest.

Don’t get me wrong, Azalie makes for a great villain, but it’s incredibly hard to buy the fact that she is now a “hero.” It’s not that easy and quick to switch sides and especially not when we see her being evil for quite so long. All it took was for Childman to remove the friendzone card from the table, but it’s way too late for that. So, while Azalie is cool, I think that the end plot development simply did not make any sense by the end. It could have been handled better.

Childman is Azalie’s mentor and seems to be generally considered as the strongest magician in the world. His abilities are quite high and it is revealed at the end that he could even have defeated the Bloody August if he had wished to do so. I don’t like this guy though because he is supremely annoying. All along he wanted to save Azalie as well, but he just decided not to tell anyone and as a result, he made no real progress in his quest. Either way, he would need some artifacts if he wanted to do anything, but he never got any of them and then Azalie took his body with ease while Childman was in awe of her. He really could have handled the situation 100x better than he actually did. I respect his power, but that’s about all.

Hartia is Orphen’s childhood friend, although you could barely tell from this season. Hartia acts like a friend and tries to act as a mediator between Childman and Orphen, but it’s tough since Orphen wants nothing to do with him. It also doesn’t help that while Azalie was in Childman’s body, she kept incriminating herself and Hartia intentionally to further widen the wedge between the friends. By the end, Orphen and Hartia had some all out battles with each other. Hartia could certainly have done a better job of explaining things at different points, but in the end the fact of the matter is that he chose the tower over Orphen and that’s probably at the heart of Orphen’s grudge. I like Hartia’s superhero identity even if it certainly doesn’t help to smooth things over with Orphen. He’s actually a lot stronger than he lets on.

Flameheart is one of the main villains and he is the first opponent to flat out defeat Orphen before the fight was interrupted. He may not be the coolest villain around, but he is quite powerful. He meets with a bit of an anticlimactic end though as he made the same mistake as Azalie as he tried to grab the sword. I suppose that the sword is just hard to resist. I’m not really a fan of this guy though and he does do a lot of whining when things don’t go his way. Good villains have to keep their calm and activate a backup plan when things don’t go well.

The show has some mild fanservice towards the beginning and the end. For the end it’s mainly through the astral projection of Azalie appearing for no real reason. It’s her astral form, but it is still overused quite a bit and Cleao also gets some towards the beginning, but by and large Orphen manages to dodge this trap for the most part. There are definitely a few filler esque episodes, but they’re typically not bad. At the very least, filler helps you appreciate the real episodes a whole lot more.

Power Level wise, I’d place Orphen the character above several magicians like Dr. Strange and Lina Inverse (Definitely a close fight though and composite Lina could be another story with her Sword of Light) but physically he is around human level which can hurt him against fast opponents. As a series, Orphen is fairly realistic despite the magic so it wouldn’t rank too high next to other anime titles, but I’m sure that we’ll be getting some power ups as the franchise goes on.

The soundtrack for the show is pretty good. We have a solid opera theme that plays for the big moments like when the Bloody August attacked the Tower of Fang. It was a great scene I have to add as it came out of nowhere and was pretty unexpected. Who would have thought that the big villain organization would be taken down so suddenly and in the span of around 2 minutes? These guys talked such a big game, but they crumbled in the end. There are quite a few other good battle themes in the series as well. Both of the openings are also quite good with the second one having better action scenes, but the first one probably encapsulating the themes of the show a little better. In the end, I will actually choose that one as my favorite for this series.

As for the animation, it looks pretty solid. Especially when the high budget scenes show up, there is a noticeable difference. The colors are nice and vibrant and this is especially useful for the action scenes. Even when the budget is normal though, the show looks very clear. Naturally, the sequel series looks a lot richer with detail, but this one is definitely solid. There are even some illustration type shots towards the beginning of the series which are always fun. As long as they aren’t spammed of course, but that’s not the case here.

Overall, Sorcerous Stabber Orphen is a solid show. It’s definitely one of the more somber anime that I’ve seen in a while at times, but there is no shortage of comic relief characters, which keeps the atmosphere fairly light at well. The animation and soundtrack hold up very well and fight scenes are solid as well. It’s an all around solid show and one I’d recommend to all fantasy or action fans. If you like good banter a lot, but are not necessarily an action fan, I think you can still enjoy this show quite a bit as well. I’m just about done with the sequel series so you can expect a review for that as well fairly soon. It opts to drop the serious angle so it’s more of a lighthearted adventure which works well enough in its own right, but it is definitely different.

Overall 7/10

Slayers Evolution R Review

Posted on August 18, 2015 by dreager1

It’s been a little while, but it’s time to review the final season of Slayers! I actually saw this one some time ago, but it ended up getting buried in the backlog of reviews. I’m trying to set everything free from that backlog so at last, Slayers is here! I’d say that the franchise ended on a high note. Evolution R was more fun than Revolution although I’d probably still say that Next is still the best season. The short episode count does this season no favors as well.

Lina and her friends are still seeking the Hellmaster’s jar to free the people of Pokota’s kingdom. It’s a tough journey though and the heroes don’t even know where to look. Luckily, they run across a lady named Nama who believes that she knows where it is. The heroes find out the hard way that the journey won’t be so easy. Zuuma is still on the loose and wishes to destroy Lina, but even worse is the fact that the heroes will need to revive Rezo in order to save Pokota’s people. Is this a good tradeoff as Rezo was a fairly intimidating villain?

Considering that the season is only 13 episodes, the show definitely felt no pressure to speed things up. The first 4 episodes are basically stand alone fillers as the heroes experience a lot of tough situations with Nama. A fish claims that Gourry is her husband and there’s an episode where Nama and Amelia get to bond as they fight dragons. Luckily, these stand alones were actually pretty good for the most part and I would say that they were a significant improvement over the fillers in Revolution. Of course, Slayers is one of those series that always get to its height when the plot starts and this season was no exception.

The three episodes that followed wrapped up the Zuuma arc. He ordered the heroes to protect Radock as he would come for the guy and destroy the heroes on the way. They comply, which leads to an ultimate confrontation with him as well as two monsters who randomly jumped in. Honestly, that was easily the most random part of the whole arc. I suppose that Zuuma has connections, which is how he was able to summon them.

Those three episodes were a lot of fun. I actually enjoyed the Radock plot as his son gave the heroes a hard time and Radock was always very stern and strict. There is a twist about him that I can’t say I was too pleased with, but in theory it’s a good twist. One thing that I liked about this mini arc was that Zelgadis and Amelia actually got to fight for the first time in a long while since the monsters targeted them. They were lucky that Lina was around the first time and lucky that Xellos showed up the second time. The fights just showed everyone how Zel and Amelia are completely outmatched by the modern villains. They got some good hits in and are still good fighters, but the problem is that monsters are typically better than humans. Add in the fact that these monsters were pretty tough and that’s the game for the heroes.

Still, even though they lost, they did put up a good fight and I can’t put enough emphasis on how glad I was that they got to fight. I feel like the side characters should at least fight once in a while to remind us of why they’re even here. With the Zuuma plot out of the way, the heroes could finally focus on bringing back Rezo, that is…if they want to bring him back! With 5 episodes to go, that’s a decent amount of time.

We get some happy episodes for a little while and then the heroes finally revive Rezo, who had pretended to lose his mind. It was interesting as it feels like he was pretending, but maybe he was actually in an artificial “drunk” state due to being in the jar for so long. That’s one way of looking at it anyway. Zelgadis also almost betrayed the group as he tried to destroy the jar, but couldn’t bring himself to do it and Pokota tried the opposite thing. Once the heroes settled down and thought about this, they still brought Rezo back.

Well, he kept his end of the bargain at least. The parties started up and I wondered if the second last episode would actually end on such a mild note, but then the twist ending occurred as Lina appeared and confronted Rezo on the roof. The reason why he had been making some odd decisions was that he was still merged with Shabranigdo. This has given him a significant boost to his power. Xellos arrives to stop this as that level of power could even threaten the monsters, but he is completely and utterly crushed. Rezo then admits that he can’t handle the power and tells the heroes to deal with him before blowing up. The big battle is here, can Lina handle Shabranigdo once more?

The cool part about the final battle is that the show pulled out all of the stops. Sylphiel returned for a quick cameo as she made a barrier to stop one of Shabranigdo’s hits. Like always, she started out strong, but ended weak as she started overreacting and basically being a non factor. Even the famous Inspector appeared to talk tough for a little while. Shabranigdo looked supremely impressive and I’m always reminded of why he’s such a great character. He talks about dreams a lot here as he stomps those of the heroes. There are really no bosses who can stand up to him as he makes strong fighters like Xellos and Lina look like children. Seriously, Xellos can’t deal any damage to the guy and Lina’s attack only works if he gives her about 10 minutes of time to charge up. In a one on one fight, that’s not happening.

All of Lina’s allies joined up in the attack for one of the most brutal moments of the series. They’re all taken down and one of the heroes had her fist literally crushed by Shabranigdo’s immense power. You always feel bad for Lina’s allies as they get beaten up pretty badly in every climax. This one was no different and it’s how the show tells you that the stakes just got real. Typically, it’s all fun and games even while in the middle of an intense fight scene, but the comedy angle is always dropped for the big battle.

As for the characters, there’s not much more to say about them than what has been said for previous seasons. Lina is still a good lead and easily one of the best female anime leads of all time. At this point, I’m going to say that she is the best lead and none even come close, at least I can’t think of any at the moment. It was great to see her finally use the Giga Slave once more as that attack is really great. She even gets a new design out of it although it doesn’t act as a power up in this case. (Which is surprising)

Gourry’s still a good sidekick even if he can be a little naive. Actually believing that he was the father of a fish was a little dramatic for him, but I am glad that Gourry gave the task his all. If you’re going to do something…do it right! It’s unfortunate that he didn’t have the Sword of Light for most of the series though since it meant that he couldn’t really participate in most of the action scenes. I suppose that he will get another chance in the future, but at least he did get to fight in the final battle and he was also around for Zuuma.

Amelia was a solid character as always. Her role was fairly minimal, but she keeps the group chipper with her optimism. I also do think that she’s still a little stronger than Zelgadis although it’s probably close. Zel continues to be used mainly for comic relief in the series. He finally cracks in this one and tells Rezo to make him human again, but the guy gives him the classic….”I can’t!” Since Zelgadis seems to believe him, that may have finally ended that plot. The fact that Zelgadis still thinks of Rezo as his teacher is a bit annoying though and I’m seriously not a Zelgadis fan.

Pokota is still a pretty bad character and I’d go as far as to say that he’s a terrible one. The show would be better if he was simply not here at all. As it stands, he’ll disappear for a while at times and his lack of lines in other episodes will make you forget about him. He just wasn’t needed in this season and I wish that the show could have made him more likable. At least the Inspector briefly appeared to help us forget about Pokota.

Nama was a fun new supporting character. The show makes it obvious what her secret identity it, but it was still a fun injoke for the fans. We finally got a crossover between the show and the movies. There’s even a battle between Lina and Nama to parody the films and it’s a great homage. Nama always was a fun character to have around and I wonder how her dynamic with the other members would have been had she not lost her memory. It’s something that the series should explore as it would be quite enjoyable to see. Nama didn’t get to help too much before she was taken away, but her abilities are still on par with Lina’s from the olden days so she could have been a very valuable asset to the team.

Zuuma is still a cool villain although he went a little lower in the ranks for me after the twist. I don’t think Zuuma even needed a twist, but he’s still a cool assasin. He was doing quite well against the heroes, but then Xellos appeared and that was basically game over for him. As good as Zuuma is, he doesn’t have nearly enough firepower or speed to deal with a monster on that calibur. Xellos also has high speed regeneration in case he ever was hit in that battle. Zuuma will likely never appear again, but he definitely had a good run.

As for Xellos, he was good in this season. It’s still a little iffy how the heroes get along with him, since Xellos is constantly betraying them, but that’s their choice I suppose. I was glad to see Xellos get some action scenes here since that meant he wouldn’t be all hype and no action. His fight against Zuuma was short, but showed how powerful he was and I liked his battle against Rezo. We rarely see fights between beings on their level of power in Slayers so it’s always a treat. I feel like Xellos is awkwardly in the middle of the power levels. Either he completely wrecks his opponent like with Zuuma and Lina or he gets completely destroyed like with Gaav or Shabranigdo. There is never a middle ground with him although the closest would be Valgaav. It’s always fun to see him lose, but he was actually a good character in this season so that’s good.

As for Rezo, this show should definitely prove without a shadow of a doubt that he is still evil. He did some good works along the way, but we find out how he experimented on people and basically did not care about their lives. He was doing it all just to get his sight back. He sacrificed a whole lot of people just so that he could gain his eyesight back for a minute or two before deciding to die once again as Shabranigdo awakened. All of that…just for a few minutes of eyesight. He certainly only cares about himself, but Rezo certainly makes for a powerful villain. I don’t care for him as a character, but he’ll always have that nostalgia feel to him. I already talked about how awesome Shabranigdo is so I don’t really need to go into that again.

Evolution R was really just one big nostalgia trip. We got to see old faces like Sylphiel, Rezo, and Shabranigdo again. That was really neat and it makes you want to watch the first season again to relive the good ole days. Even having the Giga Slave back was a nice homage to the good ole days. If this is how the animated Slayers franchise ends for now, I’d say that ending with nostalgia is always a good way to go about things.

As always, one of the reasons why Slayers is so fun is its balance between action and comedy. There can be a lot of serious moments and then a lot of light ones. Sometimes the show will do both at the same time. It keeps the show from taking things too seriously while still treating us to a lot of good fights and interesting plots. This formula is what has really made Slayers what it is. Luckily, the chest jokes were also pretty minimal here and the show was extremely light on fanservice if there was any at all. I can’t remember a single hot springs moment, although I suppose there may have been one in there somewhere. Either way, it was very light overall like I said.

As expected, the animation is really good for this season. The energy effects are spectacular and that really helps for the fight scenes. After seeing this, the older Slayers seasons will probably seem extremely dated by comparison, but I like that 90’s style so it’ll still be cool. That being said, the modern style is so sleek and streamlined that it is very nice to look at and makes all of the characters look even more impressive since their attacks have basically leveled up.

The soundtrack is also good. At this point, I’m very used to the themes and feel that they work well. I liked the ominous track for the rooftop confrontation and the battle themes work well too. It’s not exactly a 5 star soundtrack, but I’d probably give it a 7. It’s good and sometimes, that’s good enough when all of the other areas of the show are on point.

Overall, Slayers Evolution R was a success and it was quite an enjoyable show. In some ways, it may have even been better than Next. It was shorter, but I can’t say that it really had any miss episodes. Pretty much all of them were great, or at least good. The filler could get to you sometimes when it was too many of them in a row, but once the action started up, the show never really looked back. If a good climax can save a movie, the solid second half for Slayers is what always tips the scales. I definitely recommend this if you’re looking for a good fantasy anime and even if you haven’t seen the older seasons before, the nostalgia factor should help you get into this show. I’m going to miss Slayers. Hopefully it gets a new film or show someday!

Overall 7/10

Slayers Revolution Review

Posted on June 13, 2015 by dreager1

I’m closing in on the end of the Slayers franchise. It’s been a fun ride and this is certainly one of the definitive fantasy franchises out there. Revolution is certainly a lot newer than the other TV shows and you can tell as the animation is much brighter and more colorful compared to the old ones. Gone is the classic 90’s style and you can say hello to the 2000’s. The budget is consistently good for the animation and it is a lot of fun to see the classic cast return.

Slayers Revolution is only 13 episodes so that means that the plot can move at a much quicker pace than it usually would. A mysterious rabbit with hands for ears appears one day and starts destroying magical tanks. The cops believe that Lina Inverse is behind this so they hire special investigator Wizer Frayon so arrest her. To prove her innocence ~~and get vengeance on the rabbit~~ Lina and friends decide to find him. That being said, forces beyond what they may comprehend are also at play in the shadows. A kingdom which fell to a plague is involved and an evil kingdom is seeking the use the Zanaffar armor to make themselves a legitimate threat to the rest of the world. Finally, what does Zellos have to do with all of this?

While the series is only 13 episodes, it still makes time for some filler episodes. One of them involved a boulder contest as the heroes had to make the best golem possible to defeat the others and roll a ball up a legendary mountain. Pokota (The rabbit) decided to get involved as well for a fairly enjoyable one shot episode. Slayers has always been a series that had a lot of filler around to keep things from getting too serious with the main storyline. As far as the fillers go, they weren’t bad here and I at least did enjoy that one. The series is at its best when the show gets back to the plot though.

The beginning of the show is a little slow, but it starts to get more exciting as it shows up. Especially once the assassin, Zuuma, shows up. He’s fairly powerful for an opponent and then the heroes set sail for the evil kingdom to settle things once and for all. The final 5-6 episodes are essentially one long climax that takes a few pauses before continuing each time. The climax can certainly hold its own against any of the older titles. (It can’t win though, but it can hold its own) You’ll want to be ready for the giant monster at the end!

The series does a good job of mixing comedy with action as per usual. I’d say that Slayers has been modernized in a good way in that it is still similar to how it used to be in a nostalgic way. You could even make the case that Revolution feels more like a Shonen than the previous titles at times since the action was really nonstop for almost half of the series at the end. While Next still had some of the best fight scenes in the franchise, the sheer power of the animation keeps it close here.

As I mentioned earlier, the animation never lets up and it’s worlds beyond what we saw in the previous shows. One look at the theme song will show you that this series means business and that’s especially good news for all of the energy attacks, which have never looked so vibrant. As this is J.C. Staff, I’m not surprised since they are certainly one of the best animation companies on the block. I look forward to seeing how great the next show looks.

As for the humor, Slayers is typically funny and this series does a good job with that for the most part. The only downer in that area is the fact that the chest jokes are still present and more prevalent than ever as the villains always use this to taunt Lina before she blows them up. Still, while it is annoying, it’s probably the tamest form of fanservice that you can even have in a show and isn’t really enough to hurt the score. It also vanishes once we are around halfway through the series, which was certainly nice to see.

As always, Lina Inverse makes for a pretty great main character. She’s easily the strongest member from the main heroes and her Lord of Nightmare’s techniques really make her a threat for any opponent. She never uses the Giga Slave as the risks are probably too great, but she has many other spells at her disposal to tip the scales. While I would have liked for her to have beaten up Zellos to show how skilled she is, Lina always has a plan up her sleeve. It’s hard to find a more likable main character than Lina and I’m confident that she will always be a likable protagonist at this point. When I think of epic anime heroines, Lina is certainly near the top.

Gourry is true to form as you would expect. He’s still a fun character to root for and you’ll feel bad for him since he no longer has the Sword of Light. For most of the series, that does prevent him from being useful and he tends to be in the way during a fight scene. He tries hard, but it’s tough to manage when you have a sword that breaks over and over again. He gets a great fight scene at the end of the show to make up for this tough and he certainly outranks most of the supporting cast members.

Zelgadis used to be the intense rival character of the show, but he’s typically played for laughs in the current seasons. He has a lot of serious moments as well, but he’s so weak that you really can’t take him seriously. While teaming up with Amelia, he was barely able to beat a puppet. His skills have definitely stopped improving and they may have regressed over the years. At this point, he’s easily the weakest member of the main group, but I suppose that he means well.

Amelia is certainly a more likable character than Zelgadis and her search for peace and justice is one of the reasons why the character is so endearing. It’s also good to see a fighter using magic as a close combat type of attack instead of just shooting energy blasts all the time. She’s still not quite as strong as Lina, which we saw in the filler episode where the two fought, but Amelia has become a dependable fighter in her own right. Unlike Lina and her other pals, Amelia never allows herself to be corrupted and tries to help everyone that she can.

Zellos makes an appearance in this season and his role was actually a little larger than I would have guessed. He mostly sticks to the shadows, but actually gets to fight at one point when he challenges Lina and her friends. That was great since we haven’t seen him fight in a very long time. He easily overpowered them and showed why the main characters would always be outranked. Even if their spells can destroy him, they can never hit because of the large gap in speed. Zellos was a fun villain to have in this series and he’s certainly gone up since Next. The new voice an intriguing switch and I’ll have to get used to just about all of the new voices, but it’s not like I’ll have to get used to them for very long at this rate. I expect to see him in the next season as well.

Sylphiel appears briefly for the final fight, which will be cool for long time fans. As in the first show, she starts off with a very impressive scene as she blocks a blast from the legendary Zanaffar. After that, she quickly forgets how to be a fighter though and goes back to fainting and being in distress. It’s odd as the exact same thing happened in the first season. Maybe that’s just her gimmick. She obviously has a lot of combat potential, but it’ll likely never be explored. She’s a good character, but a longer action scene would have helped a lot.

Pokota is one of the new main characters for this season and it’s safe to say that he’s not holding back in terms of personality. It doesn’t really work for me even though the show was trying to go for the tough guy routine. I can’t take him seriously in his present form and his quest to destroy the magic tanks felt pretty futile since they can be manufactured so easily. He has a tragic past and a few twists as well, but he didn’t really add anything to the show. He’s great at running and somehow knows how to use the Dragon Slave, but he was never very helpful when actual villains arrived. It’s a classic example of a character who’s great against heroes, but bad against villains. Sort of like the police in your average super hero film. They can sometimes have the edge against Batman, but fail to stop random muggers. Pokota certainly didn’t do wonders for the cast, but he should be a little better in the next season since he’ll have mellowed out a little.

Duclis is one of the big villains and his plot ties into Pokota’s. Duclis wants to make the world pay for abandoning his people in their time of need and gets a giant monster ready to destroy everyone. Towards the end, he loses confidence in his goal and basically just decides to leave everything up to fate. He had a solid design and his light saber was cool, but he’s certainly not one of the more interesting villains around. I also wouldn’t say that he was a great threat power wise although he was a decent fighter. The show hyped up a fight between him and Lina, but it got interrupted before it could start, which was regrettable.

Gioconda was probably the worst villain here though as she was fairly generic. She just wanted to become richer and richer with every passing year. A noble goal, but when you’re already a multi billionaire…what use is more money? She already had her own kingdom, army, and castles. I just wonder why she would need more money or power, but goals don’t always have to make sense I suppose. She’s a decent fighter when she has a weapon, but I’m confident that Gourry would have had the edge if he had the Sword of Light. As it stands, he was holding back anyway. Gioconda’s android was much more memorable and she also seemed to be a better fighter as she could heal.

Zuuma is an assassin who really wants to destroy Lina Inverse. He is a human who knows quite a few good spells and his shadow magic can nullify all other spells. That’s definitely a very handy technique to have against someone like Lina since he would have the edge over her in a sword fight. He did a good job of handling the whole team and I have a feeling that he’s going to do quite well in the next season as well. He was certainly the best villain here and a great addition to the overall cast.

Zanaffar is the big monster who appears at the end of the show and works quite well as the final boss. He can actually talk, which was certainly a good thing and his abilities were impressive. He is impervious to most spells and he has a giant laser blast which can deal massive amounts of damage. I don’t think that he could be Shabranigdo, but he could give the other giant monsters a decent fight. His lack of speed is probably the main thing that holds him back, but that’s where his immunity to magic comes in. He’s a solid all around boss when you really think about it.

As I mentioned earlier, the best part of the series is the last 5-6 episodes, but the best episode of the batch would probably be the 3 on 3 fight in the Gladiator Ring. That was a lot of fun and we got to see how some of the fighters handle themselves individually. Because Lina is always surrounded by her friends, we rarely get to see her fight on her own. It’s why I was sad that she didn’t end up fighting Duclis. If that’s one thing that Slayers Revolution needed more of, it was one on one fights. Next actually had several of them and I suppose that it is one of the perks of being about double the size of this show. The pros easily outweigh the cons for long running series and I’d gladly take another 10 fillers if it meant that we would get 3 more episodes with some great fight scenes. A longer Gourry vs Zuuma fight would have been great as well since you could tell that it would be a really fun rivalry.

As for the soundtrack, Slayers Revolution certainly doesn’t disappoint there. The theme song is easily the best one in the franchise and the theme is quite catchy. It plays during the climax of the arc and certainly fits in quite well. The ending theme is also solid and the music that appears during the show is good as well. While not amazing, there were two themes during the episodes that I certainly liked. One was the danger approaching theme (Not the title, but that’s the best way to describe it) which occurred whenever things were looking bad for the heroes and the normal battle theme was also decently good. The theme song is what really helps the series as the soundtrack can be a little bland otherwise, but certainly still good and it fits for the series. It fits so well that a lot of the tunes have been present for the whole franchise.

Slayers also ends this season with a lot of cliffhangers to ideally be wrapped up in the next installment. The Android who helped Lina and friends seems to be part of a bigger scheme and the Rezo jars are still around the world. If they are all destroyed, Rezo will die as well. We also can’t forget the fact that the heroes need to find Rezo and fast if they are to awaken Pokota’s people. These plots and more, you can bet that the next show is going to have a lot of action and even Zuuma shall return if you saw the after credits scene. He has the jar and he has the power. The heroes barely stopped him last time and unless Gourry is able to keep on using the Sword of Light, the heroes could be outclassed.

Overall, Slayers Revolution was quite good and the 13 episode set up worked well for the series. One thing that hurt Slayers Try a little was the large amounts of filler that the series had, which kept you from getting too invested in the story. Part of the appeal of Slayers is the random adventures that they have, but I prefer to have all of the filler before the main plot or after it so that it isn’t interrupted too much. That rarely happens though and it still works out all right, but the short length of the series forced it to go at a rapid pace. Whether you have seen the other Slayer titles or not, this is a fun fantasy/action anime to check out. I would highly recommend still watching the other Slayers shows if you liked this one though as you will see their origin stories and learn a lot more about the universe as a whole. There are a lot of wink-wink moments to season 1 for the fans and it’s always fun to know the references. I’ll be checking out the next show soon and we’ll see if it can manage to top this one.

Overall 7/10

Blue Exorcist Review

Posted on December 4, 2014 by dreager1

Blue Exorcist is a pretty short show and I can’t say that it ever became supremely popular, but it’s definitely a title that I was aware of for some time. The publicity that it did get was pretty good and the posters always looked fun. What can beat a fire swordsman as you main character? The premise itself definitely had a lot of potential and I love this kind of action show. Blue Exorcist isn’t an all star title and it can’t really claim to be the best at anything, but it’s a pretty fun ride from start to finish.

The plot involved a kid by the name of Rin Okumura. He is the son of Satan, but his life’s mission is to destroy all of the demons since Satan murdered his foster Dad and a lot of the monks. To do this, Rin must become a high ranked Exorcist so it’s time to get down on his studies. Meanwhile, he meets up with a bunch of other people who want to become Exorcists in one form or another. Their teacher is very shady though as he is a high ranking demon himself and nobody really seems to mind. It’s not as if the humans can really do anything about it, but it is rather odd. Will Rin be able to accomplish his goal or is he doomed? Well, if you’re familiar with Shonen titles like Naruto, (I wanna be Hokage) One Piece, (I want to be the Pirate King) or the other Journey manga, you’ll realize that the odds of this happening in 26 episodes are slim. Still, we gotta hope that Rin can make it to the end or at least get Satan to repent of his evil ways.

It’s easy to compare Rin to Kirito in many ways. They both use a blue color scheme during their battles (Animation wise anyway) and they’re both sword fighters. They actually managed to snag Kirito’s voice actor for Rin (Or vice versa) which was pretty cool. (He’s still the best voice actor in the business and it was a great time for viewers since Blue Exorcist, Sword Art Online, and Attack on Titan were airing at the same time) Kirito is typically a lot more humble and quiet while Rin certainly does not fall into those traits, but they still feel pretty similar personality wise. In a fight, I think Kirito would probably have the significant edge, but it’s possible that Rin ends up surpassing him in the manga. I would almost say that it’s likely, but the pacing for power ups can be slow.

Back on topic, Rin is a very good main character. He’s certainly a lot better than you may expect from the posters. He’s not afraid to get into a fight to stick up for his brother, Yukio, and he doesn’t back down from a fight. He just says what’s on his mind instead of thinking about it and his intentions are always good. He’s probably the most reasonable character in the whole series even if he’s quick to leap into any situation. Rin’s basically the kind of guy that you would want to be friends with. He’ll always stick up for you and help with any tricky situation. He’s just a good guy through and through.

Yukio is one of the main characters in the show and he had the potential to be a very good character. Unfortunately, his character development goes in a circle instead of occurring on a straight path. A running theme is that he is jealous of Rin’s personality and abilities. Other times, Yukio just admires those traits. While Rin can use his demonic abilities to fight, Yukio is stuck using bullets so it can be tough for him. You can certainly sympathize with Yukio’s plight at times, but he makes it difficult at other points. I think he crossed the line when he attacked Rin in one of the last episodes and then tried to destroy his demon cat. Yukio basically betrayed everyone at the end and I definitely didn’t agree with his reasoning. Part of the problem is also that Yukio is very gullible. It should be noted that many of Yukio’s worst moments occur in filler. So, he can be a good character at times, but he is usually too antagonistic to be likable.

Ryuji is the rival, but he is just too weak to be taken seriously. It doesn’t help that Rin is already hardcore enough to be the main character and the rival. Ryuji turns against Rin so many times that it’s scary. He sticks up for him at some points, but he is pretty unfair to Rin at several points. I was glad to see Rin show him up when Ryuji made his debut. Ryuji has his verses that he recites against the demons, but it is usually ineffective. I have to say that he isn’t a good character, but he beats some of the other supporting characters, which is pretty scary.

Shiemi is the main heroine. Unfortunately, she can’t really fight. She has a grass familiar with her who makes grass and vines appear to block other opponents. It is pretty useful, but this means that Shiemi is completely defenseless without it. She always wants to help out, but she ultimately ends up getting in the way a lot. She has company since the other characters besides Rin are pretty weak as well. Ultimately, she just isn’t as interesting as she could be. Her character was just not very developed and she was a little too desperate to make friends right til the very end.

Izumo is probably the toughest character from Rin’s main friends. She isn’t much of a fighter on her own, but she can summon a pair of cats/dogs who help her out in the tough times that she gets involved in. Naturally, they are helpless against all of the decent villIns, but at least she won’t have to ne afraid of the minions. She got a decent amount of character development and she managed not to betray Rin unlike some pf his other friends. I liked her more than the other supporting characters, which may not be saying much, but it’s a start.

Konekomaru is easily the worst friend of Rin’s. He was the first in line to betray Rin and he tries to turn everyone against him. Rin is the son of Satan after all and Satan destroyed a lot of people close to Konekomaru. It is pretty tragic and he should keep his beef against Satan, but Rin had been helping out for the whole series. I just can’t consider this guy to be a true friend and it was pretty tough to bounce back from that. Evidently, too tough for Konekomaru.

Shura joins the squad during the latter part of the anime. Technically, this may be slightly before the halfway mark, but she certainly feels like she was introduced late since everyone else was already established. Her introduction involves an intriguing plot twist and she looks good since she goes up against a powerful foe in the form of Amaimon. This is a Gamechanger. I already mentioned that none of the supporting characters could really do anything against the stronger demons. Well, that was until Shura came along. She is debatably stronger than Rin or at least a match for him. I would likely choose Rin in a no holds barred fight, but it would be a close fight. Shura works for the government, but she is still a pretty good character. She is openly rebellious to the corrupt figures although it can be frustrating to see her just accept their decisions. She talks tough, but she will rarely oppose the government openly. She is also used for fanservice at times, which isn’t cool. She is still a step up from the others though.

There is also a quiet kid with sock puppets and you have to wonder what was going on with him. He never really talks and he makes sure to disappear when the fighting starts. Maybe he is just a random classmate? That could be the case, but the anime gives him a lot of foreshadowing. He gets some ominous lines at the end and you get the feeling that he knows more than he is letting on. It is just one of the plot lines that goes nowhere. I don’t mind all that much since I dislike the character so far, but I’m sure that his true personality would have been a little more interesting.

Shiro is the man who raised Rin and Yukio. He was a very powerful Exorcist and he seemed like he had a bright future. It was literally bright since he was engulfed in blue flames, but that is not what he had in mind. He was a pretty good character. Shiro certainly wasn’t great, but he was fairly likable. He protected the heroes for quite a long time and he made the heroic choices when necessary. If only more of the old Shonen mentors could be like him instead if Jiraiya.

The Paladin is one of the characters who never got to really get any closure on his development. We don’t really know much about him other than the fact that he’s a very strong warrior. He took Rin down without a whole lot of effort and he basically just does whatever the government wants. He has a cool design and I actually like his character for the most part. He didn’t look good in the filler though so overall he would only be about average. He’s still someone to keep an eye out for since he is one of the few humans to be very powerful.

Mephisto Pheles is a character who is hard to understand. If this is intentional, then the anime did a good job. On the considerable chance that it was accidental, then it is not very impressive. Mephisto switches from hero to villain several times as the show goes on. We learn that he helped to save Rin a while back yet he repeatedly tries to destroy him. (I suppose that we can say that he knew Rin wouldn’t die, but this would be dicey to say the least) Does Mephisto want to destroy the human world or Hell? He doesn’t even attempt to stop one of the villains from his plan to destroy Hell so I guess he doesn’t feel any loyalty to his fellow demons. On the other hand, he keeps causing trouble for the human world so maybe he wants to rule it. His goals are not very clear cut so it is entirely possible that he just likes to cause chaos so that he can see what happens next. All villains should have some kind of understood goal by the end in my opinion. (There are probably some exceptions) He also has a good time operating as a hero though so maybe Mephisto flips a coin to decide how he will act on that day. It is heavily implied that he is much stronger than any of the heroes so he could probably end any resistance made by the Exorcists in an instant.

Amaimon doesn’t appear a whole lot, but he makes each appearance count. He gets a cliffhanger for his first appearance and his big three episodes each revolve around big fights with Rin. He is one of the strongest Demons since he is one of the 4(?) Kings. He is a hand to hand fighter, which works out great for us since those fights always tend to be fun. He seems like he just wants to enjoy the human world’s unique features (Like the food) as he finds some solid fights. There aren’t many fighters who really get him intrigued, but he likes to mess with Rin so that keeps him entertained for a while. While Amaimon adds a lot to the show thanks to his fight scenes, I don’t really care for his personality. He doesn’t have a lot of development as a villain and the voice probably prevents me from taking him seriously.

Igor is one of the characters who shows up and he also shifts from being a villain to a hero to a villain as the series goes on. He works for Mephisto Pheles so that makes sense. I definitely consider him to be a villain since he did attempt to murder Rin, but I would also call Mephisto Pheles a villain as well. I don’t trust guys who keep changing sides all of the time. Igor has a rather emotional subplot towards the end of the series, but he mostly tries to stay pretty detached. He has a grudge against demons due to a certain incident, which definitely changed how he acted. He’s a very interesting character and it’s always enjoyable to see him on screen.

The animation is pretty sharp. It doesn’t use any fancy animation techniques and there aren’t many scenes that will get a lot of buzz for this area, but you can instantly tell that this is a relatively new anime. I was sold on the animation right from the first episode and it really does the blue flames justice. This is the kind of show that could have been hurt by bad or average animation so it’s good that it was able to pull through. The fight scenes can look really great when they occur. They are fairly rare, but we get two big fights with Amaimon and a short sparring match with Shura. Rin and Yukio have a bit of a tussle, but I can’t really call it a fight. Anytime Rin enters his demon mode, you can be sure that something cool will happen. One fight that didn’t involve Rin, but was still cool was when Yukio fought Igor early on in the series. That was definitely pretty fun and the normal danger scenes can still be very entertaining. You’ll never find yourself bored in any of the canon episodes so I can safely say that the director did a great job with the pacing.

The openings are pretty good although the first one is significantly better than the second. I like the main theme a lot and there’s another one that’s pretty good for the battles. My favorite theme may actually be the one that seems to be inspired from the 90’s Xmen show. It’s hard to describe it, but it occasionally plays for a fight scene or for an emotional moment. One time where I remember it popping up is when Rin first meets the giant cat. On the whole, the soundtrack is pretty average, but having 2-3 really good songs is enough to give the whole soundtrack a much needed boost. It certainly won’t wreck any scenes like One Piece. (The big offender that always comes to mind when I think of battle music that takes away from a fight) If you think about it, having 2 terrific themes can make any soundtrack good since they will be popping up quite a lot as the show goes on.

The show didn’t have a whole lot of room for filler so I guess the writers felt that they needed to really remind us how dangerous it can be. The episode sees our heroes head to the beach to fight a Kraken type of opponent and it is a pretty terrible episode. It features a filler character who can’t fight, but he wants to avenge his Dad. His Dad was seemingly destroyed by the beast. Along the way we have a lot of not funny situations that will just make you dislike the kid even more. The ending is clever in a way, but the episode was already sunk by that point. The episode itself would definitely be counted as a negative for me. One bad episode (Within reason) may not affect a show like Naruto (Which can afford about 20-40 bad episodes) but for a 26 episode like Blue Exorcist, you’re probably not going to forget it anytime soon.

The show started to fall off the rails in the final episodes (Enough so that it’s noticeable, but the episodes weren’t downright cringeworthy so that it would really hurt the score) so I shall quickly talk about why it didn’t work. The set up is that a guy who claims to be Rin and Yukio’s uncle appears and he tells Yukio about how he can turn Rin into a normal human. (This is already impossible since he was born from a demon…but let’s keep going!) The casualties will only number a few trillion as he wants to destroy every demon in existence. (Will Rin really be spared?…..) Yukio quickly agrees, even if it means destroying Rin’s friend and hurting the familiars who have been helping the heroes the entire series. Yukio even turns against Rin during one critical juncture. Alas, Rin also gets kidnapped in a pretty sad moment where he couldn’t land a single hit on the Paladin. Then, the Paladin admits that he’s just a pawn of the government and he watches as they start to drain the power away from Rin. Rin has a healing factor, but it’s being exploited to gather the power needed to open the portal enough for the bomb to go through. I’ll stop there so you can watch to see how it goes, but the whole thing is pretty sad.

One character gets a power up out of this, but it’s hardly a good one. This also means that we don’t have a real final fight since the filler writers couldn’t think of a good one. One of the subplots in this arc was also not very good. The writers try to make Satan a sympathetic hero who is simply misunderstood. Remember all of the people that he murdered? He didn’t mean too…he was just trying to find the right vessel to allow him to stay in the human world. ~~He did taunt them as he burned them to death, but maybe we misheard him.~~ He gets like an episode or two just to show how much of a hero he is. He only wants peace and he believes in love at first sight. The problem is that most Earthly bodies begin to catch fire once he goes into them. Luckily, this is where Rin comes along! Any development that Satan has is quickly thrown out the window as he reverts to his villainous ways in the final seconds. Let’s face it, making Satan a likable hero is just not possible. Nobody can take that seriously and the only believable way to make a demon like that good is to help one from birth. (Like in Beelzebub) The writers were really grasping at straws here. As bad as that was, the whole Yukio subplot is what really drove this arc into the ground.

One reason why there is not a lot of hope for the heroes in the series is because the humans are simply outmatched by the demons. Rin, (Who is a demon anyway) Shura, Yukio, and the Paladin are the only capable fighters for the good side. Mephisto Pheles can potentially defeat all of them and he also has Amaimon and many other powerful demons to help him. Not to mention that most of the strong fighters in the demon world haven’t even bothered to appear yet. The heroes have a barrier to stop high level demons from appearing in the human world, but Mephisto likes to invite them for the lolz. (Villain move or simply a test for the heroes?) Normal demons can take down most of the humans and a simple cat was able to take on the Police squads. It seems like the demons are toying with the humans or they just don’t care about invading the human world. The filler episodes strongly point to the latter being the case. Most of the demons just want to either live in peace or just stay on their planet. The vocal minority are the ones who try to destroy the humans. Once again, it just makes the humans look bad since they tend to start a lot of the conflicts. It reminds me of how D.A.T.S. ran things for a little while.

Overall, Blue Exorcist is just a really fun show. Some episodes can be a little lighter on the action than we are used to, but the characters quickly become interesting enough to hold their own episodes without that element. The show does have some moments of fanservice here and there and the final episodes really cripple Yukio’s character development. Quite a few plot lines go unanswered as the show ends and you’re left waiting for a sequel. We also do get cheated out of the final boss fight, which wasn’t cool. I basically just threw in all of the negatives at the beginning of the paragraph so it may sound pretty negative, but they are still overpowered by the positives. The solid action and the great characters coupled with its fast moving plot still make Blue Exorcist a winner. It’s a very interesting series where you just enjoy seeing their day to day missions. ~~After all, they’ll never actually destroy Satan right?~~ I definitely recommend this title if you just want to watch something action packed and easy to get into. At 26 episodes, you’ll be finished with this title in a breeze and then you can compare it to Sword Art Online like me! Also, you should prepare yourself because the series ends with a cliffhanger that will likely never be resolved.

Overall 7/10

Slayers Next Review

Posted on November 14, 2014 by dreager1

I have now finished the second installment in the Slayers franchise. The previous title managed to be a pretty good anime as it was a pretty unique title with a main character who wasn’t afraid to deal with collateral damage. The concept may not seem unique to older anime viewers, but there aren’t many fantasy titles that take place in the olden days like this one anymore so it was pretty fresh for me. Slayers Next definitely takes most of the aspects from the first show and brings them to new heights. This works as a double edged blade, but it is definitely another anime worth watching.

The series takes place shortly after the climax of the series finale as Lina and Gourry have split up from the rest of the party. They seem to just be wandering around without much of a goal, but they meet up with Amelia and Zelgadis. Zelgadis still wants to be turned back into a human so he is working for some corrupt dealers. Lina quickly sets him straight and the 4 heroes decide to search for some manuscripts to the Claire Bible. The Claire Bible is supposed to have unlimited knowledge so that should help Zelgadis in his quest. This artifact becomes more and more crucial to their quest as some strong monsters start showing up to destroy Lina. Lina Inverse begins to suspect why they are after her and let’s just say that there are some planetary ramifications involved. The heroes are going to have to grow even stronger if they want to counter this new threat.

Now, you can argue that the Claire Bible arc is the entire show or you can divide it up by having the search for it be the first half while the battle against the monsters is the second half. It’s debatable I suppose, but it’s really just all one arc in my mind. A mysterious figure by the name of Xellos helps to distinguish these parts as he leads them on a lot of wild (filler) goose chases to various parts of the planet in the first half of the series. Also, we can’t forget that this is still Slayers. There are quite a few filler episodes where the cast gets to help liberate kingdoms and solve mysteries as they take a break from the serious dealings with the monsters. Sometimes, a filler episode will even squeeze in a moment or two to add some details to the real plot as they go on their journey.

The series is still pretty light as with the first title with only a quick scene or two where the violence gets ramped up. It never goes overboard as the show keeps it real and that makes the scenes even more surprising. As with the first show, this only occurs at the very end when the climax starts. The body count begins to rise and you can tell that the main villains mean business. Slayers does a good job of knowing when to get serious and when to keep the mood happy and light.

I also have to give the writers credit for their depiction of Lina Inverse. It would have been easy to pull a 1st Hokage or Goku/Gohan where they are always very nice, but instantly become feared amongst their allies when they get serious. I never liked that aspect of a character since it’s okay to intimidate a villain, but your allies shouldn’t fear you. Doesn’t that basically just make you the next villain? Lina’s pals never fear her except for comic relief scenes where they back away. That’s more acceptable since it’s just for laughs anyway and you can tell that they aren’t serious.

Lina starts to question her use of the dark magic from the Lord of Nightmares after she sees a vision, which unfortunately hampers her ability to fight towards the end. At least she still pulls through when the chips are down, but I disagreed with her hesitation from the start. The world may blow up, but it wouldn’t matter anyway since the villain would bring a lot of ruin to the planet as well. Lina is primarily a thief, but she always gets tangled up in these wars since she is a mage of world wide renown and she does have a sense of justice deep down. (Although she doesn’t admit it, which is a plus) The heroes are lucky that she is around since Lina is vastly superior to all of her allies in terms of raw power. We rarely see a main character shooting off blasts that can level cities so casually. (We also see proof of this as seen when she does blow up towns and mountains as opposed to Goku who can’t afford to blow up a planet so the doubters still have a little bit of wiggle room there)

Sadly, the anime does use Lina as an excuse for some fanservice now and again. (For once, I wouldn’t actually blame Lina’s character for it since it’s usually people insulting her, which is hardly her fault) It’s not drastic since Lina’s character is meant to purposely not be able to give us a lot of fanservice so it’s mostly just a lot of chest comments from villains that Lina quickly decimates. Martina is usually the one who initiates this and she also gives us some more fanservice. I’d say that Next definitely has more of this overall than the first season, but it’s still reasonably light compared to most shows. As mentioned, the fanservice is mostly audio based as opposed to the standard visual. (There’s only one or two hot spring scenes that would beg to differ) I’d say that this is preferable, but they are naturally both uncalled for and I’m just glad that they aren’t heavily featured here. It should be noted that there are some brief romance elements to be found here. From the parody Sylphiel to the filler princes, Slayers Next does include a bit of it. The final episode also has a quick moment, but luckily the characters realized that they just panicked and pretended that the whole thing never happened. Forget and Forget is their motto and it worked pretty well.

Gourry is about as likable as he was in the first show. This means that he is a great character 90% of the time, but he still can’t help, but make insulting remarks about Lina’s chest, which quickly drops him down as a character. To be a truly good character, you must be good at least 99% of the time. Gourry is always a little slow on the ball when it comes to just about anything, but it arguably gets even worse in Slayers Next for him. A scene that captures his personality perfectly is when the heroes go to the hot springs. Gourry takes so long to change out of his clothes that everyone is already leaving when he’s getting there. He tries to tell Zelgadis to wait up since he was just about to go in, but he doesn’t listen so Gourry is forced to enjoy the hot springs by himself. It’s hard to tell whether you should cry or laugh since it’s just so sad for the guy. You also have to wonder how long it took him to change since you’d think that the heroes had already been in the hot springs for a while.

Gourry’s also fairly outmatched in this series by just about everyone. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to use magic, which is pretty dangerous in this world. He has the famous Sword of Light, but it feels like anyone can just block it or dodge the strikes. So, Gourry doesn’t look very good when it’s battle time, but you do have to admire his determination. He’s typically the first guy to attack and the final one to fall. That speaks highly of his durability and his actual swordsmanship is great. We get a glimpse of how strong Gourry could be if he was serious during the final batch of episodes and he looks very impressive there. If he could learn to fight at that level consciously, he would be a real threat. Technically, the Sword of Light is great since it’s unbreakable and it can block any magical blast. (Within reason) It protects him from all projectiles and one good hit can destroy any monster. Gourry’s main drawback is that he is only a human so it’s hard to block a blast if he’s not prepared for it and he can’t fly. Gourry can only move at normal speeds as well. When he was “awakened” Gourry’s reaction times were the critical change as he could block just about every blast and his raw power seemed to go up. So, his overall ability was not altered very much, he was just able to utilize his abilities to their fullest extent. If he could do that every time…I’m confident that he would be one of the top tier fighters here. At least, he could be the second strongest hero! (Behind Lina)

Zelgadis has certainly changed a lot since his days in the original series. He’s totally used for comedy now and he’s barely serious at all. He’s also shown to be significantly weaker than Lina at this point so he can’t really help when it comes down to a fight. Ironically, he did get a cool new sword, but it’s no Sword of Light and the villains tend to be too fast for him. All of this doesn’t bode too well for him, but you could argue that these developments were not downright terrible for him. No, the worst part is that Zelgadis completely turns against his friends just because he believes that someone can cure him. He betrays them without a second thought even though he knows that he’s working for an evil person. I have to admit that this was going pretty far and while he may have joined up with Lina’s team on good terms by the end…it was a little too late for him. He just went way too far in his quest.

Xellos is easily one of the worst characters in the series. He’s played off as a mysterious fighter who is also incredibly strong, but it worked better for Blues. (Proto Man) Xellos has an extremely nasal voice to continue the franchise’s interesting ensemble of voices, but it’s not enough to make him likable. He likes to troll the heroes, which isn’t terrible in itself, but he does it in an evil way. You can tell that he’s a villain, but the anime tries to play it off like he’s just above such disputes. He humiliates Zelgadis and typically just gets the heroes into trouble, but they still allow him to tag along on the journey. He also makes random romantic advances to keep people quiet, which also makes him pretty tedious. He has a few twists and we discover just how powerful he is, but he still manages to look terrible. After all of the hype, he can barely take on a minion (He needs Lina’s help) and he gets utterly wrecked by the first real villain that he encounters. Sure, he took on an army in a flashback, but flashbacks are like banana peels. They used to be good and now they’ve just spoiled our image of what things could have been. whenever Xellos appeared, I would hope that someone would take him out. The heroes never really tried to do anything about him so it was up to the other villains.

Amelia has stayed pretty true to form in this sequel. As with Gourry and Lina, she really hasn’t changed at all and that’s a good thing. The first episode was a change of pace since she seemed to be more confident in her role as a princess as well as her combat abilities. She may be a little more aggressive and eager to fight here, which can only help her character. She is still a hero of justice and Amelia is easily the most heroic member of the party. (Gourry may be a close second, but Amelia really just wants to help people out. It doesn’t get more heroic than that!) She is the first fighter to finally enhance her hand to hand skills with spirit energy, which is a classic Shonen technique. She can’t really match up against the villains so she is forced to watch on the sidelines with Sylphiel and Zelgadis for the majority of the series. Her determination is simply not enough to close the gap, but she’s still a pretty great character.

Martina has quickly become one of the main characters of the series, but she’s only good in a parodyish way. Sometimes it can be hard not to root for her to defeat Lina so that she can finally have a win, but usually you are just hoping that she will go away. She crushes on people pretty quickly and she worships a made up monster that she thought up during her desperate hours. I do admire the fact that she is always going after Lina, whether it means going through a den of monsters or burning one of the Claire Bible manuscripts. I think the series should think twice before making her a permanent member of the team, but she’s still better than some of the party members that we’ve seen in other series.

I have to wonder what happened to Sylphiel. I’m thinking that the writers must have forgotten about her and how skilled she looked in her debut in the original series. Sylphiel started out her anime history by blocking one of Rezo’s ultimate blasts with a barrier. Not even Lina and Zelgadis’ combined efforts were enough to block this, yet Sylphiel stopped the blast with ease. After that, she has never managed to pull off a decent magic feat again. For most of this series, she just provides the heroes with moral support. Sylphiel does get one good moment where we find out that she knows how to use the Dragon Slave (City Buster) attack, which was a great improvement, but her other abilities are still below average. She is mainly a healer and it seems like she will be sticking to that. I think the writers dropped the ball here since she could have been the ultimate defense fighter with her powerful barriers and healing magic. She’s still a decent character, but she’s probably a little less likable than she could have been. Also, she says “Dear Gourry” instead of “Gourry dear” in this show a lot. I guess it’s because Gourry isn’t usually around, but it’s hard to get used too. She means well, but I’m not sure what she can really bring to the table when a fight draws near. Lina has some healing magic to use in a pinch as well.

Gaav is one of the big villains in this series and he’s pretty great. He’s a villain who relies on his physical attributes while also utilizing his energy blasts. Think of him as an evil Goku and you’ll have the right idea. He’s easily the best villain in the franchise so far and I don’t see him dropping anytime soon. He doesn’t appear until the series is almost over, but he makes his presence known. His end is pretty unsatisfying, but I think it was better than some of the alternate ways that the show could have gone about it.

The Lord of Nightmares is a supremely powerful being who is capable of doing just about anything. She is above all of the other cosmic beings so she can be used as a Deux Ex Machina whenever the need arises. She is known to be a really evil and dangerous figure by reputation, but we find out that she’s not really a bad person. She blows up galaxies and star systems, but she doesn’t do it for any petty reasons. It’s just the natural cycle of life. She will alter her plans if she wishes to do so. She gets a bit of a role in the climax and I was glad that she lived up to the hype. I doubt we’ll ever get to see her seriously fight since it would be impossible for another fighter to match her, but I’ll take this over nothing. She’s easily one of the better cosmic beings since she is at least a reasonable person and she doesn’t drone on about how we can’t change the inevitable.

Phibrizzo is the final villain of the series and he’s definitely a force to be reckoned with. His true form seems like it would have been cool, but we don’t really get to see it in action. Phibrizzo makes the intriguing decision to fight the heroes as a little kid and I can’t say that I appreciate the gesture. This means that we can’t really look forward to any close combat situations with him. He likes to terminate his opponents from afar by simply willing it to be. He has power over death, which makes him very powerful, but not very fun to watch. I didn’t like him as a villain from the get go. As I mentioned, he’s very tough, but that doesn’t make him likable. As far as final bosses go, Slayers could do better. If only Gaav had been the final antagonist..now he was a villain!

Kanzel and Magenta are two of the monsters who challenged Lina and her friends during one of the mini arcs. They were actually relevant to the plot by the end since they had orders to get Lina, but their episodes tended to feel like filler. No matter, these guys were pretty tough and especially Kanzel. Both of them could have easily defeated Lina’s group if they had fought seriously from the beginning. The battle with Kanzel was pretty fun to watch since he could spam his teleporting ability and his defensive capabilities were unbelievable. He was able to take on a Ragna Blade and a Dragon Slave. His design is also pretty great when he enters his super form. Both of these villains were actually pretty likable and I would take them over Phibrizzo.

Halciform is a villain who gets a pretty minor role, but his immortality gives him a fighting chance against Lina. I always felt like anime writers gave immortality a little too much credit. Even if a villain is immortal, they are still vulnerable unless they have instant regeneration. At one point, Gourry slashes Halciform, which destroys him until he regenerates. It takes him a few seconds and they could have gone for a more serious injury that would have slowed him down some more. He also has some magic spells, but it’s nothing that will really be able to take Lina down. I didn’t find Halciform to be that likable, but he was a decent threat as far as one shot villains go.

Zangulus only gets to appear briefly for about 2-3 episodes, but he arrives at a pretty crucial moment. He looks pretty good here as he just wants to fight Gourry and he’s more of a rival than a villain now. He doesn’t resort to cheap tricks and he just wants to have a fair one on one fight. I can’t say that I really cared for him in the previous show, but he’s much better here. It can be a little hard to take him seriously since he’s outclassed powerwise, but he still puts up a good effort. His sword certainly comes in handy as well. His screentime may be limited, but Zangulus certainly makes the most out of it.

Seigram is actually one of the biggest villains in the show. He’s technically just a minion to Gaav, but his abilities speak for themselves. He was strong enough to give Zellos a good fight and he was also outclassing Lina and her friends. It’s hard to land a hit against him since he’s constantly teleporting. It’s sort of like Tobi’s trick from Naruto. He’s a cunning and resourceful villain and I became a fan by the end. He reminds me of The Other from Avengers. He has a cool mask and epic powers so that’s basically all that I needed from him. He’ll probably just be known as one of the more obscure villains as the franchise goes on without him, but he was pretty cool.

The soundtrack is decently good. I’m still not going to say that it’s great, but it fits the fantasy setting that the show is in. You’re certainly going to remember a few tunes by the end of it and they won’t annoy you, which is always a good thing. I’m still not crazy about the theme songs since they do feel rather dated (In terms of sound), but you can tell that the budget for them was also a lot higher than the original show. The characters look very sharp and the openings also have more action, which is great. (There should have been 2 openings since this is a 26 episode show though…)

The animation is also a noticeable step up from the first show. Some episodes may look a little bit like the original, but the climax as well as the first episodes can really show you how the animation has advanced. The colors are a lot brighter/sharper and JC Staff has once again showed us that they are ahead of the curve. Mixing that in with the DBZ effects just makes it incredibly enjoyable to behold. Slayers is able to keep that 90’s feel while bringing in some animation that looks like it’s in the latter 2000’s era.

One area that could come back to bite Slayers are the power levels in the series. Lina continues to learn new spells, but physically she is still just a human. This affects the whole cast since it doesn’t matter how much they train their offensive capabilities if their speed and durability to not improve. As it stands, the heroes get nervous whenever a monster shows up. If a normal monster can give them a good fight, then it’s even harder to see how they can stand up to the higher ups. They were lucky that Phibrizzo decided to take their ultimate attack and that the Lord of Nightmares found the heroes intriguing because things could have gotten very dangerous otherwise. Lina’s attacks deal damage over a pretty wide area, but that’s still not going to cut it against enemies who move at high speeds. We saw Zellos take on one of the commanders in a hyper speed battle and Lina’s group couldn’t even see them half of the time. The heroes simply wouldn’t stand a chance and the opponent wasn’t even one of the high ranking villains. This series certainly had a decent amount of plot hax, but it wasn’t spectacularly obvious. All shows have some plot hax to a degree, but it’s all about minimizing these scenes.

Slayers definitely deserves a lot of credit for the character roster. We have some pretty likable heroes and villains. Since the show lacks some of the advantages that other titles have, it has to make up for it with strong writing and solid characters. (For example, Sword Art Online started out with a huge budget, top notch voice actors, and an amazing soundtrack. Slayers has to start off without any of that) The voices are still a little retro in an unintentional way, but they can make the characters a little more humorous as well. One way to tell whether the characters are really good or not is to pay attention to the filler episodes. There are plenty of them to be found here (Dragon Fishing, Tennis matches, mysteries, etc) and a filler episode can hold up well if the characters as good. If they’re boring or can’t hold their own episodes with a bad plot, (Like Naruto and DBZ without the Saiyans) then they may not be as good as you think. Some of the filler episodes weren’t that good, but the characters always stayed in character and they weren’t as bad as the filler that I am used too.

Overall, Slayers Next is a pretty solid show. I’d basically say that it’s the very definition of a good/fun anime. It was slightly better than the first show, but it’s pretty close. This one had more action, but some of the filler episodes as well as Xellos’ character as a whole kept this from being a stomp. That being said, we’ve moved away from the days of the random mobs and monsters as real threats are always around now. Slayers Next also had a little more fanservice humor, but it was not overdone, which was a very good thing. The soundtrack can hold its own and the animation has improved. As long as Lina and Gourry are the two main characters, we can look forward to fun episodes since they can really hold their own stories. Their interactions are always fun and the voice acting keeps you entertained. I recommend this title to all fantasy fans and viewers who want to see a traditional RPG styled title.

Overall 7/10

Beware The Batman Review

Posted on October 25, 2014 by dreager1

It’s time to see how Beware The Batman fared. It was a pretty original take on the Caped Crusader and the show also had a lot to live up to. Batman already had a few all star series in the form of The Animated Series and Brave and the Bold. Batman Beyond was excellent as well, although Batman didn’t really get to fight that much. Lastly, we can’t forget about The Batman. Does this show manage to take those out? Well, considering the episode disadvantage…it would be quite the feat!

The series actually does have some plots that continue through the series. The first half is mostly stand aloneish, but we get to meet Katana and we are also introduced to Batman’s cast of villains. None of the all stars are here, but maybe that’s a good thing. When was the last time that we got to see Magpie and Anarchy steal the spotlight? Of course, then we’re reminded of Professor Pig and why we would have preferred the Mad Hatter. Anyway, back to the plot! Professor Pig and Mr. Toad are recurring villains, but they don’t have much of a master plan so I would say that Anarchy is the guy who really brings the plot. We also have the League of Assassins, who play a big role in Alfred and Katana’s past.

Towards the second half of the show, we get a subplot where Batman is starting to become a little more vicious as he keeps to himself more since Alfred has left. Harvey Dent has also risen up through the political system and he wants to arrest Batman at all costs. It will award him the promotion that he needs! Meanwhile, Batman’s toughest foe has arrived in the form of Deathstroke. He’s going to need all of his skills if he wants to pull off a victory!

Well, let’s address the elephant in the room. Is it true that the CG-I kept Beware The Batman from being a better show? Absolutely! The animation isn’t very bad and the character models are decent. At the same time, it’s hard to get excited when watching the show because of the stiff animation. A lot of the fight scenes will end up looking similar and the power levels are a mess. The animation just doesn’t let you really get into the episodes. A lot of the intros just don’t capture your attention and you know that the fight scenes won’t be able to match up to the original animated Batman show…which is around 20 years old at this point.

For an example of the power levels, let’s just look at Batman’s fights. He got crushed by Magpie and Anarchy is able to hold his own against him. Then, Batman humiliates Silver Monkey, who is supposed to be an excellent hand to hand fighter. It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you think about it. This happens all of the time. There are also a lot of moments where it’s Batman against the cops and the cops should actually win, but we won’t look at that too deeply since plot hax are usually required in those scenarios. Nobody is really able to deal with Gotham PD’s finest after all.

The theme song is pretty lazy. It’s very short and it just doesn’t scream Batman the way that the Brave and the Bold’s intro did. I really liked the credits theme though since it has an epic feeling to it. Now, that could make you pretty excited for the next episode. Inside of the episodes, the music is pretty unmemorable. Usually, the scenes are fairly quiet so you can focus on the sound effects. That’s not a negative per say…but I wouldn’t call it a positive either!

The show also made the intriguing decision not to use any of Batman’s iconic foes like the Joker, Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Bane, etc. We don’t even get to have Robin, Batgirl, or some of the others. (Barbara Gordan is here, but she’s so young that we wouldn’t get Batgirl for a very long time) I don’t mind digging out the obscure characters, but it’s better to use them sparingly instead of every episode. Towards the end, they started breaking out some popular fighters like Deathstroke and Killer Croc, but we were already wrapping up. I don’t think including the big villains would have saved the show from being cancelled, but I would have liked to have seen Mr. Freeze and Bane appear at least once. It would make the episodes more fun. As it is, I think Batman has one of the weaker selections of villains so I suppose that the show did what it could.

All right, time for the comparisons. By this point you can probably already tell how the standings go. Beware The Batman get demolished by The Animated Series, Crushed by Beyond, Terminated by Brave and The Bold, and Humiliated by The Batman. I like to think that is easily beats the new Gotham show that is airing, but I won’t count that one since it would be a little too one sided! This Batman show still holds up well as a superhero show, but it just can’t be compared to those other titles. Again, if the show had not been CGI….we may be singing a different tune. (Still in last of course, but it would be closer) Batman also gets a possible romance subplot that arrives out of the blue towards the end of the series. The lady is pretty suspicious, but Batman doesn’t seem to suspect anything yet. I dunno…this all seems fishy and luckily the show ended before something dicey could happen!

Batman’s portrayal is pretty solid for the most part, but there are definitely some iffy moments during the series. One of them is the fact that Batman actually lets his comrades eradicate the memory from one of the villains. This happens near the final episode of the series and it’s pretty awful. Did the writers not read one of the most iconic Justice League arcs in the comics where Batman made a point to prohibit such an action? It’s why he fought the team in the first place. It was pretty out of character for The Dark Knight. Another problem is that he just looks very weak throughout the series. I’m not expecting him to look quite as tough as Superman, but I still expect better. He lets Deathstroke know that he can’t defeat him in a fair fight on more than one occasion. It’s pretty laughable and Batman fans will want to turn off the TV. This isn’t the Batman that we remember!

On the other hand, this Batman had some good traits. When he wasn’t making rookie mistakes or having trouble against foes with 0 hand to hand experience, Batman got to show off a lot of his detective skills. His best showing is probably when he solved the big puzzle that Humpty Dumpty threw him in. That also took place during the part of the show where Batman got a lot meaner since Alfred left. He went pretty far at some points, but I dare say that he looked his best during those moments.

Alfred has changed a lot from his usual appearance. In this show, he’s an ex M-16 agent so he uses his government sources to find out any intel that Batman may have missed. He’s always got his gun at the ready and he even knows some hand to hand techniques. It’s all supposed to show us that he’s actually a pretty epic guy. Unfortunately, he still manages to lose a lot when the going gets tough. He deserted Batman at a rather dicey time to bring on some trouble to an old “pal” of his. His journey didn’t really have a point since he just ends up coming home empty handed and you have to wonder what he was doing. That certainly wasn’t one of his better moves. Seeing Alfred as a “Professional Agent/Fighter” was interesting….but I’m ready for the classic (Post plump) Alfred to return. That’s still his best era.

Katana is basically the Robin of this show, but we see that she will be a little different right from the start. First of all, she is already a good hand to hand fighter when she joins. She gets a lot of hype although she doesn’t actually live up to it. She has a subplot involving the sword that she stole, a romance subplot with a pretty cheap character, and a subplot with someone who may have destroyed her father. So, she is pretty relevant to the plot, but 2/3 of those subplots didn’t go over very well for her. The romance is rather unnecessary here and Katana is always forced to play second fiddle to Batman. She cannot beat just about any enemy on her own and that can be a little sad for fans. If she always needs Batman to be around, then she’s not really helping out all that much. She likes to break the silence during an adventure with the occasional pun, but it typically doesn’t work. I have to say that I wasn’t really a fan of hers by the time the show ended. She got a little too much hype.

Anarchy is one of the more interesting villains and he actually could be the best one in the show. He’s always presenting Batman with some dicey propositions and he forces the hero to play by his script. He’s not amazing at hand to hand combat, but he’s good enough to keep Batman busy for a while. He even fights with Katana at one point. He mostly stays in the shadows and eggs people on though since getting on the front lines isn’t really his style. He gets a whole lot of episodes so if you don’t like him, it’ll be a long ride.

Deathstroke arrives for the final 3 or so episodes and he’s a pretty fun villain to have around. He’s definitely becoming DC’s Deadpool as we’ve seen him animated quite a few times as of late. This incarnation of him is better than the one in Son of Batman, but he still relies on using a lot of cheap tricks instead of just fighting Batman with his own skills. He only attempts a fair fight once and it doesn’t end well, which is why he must rely on his plans for their future encounters. You’ll likely figure out his secret identity right away since a new character joins the fray without any real reason at one point. It’s good to have a villain who isn’t being played by Anarchy so I give him some bonus points for that. As it stands, he’s one of the best villains in the series.

Barbara Gordon’s role increases we we progress through the series. I think that they made her a little too young here though since she’s basically just a kid. There’s not a lot that she can do at this point so she’s currently tech support for the team. She basically skipped the Batgirl phase and became the Oracle right off the bat. Her romance subplot with a random kid in one episode was probably the low point of her appearances in this show. I definitely wasn’t much of a fan. She was all right when solving the puzzles and helping out, but then I would lose the respect when she started to act a little too smug and confident as she forced the Commissioner to do what she wanted to do.

Commissioner Gordon gets a pretty small role in this show. He’s technically around a lot, but he is usually just there to be pushed around by Harvey Dent or get outsmarted by Barbara. He’s a good cop, but he’s just out of his league. At least he knows that Batman is good. (A quick thumbs up is awarded to such characters) He’s pretty true to his usual depiction and Gordon has always been a pretty consistent character.

Harvey Dent gets a rather large role towards the end of the series as he does everything in his power to make life tough for Batman. The police are basically under his control (The special division anyway) and he attacks Batman no matter what the circumstances are. I’m sure that we were all waiting for his transformation into Two Face, but it’s safe to say that the show didn’t have a whole lot of time to show it. He gets a very brief role and he probably would have been more of a factor as a super villain in the next season. Despite that, he was pretty interesting as a corrupt politician. He always knew when it was the right time to insult Batmans or to take out his gun.

Ra’s Al Ghul is really the same as always. He still likes to think that he is the greatest martial artist ever and he does humiliate Batman a few times. That being said, the show made him a little too strong and the heroes can only beat him with a nice spoonful of plot hax. He got a lot of hype and I was glad that he lived up to it, but his ending was pretty unsatisfying. He’s not a very interesting villain, but he’s tough so I give him some credit for that. If he would just lose the accent..it would be perfect!

Lady Shiva is Ra’s right hand man and she looks pretty tough in her appearances. She takes on the combined might of Batman and Katana and she looks consistently good throughout the episodes. You can argue that she does get a little weaker by the end, but I’m sure that it happens to most fighters with these wonky power levels in effect. I’d consider her to be in the top 3 Beware The Batman villains and it’s nice to finally see her on the big screen. We need more serious hand to hand fighters to join the fray! She doesn’t get a whole lot of screentime..but she gets enough to get by.

Killer Croc is the leader of the underworld in Arkham and it’s interesting to think about how he could have broken free from prison at any time. The cops definitely need to step up their game a little. He’s a pretty decent villain and his fight against Batman was probably one of the best fights that we saw in the series. He only appears in two episodes, but he left more of an impression than a lot of the other villains. I wouldn’t mind seeing him a little more although his role was a lot more petty in the second episode.

Magpie doesn’t appear a whole lot, but she’s also fairly tough. Her personality is a little warped since the “accident” changed her, but now she has some super strength and speed on her side. She really does a number on Batman whenever they meet with the Dark Knight usually getting knocked out. She’s a pretty fun villain to watch, but I can’t say that I actually like the character that much. She wants to introduce more romance into the series, but we weren’t having any of that!

Professor Pig is easily one of my least favorite Batman villains and the show really reminded me why he is not one of Batman’s more popular enemies. He just has no point as a character. He borrows some traits from the Joker while retaining a pretty polite attitude, but I don’t find him to be amusing. He’s also pretty weak since he’s overweight and he just likes to carry a big saw or knife. He’s no better than the average thug so he really shouldn’t be a match for the Caped Crusader. How he lasted so long I’ll never know. If his episodes had been replaced with a cooler villain, then that may have even helped the show.

Mr. Toad typically works with Professor Pig and he doesn’t have a lot of character. Towards the end, he forgets his place and thinks of romance briefly, but I think it was mostly in a fake way. Either way, it didn’t exactly do him any favors in my eyes. Ironically, he’s actually tougher than Professor Pig, but I doubt that any of them would admit it any time soon. He’s just another uninteresting villain that I could have done without.

There are some other fighters like Cypher, Silver Monkey, and Man Bat, but they don’t appear all that much or get a lot of personality. A guy by the name of Manhunter shows up and his story is rather dicey for a number of reasons. He vanished for quite a long time and he could have planned out things a little better. Metamorpho also gets a pair of appearances and he’s probably the toughest guy to appear in the series, but he doesn’t get to show off his strength. That’s pretty unfortunate, but without any tough villains…what are we gonna do!

Beware The Batman also has to deal with the fact that Batman is fairly new to the business. I hope that the next show takes place after he has already been a hero for a while like in the Animated Series. That’s the Batman that everyone wants to watch anyway and it’s more fun when you know that Batman has the power of Prep Time! The show already had a number of disadvantages so getting rid of that one definitely could have helped out a little.

The review may have come off a little negative, but the show just made more mistakes than you would expect from a show where Batman’s the main character. There were two pretty strong points to help the show along. One is the writing. The scenarios are pretty well thought out and the Humpty Dumpty episode comes to mind. The plots can be decently engaging even when the situations aren’t very intense and it’s all thanks to the script. Another good part of the show is the fact that we do get a lot of hand to hand fights. In an era where many shows have big DBZ styled fights with epic energy blasts, it can be fun to see a retro hand to hand fight. DBZ always wins, but you can’t have a winner without both sides right? Batman does manage to get knocked out about 2-3 times per episode, but that makes things interesting. Try ordering a slice of pizza every time he gets knocked out…it’ll be a fun wager! A good amount of action can make any show more interesting and this one has a lot of it.

Overall, Beware The Batman is a show that I highly recommend to all Batman viewers. I would naturally recommend that you watch the other titles first, but if you’re a big Batman fan, then I’m guessing that you already have at this point. The others were pretty legendary after all. I may have qualms with the animation and the fact that the series had a lot of filler (or unimportant) episodes despite the fact that it was so short. There wasn’t enough Justice League build up either, which is pretty important for a Batman show. All of the titles that I mentioned earlier had the Justice League or was at least building up to it. This show just didn’t make the effort. Still, now you can tell people that you saw a CGI Batman and the show does manage to contain a lot of action scenes in its own right. It’s certainly of a higher quality than the current Hulk show or even the Pac Man cartoon that is airing. Now, we just need the next Batman show to be announced and we’ll be all set!

Overall 7/10

Slayers Review

Posted on October 6, 2014 by dreager1

There aren’t many TV shows that really deal with the fantasy genre. Or at least, most of the titles I would not consider to be a true fantasy title. A true fantasy title means that the heroes must go to the wilderness or to towns/cities that look as if they were created in the olden days. Of course, this is a risk since it is basically impossible to pull off in a live action movie. An anime can achieve this though and that’s what Slayers sets out to do. It’s like an old fashioned RPG or what Sword Art Online would have been if it came out 20 years ago. It’s a pretty fun anime with its ups and downs.

The story revolves around an experienced sorceress by the name of Lina Inverse. She is always on the lookout for some extra money or jewels to obtain and she doesn’t mind being used as a mercenary to obtain such treasures. She meets up with a gallant bodyguard by the name of Gourry and he decides to escort her to the next town since he thinks that she’s just a little kid. The two of them have many adventures until the plot finally begins.

Rezo, The Red Priest, is one of the strongest beings on Earth. Or at least, one of the strongest humans. He is supposed to be a wise sage from the past, but he seems to be pretty shifty and he tells Lina and Gourry that they possess an item that many villains are after. They will stop at nothing in order to get the object and Lina doesn’t even know which one it is! The heroes may be outgunned here.

The second half of the show’s plot is pretty similar to the first one’s or it at least builds off from it. Lina, Gourry, and some new friends are having a decent time when they find out that someone is attempting to unleash another power on the planet. The culprit responsible for this wants to destroy Lina and her friends because of something they did in the past and he has framed them. Lina cannot earn money freely because of this situation so she has to get to the bottom of this and fast! Luckily, she has made friends with a Prince’s daughter so she does have some more connections now.

It’s an intriguing plot summary, but many of the episodes are pretty episodic so it all works out. The series mostly acts as a comedy/adventure title, but the climax typically adds some more action to the mix. The series is very light toned and the violence is also kept at a very low level so it’s a mainstream title that you can easily recommend to someone else if they are looking for a fantasy title. Things just tend to heat up during the climax. The final batch of episodes is the only place where you will really see a big blood puddle like in Bleach or a character getting stabbed as an instant KO. The rest of the action scenes borrow elements from DBZ while maintaining a hit and run tactic so it is rare that any serious damage is dealt to any of the characters. If a character is burnt, they will typically look more like a Pokemon Trainer when he gets zapped.

So, I would consider the action segment to be a pretty good positive for the show. They’re fun to watch although the comedy can be a bit much at some points. The timing is crucial for such a thing and a character can go from being very powerful to very weak in a short amount of time depending on what genre the show is currently operating on. I’ll likely address this more as we go into the review.

Lina Inverse is the main character and she’s debatably the strongest hero on the planet. She is also one of the strongest beings on the planet not counting the big deities like the Lord of Nightmares. Unfortunately, the comedy tones of the show can make it a little hard to say just how strong she is. Sometimes Lina will casually take on a planet buster and other times she will attempt to run away from your average batch of minions. The inconsistency can definitely be more than a little tricky.

Personality wise, Lina is definitely not your average lead. That’s because she really not even a hero! She just does whatever she wants whenever she sees that there is some money to be earned. One running gag in the series is that she loves to use her Dragon Slave attack, which can instantly wipe out a city. She actually does wipe out a few towns and mountains using this attack and there are typically a lot of casualties. It’s played for laughs of course, but the amount of innocents that she ends up taking down is a pretty large number. At least that does say something for Lina’s abilities. It’s why I always find it a little hard to believe when she just runs away and barely puts up a fight sometimes. Lina typically acts tough and likes to insult Gourry a lot. He makes it pretty easy for her to be honest, but he’s a good guy deep down. Lina is a charismatic lead though so despite her not heroic actions, you can typically root for her. You just shouldn’t look at her as a hero and then you’ll be okay. She’s not the next Medaka or Kirito, but she’s much better than Harayuki and Sailor Moon.

Gourry is Lina’s main sidekick and he’s an “interesting” character. Have you ever met a character that you found pretty entertaining while on screen, but the character was technically pretty bad and you would have to root against him? Gourry’s like Furuichi in this case, but I’m not sure that many of my readers will understand the reference. Gourry spends most of his screen time being pretty unaware of the situation and making rookie mistakes whenever possible. However, he balances this out by also having some moments where he goes a little too far in his teasing about Lina being a little girl. The latter is why I ultimately can’t like Gourry. He acts a little perverted in that sense even if he’s really just not bright enough to fully understand what he’s doing. Ignorance is still no excuse so that ends up dropping Gourry. He’s still a lot of fun to watch when he’s on screen, but it just goes to show that a few bad scenes can really destroy a character.

When he’s a gentleman, Gourry is definitely at his best. He can turn his “hardcore face” on and off very quickly. He gets a rival in the second half of the show so Gourry will have to keep on switching between acting casual and intense in the blink of an eye. “Light come forth!” is his catchphrase and it signals that Gourry is going to use his legendary Sword of Light. While Lina is a magic specialist, Gourry is a more traditional fighter. He uses his swordsmanship to attack opponents and he wasn’t really aware of demons and monsters before the series began. Ultimately, Gourry tries to be a nice guy whenever possible, but things don’t typically work out for him.

Zelgadis starts off as a fairly intense villain and he slowly starts to warm up to the heroes by the halfway mark of the series. His skin is that of a golem’s and he wants to find a way to turn himself back to normal. To do this, he must defeat Rezo and possible use the philosopher’s stone. It’s going to be tough though and his journey could be a long one. He makes for a decently good ally, but I prefer when he meets up with the heroes from time to time instead of travelling with them. He just ends up being the straight man in all of the jokes and he just brings the humor down. He works better as a rival figure than as an ally. He’s definitely one of the better characters in the show though and he’s possibly the only other hero who can fight alongside Lina as a magic master.

Sylphiel joins the cast towards the end of the show and she has known Gourry from back in the day. She’s very soft spoken and is a Hinata type character. If you don’t know about Hinata, just know that Sylphiel always starts off her sentences by saying “Gourry dear” and she typically doesn’t fight when the going gets tough. She did have one really good scene where she blocked a huge blast that Lina and Zelgadis couldn’t stop with their combined effort, but it was just another outlier since she never shows that level of ability again. Towards the end of the show, she can barely muster up a fire arrow, which was a little sad. She’s definitely not my kind of character and she really blew it at the end of the show when she tackled Lina to protect the planet at the cost of her friends. That’s not a good trade off and especially when you realize that the planet likely would have been okay anyway.

Shabranigdo is one of the big villains from the first arc. He gets a whole lot of hype from one of the very first episodes and it never dies down. I was one of the first people to jump on the hype train so I was really hoping that he would end up looking impressive. Luckily, I was not disappointed! His character design is decently similar to Zorc’s and this beast is worthy of the term “Kaiju.” He doesn’t get to fight the heroes while at full power, but he still puts on quite the display. He’s above the usual spectrum of emotions so he’s pretty detached from everyone when he appears. He actually congratulates the heroes at one point so you know that he doesn’t take these things personally. He was easily the best character in the series and I hope that he returns someday.

Rezo is the main villain of the series and he is basically around for the whole series in a sense. The first arc shows how he became mad in his quest to heal his eyes. He decides to resurrect Shabranigdo so that the monster can help him so he naturally crosses paths with the heroes. He’s known to be incredibly powerful, but we don’t get to see him use that many attacks before the arc is over. His design is very interesting and he’s as sinister as they come, but I still preferred Shabranigdo.

Arc 2 changes things as Rezo’s goal switches. The heroes are shocked to see that he is around since the end of Arc 1 was pretty dicey. He decides that the heroes must die and his powers have grown by a considerable amount. Arc 2 was more action packed than the first half so the fights were a lot better and we really got to see his abilities. With a single attack, Rezo was able to take down the entire city and he consistently beats up the main characters with ease. He also grows to be a lot more confident as he challenges Lina to use her strongest attacks on him so that he can prove his superiority. I definitely gained a lot of respect for the character and Arc 2 Rezo is much better than the first half Rezo in just about every area.

Eris worked for Rezo and she was pretty distraught to see him go down the path of evil. Unfortunately, her loyalty to her master is pretty misplaced since it ends up turning her into a warrior for darkness as well. It’s hard to gauge her abilities since she rarely fights, but it would appear that she is a decent sorceress. I can’t say that she is too likable though and her goals are pretty hard to sympathize with. She appears out of nowhere and then gets thrown back out of the spotlight just as quickly.

Amelia is another addition to Lina’s party and it’s safe to say that she’s easily one of the better characters. She’s always talking about justice while striking really dramatic poses. She’s not all talk though since she also has access to a wide variety of light and fire magic spells. She can hold her own in a fight and she can prove to be just as dangerous as Zelgadis and Lina when she’s serious. (Which is very rare I’m afraid) She helps the team to stay light during serious moments and the heroes could really use the firepower. It’s also ironic since she may be the only heroic member of the group besides Gourry until Sylphiel joined up. Amelia is also very polite so she’s really the polar opposite of Lina and she could easily pass for the main heroine of the show if you didn’t know better.

Prince Phil is Amelia’s father and he also strongly believes in Amelia. Their character personalities are very similar, but Amelia pulls it off a lot better than Phil. Phil gets insulted by the heroes a lot since he’s not the prince that they had been expecting, but he has a strong bond with Amelia. A running gag is that he may just be a human, but he can still hold his own against all kinds of monsters and demons. Phil is not to be underestimated and I may not have been a huge fan of him, but he was still a good character. He’s just better in small doses so he shouldn’t appear too much.

Zangulus is Gourry’s rival in the second half of the show and he’s a pretty decent character. He fights with honor and he may be a villain, but he’s not downright evil. He just wants a good fight and you could argue that he basically turns into a hero by the end. It all depends on where he goes from that point of course, but I definitely wouldn’t mind if he stayed as a hero. He’s very determined and he follows the heroes across the whole world until he finally gets his big fight. His sword is able to shoot blasts of wind that are very dangerous and Gourry may have been done for if not for his sword of light.

Vrumugun is Zangulus’s parter and he was a decent character at first, but he quickly dropped after a certain plot twist. He can give Lina a good fight when necessary, but it’s clear who the better fighter is. He doesn’t have much of a personality though since he basically lives for the mission. Even when the heroes are heading to the place that Vrumugun wants them to go, he can’t help but try to fight them some more. He also gets humiliated during a play that the heroes performed, which was pretty sad for him.

One of the negatives for Slayers would be that there can be some heard fanservice. “What’s heard fanservice sir? I don’t believe that’s a real term…” Well, it is now! Basically, “heard fanservice” is when you talk about something fanservicey without actually showing it. For example, Lina gets teased about her chest a lot and I would still consider that to be fanservice in a sense. Luckily, the show does a good job of not really showing it. There are the occasional moments where Gowry will fall on Lina and make a grab, but luckily they are few and far in between. “That time of the month” is also a running gag for about 2-3 episodes, which can get a little old. This is an area where the light nature of the show really helps since the moments are really used for humor. Unfortunately, it’s definitely not my kind of humor, but the show glosses over this as quickly as possible so the scenes don’t last for as long as they could. This does hurt the show, but it won’t actually cripple it. This is nowhere near as bad as many other titles and the 90’s animation also helps since it’s so old school. Shows had more class back then…

The animation for Slayers holds up pretty well. It’s fairly old so you shouldn’t expect it to look like Accel World or something like that, but this show did come during a pretty good time for character designs. The 90s were fun in that respect and all of the characters should be instantly iconic. Memorizing the names is pretty effortless as well since they’re all straightforward. You can see how the show was inspired from DBZ as it shares many of the same sound effects and the energy blasts look fairly similar. One of the fighters even powers up before unleashing his strongest attacks in very DBZish moments.

The soundtrack is good, but I wouldn’t call it great. The tunes aren’t extremely memorable and I mostly just remember the To Be Continued music as well as the title theme. Others I would recognize if I heard them, but I probably couldn’t keep them in mind from my head. They fit in pretty well while you’re watching the show, although I wouldn’t mind if they added some fast paced rock themes. (They would just need to extend some of the fight scenes)

The dub voices definitely need to be mentioned. Most of the dubs in the 80s to 90s can sound a little interesting at times since they are so old at this point. There is typically a lot of gravel or a hoarseness in the voices as the transition wasn’t as smooth as it is now. That being said, Slayers takes it to a new level and you can argue that the voices are the worst or the most unique that you’ve heard before. There’s nothing wrong with Lina’s voice, but let’s take Gourry. He takes the oblivious strong, but not very smart guy voice to a new level. His voice is completely flat and he talks in a way that will purposely make you chuckle. Sylviel’s voice is the kind of voice that you know you would never hear in real life. She doesn’t put emotions into her words and her voice is way too light. Zelgadis talks like he’s half whispering in the first half and his voice ends up being flat as well. Amelia is the opposite as her voice is very high and it can almost sound like screeching. To an extent, I have to imagine that this was done on purpose. Maybe the voice director just thought that it sounded really cool or something. So, it depends on how you use the word “worst.” Technically, I would probably say that it is, but the voices actually help to make the show more entertaining. It fits the comedy undertones of the show so I’m actually glad that the dubbing is not more refined. If it is intentional, then I have to give the show some major props there. It’s an interesting tactic and it’s one that really works out well for the show.

There are several other side characters that I did not mention, but they are pretty unimportant. We had a fish man whose design was creepier than you could imagine. The voice made him appear to be quite the threat. Zelgadis also had two minions and one of them was pretty bold. He mentioned how humans have surpassed monsters and his speech is pretty brilliant as he attacks Shabranigdo. It’s a moment that you can probably imagine ending pretty badly for the guy, but at least he gave it his all I suppose.

Going back to the inconsistent power levels for a second, it can be a little jarring. Lina is able to go up against one of the four legendary priests in one scene and then she’s having trouble with your garden variety monsters in the next one. It appears like Lina just likes to troll her allies sometimes, but it goes a little far. We know that she’s immensely powerful and she somehow seems to know just about every spell so they may as well play it straight. There are quite a few third wall breaking moments to also make sure that the show doesn’t get too serious. It’s pretty interesting since the show is very direct on this approach. Gourry also suffers from this since he is usually an expert swordsman, as seen when he faces his rival, but he can also be pretty helpless at other times. For better or worse, it’s just the kind of show that Slayers is I guess. Every show has its weakness so having a minor one like this isn’t bad.

Overall, Slayers is a pretty fun anime. If not for the chest insults and other bits of mild fanservice, I probably wouldn’t have any issues with the show. It’s a light hearted adventure where it’s easy to get into the show after only a few episodes. It helps to remind me why I miss the 90’s and the show brings back most of the elements that you just don’t get in today’s shows. The cast is pretty likable and the villains are also pretty interesting. The second half definitely ramps up the action and we also get one or two scenes that are decently violent, but it’s a good trade off. (You still will be shocked when one of the characters dies since it just doesn’t feel like Slayers for a while there) Of course, the show can definitely work on its transition between action and comedy. The show needs to be a little more subtle about it since it can wreck the overall power levels. Slayers is a big franchise and this is just the beginning so I’m sure that it won’t be the final review that we’ll see on the blog. I recommend this show if you’re looking for a fun adventure or a nice, retro anime. You should be pretty pleased with the experience and I can see why it is so popular. Time to see if the next show can match this one!

Overall 7/10

Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations Review

Posted on September 10, 2014 by dreager1

I watched the Tsubasa show pretty recently (Or it feels recent anyway) and it was an enjoyable watch. It was a great adaption of the manga and I dare say that it was more interesting except for the fact that it didn’t cover the second half of the series. The half of the series where the action really kicked into high gear and the part where I became a fan of the series. Well, this OVA covers the Kamui arc, which was my favorite volume of the series. It helps that this is the first part of the story where I really began to enjoy the series. Let’s see if it has the same effect on the animated adaption!

The OVA is three episodes long so it’s actually still shorter than your average theater film and it may be a little longer than your average animated film. This story takes place immediately after the library battle so the filler from the TV show has been ignored for the sake of the canon plot. The heroes arrive in a land where it is always raining acid and the world’s inhabitants have all been destroyed except for a handful of people. They have divided into two groups who protect their supply of water as they try to survive. Both groups don’t like each other and the heroes bump into a group that’s led by a vampire named Kamui. Syaoran needs to find the feather that is in this island, but what if it means extinction for the poor inhabitants of the city? Meanwhile, the Syaoran who has been trapped in the water tomb finally awakens and Sakura has to go on a solo adventure.

A lot of things definitely happen in this OVA so hopefully you are prepared for a fast paced journey. Right away, you’ll likely be able to tell that the animation is much different from the show and the tone has shifted as well. This one is a lot darker and it’ll be tough for you to locate any cheerful moments. (Whereas the anime had those in spades) Of course, we do get plenty of action scenes, which is always a solid consolation prize!

The soundtrack is pretty good and you should recognize most of the tunes from the anime. My favorite opera theme only appears once, but that’ll have to do. The rest of the themes are pretty good and while Tsubasa doesn’t end up having anything that will become iconic, the overall soundtrack is well above average. The theme song is intriguing since nothing really happens and we just see a glowing object. I think it works really well for a theatrical experience since it would slowly build up the hype for you. It definitely would have been more fun to look at if there were fights and fun images in the song, but this was still pretty good. For me, it’s a natural hype builder.

The animation is solid and I supposed it’ll be based on your personal preferences on whether you think it beats the show’s animation or not. I think the animation here is more fluid, but the fight scenes may have been a little hurt by this. It’s hard to describe, but the action scenes aren’t really fleshed out as much as they could be. The characters are fighting and yet, not much is happening. Either the screen will cut away or they’ll only have time for a few blows to be exchanged. (The next OVA is better in this area) This OVA really only has two fights. Kamui vs Syaoran and Syaoran vs Syaoran. Both fights are very short though, which could also be why I wasn’t very impressed with them. Good action scenes take time and the OVA covered so much that they breezed through them. Sakura fights with giant monsters, but I can’t say that it’s much of a consolation prize this time.

Syaoran is the protagonist that we all remember, but his personality quickly changes as the OVA goes on. He starts out as the happy camper that we’ve come to expect and by the end you can only call him a hero who has strayed from the path and turned into the villain. He wants to get the feathers at any cost and that cost may now include murder. (Of course, he did risk the lives of everyone in the village to get a feather in the TV show so…) One can argue that the change is beyond his control since a soul is taken from him, but he still has his soul so I like to think that he can control it. He still has his memories and everything so this was basically his decision. It’s intriguing, but I would say that he is my favorite villain in the series. He gets a pretty huge power up to coincide with the trope that a hero who turns evil gains great power.

The mysterious Syaoran in the container wakes up and he gets a role in this OVA. He uses a mixture of sword techniques and thunder abilities to contrast with the other Syaoran’s fire sword and spellcasting. He is similar to the original Syaoran, but he’s definitely more sullen. He’s not very cheerful and his thoughts always seem to keep him preoccupied. His arrival brought many questions along with it and it’ll be tough for the other heroes to get used to him being around. Which Syaoran is to be trusted right? All is explained in the OVA and they’ll continue to bring up more plot points as Tsubasa goes on.

Kurogane is really more of a non factor here. He proves that he can go up against Kamui in a fight and he’s definitely a skilled warrior, but he doesn’t really have a stake in the whole situation. He does get a lot of character development with Fai though since they have definitely become closer as allies. Fai still keeps his secrets, but it doesn’t stop Kurogane from making a dangerous decision to save his life. It’s also frustrating for Kurogane since he’s unable to help when the two Syaorans face off against each other. It wasn’t a great moment for him, but I’m sure that he’ll do better in future stories. He’s still a pretty good supporting character and he just needs a good power up to keep him in the helpful section of characters.

Fai doesn’t look very good in this OVA. He has a lot of power and he’s finally willing to use it to help the others, but he underestimates his opponent. This is a critical mistake and he ends up losing just about all of his power. He went from being immeasurably skilled to suddenly being the weakest member on the squad. Kurogane makes a deal to keep Fai alive, which also gives Fai some superhuman abilities, but it’s regrettable that the situation had to occur at all. I would have expected Fai to have put up a better fight. I definitely didn’t care for him in this collection, but I’m sure that he’ll do better in the next OVA. He just needs to learn how to fight in his new state and he’ll be set.

Sakura is mostly asleep or unconscious in this OVA due to circumstances that happened earlier. All of the clone drama and other twists have likely weakened her condition as well. She is unable to prevent the tragedy of the two Syaorans fighting and when she finally wakes up once again, Sakura is given a task. She must find a treasure and bring it back to the base so Yuko can grant a wish to help the heroes. This results in Sakura going on her own adventure to get past giant monsters and prove that she can help the team as well! It’s a noble gesture and Sakura is a good character although it would be great if she was conscious more often. Going on the trek by herself did grant the other heroes some much needed rest so it certainly helped.

Kamui quickly became one of my favorite characters in the manga so it was nice to see him appear in the OVA. He’s still one of the better characters although he may not be quite as high for me here as he originally was in the manga. He was just a little weaker than I remembered since he looks bad against the other squad of humans and his showing against Kurogane wasn’t great. He still pulls through when it counts, but Kamui wasn’t quite as awe inspiring as I had remembered. Still, his design is pretty good and he’s one of the few vampires that I actually like. Kamui is also pretty unreasonable to the other group. They just want to share resources to last longer in this world, but Kamui just wants to fight. Perhaps they did something in their series to make Kamui distrust them, but strictly speaking from a Tsubasa viewpoint, Kamui and his team seemed to be at fault. Kamui’s twin, Subaru, isn’t quite as memorable since he doesn’t really get to appear until the very end. He spends most of his time being trapped, which doesn’t help his case.

This OVA definitely takes place at an interesting time since there is really no conclusion. The animators likely should have just made this a 13 episode OVA to adapt everything since there isn’t a whole lot of time in 3 episodes. Still, it was good to see that Tsubasa’s popularity was still strong enough to get it this far. Viewers of the show may not appreciate how different the OVA is from the show, but this also occurred in the manga. The OVA isn’t very violent although one character does steal someone’s eye, which is definitely the most graphic part here. I never liked that kind of violence since attacks against the eye are rather sensitive. It’s just not the same as losing an arm or something like that. Still, it’s not very graphic and it’s just the thought that can be stomach churning. The OVA is certainly a lot more intense than the show, but likely nothing that you can’t handle if you’ve seen Naruto Shippuden or Bleach. The only other scene that may not be a lot of fun is the Sakura vs Giant Monster part. She has a gun so you can likely tell that the monsters are doomed. That part’s a little iffy since giant monsters are practically the same as animals at times so those scenes would be a little negative as well.

Overall, Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations is a pretty solid OVA. I think the adaption may have went more smoothly if they had kept going in the show format and I have to wonder how the scenes would have been altered to fit the show’s format. I’m sure that it would have been a little more cheerful and the fights would have been longer. So, in that sense, I still think the show was their best bet, but this OVA does a good job of continuing the series. The soundtrack and animation are very solid and the plot has definitely moved forward. We have been waiting for the Syaoran in the water tank to get out for so long that it’s refreshing to see him finally get out. There isn’t much of an ending and it’s basically a “To Be Continued” so it’s good that this OVA got a sequel. (Which I shall review shortly) This is a fun stand alone story that I could recommend to people who didn’t see the Tsubasa show as well as those who did. It’s pretty atmospheric after all and it’ll play out like a mystery if you didn’t see the show. We get a lot of references to other old villains and even Fei Wong makes a cameo as he takes down his assistant. Of course, every viewer can appreciate Mokona and all that he does for the team! The eye scene and giant monster violence are the only things that you may want to be on the lookout for as the rest is all clear sailing! (The next OVA has more action so get ready for epicness!)

Overall 7/10

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